Hi, i'm new on that and i would know what metal detector is better to find on the water of the beach, y want it for seach coins and gold rings etc, Much people said to me buy a Pi metal detector like garret sea hunter mark, but that detects all metals and doesn't have discrimination, and others said the minelab excalibur II, but i don't know for that because if i would find gold i have to take in all metal model, can somebody help me? Sorry for my bad inglish i'm from spain.
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Sea hunter or Excalibur II
- Thread starter loises
- Start date
BootyHunter
Active member
Hi. If you are going to be walking the beach and in the shallow water up to about waist dept, then I would definetly get the Excalibur II. The Garrett Seahunter is an excellent detector, but on a beach you have lots and lots of aluminum and iron trash that will be too much to dig and will cause you great frustration as well as waste your detecting time. The Seahunter is great for diving. The Excalibur is able to give you a good idea of the type of target with tone ID and will make your detecting time much more productive if walking the beach and shallow water.
loises, it's true the sea hunter doesn't have discrimination,but it does have an Elimination which is about the same as discrimination only better.I have use both detectors and the one thing that they ( other people ) are not telling you is that excal 2 is ether 10" or 8" coil what you buy is what you get. But the sea hunter ,you get an 8 " coil and a under water headset,and a whole lot more ,you can change the coils and headset. Garrett has all kinds of coil you can change too. You can change the headset from land to sea, you can't do this with the Excal 2 . the sea hunter cost $600 the excal cost $ 1200. You may dig a little more trash ,but the deep Gold the excal 2 misses you will find.All the changes with the Garrett sea hunter can be done on the spot , try that with the excal. HH Ron Lord
BootyHunter
Active member
Well 1 thing "they" aren't telling you about the SeaHunter is that with that "elimination" mode, you lose most of your depth and also will miss small or thin gold items. I am not knocking the SeaHunter at all, I have 1 and love it but I also have the Excal II and if you have endless time and energy to stop every 2 feet and dig 12" for a bottle cap or piece of wire then the SeaHunter will be fine, but if your detecting time and energy is limited, then the Excal is the way to go. More often than not, you are going to be getting the deep hairpin or bottle cap that the "Excal missed" than the "deep gold" that the "Excal missed" and on the beach "time is money". Trust me, I know what I am talking about. Another consideration is if you are going to be in Salt water or fresh water as bobby pins and bottle caps take forever to rust away in fresh water so there are more of them to deal with. With the Excal you can go over a target get a beep, flip a switch and tell if it is worth digging or just trash, try that with the Seahunter. All in all both machines are great and versatile and if you do end up going with the Seahunter due to the cost, then you will have a great machine but don't waste your time with that "elite trash discrimination" mode, you will be hurting your chances of finding the goods.
The above 2 posts are right on. I use only the Sea Hunter and it's home is in the water shallow water to 200 feet deep if you choose to, (not me)
The farther you go out the fewer the trash targets and the better chance for gold . Less digging better items. Only use standard mode on SS with discrimination on 0. The same is true for the Excal except that it can skip over iron a big plus, especially on the beach. I want to purchase the excal II this spring, but am waiting for perhaps a new release that will fix those little problems. The combo SS and Excal is a killer combo for Salt/Fresh water hunting and will pay for themselves.
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The farther you go out the fewer the trash targets and the better chance for gold . Less digging better items. Only use standard mode on SS with discrimination on 0. The same is true for the Excal except that it can skip over iron a big plus, especially on the beach. I want to purchase the excal II this spring, but am waiting for perhaps a new release that will fix those little problems. The combo SS and Excal is a killer combo for Salt/Fresh water hunting and will pay for themselves.
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BootyHunter you say you loss most of your depth in Elemination mode.Define most of your depth! In elemination set on 2 I fine class rings at 20 to 26 inches, Post ear ring at 6 to 8 inches. in salt water. The excal won't do that, I know I use to own one , I now own a sea hunter and an infinium LS because I don't mind digging deep Gold.
BootyHunter
Active member
junklord3139 said:
I assume you are retired and have unlimited detecting time, no? If so then you have time to chase deeply buried junk targets, and don't say that you don't because the Seahunter has one tone whether the target is a 22K ring or an old rusty bottle cap. You might get a double beep on some elongated targets that give you a hint of what they are but the Treasure hunter in us all still makes you dig it on the off chance that it is a chain or braclet. Yes, with the discreete mode there is a loss of depth and especially on thin gold rings. Anyone interested go to youtube and search Garrett Sea Hunter Mark II test. There is a video of a guy in Texas and I don't recall his name at the moment, and he tests the detector and you will see an example of the discreet mode there. I have done tests myself and there is a noted drop off in performance to the extent that I haven't even tried hunting with it in this mode because I KNOW that it doesn't perform up to it's ability in this mode.
