ramairnut said:
I am in Ohio, no chance of that. This detector suits me perfectly for the hunting I do.
That's a great response, Brian, really should be the thinking we use when picking any detector / detectors for our personal arsenal. I have a friend I sold a White's M6 to quite a few years ago when I was a Dealer, and that was his first detector. He put in the time to learn it well, and it worked well for the hunting he did. Maybe he could have done just as well starting out with something a little less, or even with an MXT that offered a little more, but for him it worked just right for his needs.
He now has a detector battery of three models, and once again he has put in the time to be patient and learn them well, and for the types of hunting he chooses to do, he has a detector model that works
'perfectly' for him. Something he's comfortable with and he gets the results he wants. His other two models are the V3i, which he has mastered better than anyone I have ever hunted with, and he likes that unit a lot more than I do because it has some quirks that just don't fit me and my types of hunting.
His 3rd device is the MX Sport which, fortunately, has been working well for him. Very minor things to be taken care of and he's had his since not too long after they were introduced. He lives over on the Western-side of Oregon in the very dreary and rainy Willamette Valley. He doesn't seem to mind hunting when it is showery, and he's stretched his hunting site choices to include a wide variety of places from urban parks and schools, to old yards and more rural places to hunt old and long forgotten sites like picnic and resort sites, or any place that had some sort of activity in the past. And he also enjoys Relic Hunting the ghost towns and other more dated activity sites from 150 years ago or more where there's a lot of iron and rusty tin to deal with.
If I recall our last conversation, he uses the MX Sport more often but still puts the V3i to work regularly, all depending upon the type of site challenges he faces and what he is after.
His choices are great
for him, but there's only one of his three detectors I would own, if I had to pick from just those to fit my needs, and that would be the M6. I know it well and it has worked fine for me in the past. I used to have an M6 and MXT Pro in my arsenal, but the M6 was replaced by the MX5 which, honestly, replaced the MXT Pro I had for most of my hunting, especially urban Coin & Jewelry Hunting. The MX5 had slightly better depth and some performance 'edge' over the M6 and MXT Pro, plus it was in a lighter, better balanced package for my achy old self.
I like to rely on and own detectors that
"suit me 'perfectly' for my typical hunting needs" and for the last three years I have had an MX5 in my
Specialty-Use Group, but not as one of my
Primary-Use Detector Team because they did overlook a few things I wished for to make it a more versatile, more comfortable detector. The headphone jack location is terrible, and they did not incorporate a 'Lock Track' option for it, and I don't like to use a ground tracking detector full-time. But it serves a purpose for me from time-to-time and is just right for that.
I have detectors with 7X11 DD and 8X11 DD coils and have no use for a round 10" DD, so the MX Sport coil wouldn't
"suit me perfectly". I don't like the MX Sport weight and balance with that standard coil, and I don't go under water. I live on the far Eastern-Side of Oregon where it is generally nice and dry, averaging only 10.2" of precipitation a year here in Vale, so while I liked some of the MX Sport's circuitry design and noted its performance when I tried a couple of them on a hunt or two, it wasn't a fit due to weight and design.
This Friday & Saturday, however, I'll get out and enjoy the MX7 which
"suits me perfectly" for many applications because it offers me what I wanted in comfortable weight and balance, a rear-positioned headphone jack, now proven circuitry design, and comes standard with a bigger Concentric coil that I can make use of ... at times. Most of my detecting is in debris-filled sites and smaller-size search coils serve my needs much better, so that's what the MX7 will have mounted most of the time.
On top of that, the MX7 also adds some additional color to my arsenal that I just happen to prefer.
So, my tastes and detector selections are going to differ from others, simply because I try to
"pick a detector that suits me perfectly" for each of the different hunting applications I encounter. Although there still is no 'perfect' detector for everyone and everything, there certainly are some exceptional selections out there we can make to be a nice 'fit' in
our personal detector battery..
Monte