My top Vintage Detector Favorite !

It has to be the Whites Eagle 2 SL 90.5 with tone I.D. and signal balance. It has just about every useful feature you could want. Just take the time to master the multiple function push buttons.

I've had a few that I really liked that were "vintage"...the Nautilus DMC IIB...Fisher CZ3D...Minelab Explorer II...etc. But my all-time favorite was the Fisher 1266XB with the special "Super 6" coil. That unit was tops IMHO. It was deep and well-balanced with that particular coil.

Now my favorite newer unit is the XP Deus with the round 9" HF coil.

Charles



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2018 08:16PM by Charles (Sabre)(Tx).

FISHER 1265 X, and I still use it on occasion.
Marvin

My Whites Blue Box 5900DI Pro Plus, best threshold ever and power in reserve compared to modern machines, And the DISC will also smooth out bad ground, If only they made a new version, It has the power of a PI when you learn how to tune it.

texkinzee Wrote:
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> It has to be the Whites Eagle 2 SL 90.5 with tone
> I.D. and signal balance. It has just about every u
> seful feature you could want. Just take the time t
> o master the multiple function push buttons.

Good topic Texkinzee. Yes: The blackbox Eagle 2 SL 90.5 was amongst my favorite all-time machines. Very versatile on land . In-so-far as "feel". Ie.: you could just size up and feel out what the machine was telling you. Spot on with difference between dimes & quarters for sure (where ... I have to look 3x, and study the cursor on my Explorer to tell sometimes). The Eagle was good in demolition sites, ghost-townsy sites, etc..... D/t it had a funky ability to "ratchet down" by clicking near offensive targets, to off-tune your setting momentarily. At least mine did. Not sure if all the Eagles did.

That is: If you clicked the toggle near a garbage can, for instance, you were now "de-tuned" to that amount of metal. That made pinpointing a breeze. Or separating targets, etc.... It was like going to a small coil "with the click of a switch". The only thing was, you had to make sure that when you wanted to click to full threshold/balance again, that you had to click with the coil held out in front of you, in the air

The downsides for me were :

1) The eagle was NOT a good wet salt beach hunter. Despite the "auto-track" feature, it did NOT track worth a durn. I found myself having to rebalance every time I moved further to, or further away, from the water's edge. And it did not favor low conductors (foil, nickels, etc....), so that too would make it a poor beach machine.

2) The eagle got clobbered on depth when the Explorer started making the rounds (and arguably machines like the CZ, Sov, etc....). It was just never a deep machine, when compared to today's power-houses. I went side by side with an Exp. II user (back when the II first came out). And he was showing me signals that .... I had to be honest .... I wouldn't have heard if it hadn't been pointed out to me And he was doing it with absolutely no getting fooled by nails, and great ability to "call" the target, even when deep. I immediately ditched the eagle. But up till then, it was my go-to machine for everything.

Another great vintage machine was the Compass 77b. When I first started in the mid 1970s, there were still a few guys using that . And they did quite well in sidewalk tearouts and other such ghost-townsy situations. And ... to this day .... probably can't be paralleled for some such hunts (although some Tesoro 2-filters are very close seconds, plus much easier to operate, doh! )

auminesweeper Wrote:
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> My Whites Blue Box 5900DI Pro Plus, best threshold
> ever and power in reserve compared to modern machi
> nes, And the DISC will also smooth out bad ground,
> If only they made a new version, It has the power
> of a PI when you learn how to tune it.

Yes. That and the 6000 Di pro. There were still some guys in this area that refused to swing anything else for decades. Good on our local wet salt, versatile on land, etc.....

Fisher CZ70 was the first good deep silver seeker I got my hands on, completely opened up "hunted out" spots and did pretty well at the beach too.

Tom_in_CA Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> auminesweeper Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > My Whites Blue Box 5900DI Pro Plus, best thresho
> ld
> > ever and power in reserve compared to modern mac
> hi
> > nes, And the DISC will also smooth out bad groun
> d,
> > If only they made a new version, It has the powe
> r
> > of a PI when you learn how to tune it.
>
> Yes. That and the 6000 Di pro. There were still
> some guys in this area that refused to swing anyth
> ing else for decades. Good on our local wet salt
> , versatile on land, etc.....

Yeah Tom, It has a twin pot GB set up and if you still hear the ground a quick tweak of the Disc and you don't hear a thing, Pure Velvet on A Stick. The threshold is even smoother than the TDI SL, And the depth that a modern machine can see with a 15" Coil the 5900 will do with a 950 coil with a bit to spare, the moment you turn it on it brings a smile to ya face, I got mine on ebay and it had never been used and was stored in someone's Loft since 1989 in it's original box complete with the original manual.

For me, Tesoro Lobo ST. Adjust the internal ground balance and it really comes alive in disc mode.

Rick

The old Tesoro Toltec 100. I had a blast hunting old areas with that thing!

CZ all the way however aforementioned units were all good also...just a matter of preference....the bad aspect battery consumption and weight in most cases...

My introduction to Target ID was a hip-mounted Teknetics Mark I. I added the 8 1/2" coil for improved depth and coverage. Huge step up from the White's Coinmaster TR I had since the mid-70's. Opened up the world of coinshooting to me. A few years later, I picked up the new White's Eagle and coupled it with the 6" Eliminator coil. A great combo for me for hunting old yards and parking strips, I had a few other good detectors in the 90's, but my next 'favorite' would be the Minelab Explorer XS I bought in 2000. More of the places I was hunting in the early 2000's had already be hunted by others and I was now trying to find what had been left behind by others; gleaning so to speak.

Newer detectors wouldn't qualify as vintage, so I will stop there.

My favorite among these 3 ? I have the fondest memories hunting with the White's Eagle (hip-mounted) with the 6" Eliminator Coil. This may be since back in the 80's I was usually 1st when it came to detecting an old yard. Not as much competition as a decade later or now. It had that nice smooth operation, great audio and target ID and found stuff.

Interesting to read others experiences.

Rich (Utah)

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Just one more good target before I go.

I still use a CZ-3D and Golden uMax so don't consider them vintage. Probably have to say the Nautilus IIBa first run with the thicker more reliable coil. Never had a issue with that one with the thicker 8" coil. The Newer ones after that With the thinner coils always had a problem with them. The originals seemed deeper too with more modulation. I found a 12" Indian head penny with the one I had at a pounded Victorian era amusement park. Never got a coin there with My Whites DFX or Fisher CZ-5 up till then. And that was with the 8" coil. I traded it in on the New CZ-3D that came out. I hated to do it but couldn't afford to keep both at that time. I wish I had it back today as newer ones not the same after Jerry Tyndall sold the company.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2018 09:57PM by Harold,ILL..

Fisher 1266X and the Nautilus DMC IIb

I liked the first Explorer and the Troy Shadow X5.

I have always had a sweet spot for the old Whites blue box detectors, I have had several different models and I believe you can still do quite well coin shooting with them in the parks and curb strips. It seems to me that if you run a Whites 6000 di pro with a blue max 600 coil you can still keep up with the light weight Technological marvels that everyone is using today in a trashy park. Besides that the quality and durability of the old Whites detectors is unparalleled, thats why you see so many of them floating around still. I think the best way to break into metal detecting is to use one of the old blue boxes, they teach you about proper ground balance, threshold, all about discrimination adjustment, target modulation and pinpointing. The only thing they have against them is weight and balance. As long my arm and shoulder stay strong enough I will still swing them and I will find good targets! I still love my F19 LTD and Deus though.

Up to my ____ in Pulltabs, Grant