coil for working lawns and similar sites for 'casual, everyday' type hunting, and the 10" D-D EXcelerator is my pick for working many of the freshwater river beaches we have.
I used our postal scales and weighed the stock coil, with coil cover and lower rod. The 8" EXcelerator DD, with coil cover and lower rod, weighs only 1 oz. more and due to the rod mount point it provides a really nice balance. The open-designed 10" DD EXcelerator, also with coil cover and mounted on a lower rod, weighs the same as the stock 950 set-up.
Now, to give an example of some 'water hunting' challenges we have around here, the MXT's ground phase readings, at most sites I hunt (parks & schools, renovation sites, yards) runs anywhere from about 73 to 83. On a few rare ocasions I hunt kind ground that falls in the 68-72 range, but I also get into uglier sites where it is 84, 85, 86, 87!
Our coastal beaches are not pleasant sunbathing sites where folks flock to like down in California or Florida, for example, and they make up for the low people-count by having a high mineralization-count. But I only get to the coast maybe 3-5 times a year, in a good year.
Here in the Portland, Oregon area we have a lot of beach hunting opportunity provided by the mighty Columbia River and the major tributary, the Willamette River. Now, for those who haven't seen larger-sized river systems, it might be difficult to imagine them. We had record breaking rainfall last Saturday and Sunday, and maybe one other day this past week, so many river bodies are up a little, but it won't last. They were very, very low due to the drought-like winter we've had.
Walking on these river beaches is easily some of the nastiest 'black sand' environments most people could ever imagine hunting! The key to successful searching of these types of environments is the minimal use of discrimination (as in 'no' discrimination), the ignoring of visual Target ID (because the nasty ground easily masks most signals and distorts them), and paying attention to the audio response and going after the coin-like signals.
Aside from running w/o rejection, ignoring TID and going after audio 'hits' the next thing you an do to put some odds in your favor is opt for a Double-D coil. I can assure you it isn't always the answer, nor does that mean that a decent concentric coil is totally useless because they aren't.
But for working some really ugly (mineralization wise) freshwater beaches, I haven't found a coil yet that I like more than the 8" EXcelerator ... unless it's the 10" open-design EXcelerator. I like the 10" more is wading in shallow water, but aso when working dry sand areas as it doesn't 'plow' or build up on top of the coil. The 8", with its solid design, is what I like for handling the bulk of the river beaches, and for hitting the fringe areas where there are some taller grasses that need to be dealt with.
I don't like to post boasting coin depths, but I can tell you that in doing my field evaluations of coils in general, the 8" and 10" have essentially matched the stock 950 most of the time, or done just a little better so far as depth is concerned.
What I really like about them, when used with the MXT, is that I can get better target info with less side-to-side sweep. This is handy when it is a little trashy, and it means there's less ground signal to deal with, too.
I have a couple of larger coils for the MXT that are fine for times when I am after larger targets, such as when I am 'lock hunting' around old RR switch sites, but for overall hunting with an MXT, I am most comfortable now with a two-coil set-up mating my 5" EXcelerator with the 8" EXcelerator (but the 10" is very close to taking the place of the 8"!).
It mainly depends upon the types of sites you usually hunt. The 5" still gets the most use on the MXT, but the 8" is quickly mounted when I decide to walk the MXT out across a local park or grassy school ground. So far the deepest coin I have located in some of the higher mineralized beach applications was about 7