If you have unlimited time to hunt and you want to clean the beach of all targets then yes the Seahunter is great, but in the real world where most of us have limited time to hunt and there are 100 junk targets to 1 good one, the discriminating abilities of the Excal are the better option. Again, let me reiterate that I am by no means bashing the SeaHunter. As I have said this was my 1st water detector and even after having bought and used the Excal with great success, I still have and use my Seahunter. I keep it set up on the diving rod and use it exclusively with my hookah gear to dive the swim areas that I hunt. In that environment the Seahunter shines and outshines the Excal because the audio is louder on the Seahunter and is easier to hear over the regulator bubbles, it will find objects the size of a bb such as stud earrings and whatnot and while diving I want to take my time and find every single target as target recovery is not an issue. I have the Seahunter and the Excal and love the both of them, but the question was if buying only 1 then which one and unless the fellow is going to use it strictly for diving purposes I would have to reccomend the Excal. With reverse hunting the Excal I have dug rings at the 20" mark and to me that satisfies any "depth questions" that I may have had with the detector. The ability to check a signal with the discriminator knob and either get a "yeah dig it tone" or a "no this is trash tone" is clearly the biggest reason to get the Excal over the Seahunter. Also for every good target that is 20-26" down there are 100 pieces of iron or drink cans or wads of aluminum foil or sparkler wires that are also down that deep and digging deep holes to get these items gets very very very frustrating on a hot beach with tons of spectators asking annoying questions.
BootyHunter
Active member
I'm talking about in the wet sand. I don't even venture a guess at how deep things are in the water. I am not exagerating at all, I have my handle on my scoop marked so I KNOW how deep those finds were in the wet sand.
seems like a useless mode anyway, does not have the sensitivity of the standard mode. I use strictly standard mode even though sometimes it gets a little chatty. I can make the noise go away by increasing the sensitivity but I'd rather not, don't want to lose small gold, I keep it on 0.....HH
John(Tx) said:
I keep the SH on 0 standard mode all the time. This is a simple detector to use; turn it on set the threshold and rock and roll. You dig a bit of junk, but you can hear a good target for the most part. A sharp tight sound in either direction when "X'ing" the location equates often to a ring or coin. Double beeps in both directions can be a ring or a hoop earring. I think it is most effective when in ankle to waist deep water low tide, but then targets are everywhere.
I want to buy the Excal 1000 II to have a good discriminating detector to do shallow wet sanding and dry sanding in the winter when I am not going into the water to hunt at waist deep. Either machine will get paid off in short order with the finds.
GL and HH Marty
TheDualFieldBandit
New member
20" to 26" what Excalibur are you using??? My Dual Field doesn't even do that! 18" to 20" is pushing it with the DF. My Excalibur II 1000 in PP mode maybe 14" to 15"? In Disc mode it's good out to about 12" maybe? Now I'm talking 6+ gram gold rings! Not soda cans!!!
BootyHunter
Active member
Wow it amazes me how poor reading comprehension is around here. The 20" to 26" statement was from Junklord and he was talking about using a Garrett SeaHunter Mark II PI. I stated that I have found rings at the 20" depth with an Excalibur II in pinpoint mode in wet sand. Both rings that I have found at that depth were large mens rings. Do I find rings at that depth often, of course not, but I was simply stating that I do not worry about depth when using my Excal vs the SeaHunter and that I would rather give up a little depth and be able to not waste my time digging sparkler wires and bobby pins.
Finderskeeper
Active member
It would be interesting to do a shoot out between PI machines and an Excalibur in pin point mode with Goldmaster headphones and a Doc's Treasure Amp.
Neil
Well-known member
BootyHunter said:
pinpoint mode on the excal/sov is like hunting with a pi, its all metal. you use pinpoint for extreme depth so the tones in disc are now out the window so what are you talking about? how are you not wasting time if your hunting and digging in pinpoint mode?
OldBeechnut
Well-known member
If all goes well there maybe a few hunters in Janurary that meet up for this on the Jersey Shore, (not a shoot out but more of a Learning session), hopefully a Infinium, Dual field, CZ20. Sovereign, Excalibur II with Peltors, and both of my excaliburs, one with WOT/Doc's/Peltors, the other with a 10 inch coil, Doc's/Peltors, I can bring a SeaHunter w/8 inch coil. There maybe a SandShark , And VB Max and his SE Pro has been invited, and has said there is a chance he will be there....My thing is to learn what settings work best on the Jersey shore's on each of these machines, and which would be the best for different conditions. I hope to capture a little video of each machine's settings, swing speed, and anything that might set it apart from the others. Looking forwards to meeting some great hunters.