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Garrett XL500 VLF

A

Anonymous

Guest
hi, i am about to buy one of these Garrett XL500 VLF for the beaches over here in hawaii. now, can it do well on dry land as well as underwater scanning? can i go in and out of the water to scan without returning the settings?
thanks fil from hawaii
 
There is lots of info on this detector in previous posts on this forum. Why don't you try doing a search here. The first thing you will learn is that it is a pulse, not a VLF. It's not the best choice by far.
FJ
 
Is not really a beach detector, will not be sensitive to smaller gold items, or smaller, thinner items like rings,it was made for diving and detecting larger items.
 
FJ the XL500 and XS500 Seahunters are both VLF/TR with the same electronics the only difference being that the XS had the short stem for diving.
Specifically designed for finding gold in heavily iron mineralised areas and for coin detection.
Three modes,iron ground cancelling,salt water operation and trash rejection combined with manual or auto tuning. The headphones were designed specifically for the machine and had 'melo-tone' for improved underwater audio.
Depths of 18 inches plus on coins (but it would have to be a very big coin!) I would say more like 12 inches plus.
From what I remember you would have to retune between underwater and surface use and Garrett were in the ten turn knob mode in those days which I did not like and used three 9 volt batteries where one would always fail early.
Must be quite an old machine, I had mine in 1982-83.
 
The original XL500 detectors were VLF. I had one from Garrett in 1982 to use the case, associated mechanics and control layout as the basis for the PI version which superceded it. The VLF one used the stacked coaxial coil arrangement i.e. transmitter in the middle and balanced receiver coils on either side.
Eric.
 
Just looked at a Garrett 1984 catalogue which I still have on file. Both the PI and the VLF XL500 were on sale that year. The XL500 VLF is described thus - The Garrett Sea Hunter XL500 VLF is designed primarily for use on land and in FRESH water. Not recommended for salt water operation. Same specifications as Pulse model, except it uses manually tuned VLF circuitry and does not have Detection Depth Selector and interchangeable search coils.
There was also an XL200 PI detector which was basically a slightly simplified XL500. Only two controls and just an 8in coil. Anybody owned one of these?
Eric.
 
yes, I had an XL200 PI for a short time, sold it to move on to your newer more sensitive PI's for beach
 
I own both the VLF and the PI XL500's. They look virtually identical.
- Carl
 
I dug bag through my old literature this morning (I wanted to see what the frequency was) and the XL and XS were both being sold as land and salt water machines with a specific salt water mode. Reference was made to their being used at that time to recover coins from the Spanish treasure fleet. Garrett at this time (1982) didn't seem to have a P.I. in their stable.
 
I think the PI didn't come out until about 1985, Eric would know of course. He developed it for Mel Fisher to use on the Atocha.
 
Hi Eric,
I had an XL-500 PI back in the days when it was a battle between the Whites PI 1000 and the Garretts <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=":)"> The XL 500 PI was ok on large gold rings but it only had a small coil. A couple of years ago someone gave me a broken XL-200 PI. I fixed and it works but it definitely does not have any sensitivity to small gold items. It's ok on large gold rings. It's coil is also small like that of the XL-500. The Xl-200 PI is sitting in a closet collecting dust right now <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=":)"> After reading about the capabilities of PI's like the Goldquest SS an having had a chance to use an Aquastar I have no desire to even take the XL200 out of the house <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=":)"> <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=":)"> <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=":)">
I remember reading on your original Forum where someone had asked about lowering the pulse delay on an XL500 and I believe the reply was that due to the basic circuit design it wasn't possible/feasible to lower the pulse delay on it. I would imagine the same would hold true for the XL200 PI as it seesm to be just a lower powered version of the XL500PI.
HH
Beachcomber
 
It wouldn't be worth trying to modify the XL500 or 200 detectors to run at shorter pulse delays. I could be done, but there are a lot of changes, and you would also need a new coil. XL coils are unshielded and would be unstable at short delays.
Eric.
 
Thanks Eric. I didn't think it would be worth the trouble. And your right even in it's day the coil supplied with those detectors was too small!!!
HH
Beachcomber
 
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