DetectingWales.com

ok i have been offered a laser power max £220
laser b1 £200
laser b3 £225
fisher 1266x pro £250
what are your thoughts and suggestions.
do i leave them all alone or do i take one.
all help and info welcome.
i want a good machine that goes quite deep, something light and something that is going to serve me well for a while

Really it all depends on where your going to do most of your detecting , Land or Beach ? i'm selling my Laser Hawkeye , cos i do a bit of both and the hawkeye ain't no good on the beach , but great on land

i agree with mike you need to think where youre gonna use it. if you plan on beach forget a laser/tesoro.
if you have those prices in mind id personally look for a 2nd hand Sovereign good machines on beach or land but they are heavier than laser's will this be a problem for you?
do you specifically NEED a light weight machine, due to illness etc?
specify your needs, land/beach or both, and what area you live.(some whites models ive been told arent too clever on high mineralisation soils).
price your looking to spend.

i will not be doing any beach work, i live in herefordshire.

then i would say a laser/tesoro would be a good buy mate.
you might find a pm to ukbrian  would pay dividends. he'll give you the low down on each model

I was thinking there all a bit on the old side especially the Fisher that you might not be able to get repaired as its a pre take over model.

All the Lasers were great machines but the prices you quote seem very high. I thought I was pushing it a bit asking for £160 or was it £170 for my XP 200.

If your thinking of keeping the machine and adding a different coil then you need to have a ground balance to get the best out of different coils, and the fact you might have some bad ground knocks out the B3 and possibly the Power as I think they dropped the ground balance off that initially though you could have an upgrade. Hopefully an ex Laser owner could advise on this as I can't really remember anything apart from an ugly blanking panel appearing on the control box.

The four machines you mentioned are all old models the lasers being good inland preformers in their day  ;) were vnot the deepest of machines out of the lasers the powermax 11 is the most recent machine the fisher 1266x is one to stay away from I,ve owned one of these their a bloody magnet never dug so much Iron in my life  :( I,ve also owned a laser b1 high power and powermax11 and my friend has a laser b3 if you want good Iron rejection lightness and reasonable recovery speed the c-scope cmx3 / Laser trident 1+2 /xp 150 +250 /whites prism4 are all good preformers at a reasonable the last three are operating at lower frequency and more prone to electrical interferance from powerlines etc  :( hope this helps you ??? good luck ;)

ok i am now at a loss, what would you recommend, i am willing to spend about £3-£400.

plenty of minelabs on flea bay for that price

I own a lazer and a minelab sovereign but always end up using the minelab..

Advantage of the lazer is that it is very light and you can swing it all day long but saying that, I use a hip mount and bungee on my minelab and I can swing that all day long and have far better results and much deeper finds.

As stated, the sovereigns appear often on ebay and you will not be sorry if you buy one.

Probably the best second hand machine money can buy and within your price range.

If Minelab are going to or have stopped repairs for ten year old machines then loads of the secondhand Sovereigns don't seem a good bet.

There's a post on another forum and some agreeing that the C-Scope 3MX isn't to hot on iron reject. Supposedly they were contacted re this and said it wasn't designed to deal with iron, even nails, larger than coin sized !

I would check out near new Lasers or even the Tesoro Vaquero which can be hyper tuned to the performance of the Tejon. Or the XP Goldmax Mk 1. The Mk 1 XP Adventis would also be my choice over the later 150/250 models.

Don't forget multifrequency has a price to pay in not likeing air in the soil or a fast sweep speed. If on a ploughed or ploughed and rolled field a faster sweep single frequency detector will let you cover much more ground.

thanks Brian for your knowledge i have been looking at the Tesoro Vaquero and it looks a decent allrounder, i will have a read up on it and get back to you with a few possible questions.
thanks again.

Hello :) Hunter 2000 uk the tesoro vaquero is the american equivelent of the laser trident 11both manufactured by tesoro differant decals and supposedly slightly preformance parameters  ??? I,ve owned a trident 11 myself a very light and powerful machine with very good Iron rejection and sensitivity to the smaller hard to detect finds ;) wish I kept it in fact contemplating getting another you won,nt go far wrong with either of these machines  ;) good luck bud ;)

I'm also in Herefordshire and use a Tesoro Tejon and seem to find cut halfpennies and quarters with it so it can't be doing me too badly mate! Oh,and bloody .177 air rifle pellets you find yourself digging too! Bought mine for £240 off e-bay. My third signal as I was testing it out was a cut halfpenny in woodland so I got off to a good start with it.
Hope this helps.
Ben.