Thanks for the opinion Jeff, I was kind of steering towards the Minelab 505, thats where I'm going to end up. I'm leery of spending more than $300 in case I lose interest after a while, if not, I'll upgrade to the 705 on your recommendation. A shame what happened to Tesoro, I saw the pictures of the facility on a real estate site. Too bad someone with the business sense and cash can't resurrect it.