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Well....

D

Dan-Pa.

New member
I have an X-terra 30 coming as I feel it will meet my needs and hope the weather holds out to give me some field time so I can add to feedback. I have know Monte for years and really won't know until I get some swinging time in with it but I think his posts put me over the edge and of course the other excellent evaluations from seasoned detectorists certainly gave me a feel for it...I know Minelab make excellent machines guts wise with heavy exteriors so this lightweight unit should be a joy...
Certainly not going to burn my Sov., but only time will tell....do remember if Tiger Woods only had one club in his bag we certainly wouldn't see him around the top scorers on a Sunday afternoon..
 
I think you'll like it. I "blame" Monte (and others) too. ;)
 
Hi Dan,

I think you'll enjoy the X-Terra. The more I play with my X-Terra 50 the more I like it. It is very much like the Fisher CZ-100 I was hoping for. The only thing lacking is the dual frequency and so saltwater use is likely to be iffy.

Hard as it was to do the X-Terra caused me to finally let my CZ-70 Pro go. I still have four tones, but nickels now have the tone I want. Since I hunt jewelry a lot I always wished my CZ would put nickels back at mid-tone instead of high. It was not that big a deal on the metered CZ units, but it really was a bummer on the CZ-20 as you are forced to dig all coins unless you are willing to forgo nickel range gold - not a good idea. If Fisher had just changed the tones on the CZ-20 I would have bought a new one. Instead they discontinued it!

The X-Terra 50 ground balances, though it is a coarser tune than the CZs.

But the real thing that caused me to finally part with my CZ was the lack of notch categories compared to the X-Terra 50.

Really, the only thing I'm lacking right now is a 5" coil for my X-Terra. But I now have more faith in Minelab (or Sun Ray) putting out small coil than I have in Fisher with their new units. Note to Sun Ray - build that 5" coil first for my XT50 and you've got an instant sale. The lower frequency so it works with the XT30 also will suit me just fine. Just stick it in your 5" round housing and I am sure myself and others will line up and get it.

Does the X-Terra beat the CZ for overall depth? You know, I'm not sure, but I would doubt it. The fact is it is close enough for me. My in-town detecting style is not so much for depth as it is for target separation and good id. If I can't pop it out with a screwdriver it is too deep. I very much prefer not to plug/dig holes.

Anyway Dan, I've yakked on like this about the CZ as I know you also are a CZ fan. But I'm not kidding when I say that I feel like Fisher abandoned me as a customer. They had me, lock, stock, and barrel. I had a Gold Bug 2 for nuggets, CZ-5 for coins, and CZ-20 for water/jewelry. I was sold on the brand, and all they had to do was offer units that I expected. I expected improvements on existing designs. I do not mean that I expected Fisher to stay with analog. But I expected newer units to be like the CZ in look, feel, and features, but improved.

But they dropped the ball, and oddly enough it is now Minelab that seems to be picking up where Fisher left off. If the little box I got had said Fisher on it and the detector had been labeled CZ-100 I would have been less surprised than I was when it turned out to be a lightweight, affordable Minelab.

I still have the Gold Bug 2 and paired with my GP 3500 I'm a gold getting guy! But my CZ has given way to a DFX/MXT/XT50 combo. An my CZ-20 gave way for a White's Surf PI Pro. I'd like another VLF water machine buy nobody is building what I want yet. I'd buy an XT50 diver tomorrow if Minelab made one. I may have to build one myself, which would be ridiculously easy given the design of the unit.

Well, I have not had much chance to use my new toy the last few weeks since winter started here in Alaska. I'm off to Cabo this week for sun and detecting. I like the way the XT50 packs but may have to cut the lower rod down a bit to get it in my carry-on bag. I'll know in a few hours. It is easily the most suitcase friendly machine I have the way the pod pops off the handle and with the three piece handle.

The place we are staying is on a beach where the surf is so bad as to be unswimmable. So the Surf PI is staying home this trip. I plan on hitting the beach itself with the XT50, most likely up in drier sand, so I figure the fact it is single frequency will be ok. I'll let everyone here know how I did in a week.

I'll be curious to see what you think of the XT30, Dan. If it were not for ground balance being a "must-have" feature for me I'd be more tempted by the XT30. And I have to admit I'm pretty excited by he prospect of the XT50 with a 18.75 kHz coil. The unit is pretty darn good on small gold already. At 18.75 it could be that freshwater "hot on small gold" unit I'm looking for.

Steve Herschbach
 
You bring up some good points as Fisher has changed over the years and their new units leave little to be desired.
For my style of hunting really don't feel I need the ground balance or extended segments as I basically silver coin hunt, but have to agree the thought of extra coils with higher frequency for the 50 model should excell for gold..Here in Pa. all we have are coal nuggets
so I am sure you understand. Do appreciate your articulate post and having used other minelab products I know they excel and fully understand your post..
 
and the CZ-3D has been a joke, at least every one I have used.

