Kevin (+ others),Glad you like the shirt,I love wearing it.It expresses my passion for the hobie and my satisfaction with the Explorer.Thanks.... in regards to the machines-I found one falt in the SX ,that was corrected in the II + SE and that was hearing the response tone well before the cursor(crosshairs)would move to a coordinate on the screen .Annoying at first but after becoming familiar with the tones the cursor location became secondary....I respond to the tones.... other than that I cant think of any major differences.Factory say faster processors as the new replaced the old. From the beginning I wanted to get the most out of the machine,in terms of discrimination(the reason for bying it )..So as I became familiar with it I gradually kicked up the variability and limits to max, giving me the most tone discrimination available.Bench testing is a good way to learn some of the tones...I always used the`smart` screen rather than trying to remember numbers in the digital display and used conductivity, with coins,silver-High..gold,nickles,pulltabs-low..Just my preferances... You mentioned Pulltabs!!!Damn them!!.Like trying to get rid of an x-wife..(Oops!!..thats not politically correct...sorry)One thing I did early on was to put a clear laminant sheet over the screen.(the type used to protect id cards and such)Then I bench tested, dropping the sensitivity to 2 and ran every piece of gold I could gather under the coil(one at a time) and using a fine marker put a dot at the center of each crosshair location.After a while a pattern arose and even though Ive done that with over 100 pieces of gold there were only maybe 20 dots on the screen..(the darker verticle spots in photo)Not to say thats the only locations gold can show up on.There were more tone differences though.Then I ran numerous pulltabs under the coil,complete,bent,broken etc and they all came up on one of the `gold`dots..except for the footprint tab (newer type with 2 holes)which fell between the break in the verticle gold pattern with a slightly different tone than other tabs.Moral?Pulltabs are here to stay!.unless some company figures out how to seperate tabs from gold and markets it....but it seem they like to `spoon feed` us with advancements with machines so that may take a while...They do offer GPS though..... The Explorers can be very frustrating machines in the beginning because they give you a lot of setting options..They take time to learn but its time well spent As you know if your not sure gold is where your hunting ,you dig everything and hope to get lucky..But I was fortionate enough to hunt 10yrs at beaches used from the late 1800s (found gold wedding band dated Nov.25,1879)and abandoned in the late 60s))that were loaded with gold waiting to be found...(EVERY TH`S dream).So with the Explorer I was able to be very selective ..I dug everything that fell into or near the gold response of the machine and ignored coins(high tones,pennies,dimes,quarters and yes,even silver tones).When you can dig gold why waste time digging coins. Bottom line-learn your machine..do research for potential` hot spots`...and yes,luck always plays a part!!.... By the way,Andy Sabisch has a good book out with tips on the explorer and is well worth reading.. HH Ralph