heavy salt and black sand

[david69]

hi i'm new at this hobby i've been reading for day's,my problem is"so i hear' i'm from atlantic canada and our beach's have heavy salt content and can be a problem with feed back from the detector,i was told that i need a detector with manual ground balance.is this right?and whats the differnce between manual and preset,i take the preset ground balance cant be set?and if all this is true could u point me in the right way to the most cost efficient detector.i found the Bounty hunter 4000 for around $350.00,if i can get a cheaper one with manual balance that would help me out.thanks

[goodmore]

No that is not correct. Ground balance will not help you in wet salt water sand or black sand.You might be able to use the ground balance in combination with lowering the sensitivity to make the detector quiet. But this will influence detecting depth which is everything on a beach.

What you need is a multi frequency detector like the Minelab Sovereign or Excalibur. All Excaliburs are probably out of your price range. There are older model Sovereigns that are not. And the older models are just as deep as the current GT model.

Or you could go PI detector. Very deep seeking Pulse Induction detectors with no discrimination. If your beach is clean from trash this is a good choice. Only beach hunting with this kind.

Do your homework and make a good choice. A good beach detector can pay for itself with one ring.

Feel free to PM me if you need help. But there are many good threads already available to read. And welcome to the forum. Stick around and educate yourself on a wonderful hobby.

[Terry Soloman]

Originally Posted by david69

hi i'm new at this hobby i've been reading for day's,my problem is"so i hear' i'm from atlantic canada and our beach's have heavy salt content and can be a problem with feed back from the detector,i was told that i need a detector with manual ground balance.is this right?and whats the differnce between manual and preset,i take the preset ground balance cant be set?and if all this is true could u point me in the right way to the most cost efficient detector.i found the Bounty hunter 4000 for around $350.00,if i can get a cheaper one with manual balance that would help me out.thanks

Hi David! This article might help you: http://www.hollandsbrook.com/blog/sa...detecting-101/

[david69]

thanks,i'm looking for something that will do beach's and ball parks.

[Terry Soloman]

Originally Posted by david69

thanks,i'm looking for something that will do beach's and ball parks.

Aren't we all!?

[fsdigital12]

David,

Beach/Land machines don't really exist.

Let me re-phrase that. A good beach machine and a good land machine are currently two different machines.

Yes you can get a machine what will "work" on both, but they won't excel in both areas.

If you find yourself doing more beach then land, get a Sovereign GT or a used sovereign. These machines do very well in the beach and are good land machines also. (Albeit not as good as a equal land machine).

Originally Posted by david69

thanks,i'm looking for something that will do beach's and ball parks.

[david69]

thanks, good information. i can get this. "Whites Professional Metal Detector Model MXT 300 with Case", Headphones, Head Cover, Bulls eye. Excellent Condition.for $750.00 used.will this be alright for what i will use it for?won't be going any deeper then 2 feet in the water.thanks again

[Terry Soloman]

Originally Posted by david69

thanks, good information. i can get this. "Whites Professional Metal Detector Model MXT 300 with Case", Headphones, Head Cover, Bulls eye. Excellent Condition.for $750.00 used.will this be alright for what i will use it for?won't be going any deeper then 2 feet in the water.thanks again

Not in saltwater..

[david69]

thanks again!i'll keep on looking!!!

[Iron Patch]

It must be your lucky day because I can answer just about any questions you have on both detectors and where you plan to hunt, because I've probably been there! (except NFLD and you did say Atlantic not Maritime provinces, so maybe you are there) Here's your first piece of advice, especially if you are not in Newfoundland, think land digs not the shore. There is WAY better stuff to find on land. I did the shoreline on a regular basis for probably near two years and didn't have anything great to show for it, then we concentrated strictly on land and the results were so much better. I very rarely go down on the beach much, only if I'm an old site that's right on teh bank.

If you want a detector to handle the salt and you can't raise your budget you might want to think used. To basically sum up your choices you need a multi freq. detector. Anything else will not do the job well.

[Iron Patch]

Originally Posted by fsdigital12

David,

Beach/Land machines don't really exist.

Let me re-phrase that. A good beach machine and a good land machine are currently two different machines.

Yes you can get a machine what will "work" on both, but they won't excel in both areas.

If you find yourself doing more beach then land, get a Sovereign GT or a used sovereign. These machines do very well in the beach and are good land machines also. (Albeit not as good as a equal land machine).

They sure do exist, my explorer excels at the shore, every bit as well as it does on land, and so far I've seen nothing that does better on land because if I did I wouldn't have just wrote that.... because I'd own another detector!

