1. What state do you live in now, and what part of the state, and are you coming out here just for vacation or are you moving out here? If you are just coming on vacation, do you have either fresh or salt water that you want to detect in when you get back home?
2. What part of the west coast are you coming to? West coast could mean southern or northern California, Oregon, or Washington. Different soil conditions all along the coast.
3. What price range do you want to stay within for another detector?
All the above questions make a difference in what to suggest. If you are just coming on vacation and you don't do water hunting back home, then just stay with the Ace 250 and do the dry sand and parks here. Unlike Florida, which has no mineralization in their sand, southern California has very thick black sand, which is iron particles mixed with the sand. No single frequency detector works well in our wet sand. Most people use a multifrequency detector or a pi for the wet. I used an Ace 250 for 3 1/2 years and I loved it. I'm an old guy that just detects on occasion, yet during that time, doing mostly dry sand, I found over $1,260 in change, 6 gold rings, 20 silver rings, and a lot of toys and other neat things. When I had over $800 I decided to buy a detector that would be good for our wet sand. I spent months watching what other people were using out there in the wet, and by far most people were using the Minelab Sovereign or Excaliber. They are basically the same machine, but the Excaliber is waterproof to 200 feet, and the Sovereign isn't waterproof at all. The disadvantage of the Excaliber is it is much more expensive to buy, most people don't like the stock shaft and where the control housing is, so end up spending another $100 for an aftermarket shaft, the coil and earphones are hardwired in so it is hard to change them, and whenever you send it in for repair it is much more expensive than the Sovereign because the factory has to test it to its 200 foot depth rating. Don't get me wrong, if you're going to go out in the water deeper than your waist, then that (or a pi) are the machine to get. Here in southern California, we have decent size waves and a lot of undertow, and I don't swim well, so I wait for 2 hours before low tide until 2 hours after low tide and just do the wet, and sometimes I go out in the water up to my thighs, so the Sovereign GT was my choice. Both those machines are 17 frequency and have unlimited multitone response so you have some idea of what you found by the sound, also both machines ignore iron, even if you use no discrimination. The advantage of the multitones is if you are looking for gold you can ignore the coin signals which around my area are mostly pennies (and foil packet signals, which make a unique sound like nothing else on my machine), and just concentrate on the mid tones where can tabs and nickles fall.It works for me. I'm 70 years old, extremely hard of hearing, don't detect that often, yet in a little over a year, with the Sovereign, I've found 5 gold and 1 platinum ring, and big container full of change that I haven't counted. If you're going to live out here, having both a Sovereign and a pi machine is the way to go. The Sovereign when there other detectorists (let those pi guys dig all those zinc pennies while you concentrate on the gold signals), or when there is a lot of iron from pier struts, ship. etc. Use the pi during the late fall, winter, and spring, when there is much less competition, and you want the extra depth and its ability to find the smaller gold chains the vlf machines miss.I'm not in any way saying what is right for me is going to be right for you, I'm just giving you additional food for thought. By the way, even though the Sovereign GT sells for $1049, you can usually find them used for around $700, and the models before the GT are just as good and sell for less. .
run the seahunter mk 11 wide open.....great machine on the wet sand!N/T