Beach Detector Show Down

[Surfnturf]

Me and a few friends of mine all love to beach hunt. So one day we where all talking about how deep our detectors go and so we decided to see which of them was the king of deep.
We packed up our detectors and headed to Daytona beach. It was a nice sunny day and perfect for a day of fun and sun.
We decided to make it fair we would take a small ring tie a string to it and bury it, then each of us try to detect it. We got close enough to the waves that each time the waves came in it would fill our hole in and we could go alittle deeper each try.
Here is our results:
Minelab 1000 7" inches max
Fisher CZ 20 9"
White's PI pro 12"
Garrett Infinium 15"

Keep in mind this is a very small 14k baby ring. It won't even fit on my pinky finger.

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

And what were the sensitivity settings on all of these machines? Because that can make a big difference. If you say they were in Auto I could believe it because in Auto you don't get much depth on the Excal. If you say they were cranked to the max, I would question that as well because many machines will lose depth if the sens is too high for the conditions or if it's unstable. There is an optimal manual setting for each of those machines that will provide the best depth and I'm curious where they were all set. I typically get better depth than that with my Excal.

 

[Surfnturf]

Hi Mike,
We pretty much had them all set on max. Please keep in mind that the ring we where using is a very tiny baby ring. :blush:
I have used a Excalibur since they where 1st released. I still have the original Excalibur(pre 800 or 1000 series)the one with the blue sword on the side and the 8" horse shoe coil.
The Excalibur 1000 we where using has the standard 10' coil. Since this was a shoot out we tried about every setting possible including pinpoint.

Merry Christmas and HH

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

Well that's pretty amazing on the depth for the Infinium. And I'm surprised on the CZ, as I have a CZ-70 and while it's great at the beach, I feel my Excal is a little deeper...the threshold being it's main advantage there, in my opinion.

So since you were using this baby ring, it would seem that any of these machines would LIKELY hit a larger ring even deeper. So would your opinion be that the Infinium is clearly better at the beach than ALL of them? I've known about the Infinium, read a little about it, but have never actually SEEN one, despite them being out for years now. Of course every other machine you see at the beach these days is an Excal. Maybe might have to test an Infinium out myself. I started with a Garrett, actually...GTAx-750. Wasn't a beach machine at all, but sure did well on land.

Merry Christmas!

 

[bdahunter]

I hunt with an Excal 1000 and my buddy Besco swings the Infinium here in Bermuda. We've compared these units in field conditions and found them to be a draw as far as performance during actual hunting.
The Infinium is unstable with the 14" coil in the surf but the 8" coil works just fine. The Excal has a faster swing speed so you can cover more ground and of course it discriminates a little better.
Depth seems to be about the same but that may have something to do with the lack of black sand on this island which would help the Infinium and hurt the Excal.
The Infinium is certainly a lighter unit, especially with the hip-mounted arrangement. A lot less tiring at the end of a long hunt.
Each unit has pros and cons but not enough for me to switch from the Excal to the Infinium under my current hunting conditions. I would certainly look at getting an Infinium though as it is a good unit at a little sharper price than the Excalibur 1000.

Just my two cents worth,

BDA

 

[Beachcomber]

Minelabs usually don't fair well in Florida due to the lack of mineralization. Minelabs need at least a slight amount of ground minerals in order to work thier best. Working in an area such as Daytona is like trying to do an airtest with a Minelab. They do bad in air tests and in areas with no mineralization. The same reason that the Excal did bad in your test is the reason that the old-style TR Machine that Mr. Gold builds works so well down there. A TR Machine will not do well in a mineralized environment where an Excal excels but use it in a place without mineralization and it will put the other detectors to shame. JMHO

Merry Christmas to one and all!!!

HH

Beachcomber

 

[Surfnturf]

Hi Mike, No I don't think it's a better beach machine Just in this test it was the deepest. Maybe it was because most PI's do better in mineralized ground. I have both the Excal and the White's PI pro. I usually use the Excal if there is alot of trash. If not I break out the PI pro. Both are great detectors in my opinion. Soon they will be replaced by a true disc PI. But that's another story...

 

[Surfnturf]

Daytona beach like most beaches have what I call fluff. It consist of anywhere from 2 to 4 ft of loose mostly brownish sand. But then you get to hard pack. It consist of red and black sand. When noreaster's come and blow all the fluff out to sea that's really your best time to hunt. Last year we had a couple and it's when I found most of my really old coins and jewlery. Sand always shift thats why we find things everyday at the beach no matter how many times we go over it. But when you get in the hard pack it really doesn't shift or move much and since gold is so heavy that is usually where it ends up.
The best ring I have ever found was in the hard pack along with about 20 coins dating mostly in the teens and 20s. Only bad thing is salt is also corrosive so they where totally black and ate up. But the gold is always nice. Here is a pic of the diamond I found in the hard pack. It has 10 smaller diamonds an a .65 beauty in the middle.
<img src=http://sthom92587.hypermart.net/Diamond.jpg>

 

[Gulf Hunter]

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