The Clunker, Remembering your worst.

[Dancer]

My worst experience came with a machine I just wasn't ready for. 2002, I'd only been hunting for a couple of months and my Uncle asked me to try out this detector. Said it was a deep one from Australia. I believe it was a Minelab Sovereign. Well it was way above my pay grade. Couldn't understand what was going on with the numbers. No book of instructions, and it weighed a ton. I gave it a few hunts and gave it back. That machine deserved better than me.
Machine I started out with was an used Garrett Gti 1000 I believe. It was a good starter but sure did dig a lot of deep Alum. claiming to be quarter's. Funny as I got more experience the better the machines seemed to be.

 

[GeorgeinSC]

I took up this hobby "Later in Life". Brother in law recommended that I get a Sovereign Gt. Of course Minelab quit production six months later. I thought that I had wasted a bunch of money as I could not understand what the machine was telling me. I finally put one of "Ron's 180 Meters" on it and slowly but surely the light at the end of the tunnel began to appear. Now even with my lousy hearing when I swing the coil over a dime or quarter the sweet high tone stops me in my tracks.

Yes it is a bit heavy but the danged thing finds the goodies.

 

[still looking 52]

57 Chevy pickup truck that used more oil than gasoline, seriously, I've only owned two detectors, a bounty hunter and the f5 and l liked them both.

 

[WV62]

Back at the beginning my first attempt at detecting in the 70's I was in a gun shop and he had 5 detectors hanging on the wall. They were Jeadco or something like that and I bought one. Read the manual and I was off. Now I went to my mom's house and they had a old store over the creek and I started hunting and I remembered the manual said the coil was water proof. So maybe the coins I was looking for were in the creek, so I put the coil in the water and the detector quit working.

I took it back and they gave me another machine, same thing in the water it quit working. I went through all 5 of his detectors and ended up with a nice new bicycle. Kind made a slow start on my detecting career.

Then a year or so later I found a really good deal on a Heath Kit that just needed a few wires connected up and I would be good to go. Well I never got a beep out of that one.

Wasn't until my dad came up with a White's 5000D, man after seeing that machine I had to have one of those. Now at last my career was off and running.

Ron in WV

 

[bootyhoundpa]

Started out with a gta 1000..great 1st machine.. then got a whites 5900.. great machine and in some ways my favorite of all... then i made the leap to the sov gt and ya i thought i made an $800 mistake but once i finally understood what it was telling me i was popping coin after coin out of my yard that the previous two had missed.. later picked up used excal,no explanation needed as it's related to the sov gt... then picked up fisher 1270 which has found me a fair amount of gold as have the other units except for the gta 1000... however if i had to consider one of them to be a bit of a clunker it would be the 1270 just because it seems to like iron a little to much... but every machine has its strengths and weaknesses. ..

 

[bulletman]

Truly got heavily involved in 1987 with the purchase of a Garrett Freedom 2? Could not use it as I was in Germany upon my 5th duty assignment. Germany had a ban upon metal detecting because of the un-exploded ordnance that is still in the ground. I see lots of videos now on YouTube, apparently the ban was lifted some time ago in Europe. That is truly virgin ground over there, with thousands of years of unearthed history to yet be discovered!

Bulletman

Shalom

 

[jim tn]

Started out about 1972 with a Jetco. Of course, it beeped on everything metal in those days and I believe on a good wet ground day it got maybe 2" of depth. Apparently enough to spur hobby interest as have been swinging detectors ever since. Merry Christmas, all. HH jim tn

 

[Southwind]

Don't know that I would rate them as "clunkers" but I was not impressed.

First was the White's XLT. I know a lot of people swear by this machine but my swearing was at it LOL.

I had been using the White's Eagle Spectrum for a good 6 years and as less coins started popping up in our city park I started researching for a deeper detector. I loved my White's so I bought the nest model the XLT that on paper looked to be a smaller Eagle Spectrum with a few new features. It was, in my opinion, simple a Eagle Spectrum in a smaller box. I used it for a year or so and sold it. I them bought the top of the line DFX. Loved it right off the bat. I was back to pulling coins by the handful again.

Second flop was the Minelab SE Pro. Now in this case I must admit this was more an issue with the user than the detector. Going from 10 years of White's rock solid tones and threshold to a minelab flute was overwhelming. Had I had someone experience with minelab things might have been different. I tried and tried for two years to get the hang of that Minelab tones but I just didn't seem to be getting any more depth than with my DFX and my DFX was nice and smooth. I finally decided to sell it and wouldn't you know it two days before the guy I sold it to was to show up and pick up the SE Pro we clicked. For a short few hunts I was pulling some deep coins. But the guy showed up and I regretfully had to give it up. Not a total loss though. A few weeks later I bought the E-Trac and life was good.

