Minelab Sovereign GT, or Etrac/Explorer

In fairly mineralized grd Tom has mention many times the the Etrac or Explorer trumps the F75 LTD, but the GT is rarely mentioned.
Are there any GT users out there, or is that platform outdated. The Sovereigns used to be considered great detectors if you were strong enough to lift one. Looking to upgrade from my long in the tooth CZ6a. Look forward to your input.

Turtleman

Go Canucks!!!

I use to live in Montana with fairly mineralized ground.I had a Sov. GT,SE Pro and an Etrac there.The Etrac was the best for old deep coins.The Sovereign was slower.I had the meter on it and for me it was difficult to seperate the targets by their ID number.Silver and copper were bunched together on the 180 area.I just liked the extra information from the SE and Etrac.I dug some deep,deep silver with them.Bill

Always like the soft pleasant tone on Sov's when you hit a silver coin and worked well on saltwater beaches and although both heavy like the hipmount abilities of Sov. models....but lets face it Explorers in general are the king for deep silver coins and do give a lot of info along with the ability with noise cancel to handle a lot of conditions..
Many do well with either and Minelabs in general produce a real good unit no matter what model or price range which is the consideration of many along with weight issues as they have some nice lightweight ones also...

I agree w kickback also had a GT, good machine but all sound, big learning curve. Got a explorer and etrac and like the etrac best mostly cause there is a lot more target id.

Thanks for the input guys. I am interested in the GT but with my hearing may not pick up the subtle changes in tone.
Decisions, decisions.

In most circumstances......the flagship Explorer/E-Trac is the trump-card over the Sov. ...... by just a tad. This is to include the wet salt environ.

Turtleman,

Be aware that the E-Trac can be programmed to only give 2 tones in Conductive or Ferrous mode, so you don't have to listen to all the tone options.

I have and E-Trac, and have been using CZ6a's for a long time. The E-Trac is a sweet unit, but sometimes you can't beat the simplicity of a CZ. To me, the major difference between the 2 are the coil designs. Depth wise they are pretty similar, but you do get more info from the E-Trac....especially in trashy sites with the smaller coils.

If you are going to be mainly coin hunting on land and will not use the unit on salt water beaches, the E-Trac is the choice. The reason I would say a GT for salt water beaches is because it's much easier to protect and the shaft configuration is much better balanced in addition to the unit can be hip or shoulder mounted when using bigger coils. You really don't need meter on the beach.

It also depends on where you are using them. For the beach where you are digging it all the Sov isnt a bad choice. All to often we tend to depend on the screens and thats not the way to affective hunt these machines. The screens tend to be a crutch to NOT DIG. Anyone using the MLs affectively are listening to the tones and might glance at the screens or depth meter. I think the Sovs more consistant 1.5 fixed freqs work very well on the beach. The Xcals really have put the Sov out of business since they are basicallly the same machine and are water proof. That said for an all around machine any of the explorers can be a very good choice.... as far as the Etrac over the exp..... well that opinion varies.

Dew

Well said Dew.

Would the audio on the GT be classed as mono tone.

Thanks for all your input. It's been very helpful.

Turtleman