Well, it got a little crazy in this thread, and some posts got deleted. Minelabman or whatever his name was, probably went bragging to his buddies how the BH crowd panicked.
There were two things that stuck out in the whole conversation.
1. The guy didn't know anything about BH and was just making stuff up. He was so creative that it was hard to tell what he was even saying.
2. He turned out to be a Minelab shill concealing his identity.
Some of you have read essays about metal detectors I've written for a general audience. I'm respectful toward the company that writes my paycheck, but beyond that I am a spokesperson for an industry that I've been in for 28 years, having worked for several employers who are now competitors. There are things I like and don't like about specific products, even ones I've designed; and things I like and don't like about our competitors. They're in business because they offer something to someone that we didn't. And vice versa. I respect competitors.
Now, since a few people reading this forum may be newbies, I figure I oughta clear the air a bit.
Bounty Hunter is manufactured in El Paso, Texas, with the exception of one low end product some of which was manufactured in China for a little while but I don't think we're importing them any more. Most BH designs are traceable to the 1980's platforms of George Payne, one of the most repected engineers in the history of metal detecting. Over the last several years we have made major improvements to those platforms as well as introducing entirely new products. The Bounty Hunter trademark is associated with products which offer excellent value in the low to mid range of the metal detector market. Bounty Hunter products as well as private label variants of BH products are sold through a wide variety of venues, from mom-and-pop storefronts to the Internet and mass retailers.
Bounty Hunter is manufactured under the same roof by the same people who make the venerable Fisher machines as well as the new Teknetics line. The Fisher and Teknetics trademarks are aimed more at the high end of the market and for sale through local dealers, although there is some crossover with the BH lineup. For the last several years the chief design engineer for all of them has been myself, Dave Johnson, who was the primary metal detector design engineer for Fisher from 1981 through early 1995.
The BH lineup are mostly products which have been around a while and have been revised as necessary to eliminate any problems. Nothing's perfect, but our BH products are on the whole very solid and reliable machines, well-proven designs of engineers who put their companies on the map with leading-edge high-performance machines. In the mass market, we dominate, holding our own against Chinese competitors because our products are better even though we can't match their low costs.
In metal detecting, what you paid for the machine is not necessarily an indication of how well you will do with it. Most of the BH lineup are easy to master, whereas some high-end metal detectors take a long time to master. And, the kind of "beeping" you do also matters. In gold prospecting, high performance is essential to get good results unless you happen to be darn lucky, whereas in many types of coinshooting the details of how features are implemented counts for more than sheer performance. And, some people like lots of features to play with, whereas others like simplicity.
I will now sing the praises of our Tracker 4, a low end metal detector that's been around for longer than I've been at First Texas, and the boss never let me redesign it because it's almost impossible to find someone who has one who isn't happy with it. It may be ugly, but that doesn't stop it from working good. It will only find coins to about 6 inches or so deep, but in a public park or tot-lotting, more sensitivity than that is as much a liability as an asset. ......I used to know a guy in Colorado who took up metal detecting briefly and blew a lot of money on high end machines (including one I'd designed), and he was ready to give it all up when his wife bought him a Tracker 4 for Christmas. All of a sudden, beeping was fun, and he mastered the machine. In a public park or tot lot, guys with expensive machines couldn't touch him. He got a kick out of following right behind them and showing them what they left behind, and even ID'ing it through the feel of the sound better than their visual target ID systems did.
Now I'm gonna disturb Mr. Minelabman or whatzizname: my favorite low end machine is the BH Junior, although I wish we offered it in an adult mechanical configuration. It's very easy to use, with smooth and predicable responses, and expressive audio and tight motion pinpointing. A couple years ago a priest friend of mine asked me to locate a child's bracelet lost on the front lawn of his parish church, so for me the question was what machine to use? There in engineering dept. I've got BH's, Fishers, White's, Minelabs, Garrets, Tesoros, stuff you never heard of and prototypes you'll never hear of. Small target on the surface in an area where there would probably be a lot of trash. I could have picked anything, and I picked the BH Junior. I didn't find the missing bracelet, but I'm confident that the metal detector didn't miss it, the bracelet was not lost where the girl thought she lost it (and she was unsure where she lost it, she was just guessing).
The BH Platinum is a medium performance machine, recent design on an entirely new platform from which the Fisher F5 and the Teknetics Omega were also adapted. Some people even say it looks good. They're not all as homely as the Tracker 4.
There are a lot of BH products, I don't have space here to discuss them all. Some I like better than others: some I personally don't like but other people think they're great. I'll defend the lineup by saying that they're good products for the money, and that in many circumstances they can hold their own against much more expensive machines.
And since Mr. Minelabman or whatzizname is probably following this thread with glee, I'll remind the cuss of something. Which is that Minelab's products qualify the company as a worthy competitor, but not all Minelab shills can be considered worthy to touch a metal detector, be it a Minelab or a Bounty Hunter. The phrase "a disgrace to the hobby" comes to mind.
--Dave J.
Chief Designer, First Texas Products & Fisher Labs
Minermangold, air tests are laughed at and not viewed as a valid test of a machines performance regardless of which machine you are using. My full sized F150 air tests at about 3 1/2 feet in all metal with the 10" coil. whoopty doo. I would love to run minelab's $200-300 machines head to head with BH's. Yes, that would be all ONE of them, the x-terra 30/305. The x-terra's are notoriously lousy coinshooters and ID just as bad. The higher end x-terra's (multi-frequency) require you to buy 3 coils, 1 coil for each frequency. This means hunting the same spot 3 times to know you got the most out of your machine. They could probably kick any BH's ass in a gold field though. I have run my BH SSII head to head with quite a few different brands. I can consistently run circles around my buddy's high end minelab, literally. 
I always beat him 5 to 1 in total finds but his fewer finds usually result in a few more older and deeper coins on average. His machine is by far dominant in ID'ing the DEEP silver(8"+) but lousy on gold. Whites coinshooting machines are less than impressive compared to BH. I usually run neck and neck with a buddy using a quantum xt, neither machine really leaps and bounds ahead of the other. The BH and the quantum xt consistently outhunt the ace 250, (but that could be user related). I think the point to be made is the BH's are allot of bang for the buck and a fantastic entry-mid level machine to get people hooked on a great hobby. Like anything else though, If you want the bells and whistles, It'll cost ya'! GL & HH, JJ
