Satisfy my curiosity please.

[NH Bob]

What prompted you to buy your first Explorer?

When I started my dealer sold Garretts only and my first machine cost me $50.
Then I got out of the hobby for some time and when I decided to get back in he now had Whites also. Plus some used models. I got another G and that didn't last long as I wanted to upgrade. When I went back again to see what I could do he had taken an Explorer XS in as trade. He had no clue how to use it and the guy that traded it in didn't either I guess. (I'm the type of guy that when I get into something I have to go all the way and get what I think is the best) So I bought it for $600 and was bound and determined to learn to use it in short order. I put everything that I knew aside and learned the machine with an open mind. It was no time and I was on my way to mastering this elite little machine. At least In my eyes I was. I liked it so much that when the XS II came out I had to upgrade.
Last spring I sold it because the weight was bothering me a lot. I have Arthritis. I sold it to a nice guy. You guys know of him as he post on this forum.
When the SE came along and they boasted about the weight and Bal. changes I decided to take a chance. I am glad I did. A couple things have worked in my favor. I'm on new pain Med.,I got myself a new long handled digger with a small blade and some adjustments to the shaft length on the SE. The digger is just heavy enough to counter Bal. so the SE doesn't pull on my back. I used to hunt 6-7 hours without stopping. I'm still doing Okay with 5-6 hours with a short water break.
I also own an Ace 250 for a loaner and a Shadow X5 for high grass and corn fields. I just sold my X-Terra70 to a man in Germany.
I'm done Babbling, now tell me how you got started and your first Explorer.

 

[Mike Bearden]

I started hunting with a Heath Kit detector that my Dad got me as a teenager, he said ... Here Boy, you like to tinker with my stuff, maybe this will keep you out of trouble.
Well, I got it together and within a week the yard looked like War Zone from all the holes. It would hit a coin at 4" in a air test and maybe 5" in the ground. I was HOOKED
Then I saved my money and got a Fisher, it was really ON then.
Stayed with Fishers for awhile, tried everything NEW that came out over the years and one day I walked into a TV shop to visit a buddy of mine. During our daily BS session he pulled a big box out and told me that he had WON this metal detector as a door prize, it was a Explorer S model.
We opened the box and both stood there in AWE, I ran out to buy some batteries while he was attempting to put everything together.
When I returned, he had it assembled and was scanning thru the manual.
I filled the battery pack and we took it outside and turned it ON without any headphones.
When it booted up and started making all those musical notes he immediately handed it to me as if he was scared it would blow his arm off
I took it out on the grass and it settled down a bit but couldn't make heads or tails of what I was hearing or seeing on the screen ... it was a hoot.
All of the sudden we decided that the manual for this beast was MUST READ ... ha,ha.
My buddy tried to make sense of it for several months but would always end up handing it to me and grabbing my Fisher 1266 to hunt with.
Wasn't to long before I started finding goodies with it.
Finally one day he said, Mike if you want this damn thing, I'll trade you even-up for the 1266, so it was a done deal.
Now don't get me wrong, plenty of goodies was found with the Fisher but at the end of the year it became obvious that the Explorer was a silver magnet and I've stuck with them ever since.
My buddy lives in New Mexico now, he still hunts with the 1266

Anyway ... the original Explorer has evolved into what I consider the best electronics package a detectorist can arm himself with and I'm still swinging one.

Mike

 

[tomtowns]

My first was a Whites Coinmaster ll TR, back in 75' next was a Whites Eagle ll SL (which I wish I still had)& Goldmaster 2...sold those to get a Minelab GP Extreme & sold that to upgrade to a GP 3000 for prospecting...Arthritis & old age started takeing it's toll on my ability to climb in & out of the steep terrain with all the gear So sold the gold mineing gear & traded a $10 gold piece for a MXT so I'd have a dual purpose machine...& took a 6 month vacation...I started reading all the fine reports on the explorer so I sold the MXT to get the SE...No more extended vacations...they are way too hard on the pocketbook...I'm gonna probably get another MXT...But am not gonna sell any more detectors...Hey Bob...About the arthritis...I'm not sure it will help you but it sure helped me..The less WHEAT products you eat the better your arthritis will be...At least that's the way it worked for me...that means pasta's, bread,cake ETC. Wheat supposedly contains Glutin, & from all I've learned, gluten is supposed to be the WORST thing you can eat if you have arthritis...Check with a nutritionist & they will probably tell you the same thing...I don't even have to take meds any more & a good side benefit is you will probably lose weight

 

[savage]

Hello NH Bob,
My best friend Sunzabeach (43yrs) wanted me to get a machine with him. Basically he did all the research and determined that the Explorer II was the best machine available. 28 freq, and digital display. He checked all of the machines and the close runner up was the whites top of the line model DFX. I have never had any other machine, and when I up grade it will be a SE! Happy Hunting Grounds,

Savage (EX-II)

 

[NH Bob]

n/t

 

[NH Bob]

n/t

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

n/t

 

[tomtowns]

Wasn't that part of the Tandy company??? Original Radio Shack??? I'm not positive but they seem to be ringing the same bells in my head

 

[NealNoIN]

then after hunting with my buddy Robin(MI) a couple of dozen times and watching him kick my butt with his XS I decided it was time to upgrade. I took the Explorer to sites I had pounded to death and was very pleased to find it would not only get stuff that was beyond my White's machine's depth capabilities it was getting alot of shallow stuff that was next to iron and trash. I've had an S and an XS now and will have to see some real amazing performance from another machine before I'll switch!
Neal

 

[DukeOBass]

I had a Fisher Model 442 that I bought brand new back in the 70s. I didn't use it much because it seemed like all I could find with it was rusted iron. I may have used the thing a total of 12 times. I've been a bottle digger for many years and just recently decided that I would like to try a modern detector with the new discrimination abilities I had been hearing about for the past several years.
I read some reviews and chatted with a few people on line. I decided that the SE seemed to be the most flexible machine available in that you could discriminate yourself into finding nothing or open it wide up and find everything.