 

[Hoser John]

Hahahahah In 1961 I went to Tandy Craft Store and bought a kit to construct a Heathkit BFO modern whoopdedoo scientific metal finder. OMG it went ape most of the time but Redondo,hermosa,pv ,manhatten paved with gold/silver as no others and no beach cleaning monsters in the early am. Took it out rockhounding/mining and it hated them hot rocks,,black sands and wet?? forget it. Paid for my first car,a 52 ford ,with the finds though. Stolen in a move but would have liked to have had my first unit-John

 

[Dan-Pa.]

Many years ago bought an early turtle water unit....kept going out of tune but did find several gold rings....understand the later models were improved and worked well....

 

[Cliff KS]

Had some CZ's that I had some success with, but had the itch to try a model with VDI readout, and Fisher had just come out with the F75, so I jumped. Well, it was too chatty no matter what the settings and false signals galore and I called them and they said it sounded like I had a faulty coil so send it in. When I got it back the machine turned on but would not make a peep ! Someone had forgotten to reattach the speaker, so back it went to FT. Got it back and it was just as eratic and noisy as ever, so I sold it for a considerable loss and got an Xterra 70.

 

[slingshot]

Tesoro Silver Sabre umax. Sent in to the factory 5 times. They couldn't fix it. Luckily. I had a dealer who finally just gave me a Silver umax. Had he not helped me I would have never used another Tesoro.

 

[Sneakyweasel]

$49 RadioShack TR, the black plastic one with no GB and took 6 AA cells. What a piece of crud that was.. but it kinda got me into it and, years later, when I took up MD'ing again, it was with a pawn shop Fisher 1225x. That was a decent little beeper.

 

[Electricfrontporch]

$39 harbor freight special. It was definitely a turd, but it did its job and got me hooked. Dig it all.......Noah

 

[Johnnyanglo]

Nice Jetco blue BFO in about 1971 - was able to find anything metal within 3 to 4 inches of the surface. Rudimentary at best but it worked. Next best detector was White's DI pro 6000. Had that for years until the VDI meter kept sticking. Sold it and bought an Ace 250, then an e-trac , and then the CTX. Don't think any of them were clunkers though. Liked each one in their own way.

 

[ironsight]

Had to be a home made one me and my buddy built from a Popular Electronics article back somewhere in the 1960's. Was in hi school at the time.
Even built the search coil from scratch. Yeah it was BFO based, state of the art technology back then.
It worked somewhat when we got it debugged, tuned and finally got the oscillator to run.

That contraption caused me to lose interest in metal detecting for the next 20 years.

 

[HaloEffect426]

For me it was 1974. I was 9 years old. My dad owned and operated a type writer shop in Indianapolis, In.. I still remember that day .....My older brother and I went with him to talk to a customer who had his type writers repaired by my dad. Just so happened the cust. Owned a metal detector. Shop..he could not pay my dad for the repairs but asked if he might consider a trade for payment.. This was the BFO maybe TR days...he offered two brand new detectors off his wall for payment. My dad accepted..

One was a Detex tiny-tex bfo....had one knob..head phone jack and I think a 4" coil...all one piece with a bicycle handle on the top all gold colored
The other was a diff. Maker that i dont remember but it had "Mark 1" on it...pretty shure it was a tr type as it was beep and dig.no threashhold tone. With a 8" coil.

If i remember right, that little tiny tex could get a quarter three maybe four inches. I really liked the bfo for some reason.
A few hunts in the yard found some coins. Dad even took us to a competition hunt or two. Had a blast! Trip to our favorite lake and the beach my dad found a nice wedding ring w diamonds on it.

I was already hooked but tht next winter trip to Tampa FL. I was using the tiny tex on the beach....just a little kid....and
...............................BAM!............. A. HUGE platinum gold wedding ring with some huge diamonds on it....appraised for around $1,200.00!
My dad never really said much then but that one find pretty much financed the entire family vacation to florida..
Been hooked ever since.....and to this day I have yet to beat that one nice, expensive. Ring... Maybe this spring??

 

[kingingkunsan]

Radio Shack Discover 1000 or something like that. Took two 9V. Max depth on any coin was about 4 inches. But as I was new to the hobby I had no idea I had a bad machine. I was having fun and digging clad. After about a year of owning it I joined a detecting club and showed up with my trusty RS detector and the members all laughed and smiled. I was lost to the humor. I was educated and upgraded to Minelab EX II. Quite the leap.