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Need opinions on Explorer XS

A

Anonymous

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I've been thinking of purchasing an Explorer XS and would like to hear some +/- opinions from users who switched over to the Explorer from a Garrett, Whites, Fisher etc. Are you glad you made the switch and why? What's the biggest advantage to the Explorer over other brands?
 
Vince;
I switched from a garrett 2500 and am very happy with the change. In the past 8 months my coin total is over 2000 and 16 rings.
Yes there is a learning curve with the Explorer but it is well worth the time to learn it.
The biggest advantage to me is the ID.
Rick (TN)
 
the xs has found some coins my whites didn't see at all, the id is very broad giving you more accuracy in target iding. it also cancels out alot of interference from power lines etc. with its scan feature. the dd coil seperates tragets better than concentric, there is no ground balancing, you can program it as you like and the save the different programs to use when ever. get andy savages book and read all about it. it can overwhelm you but if you can use a pc then you should have no trouble with it.
 
Hey Vince,
I switched from a tesoro supertraq to an explorer xs. With my tesoro I found mostly new coins and almost no old coins in parks around my town. I could get a depth of about 5 inches and the target sound was very weak and sounded like any other target. I could have been trash, it could have been an old coin. The amount of trash I dug was enormous. On the other hand, when using my explorer xs, I get much better depth and target identification. By listening to the detailed sounds of the explorer, I can hear depth and target composition with very acceptable accuracy. I regularly find silver dimes at depths of 5 to 7.5 inches. I can skip over aluminum pull tabs because they sound so different than silver coins. Tabs are also usually shallow targets and I can hear that too. One drawback to the explorer is the amount of time I had to spend learning the sounds. I had to spend about 2 hours weekdays, and up to 5 hours on Sat. and Sun. almost everyday for 3 months to actually feel comfortable with the sounds. That's probably about 200 hours or so. My biggest problem was telling the difference between rusty nails and coin hits. But now I feel confident. I have to go now. Good luck.
Mike
 
I switched from the White'DFX (good detector, found lots of silver), but going behind it at all the places that I had hunted, I found more silver. I think most of them were deep and on edge and the Explorer picked them up better. If you can call it a negative, the sweep speed is a lot slower on the Explorer, but that is why people are finding the coins in trashy areas. It is like any new detector, it takes time and patience to learn what it is telling you. One other thing that takes a while to get use to is the weight, but part of the reason I wanted to detect was for the exercise. I got use to it after a while, but there are some good harnesses on the market also if you need one. I am very pleased with mine. The DFX is now my back up detector and my 13 year old grandson uses it when he comes to visit.
 
The Whites and all other American Machines have an electronic field entering the ground like cone. In other words the area of detection gets smaller as the depth gets deeper.
The Minelab machines have an electrical field entering the ground that is approximately 2 inches wide but it's length is 1 inch shorter than the diameter of the coil regardless of depth.
This means far better coverage and far better chance to hit those DEEEEEP targets.
If this is confusing go to any minelab ad in any magazine and they explain it graphically.
Good luck!
Jim
 
Hey Jim,
Yea, I know what you are saying. Thanks for the warning. I am only looking for silver coins because I am too lazy to look for the other stuff. I guess I figure the chances of me finding a gold coin or a gold ring (statistically speaking) is so small that I would probably have to dig up hundreds of pull tabs. I just stick with the silver coins because I know more of them have been dropped and therefore I have a better chance of running across them. I also don't dig up nickels. It seems like all the nickels I have found with my tesoro have been so corroded that I am not interested in them. So I decided that when I memorized the explorer xs sound of silver, wheaties, and post 1865 indian heads, I would leave out nickels because they are so dang ugly when they come out of the ground around here. I have not found a single nickel with my machine because I ignore those real low sounds.
Mike
 
Hey Vince,
I ran out of time but now I'm back. My comparison will be with my Tesoro Supertraq, and with my friends who use Whites.
I like the explorer because it gives you lots of accurate sounds. You can have awesome awareness of target composition, and depth by listening to the sounds. The detector can achieve suprising depths even when the coin is on edge. For example, the deepest coin I found that was at about an 80 degree angle was a barber dime at a measured depth of 8.0 inches.
Trashy operation can be tough for beginners. This machine allows you to listen and make decisions on the large numbers of targets that are present in trashy areas, so it can be overwhelming. With my tesoro, all I got was a small array of simple sounds with not much variance. Large numbers of trash items sounded like coins with my tesoro. With the XS, there are many variations of sounds (tone, pitch, texture, threshhold presence, signal duration, signal warble) that are produced. So this machine gives you the opportunity to do your own discrimination in your mind with very good accuracy. In trashy areas, this can be confusing. But in the long run, the variety of sounds becomes an effective tool for finding those coins even in "collected out" parks. I feel that the real value of this machine is in the sounds it makes.
I suspect this machine may be a little better than the top White's machines. For example, I found a verticle barber dime at 7 inches in a park. I left it in place in the ground. A couple guys with high-end White's came over and could not detect it. Also, the park I collect at is supposedly collected out if you ask all the guys running around with Whites. They don't seem to be interested in the area. I went in there with the XS and pulled out about 30 old coins over several weeks and over many many hours of hunting: IH, Barber Dimes, Wheaties, 1 Standing Liberty Quarter, 1 Walking Liberty Half. They were amazed and so was I. All the Whites guys were collecting at a nearby construction area that had the top 4-8 inches of soil removed.
In my opinion, the advantage of the XS over my Tesoro is depth, target separation in trashy areas, and target identification. The disadvantage is that the XS has greater weight (I must switch hands all of the time). Another advantage of the XS is that it comes with the rechargeable battery. I have spent over 200 hours with the XS and never bought batteries for it! Another benefit of the XS is that now I dig less trash and more old coins than I dug with the tesoro. Although, when I was trying to decipher rusty nails vs. silver coins over the last month, I dug loads of rusty nails!
Mike
 
by your discriminating methods, you are also passing up silver that is next to another object. All metal detectors average out when two dissimilar metals are lying very close to each other and give off an non silver reading.
If you really want to discriminate all but the silver on your XS, create a learn screen by making it entirely black and then clearing out only the extreme upper corner where the clean silver sounds off. Make the clear area about a quarter inch square! I use it for cherry picking when I have just a little time.
Good luck my friend!
Jim
 
Hey Jim,
Gottchya! I am back in school now and have little time. I will try and use this discrimination pattern so I can cover more ground in less time. Usually I run in Iron Mask=-10, ignore the screen, and listen to sounds only while adjusting manual sensitivity for intermittant threshhold return in between targets. But I find that this makes me go extremely slow and cover very little ground while listening to multitudes of targets. Now that I am limited with time, I will try your suggestion. I have never used a heavy discrimination pattern like that before and I am interested to see what the results will be. A friend of mine uses alot of discrimination just like your suggested method, and he finds some good stuff!
Thanks,
Mike Unruh
 
I use to crank the discrimination up on my Sovereign when I hunted an old fairgrounds because there were three pulltabs to the inch. It enabled me to cherry pick some nice old silver even though I missed alot of the other type coins. It was the only way to hunt there unless you dug everything.
 
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