The X-Terra 50 (and even the 30) provide what I was hoping to see and they are just plain old FUN to use. As deep? Not sure. More fun, however, and more target info and discrimination control, all in a nicely balanced configuration. My X-Terra 50 is definitely here to stay! :)

Monte
 
I'd have to agree on the 3-D. I really had some high hopes for it when it was first announced. After buying one and putting it through the paces, it became very obvious that all they did was shift some of the I.D. segments to a lower accept range, which did nothing (in my opinion) other than shift some of the lower level trash targets right up into the coin range. As they say, "nothing new under the sun".

Ralph
 
Bill,
Was considering trying one and see what it will do, but the X-Terra came out. Had the ID Excel and didn't do well at all like I thought it would be.
Being winter here now I may just have to try a ID Edge in the spring and see how it will compare to the X-Terras.
 
n/t
 
I agree that dropping the CZ-5 was a sad day for we old-school detectorists. I'm even more sad now that Whites has dropped the XL Pro. :cry: But, if you think the X-Terras are shallow coinshooters, then you must not have tried one yet. :shrug: I have been using one for over a month now, and if anything, in my opinion, it favors depth more than it does discriminatory coin shooting. Depth comes natural to the Minelab detectors. And the X-Terras are no exception. In the case of the X-Terra, fun means enjoyable to use on an all day hunt. Lightweight, balanced, easy to read LCD, deep seeking, sensitive to small targets, simplified operation and very good on a set of batteries. Oh, did I mention deep seeking?

I am open minded enough (and a serious enough coinshooter) that I will try any of them that do the job well. When the ID Edge becomes commercially available, I might give it a try. And I won't write it off simply because the ID Excel was not as good as some of us had hoped. :stretcher: HH Randy
 
...I knew I could get a 5" coil. I hate to be that simplistic about it, but there you go. The problem is that Fisher promised a 14" coil for the Goldstrike but never delivered. Then small coils for the Coin Strike and Excel, but so far none delivered. No accessory coils at all for the Excel.

I find this inability to deliver on promised accessory items troubling. If Fisher is not going to do something then they should not put out the word they are going to, and then not follow through.

The problem now is if Fisher said they were coming out with a 5" coil for the Edge I'm afraid I'd not really believe it until I saw it. I think I'll see a small coil for the X-Terra before there is one for the Edge, sorry to say. Hopefully I am wrong.

Steve Herschbach
 
Most of the others summed it up rather well.

Where's the smaller coil(s) for the CoinStrike?

What about other 'promises' we have heard about?

Why did my CZ-5 hit solid on a penny buried at 4", flat, in a park w/o any metal within 5 feet and ID it properly, and my XL Pro hit it well, and my IDX Pro hit it well, and now the X-Terra 50 hits it well, and the Shadow X5 hits it well, and even the Garrett Ace 250 did so-so on it, and those with TID gave or came close to a proper TID, but every CZ-3D we worked over that planted coin had a terrible audio, usually no response if rejecting iron, and TID was very jumpy? The CZ-7a and CZ-7a Pro did a little beter than the CZ-3D but still none of them matched the CZ-5's performance.

'FUN' doesn't always be a shallow detector. My Shadow X5 isn't shallow, nor is the modified IDX Pro, and the XL Pro does quite well (better than an XLT or DFX), and the X-Terra 50 has been both 'fun' and tends to hunt about as well, if not better, than the MXT's others have been using and then tried the X-Terra 50.

Yes, Fisher lost my interest in them, now it is up to them to regain it. Will the ID Edge be the one to do it? I sort of wonder.

We have all been reading and hearing about the ID Edge, but things have been pretty quiet about White's new unit, but it will probably be in more folk's hands by the time the ID Edge gets out and about. The pre-release talk and promotion better befollowed by some very serious performancer and features. Minelab's bold introduction is tough to be, as is the performance of the X-Terra 50. I am sure the ID Edge and new White's are going to be right in the same retail price range and it ought to be interesting.

For now, Fisher isn't on my high-interest list. Let's see what they can do? Okay, it's about 37
 
Which machine will work better? Depends on your soil.
Here in Wisc, Fisher and Tesoro machines excel in finding rusty iron and nails. Number one hands down. Back in the 90's, I had a cz5 and a sovereign. The sovereign would glide over our iron infested parks, going silent over the iron, picking up coins with ease. With the cz5, much time was wasted checking over all the iron signals, trying to figure out if any of them might be coins. I even became a Minelab dealer for a few years, because of the results I was having. Performance was not even close! Maybe in different parts of the country, fishers performed better, but here in our mineralized soils, mixed with iron, they were not fun! nuff Said??
looking forward to trying an x terra 50! bugg
 
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