Mike Hillis
Well-known member
I was looking for a affordable multi-purpose nugget machine more than anything else. Did a lot of comparison shopping
Minelab Xterra 70 - First off it is too expensive. Second, I'd already had two of these and found the second one had the same performance as the first - poor. Slow response, poor iron rejection in mineralized ground and the ground balance range was too small. I was always on the edge of the gb range. The Xterra 50 was even worse.
Garrett Scorpion Gold Stinger - this one was a real contender. The price was right and very nearly got my money. What stopped me was that it wasn't a true multipurpose machine. Yes it has a disc dial so I could use it for other purposes but I require tone id for all my other detecting. Remember...tones rule!
Tesoro Lobo was a thought, but again more than I wanted to spend, and no tone id, though I do like VCO in disc mode.
Whites MXT was a thought, but again more than I wanted to spend, and no tone id. When I compared the MXT to the F5 I found the F5 to have a better feature set and give more information.
Fisher F75 - already had a go around with this one and while it is a great nugget machine it wasn't that good for me for other types of hunting and again too expensive.
But the Fisher site also listed the F5 as a nugget hunter. Hmmm. I'd already been watching it because it was an affordable multi-tone unit with some tone modes I enjoy hunting with but was gunshy due to my last experience. But listing it like that on the website caused me to take another look at it. So I did.
The ground balance range was large enough I wouldn't be setting out on the edge the way most of the other machines leave me.
The gain and threshold were separated out so I could truly tune to the site conditions and targets I was after.
The phase read out along with the mineralization bar could keep me in tune with the site. I wouldn't have to rely on audio alone to tell me the site conditions had changed.
Only problem I had was that there are not very many reviews out there for this machine. Its almost an invisible detector. A video or two, one review, and just a few posts. So this is really a buy and try venture. I'm hoping my experience will be positive.
Where IS that brown truck?
HH
Mike
Minelab Xterra 70 - First off it is too expensive. Second, I'd already had two of these and found the second one had the same performance as the first - poor. Slow response, poor iron rejection in mineralized ground and the ground balance range was too small. I was always on the edge of the gb range. The Xterra 50 was even worse.
Garrett Scorpion Gold Stinger - this one was a real contender. The price was right and very nearly got my money. What stopped me was that it wasn't a true multipurpose machine. Yes it has a disc dial so I could use it for other purposes but I require tone id for all my other detecting. Remember...tones rule!
Tesoro Lobo was a thought, but again more than I wanted to spend, and no tone id, though I do like VCO in disc mode.
Whites MXT was a thought, but again more than I wanted to spend, and no tone id. When I compared the MXT to the F5 I found the F5 to have a better feature set and give more information.
Fisher F75 - already had a go around with this one and while it is a great nugget machine it wasn't that good for me for other types of hunting and again too expensive.
But the Fisher site also listed the F5 as a nugget hunter. Hmmm. I'd already been watching it because it was an affordable multi-tone unit with some tone modes I enjoy hunting with but was gunshy due to my last experience. But listing it like that on the website caused me to take another look at it. So I did.
The ground balance range was large enough I wouldn't be setting out on the edge the way most of the other machines leave me.
The gain and threshold were separated out so I could truly tune to the site conditions and targets I was after.
The phase read out along with the mineralization bar could keep me in tune with the site. I wouldn't have to rely on audio alone to tell me the site conditions had changed.
Only problem I had was that there are not very many reviews out there for this machine. Its almost an invisible detector. A video or two, one review, and just a few posts. So this is really a buy and try venture. I'm hoping my experience will be positive.
Where IS that brown truck?
HH
Mike
