When I started seriously detecting I dived straight in and bought a machine which cost me a grand (brand new) despite mild protests from my wife. After a dozen trips or so I decided that I was hooked on the hobby and longed to upgrade to the Whites XLT after hearing so much about it and having joined a club who mostly use Whites machines.

Can you imagine how difficult it was to explain to my bemused wife in February this year that I needed to upgrade to another pricey detector? To be honest she was as 'good as gold' about the whole thing and although she failed to understand why a relative novice who had been detecting less than six months needed a top of the range machine,she agreed to the purchase.

Half the battle of detecting is knowing that you are waving the ultimate machine over potential targets. I still go home with junk in my finds pouch and precious little to show after six hours in the field but I know that I can't blame my machine and that any bad returns are either down to a poor choice of site or poor technique on my part. I have found some incredibly small and deep targets.

My advice to them is check the public library for metal detecting books. Your library catalogue may even be accessible on line from home. You can see what they have and sometimes if you find a book you want at another library they can get it loaned out to you.

There are many, many books out there on detecting. Charles Garrett has written many, Dick Stout, and many other authors to look at.

While you are checking the library look also at books about the history of your town, and maps - that way you can locate the old coins or other treasures.

He came to ask me what I recommend as a good, reliable metal detector.  Besides looking for treasure, he wants to search his property for nails and/or other debris causing flat tires.

My advice to him was to invest in a used Garrett, Compass, or White’s machine. These can be found at Ebay for very good prices.  In regard to the Garrett machines, you can get the Operator’s Manual on Adobe PDF format (i.e. you can download it and print it out) from their website.  I had an old KellyCo Scorpion several years ago, bought it when it was on sale. It’s a great detector for finding ALL kinds of metal. It’s a little tougher to figure out how to find just certain kinds of things.

This is an interesting hobby.  I recently searched the parking strips in an old town and found 83 coins on just one street.  If Chris is willing to look for nails and debris then he will surely enjoy finding his first old coin.  My first oldie was from 1828.

From what I’ve seen, you need to spend $250-350 to get anything decent, so watch for sales and used ads, or shop online for a bargain.

Now all I’ve got to do is make sure Chris doesn't get rid of all the nails and trash by throwing them into my yard!

For any other GTA owners out there, let me give you a tactic.  If your units have the notch discrimination, where you can set up what you want to find by notching in an item or if you want to pass it up you notch it out, try this:

On the GTA 1000 Ultra, gold rings fall in the area between Nickel (3 to 3.5) and Pulltabs (4.5 to 5.5). I learned that by adding 4 and 4.5 notched in I might pick up some pulltabs but I don’t miss those gold rings. Your settings may be a bit different than the 1000 but look between Nickel and Pulltab to lock in the gold rings.

Now, is this tactic worth the extra hassle of digging up pull tabs? You decide.  Just for your consideration, do you know how much a gold & diamond ring is worth?  I've found more than one using this trick.

The Garrett detectors are truly deadly on coins.  It is really easy to use and picks up when others don't.

What are your thoughts?

After having a break I decided to do an easy feild with no cow holes. Again my first signal was a georgian penny - no dates too worn. I had to go back to the car to renew my batteries then decided to start detecting in some dips in the land, I got another Georgian the a real nice 1914 florin which came out shining, and how nice to be able to read the date.

I met back up with my buddy who was doing some detecting around an old crashed aircraft site, he got a shell of some sort. but not much else.

This land has potential. Cant wait to get back on there.

Your ideas would be appreciated thanks.

There's a lot of talk currently about weather the Minelab Explorer is better or not.  The Whites XLT is not as complicated as some make out, but be careful which programmes you put in off the net.  Depending on where you live some maybe good for coin-shooting in America but not for small hammered in the UK.

My advice is buy Bob Bailey's book if you get the XLT, and use one of his programmes.

I think the C.Scope Newforce R1 was brought in to challenge the XLT…which it didn't seem to do judging by the lack of R1s I see. My mate has had and R1 for a year or so, but has got himself an XLT because he wasn't finding hammered. But I reckon that's down to his bad luck more than the R1. I like the build quality of the R1 they are much more waterproof than XLT but also a bit heavier. It's strange you never see any posts from R1 owners anywhere, the only makes people seem talk about are Laser/Tesoro Whites and Minelab.

The XLT and R1 are a similar weight and size.

The R1 comes with an extra 6″ coil but no rechargable battery pack as standard. The XLT comes with a recharge & alkaline pack as standard.

Dont be scared off by the people saying “its too complicated”, its really not.