question on models

[Rainfall]

Hi I am completely new at this, I would like to buy my wife a metal detector, she loves hunting the beaches for rocks , glass or whatever she can find. We live on Vancouver Island and do most of our beach combing on the ocean shore. I have read many articles about which metal detector would be the best around salt water shores . Well what I have come up with are two which I think are good . The teknetics t2 or the garret pro AT. I don't know which one would be better.I do know the teknetics is about 200 more. I would appreciate your input Thanks

[del]

Hello Rainfall welcome to the forum , I believe the two models you mentioned are both single frequency detectors and both will have difficulties on the wet salty beaches. The wet sand has both salt minerals and black sand mineralization (some worse then others) and a single frequency machine will usually false (give a signal of a target when none are present) or act erratic in the wet sand , these machines will usually do better in the dry sand (because both minerals aren't as prevalent or overwhelming to the processors and filters) and act more normal.Machines with multi frequency (2 or more) do a lot better on these beaches or pulse induction machines ( a different breed of machine all together) .

Dan

[Rainfall]

Thanks for the reply , do you have any suggestions.

[Lowjiber]

While I live in the desert, we have a second home in Florida that is about five miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Also, I used to live about 8 miles from the famous Santa Cruz Beach... one of the toughest beaches to hunt in the world because of the "black sand". I say this only because I have a ton of experience beach hunting.

Without question, a water-proof Pulse Induction (PI) machine is the best "model" you will ever have for beach hunting. PI's don't discriminate and have incredible depth. A good PI detector will send you digging to China to recover the back of a gold stud ear ring.

Wet sand, dry sand, in or out (or even under) the water... no big deal to a PI machine.

I have an old White's Surfmaster Pro (single frequency) that has been modified a bit over the years. It's been loaned to folks from the mid-west to take on vacation literally all over the world.

Now days, the newer generation of Surfmasters have a Dual-Field feature that provides two frequencies, and are very nice and easy to use. If you're gonna "put your big-boy pants on" and seriously want to beach hunt, don't fool around with any VLF machine that discriminates. I highly recommend this one: http://www.whiteselectronics.com/surf-pi-dual-field

Expensive? Yes, but I've found literally thousands of dollars worth of jewelry with this machine.

BTW: Hairpins will drive you nuts on a beach. After a little experience with a PI, you'll be able to "hear" hairpins. Trust me.

(Note: I have no particular allegiance to White's machines, and while I seem a tad narrow-minded, I simply know what works.)