My friend just bought a Whites Surf PI Dual Field...

A friend of mine at work (and an admirer of your video) just bought a Whites Surf PI Dual Field. He wants to do shallow salt water hunting (4 to 6 feet deep) and beach. Did he make the right choice?

Wally,

I think he made a very good choice. Just tell him to dig it all because he won't miss much. Shallow iron can be distinguished from non-ferrous targets via the wider signal and possible double hit when you sweep the coil along elongated part of the nail/wire because the coil will signal on both end points, but lots of deep iron, washers, bobbies pins, etc. do sound good. But, rings on edge as well as other potential good targets may double hit too.

It's a PI....so basically you go in knowing you are digging almost all targets and will dig more junk.

JC

If this is his first detector ever......it'll be a fairly sharp learning curve. It's quite a good detector.....can ONLY be used for shallow water and wet slope.....but NEVER dry sand or inland hunting. If he can start life with this 'all-metal' detector.....and he can survive......he'll be better off in the long run.

He REALLY needs the Real World Beach Hunting DVD!!!!!!!!

Tom,

Just so you know, whenever I go out with my PI, I re-read your ID Discrimination vs All metal article. Gives me the confidence and patience I need when all metal hunting. Also, it makes me 'listen' more and really try to investigate the target attributes.

As for that Whites Dual Field...no way it can be used as a dry sand or land hunter. Not only because it's a PI , but that big coil would be a detriment.

Tell you what, if Whites ever decided to retro fit the Dual Field to have the ability of switching coils and have the ground balance and conductive switch of the TDI and still be water proof...that would be something !

I love the TDI, but really have to watch myself on the beach with it. If that thing was waterproof, I would sell off a lot of machines.

I would not be surprised if White's came out with a splashproof (or 10-feet waterproof) version of the TDI. I'm also surprised the Findmall TDI forum is not more active. I know the unit is $1700.00.......but that forum should have quite a bit more activity.

Tom,

I purchased as used TDI ( one of the through hole models...I think there were about 200 made) with both 12 and 7.5 inch coils about a month ago, so I haven't had a lot of time with it.

Took it to the beach Sunday with the 12 inch coil. It ran super smooth, but the beaches are so sanded in here in NJ that I didn't get much. I used it in both pure PI mode and in the GEB mode. In the GEB mode, running in High conductivity mode, it can discriminate out iron/tabs/aluminum/gold/nickels while hitting clad and silver hunt....or you can run it the other way in low conductivity and get the gold/nickels/tabs and leave most iron, clad and silver. Hunting in All mode, you can't discriminate but you can hear either the high tone of the low conductors or the low tone of the high conductors so you can make a determination, but you will dig iron too.

It's a great machine, but like I stated earlier, it's not water proof so I did not venture more than in the wet sand and 1-2 inch suds with it.

Going to use it quite a bit the next few times out and see what happens. Will post results but I can tell you now the thing is super deep in pure PI mode and it runs incredibly stable. Of course when you pump the gain up to almost full it does get a bit noisy ( at least in the wet sand it did), but running at 1/2 gain I was still digging deep.

It is a under-rated......powerful unit. Especially in the all-metal mode. Yes, run that gain as high as you can stand it. Be careful using any form of Discrim on the beach.

I suspect you answered your own question. That's a steep price when they have such great units coming out at half (or lower) than that price.