Excal working again.

[smoldrn]

Had to replace the battery pod on the excal, now she's working great. While I was waiting on delivery, I wound up buying a used Tiger Shark off CL.
For the record, there's just no comparison between a TS & an Excal. ML wins every time.

 

[Critterhunter]

Is it the Tiger or the Sand shark that is the VLF version? I know the other is a PI but always get the names confused. I think the first version of the PI model was called the Stingray. Anyway, I had the VLF Tiger/Sand shark model and I liked it a lot in certain respects. Not too heavy. Built well. Great waterproof battery compartment. Only problem was no tone alerts or VDI so it wasn't very useful for land hunting. I did dig a few mercs in some really bad iron infested ground with it on land though. They are also much more sensitive to fine gold like thin chains than a Minelab, but that has it's drawbacks in that you hear more bits of foil and other tiny junk and can make for a noisy hunt. A Minelab anyway will still get even a super thin gold ring at depths beyond just about any machine on the market due to the nature of a ring being a complete loop and presenting a huge disruption to the magnetic coil field. Guys seem to prefer the VLF Tesoro for fresh water more than salt for obvious single frequency problems with that, as well as in real mineralized fresh water beaches. Either way, without tone alerts or a VDI for land hunting I often was forced to crank up the discrimination on it. I simply didn't water hunt enough at the time to justify keeping it so I didn't hold onto it long. Nice machine though.

 

[smoldrn]

The Tiger shark is the VLF. Even though there's a 'salt' switch on it, it kept falsing in the suds. Only seemed to get about 6" in depth using an air test. I thought I might be able to use it on land, as the Explorer keeps acting up & ML doesn't have parts.

 

[bootyhoundpa]

good to hear you got your battery situation squared away...i also have an older battery pod that has cracks in it.....from what ive heared recently,it is a common problem for those plastic end caps to crack....maybe they crack from the little bit of heat generated during recharge.... ive never owned or used a tiger shark but i have heard a lot of good things about them....some say they are much better at hitting on gold chains.....the other slight advantage they might have over the excal is i believe you can ground balance them...happy hunting...

 

[Critterhunter]

Having a ground balance is the exact reason why non-BBS machines have a disadvantage, not an advantage. Minelabs don't use a ground balance or conventional auto ground tracking, which can cost you depth and performance on other machines. While the particulars of how Minelab does it is still largely a mystery, some say it takes a digital picture of the ground with and without a target present and compares that constantly to ignore the ground signal in a very unique way. Conventional ground balancing sets up a filter that the target has to bust through in order to be heard. Minelabs don't use that way of ignoring the ground, and that's why they ID at depth doesn't degrade as much as it can on other machines.