New Excal II will be on a truck soon

[itsaawgood]

I just got into metal detecting this year....first machine I purchased a White's V3i...what was that dealer thinking selling a greenhorn such a high end complicated machine!?! Not long after getting the V3i I find out...there's more jewelry lost in the water. Budget spent I scraped together enough to buy a Garrett AT Pro to use as a water machine. Next come a Fisher F2 for my 7 years old for his birthday. Next I got a deal on 2 more AT Pro's and other F2. I went from no machines to 6 within a few months.

The AT Pro has been very good to me finding me 3 gold rings and a sterling ring....but I just can't get past the question if I would be doing better in the water with an Excal. Darn near every other water hunter I run into is running an Excal...and they all seem to have stories of some great finds. Well I decided I needed to even out the detector collection alittle. So last night I sold one of my AT Pro's and one of the F2's. I have one more AT Pro to sell and then I will be ordering a new Excal II 1000 with a 2 piece Plugger shaft.

I think that will better round out my machines...V3i for serious land detecting, an Excal for water detecting, an AT Pro for dry beach hunting And backup water machine....and then my son's F2.

 

[hershey1]

I think you made a wise choice. I have a Safari an E-Trac and an Excallibur II along with a teknetics G-2 and have owned several more machines but once you get the Minelab tones it is hard to go with another brand with different tones. Or it is for me. My son has a V3i and does very well with it but like you said the V3i is so much different I just don't have the confidence in his machine like I do mine. Any machine out there will do the job if people will just take the time to learn them. Be patient with your Excall and it won't be long until you are finding the good stuff. HH

 

[Daniel Tn]

I too learned there are a lot of goodies in the water. I went the AT route and found 3 rings with mine...just enough to wet my appetite and get me lurking on all the water hunting forums. It was there I saw most of the successful posters were using Excalibur machines. So that, coupled with fear of the AT leaking, I ordered an Excal II.

I picked mine up Saturday and got an Anderson over/under rod to go with it. I can only say this about it and you take it for what its worth:

Over the yrs I have owned many detectors. From top of the line metered machines to the GPX Minelab gold machine. They all have plusses and minuses. But without a doubt, the Excalibur is the hardest one I've ever owned to interpret signal tones on. I like simple beeps/few tones. This thing growls, humms, snorts, equals...you name it LOL. For me as of now, it is very difficult ciphering out the subtle tone variations. The different from foil to a quarter is easy...its the in-between that is getting me. I've tested 6 gold rings on it and all 6 sound different LOL they range from small 10k to heavy band 14k. For a Excalibur veteran, the tones really help them cherry pick but for me, it is a bit overwhelming as a newbie to the Excalibur. Any time a machine has like 5+ after market books written on the subjects of understanding and setting it up...along with an audio CD of interpreting tones...well you just know its a heck of a machine with a sucky factory manual and heck of a learning curve! But I've seen the forum fruit of those who've mastered it. Consistently pulling goodies week in and week out.