My Tesoro Sand Shark quit a few days ago, so I packed it up and sent it to Prescott Arizona for repair. Not complaining though, it's performed perfectly for the past 3 years.
My good friend Sarge offered up his Whites Dual Field as a pinch hitter until I got the Sand Shark back. I took it out for six hours yesterday. No gold, but lots of silver and junk jewelry and tons of clad, at depths that made me want to rent a backhoe. I can't remember ever digging so much. Of course, lots of the targets were iron, but they were just so deep I couldn't believe it. I played around with the pulse delay, but for most of the day the threshold stayed smooth without using any.
Lots of other things I liked...like the smooth threshold, even in the 8 block long area of mysterious electrical interference where my Sand Shark sounds like a 5 year old with an electric guitar. And I like the way it handles. It's well balanced, not too heavy and I didn't experience the coil buoyancy that everyone talks about. Pinpointing is dead center of the coil and the easiest of any machine I've tried. In fact, one thing I noticed is that the outer 2 inches of the coil don't react to the target at all. So I'm not convinced that you're gaining coverage compared to a smaller coil. BUT...coverage is a two dimensional equation, with depth being the dimension that you can't compensate for with overlapping swings. So I'll gladly slow down and try to adapt to this new way of hunting, where I spend more time digging than swinging. I'll be getting a Dual Field of my own just as soon as I can afford it. That, and a big bottle of Ibuprofen.
My good friend Sarge offered up his Whites Dual Field as a pinch hitter until I got the Sand Shark back. I took it out for six hours yesterday. No gold, but lots of silver and junk jewelry and tons of clad, at depths that made me want to rent a backhoe. I can't remember ever digging so much. Of course, lots of the targets were iron, but they were just so deep I couldn't believe it. I played around with the pulse delay, but for most of the day the threshold stayed smooth without using any.
Lots of other things I liked...like the smooth threshold, even in the 8 block long area of mysterious electrical interference where my Sand Shark sounds like a 5 year old with an electric guitar. And I like the way it handles. It's well balanced, not too heavy and I didn't experience the coil buoyancy that everyone talks about. Pinpointing is dead center of the coil and the easiest of any machine I've tried. In fact, one thing I noticed is that the outer 2 inches of the coil don't react to the target at all. So I'm not convinced that you're gaining coverage compared to a smaller coil. BUT...coverage is a two dimensional equation, with depth being the dimension that you can't compensate for with overlapping swings. So I'll gladly slow down and try to adapt to this new way of hunting, where I spend more time digging than swinging. I'll be getting a Dual Field of my own just as soon as I can afford it. That, and a big bottle of Ibuprofen.
