David Popham has been using a Minelab Explorer 2 for nearly 20 years. The only upgrade he has ever done was to swap the standard coil for the lighter Etrac coil. He resisted the temptation to trade up to an Etrac or to a CTX3030 – his machine was finding things, he didn’t see the need.
Joan Allen are Minelabs only U.K. based Partners, as well as being one of our longest serving retailers they also run training days and metal detecting events. At one of their recent organised digs David was spotted using his Explorer 2 by Luke Mahoney, Joan Allen’s managing director. Luke showed David his Equinox 800 and explained it’s benefits. Impressed by the sensitivity, depth, light weight, and convenience of the cordless Bluetooth headphones, David was convinced. For the first time in 20 years, a newer, lighter machine had turned his head.
Before he took the machine out for the first time, David was advised to start off by using the following settings: Field 1 All metal on Sensitivity 19 Threshold adjusted to slight background hum With those (almost out of the box) settings and the machine fully charged he went out for a day of detecting. The first few signals were just bits of the usual rubbish but over the course of the day the nicer bits were revealed. The tally at the end of the day was five hammer struck silver coins ranging in date from the 11th to the 16th century, a 15th century Pilgrims Ampulla (used for containing Holy water), as well as less notable coins from the Queen Victoria and King George period. At the end of the day Dave was heard to say that he should have bought an Equinox sooner, not only had he found it to be fast and accurate, but at the days end he was nowhere near as tired as usual due to the lightness of the machine. I think it’s fair to say he’s happy with his decision and investment!