 

[bigfootokie]

In the late 60's my mom bought me a magical machine that would find money!!! Back then, this was a miracle of technology even though you dug hundreds of crowncaps and nails since there was no discrimination. It was a lot of fun for a while until I discovered girls. Since girls were more fun, I put the detector away for many years. By the early 80's, I was married with children and fished a lot for relaxation. My fishing buddy came by one day and showed me what he had found while operating a bulldozer clearing some property in the country. A double handful of silver dollars all dating in the early 1920's. He remembered I had used a detector and wanted me to help him find more. Well my old machine could not be found so we both went to a dealer and bought a C&G Technology Tomcat and Bobcat. We went out the next day and found enough silver dollars to finish filling a quart jar. The coins were scattered over a 150ft by 30ft area and were no deeper than about 6 inches. Needless to say, I was hooked for life. I decided to become a metal detector dealer and ran the business from my home for 8 years. This provided the unique opportunity to test many brands and models such as C&G Technology, D-Tex, Whites, Tesoro, Fisher, and Garrett. As time went on I closed the detector shop and focused on my career while fishing and detecting when I could. I still own several different brands of machines I bought through the years.
Last August I was fortunate enough to go to England to detect. I used a Whites MXT and did quite well. I did notice however that the fellows with Explorers almost always had more and better finds. This bothered me since I had many years experience on most of them and I new my MXT very well. I decided in November to buy an SE and am still very much in the learning mode since it operates very differently than most machines I have used. I am beginning to learn the tones and have found a few deeper, older coins my last 3 times out. I think I'm going to love it.
Anyway, to make a short story long, that's how I came to buy my first Explorer.
And by the way, I still think girls are great fun. (Wife of 30 years, 1 Daughter and 2 Grand Daughters.)

Jim

 

[robo]

Started out when I was about 14 years old with a Jetco. Moved up to the big time with a White's Beachcomber.( still have it and it still works!) Got out of the hobby for quite a few years.(Chasing girls ya know!) After college,marriage & kids decided I wanted to get back into it. Tried all the brands out there and kept hearing how great the Minelabs were so I decided to give Minelab a try. Still won't give up my trusty CZ5 but it now is my back up machine for sure! Had my Explorer for about 3 months and have been babying it along making sure I get to know the machine properly. Over the last several of weeks started to play with the advanced mode.Plugged in a couple of programs and have been having very good luck. Well that's my story.

 

[Don in SJ]

n/t

 

[Mike Bearden]

My Dad purchased ham radio kits, console stereos and a bunch of other items they sold because he loved building things.
I think the whole idea of Heathkit was to sell everything in kit form so most folks and hobbyist could actually afford the finished product.
Pretty cool logic IMO
I know they were bought out by another company but don't remember who, what or when.

Mike

 

[migolddigger]

Being a United States Veteran, I try to stay loyal to my country. So I figured, I'd buy the best United States Detector made. I was convinced That the Whites DFX was it. Like so many people, I started out with an older detector (A Garret Groundhog). I found many good finds, But it was just time for an upgrade. I used the DFX for 2 years. and the finds were great from 1-6 inches. Man I knew that machine inside and Out. I used the Hot-Shot coil, Man I thought that was the best detector there was. One problem was, I always found myself always tweaking it for more depth. You know, the DSM program ETC. I also had trouble Identifying targets past 6 inch mark. They would either Null or jump in to the junk #'s. The last straw was when a friend of mine, Nate Larson and I, went to a 1800's park and he was finding everything He would say here's a barber dime. He called me over and let me scan the target. The DFX couldn't even hear it!!! I honestly thought he was pulling my leg. I was laughing at him saying sure, sure it is. After he got 10 inches of dirt out of the hole I was still laughing until he pulled out the 1898 Barber dime. Then Guess who was laughing? I was stunned. The DFX never even sounded off, then I was mad. I wonder just how may coins I've been missing. Nate found 15 silver coins that day. I found 5. I guess the rest of the story is clear. I got the Explorer II, and have never looked back. The DFX sat in the closet for a year until I sold it. Like I always say, you can't argue with results.

Tom

 

[NH Bob]

n/t

 

[gitterdug]

In 1974, I won a 240Z Datsun from a local radio station. Tricked out, faster than bejeezus, and after 6 months of playing with it, I sold it, and bought equity in my first home, and with some money left over, I bought a garrett BFO, with a 12/5 inch combination coil.

First coin I found was a 1935 Buffalo Nickel at a school ground, and I loved the thought of someone losing money, and me finding it.

I learned early on about what the frequencies did, relative to penetration for coins, relics, etc. Through the years, I tried a lot of detectors, and when the news of the Explorer came out, the prospect of multi-spectrum scanning was irresistible to my thinking.

I bought one of the first to come into Fort Worth, and I never looked back. I currently use an Ex II, but still have the XS as a backup, along with a Tesoro Tejon which I recently bought for some relic hunting.

I think the Explorer is as great a machine as I have ever had. I tried to overcomplicate the machine at first, and the different noises were something I had to get used to. But man, I love that machine now.

HH

Dennis who's detected for 32 years....and still goes every chance.