[Iron Patch]

Originally Posted by david69

thanks, good information. i can get this. "Whites Professional Metal Detector Model MXT 300 with Case", Headphones, Head Cover, Bulls eye. Excellent Condition.for $750.00 used.will this be alright for what i will use it for?won't be going any deeper then 2 feet in the water.thanks again

What water do you plan to do, lakes? That's really the only place you need a water detector in these parts.... and Halifax is the only place that I can think of that has lakes to hunt. The rest you just do at low tide.

[Smudge]

David,

Trust me on this. I have tried to find a single frequency metal detector that will function well on the wet salt sand at the beach (dry sand is a breeze to work). None of them will do it. I have bought or borrowed every single frequency detector that had a good writeup for the beach.

None of them, not a single one, came close to the operational success of a mutli-tone or PI detector in terms of depth or stability.

If you want to hunt the beach, forget trying to find one that works on the land as well. They are completely different environments that require completely different machines.

Some may want to argue with me on this point. Its a losing argument. I've tried too hard and worked with too many detectors. Yes, a beach machine can find stuff of dry land, I know that. But your beach machine will not perform as well on dry land and vice versa because they were designed for different environments.

Sometimes a detector can have a crossover function, like people who use gold detectors like the Teknetics G2 for relic hunting. But take the G2 into a park laden with aluminum canslaw and within an hour you'll feel like you've entered the 7th level of Dante's Inferno.

If you're open to advice from someone's who's "been-there-done-that", think land detector and then beach detector and keep them seperate. You will end up owning two detectors. You need to.

Hope all that helped you a little. Good luck on your final purchase!

[Iron Patch]

Originally Posted by Smudge

If you want to hunt the beach, forget trying to find one that works on the land as well. They are completely different environments that require completely different machines.

Some may want to argue with me on this point. Its a losing argument. I've tried too hard and worked with too many detectors. Yes, a beach machine can find stuff of dry land, I know that. But your beach machine will not perform as well on dry land and vice versa because they were designed for different environments.

Totally agree any single freq. is a bad idea for salt water, but you can't really say what you did above for certainty because of two things. The first is you're assuming he will want to use the detector under water and I'm guessing in the end he will find that's not necessary, and the 2nd thing is he didn't say what type of targets he wanted to find. Some multi freq. have the same guts as their counterpart land machines close to the same price range so there's absolutely no difference using them on land except for them being a little more awkward. For the record, I'm probably not too far from the OP and here we're basically divided in two, which are Fisher and Minelab... all multi freq of course. I very rarely see anyone using something else although my buddy used a Garrett for years, but like I said earlier we gave up hunting near water many years ago.

[nittany1]

I just came back from the beach. I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt the X-Terra 705 with the 9" 7.5 kHz concentric coil can track salt water just fine, as long as you don't get the logic/display box wet you'll be OK. You put it in beach mode, when you see the umbrella icon and the tracking icon, just ground balance. After it's balanced then you can search in the surf as much as you want, or where the salt water washes up on the beach. It'll do inland parks and whatnot even easier, plus if you have right coil you can hit the gold fields.

[Terry Soloman]

Originally Posted by nittany1

I just came back from the beach. I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt the X-Terra 705 with the 9" 7.5 kHz concentric coil can track salt water just fine, as long as you don't get the logic/display box wet you'll be OK. You put it in beach mode, when you see the umbrella icon and the tracking icon, just ground balance. After it's balanced then you can search in the surf as much as you want, or where the salt water washes up on the beach. It'll do inland parks and whatnot even easier, plus if you have right coil you can hit the gold fields.

What did you find, and how deep?

[Smudge]

Iron Patch, your point is well taken.

David, assuming you do not get the control box wet, I will take back part of what I have said.

Certain dual/mutli-frequency land detectors will work well on the beach, especially the Minelab Sovereign, Explorer, Safari & E-Trac. The Fisher CZ-3D is another dual frequency that will work there, again provided you do not get the control box wet. These are land detectors that can cross over, but that inability to get the control box is a huge potential liability, IMHO.

But I stand by the single frequency statements I made. Yes, the Minelab X-Terras can run in wet salt sand as some other single frequency machines can, however, my emphasis is on depth and stability on the wet salt sand and the single frequency detectors will fail on one or both of those areas.

[nittany1]

Originally Posted by Terry Soloman

What did you find, and how deep?

Lots of aluminum foil bits, can slaw, a bent modern pulltab, but then my friend couldn't get my M6 to ground balance in the water and it was tough for me to try to get it balanced when I was holding my other one. Then we found this really deep target that we dug down 17-20" down and still couldn't find it, it must be a buried can, it rang up as Target ID 28 on the 705 and it came in around 30-ish on the M6. We'd have to go back with a shovel, I couldn't get to it with the scoops.

[Esteban]

Fisher CZ series work well in both. Look for a used CZ5 [ app. $350-400 ] & hunt everything. CZ3D will cost a little more.