This may have been answered before...but is the Excalibur a PI machine?

[Steve from Ohio]

I was at the local bookstore and was looking through the latest issue of Lost Treasure and saw an ad for Minelab by Minelab.

In the ad it stated that the Excalibur is a PI machine. I thought it was a VLF.......anyone know what is what?

 

[JOHNMARKHAM]

no its a bbs machine..as i understand it,that was a mis print..i have an excalibur2 and love it..works great here in fla at the beaches..hope this helps
hh
john

 

[Steve from Ohio]

Thanks John.

I kind of knew but when I saw that ad.....it kind of put doubts in my mind.

I had an Excalibur 800 and sold it. I am going to buy an Excalibur II 1000 and run it on the Gulf beaches and on the treasure coast. After that I will be hitting the Outer Banks in early May.

I miss the 800......and am regretting selling it. But it went to a good home and I am now going to upgrade to the Excal II.

BTW...it works as good as a PI machine IMHO.

 

[JOHNMARKHAM]

my first time out to treasure coast were ship wreaks are i found a piece of eight in a quarter form which was confirmed by the museum in wabasso..this was with my Excalibur 2 1000..gulf coast does great too..as I'm able to go to either coasts from where I'm at..my hit Miami this weekend or somewhere south from me...ill let you know how i do..
good luck
john

 

[BootyHunter]

I saw that same ad and thought it must have been a misprint. It has been running for months, though. Must take a lot to change an ad around or something. That ad could hurt sales though for some not wanting a pi and cause confusion and some return hassles for those who are. I have and Excal II and love it. HH

 

[Steve from Ohio]

In the past, I've seen arguments here on Findmall and other sites that said the the BBS system is actually acts closer to PI than VLF.

The PI argument was a good one as they made the case for PI quite well. It has been a while ago that I was reading that thread and
I will have to find it to repost it here.

Luck to you John. I will be down in Florida in about a month and will be spending all low tide times at the beach. I'll be on the Treasure Coast first and then head west. Maybe I'll see ya somewhere on the beach.

Steve from Ohio

 

[Critterhunter]

I think some believe BBS acts more like a PI than VLF machines do. A PI doesn't pay any attention to the ground signal. VLF machines filter out the ground, causing less depth and unreliable IDs. Rather than filter out the ground, I've heard BBS just compares the ground signal with no target to the ground signal with the target. It's supposed to ID properly at deeper depths and also handle high mineralization better than a VLF machine. That's why some people say the depth increase is much more noticable compared to a VLF machine as ground conditions get worse.

I have noticed in certain spots where there is high mineralization that my VLF machines had trouble giving coins a perfect signal, often sounding rough or dropping on the scale, while BBS will ID the target properly as if the soil wasn't bad. At one spot where I've tried various machines over the years I was forced to dig any iffy signal to try to locate coins, but didn't. I went back with my first Explorer and, while it was a little unstable, it did at least make the coins read about 80 or 90% perfect, allowing me to concentrate on those and pull a barber dime, indians, and about three large cents. The large cents had rusty nails laying in the hole with them. I've since taken the GT there and found it to be more stabile than the Explorer was, running quieter and being less finicky with sensitivity. I only hunted about a half hour but did recover a copper woman's compact that I don't know how I missed with the Explorer. I'm looking forward to going back with more time to hunt the area. I may try my S-5 coil to see if it cuts through the mineralization even better, seeing less ground than the 10" coil. It might even get more depth due to this. I know that when I hunted one bad area in the past with my QXT I was getting deeper and better signals with a small coil than I was with the stock 9.5".