Funny Thing Happened With 2 FBS Minelab Machines

I have just recently purchased both a Explorer SE Pro and a Like new Safari.
I spent the full day with these machines in order to pick one of them and sell the other.
I put a Sunray x8 on the SE Pro and put a new Detech 4.5 x 7 on the Safari for no particular reason.
Set both machines to all metal and noise canceled every time I made any changes.
Ran them both through my test garden and various tests above ground and tried every variable I could think of to see if one would fail more than the other.
In the END ???
I can't part with EITHER ONE OF THEM !!! ( ha,ha,ha !!)
To me it was a real eye opener since I have never used ANY FBS unit before.
Wonders never cease.

Very understandable...

If you liked the test garden results, wait until you use them for awhile in the real world. And buy a shovel. Seriously.

Did you swing the Safari over silver? Once you hear that sound, you are spoiled. I run a CTX and still miss that flutey song.

No I don't have any silver buried. I should though.
A couple of things did stand out though.
If you are an instant hunt by numbers person, you won't like either machine.
Slow number ID is kind of frustrating coming from other machines.
But, I have and do hunt with a GMP and it is tone only, which led to my next observation.
If you hunt by tone and only stop and wait for numbers if questionable,
Both machines just plain ROCK in the fast TONE dept.
I will admit it will take a little while to get those tones familiar to my mind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2020 03:02AM by Michael296.

You're ruined now!-----Nothing like the FBS machines.---The Greatest---the Muhammed Ali of the detecting world!

I used an Explorer 2 and Explorer SE for pretty much my entire detecting career. Found a lot of great stuff but I got tired of swinging 5 pound detectors. I got a Vanquish coming and I hope to find a lot of cool stuff with that one too. Minelab has been my brand though, I don’t see myself jumping ship anytime soon

Yup. Great machine. Not the greatest in iron-ridden ghost-townsy conditions (to see through nails). But for every other task, they are great. I haven't seen any machine that can beat an Exp II in junky urban oldtown turf.

I didn't really care much for the SE pro incarnation though. On that one, Minelab tried to speed up the processing, in order to help with junky areas. Which had the side effect of making the deeper beeps harder to hone in on (as the machine attempts to fade them out too quickly to get a good ID on them). So IMHO, the SE pro lost depth, when compared to the II . Many others concur with this. That's not to say that some fans haven't done good with them. But .... just sayin' ....

What about Etrac as is seems faster yet but no depth loss when compared to the Explorer II?

Tom Wrote;
I didn't really care much for the SE pro incarnation though. On that one, Minelab tried to speed up the processing, in order to help with junky areas. Which had the side effect of making the deeper beeps harder to hone in on (as the machine attempts to fade them out too quickly to get a good ID on them). So IMHO, the SE pro lost depth, when compared to the II . Many others concur with this. That's not to say that some fans haven't done good with them. But .... just sayin' ....
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In that situation, I would bring out the Gold Maxx Power
Hard to fool it in iron riddled sites



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2020 05:41PM by Michael296.

I have the Nox 800 and still prefer the FBS machines for silver. The Nox for final clean-up. The FBS machines are all coil sensitive. If you dont like how one FBS model reacts...put another coil on it and it will react totally different. The Explorers have great tones, but running them Fast will take away fullness of tone.....too choppy and loss of depth. The Etrac tones not as sweet as the others, but runs very smooth in most cases. Safari is under-rated.

I had an Explorer SE Pro for many years and loved it. I might have kept it if it wasn't so heavy.

Harold,ILL. Wrote:
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> What about Etrac as is seems faster yet but no dep
> th loss when compared to the Explorer II?

Harold, I never personally used the Etrac incarnation. But from those Etrac guys that I've hunted with (who had "come up through the ranks") the consensus seems to be that : The II and the Etrac were the same on depth. I was unaware that the Etrac is faster processing. And I am not sure if that necessarily makes it better in ghost-townsy iron ridden areas. I guess theoretically, it should have a slight-edge, if so. But still, the average II or Etrac user simply reaches for other tools in his arsenal, if he's in a carpet of nails


Arkansas Wrote:
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> The Etrac tones not as sweet as the others,
> but runs very smooth in most cases.

Yes, that was a common complaint from those who had come up through the ranks : Whatever benefits the newer Etrac offered, were tempered with complaints that the tones were less revealing (to discern penny vs dime vs silver, etc....) . So some guys actually went back to their II's and didn't take to the Etrac.