since b.h. is doing away with so many models :confused:

[SEMPERFI61]

whats the best made and best all around machine? is it the 505?need some feed back please.thanks

 

[Karl]

Here is what a friend wrote on another board ! It's good info.

I wanted a cheap(er) bum-around-town MD that I could use and also have available for the wife to use when we both go out. I looked at all the Bounty Hunters up to about the $300 dollar range, and you know what? I finally decided on the cheaper $100 Tracker IV. The reason is, in the lower price range, the frequency and coil size of all the models are the same. They all have an 8 inch coil and a 6-7 khz frequency range. The important thing, the Tracker has automatic ground balance adjustment, NOT FIXED. Some of the more expensive BH's in this price range had FIXED ground balance. Now some had more bells and whistles, but they all had the same coils, and frequency, which to me says the same depth range, only some of them have their own, built in, computerized ground-balance-on-the-fly, and the others were FIXED. Bounty Hunter claims that the automatic ground balance can be used in the toughest conditions, even around old gold mines for nugget hunting, with no problems in highly mineralized soils. So why buy a more expensive machine with a FIXED ground balance?

 

[Dave J.]

Responding to Karl: A bit of misunderstanding there. The TK4 tracks ground out with negative feedback differentiators. The phase is fixed. This is how all low cost "automatic ground balance" metal detectors work, and many medium priced units as well.

The TK4 isn't very "hot" (you don't expect that in its price category) but what it does, it does very well.

Responding to Semperfi: the top of the BH line is the Platinum. It's priced about the same as the Time Ranger was, and is all around a much better unit. The post-2003 Time Ranger was a good machine for sure, but no regrets here at its passing.

--Dave J.

 

[dixiedigger57]

hey Semper fi! i got delayed getting my 505 and major surgery pending. should be ok but 5 wks or so down time best case scenario. going to memorize the manual. guy keeping the unit for me. Do you know what unit in the BH or Radio shack/Discovery line has a salt mode button? i saw one at a pawn shop, i went back to get it and it was gone. there were several different BH and shack jobs, and a family bought them all. any ideas which one it might have been? which Model?

 

[nick hunter]

Well thank you Mr Dave J.

I have been "demolished", even warned for exclusion on another forum for having said that about another brand entry level model.

They even pretended that this particular model, quoting "automatic ground balance" in its specs, had also a "on start automatic GB" , that is adapting to ground conditions when turned on. And so an excellent detector for wet salt sands.

Sigh.

As far as the time ranger is concerned, I found one here (Europe) last month, a post 2003 one, and I am a very happy user since then. I hunt dry sand beaches with it.

As a general remark, maybe a little "off topic", I am very disappointed to see BH/Discovery products are very thin on the ground in my part of Europe.

I own 3 BH units and I'm doing very well with the three of them.

HH

Nick

 

[slingshot]

Yeah on the g/b. I just found out after a few days of using mine that you'd better not be swinging the Tracker too fast or many targets will be nothing but a "click" on the speaker. When slowed down and rechecking them, they turned into high or low tones. Now I'm finding stuff as usual, but am so used to medium/fast sweep speed and am kinda disappointed to find this out. Otherwise, fine.