Sovereign VS Excal

[synthnut]

As some of you know, i recently picked up an Excal and an original Sovereign ......I have noticed a couple of things while spending a LOT of time reading this forum and it has really made me wonder about both machines so I thought I would post ..... When reading about guys using their Sovereigns on dry land , the majority seem to run in DISCRIMINATE mode and most seem to say that they get at least as deep , if not deeper ........Lord knows it's surely easier to listen to in Discriminate mode when hunting dry land with all the iron iand mineralization in the soil ..........Now you switch over to the other side of the coin and you have your water hunters , and they run in ALL METAL mode, and this is how THEY get deeper .... I've read many times over that in most older machines , which the technology on the Sovereign and the Excal really is older , that by running discrimination , you will loose depth !!.....This is not just the Minelab machines , but other machines as well ...... I also know that it's up to the individual , and the mineralization and other factors , but it's been on my mind for some time now how we can hunt virtually the same machines , but use 2 radically different approaches on finding targets ......???????

Another thing that I have questioned is .....Does Minelab tune an Excal differently than they would a Sovereign GT because they know it will be used more in water ? ........Are they the same engines , but tuned differently ? ....A comparison , as strange as it might be, is motorcyles ......A company can make a street bike with a fairing and all kinds of plastic to run 150 mph and you have to keep the RPM's in the high range to keep the bike working optimally ......Then they take the SAME MOTOR for a NAKED version ( no fairing or plastics ) of the same bike , except they tune it differently and put different cam's and different compression pistons in it , yet it retains the same C.C."s and its tuned for low and midrange power ....... I'm wondering if the Sovereign and the Excal are TUNED differently for thier intended purposes ? ......or are they the same and one is a stripped down version without switches and put in a waterproof tube ? ....... ?????????

Thanks, Jim

 

[seeker41]

one thing i have noticed is, the debate is on-going! just considering the excal, in some cases guys will say they get deeper results using disc instead of all metal and vice-versa. i guess it depends on the machine and "their ground".

 

[synthnut]

seeker,
Thanks for your reply ....

I'm surprised that more Excal guys don't chime in here ...... How are most of you hunting ? ...... I think that a lot of guys on the beaches near me are hunting in Discriminate mode simply because of al lthe trash in the sand .......Then there are other beaches where you dont't hear a thing when walking 100 to 200 ft .....Some of the beaches I hunt, you can't go 2 steps without hearing at least 4 pull tabs !!!..... JIm

 

[Neil]

Jim if youve got a beach with that many pull tabs on it, well thats the one Id be working the heck out of

never saw any difference other than sound between the excal and sov and the sound is because of the headphone difference.

 

[synthnut]

Neil,
Many are the steps I take on that beach ....Pull Tabs are my friend !!!...... I smile when I dig them because I know that I'm in the Gold range , and nobody else has been there yet !!....Jim

 

[erikk]

You MIGHT get a bit deeper on some beaches using PP with the excal but you will ALWAYS get a smaller footprint on ALL beaches

 

[synthnut]

erikk,
I have started to check out PP with the Excal and also the Sovereign .....I pretty much have to stand in one certain area as there aren't many spots where I can utilize it .....The beaches near me are so trashy !!.... That day that I went down to a NJ beach that was sanded in would have been a PERFECT place to hunt PP/ AM ......AND using an amplifier !!....Jim

 

[rdavisr]

Well I have been using my new Excal over the last two - three weeks and I hunt in disc mode. I tried the PP/AM but I couldnt stand to listen to it. Having gone out now a few times with it...but hunting this area for years, I really like that nice smooth tone this machine has. Sunday morning I found a copper heart about 1" by 1" at about 8" more or less. I also now hip mount. The weight of this machine was a killer for right arm. I cant answer the question concerning the tuning above as i too own both machines but dont have enough time on either to distinguish between them. Maybe as the water warms and I can actually get in it without turning blue I may switch to PP/AM and see what happens

Just my .02

Thanks

 

[synthnut]

I think that the fact remains that not every beach is the same ......There are those of us who hunt trashy beaches where there are many targets around , and there are others that hunt beaches where there are NOT many targets around ....The beaches with only a few targets will benefit more from using PP and and amplifier moreso than those of us who have trahsy beaches ..... When the targets are far and few between , you want to hear SOMETHING so you have more time and space to deal with PP and AM when trying to hear a rise in the threshold .. ..... When trying to utilize PP and AM on a trashy beach you get rewarded with your Excal going crazy as you hear total Kaos going on in your headphones as the threshold can't keep up with all the targets ....... You're listenning for tones when there is so much going on you really can't distinguish one from the other .....Jim

 

[Critterhunter]

"Tuning" a machine that you hear about has more to do with ground balance calibration on other machines than anything else. Some have a Salt/Beach/Black Sand switch that changes the ground balance range, and some of those machines have a fixed ground balance that can't be changed. It's either "normal" mode or "Beach" mode with no adjusting, while still yet some others just change the window of calibration you can do with the ground balance to adjust it for the beach. I've always heard that the Excal/Sovereign are the exact same machines. It's just the PC board has been re-formatted to fit inside the water proof tube, and the notch along with a few other features has been left off compared to some Sovereign models. Since BBS technology uses a completely different way to compensate for the ground signal in discriminate mode, there isn't really anything to tune as the machine does this on it's own while it samples the ground. Minelab says PP mode uses no form of ground balance, unlike the All Metal tracked or fixed modes on the GT. That's what I can't figure out about people saying they are getting better depth with PP. With no ground balance in any form I just don't see how that mode can see deeper than say fixed or track All Metal modes, let alone discriminate. My money is on the audio being more pronounced in PP mode, and it's ability to see low conductivity targets at the top end of the iron zone than discriminate can. The only thing I've seen for me on my GT is that in very highly mineralized sand (sand where a max of about 6 or 7" on a coin is best you can do, and not with any good target signal) PP mode will hit the target more solid, while discriminate may get funky with it. I believe this way due to the mineral content of the sand overwhelming the conductivity of the target (lots of pourous iron in the sand) and was washing it down into the iron range somewhat. That's just MO, though.