Minelab Excalibur II   Ultimate Gold Jewelry Shallow Water & Beach Metal Detector By Chris Valerio 
  Folks, the title of this article pretty much says it all! The Minelab Excalibur II is the ultimate waterproof metal detector for finding lost gold, silver and platinum jewelry in shallow/deep waters or on the beach- Rain or shine! This is far more than just my opinion, because it's the truth and I'll explain why.   For starters I'm a treasure hunter first and specialize in Searching for lost Caribbean jewelry in the sea. I've traveled so many times to the Caribbean in search of shallow water gold, that I've lost count of how many Caribbean treasure hunting vacations I've partaken in! Perhaps 30 or 40? I travel with a group of 4 to 6 friends everywhere in the Caribbean and as a group we share responsibilities and expenses, making these treasure hunting vacations both fun, affordable and sometimes very profitable! Gold is where you find it, so they say, but we always find gold! While there are no guarantees, believe me there's plenty of gold to be had in shallow waters! At the beach people love to flaunt their gold and think little of taking their jewelry in for a dip. What they do not realize is just how easy it is to lose their precious jewelry. Swimmers laugh when we tell them what we're searching for in the water, gold! Oh if they only knew better.      But why is jewelry so easy to lose in the sea or lake/river? Well there are several reasons. Some jewelry like rings fit fingers poorly to start. Think about this at the beach where Sun Worshipers slather themselves up with slippery suntan lotions and sun block. That slippery stuff gets all over their fingers and under rings. Then they sweat in the sun or while playing beach sports, eventually seeking the cooler refreshing water as a welcome change. They may enter and leave the water several times during the course of their perfect day at the beach. Life is good! That's until sometime later they discover a missing ring! Only most have no idea where exactly it was lost? Even if they know the exact moment and place their ring slipped off, they'll most likely never find it because as soon as the ring hits bottom, the sand instantly sucks it right up and totally out of sight! So even a mask and snorkel won't be of any help in a desperate and futile retrieval attempt. Because gold and platinum weigh more than most other metals, the law of the Gravity aids in the loss. Furthermore fingers tend to shrink while submerged in water. Throw in frolicking, water sports, roughhousing, alcohol and yes lovemaking too into the picture and well one can see the loss potential. Gold chains can be ripped off during rough play, or if are long enough fall right off swimmers heads while diving into the water or showing off doing underwater handstands. This treasure deposited into the locker of Davy Jones and regularly!
  Yes these losses are terrible and sad, yet every day valuable jewelry is being constantly lost and replenished in shallow waters. We call it making deposits!  Worse, even if found by someone else later, most pieces can never be returned to their rightful owners. Believe me one of the most fantastic feelings in the world is when one can return such a lost piece. I know so because I always return such found pieces whenever possible and have even returned a ring worth $75,000!  My reward?  A big hug and a sense of personal satisfaction! Oh and yes, they are many more valuable rings and such just waiting to be found and brought to daylight again! When rightful owners can't be located well, we all know the old saying about Finders, Keepers.   OK so understand this. When you look out and over a beautiful and some not so beautiful beaches, it's not a question of if there's lost gold in the water, it's there is lost gold and searching for it with a metal detector makes for a great hobby and pastime. I can't begin to describe the feelings of seeing a recovered piece of gold jewelry just glistening in your scoop! Such a find can even set off a touch of "Gold Fever"! You just want to find more and most gold jewelry found looks as good as it did when first purchased in the store and even after years of being lost in the sea!  Besides the obvious thrill of finding lost jewelry, it also can be rather profitable! A decent plain old wedding band of gold can fetch hundreds in scrap value alone. Expensive pieces found can be worth thousands, loaded with diamonds and such! So when searching for gold, platinum and silver jewelry one is quick to realize that this is a hobby that pays. I say that because in my mind there's no question that if you look for gold, you'll find it and as much gold as the effort put in! When I travel on a treasure hunting vacation I expect to find gold and on a good trip the finds will pay for the trip expenses in full. On some trips that will not always happen, yet on others finds far exceed that. My worst trips might be 5 pieces of gold and on my best more than 100 pieces! I know that 100 pieces might be difficult to swallow, but nonetheless is true.
  While finding gold, silver and platinum is exciting to say the least, it’s the adventure of finding that takes the cake! Treasure hunting is healthful time well spent with friends and creates fond memories to last a lifetime. The finding of gold is the icing on the cake and for obvious reasons while in pursuit of the shiny stuff, one wants to utilize the best metal detectors available for the task at hand. For the serious hobbyists such as myself it pretty much goes without saying, that I can just about use any metal detector I want and I've tried and used most. Also and for obvious reasons I would swing the best detector for finding gold and I do, the Minelab Excalibur II! Why if there were a better machine out there I would use it, right?  But not only me, but also the group of fellow treasure hunters I hunt with. We, every last one of us use an Excalibur almost exclusively. Why? Because the Excalibur finds gold jewelry better than any other detector currently on the market- period! Why the Excalibur is nearly a gold magnet!
  While there are many good and decent metal detectors out there, I've found without a doubt that the Excalibur consistently finds the most gold in the least amount of time. This said for everyday and general detecting. By that I mean while there may be certain ground conditions where other machines excel, the Excalibur finds the most gold in most average conditions and will run circles around other machines most of the time. On our treasure hunting vacations the best way to be the one who finds the least gold, is to use some other brand detector and not an Excalibur! It is what it is and I challenge even the PRO hunters out there to join us on one of our trips and use any other machine and we'll see who finds the most! Yes while there are always exceptions such as plain luck, or finding an extremely deep piece, I'll put my money on the Excalibur every time!
  Suffice it to say if you want to find your share of gold, platinum and silver get an Excalibur and never look back- you will find the gold! The more time you spend hunting and becoming one with your machine, the more you'll find. So exactly why is this? Or better yet what makes the Excalibur so good? Well..
   The Excalibur is manufactured by Minelab an Australian company and is what is called a VLF, very low frequency machine. Without getting too deep into all the details for the most part there are 2 types of metal detectors. VLF machines and pulse induction machines also called PIs and for the most part VLF detectors can discriminate out junk, while most pulse detectors can't, or at least not near as well. Pulse detectors shine in very bad ground conditions such as black sand and can detect targets very deep, but when using a pulse one has to dig nearly every target that responds, so as not to miss anything good. Usually a discriminating VLF machine is more efficient and one spends time digging targets more likely to be gold, rather than junk metals such as rusty iron. One problem with most VLF machines is that they do not work well in saltwater, because the salt is conductive and responds like a detected target. These VLF detectors lose ability to detect gold because they have to compensate for the salinity of saltwater/ground and in the process lose sensitivity. PI detectors do not suffer from this as they sort of pulse on and off and during that on and off cycle simply ignore the salt and other ground minerals. That's it in a nutshell. So while one might conclude that a pulse detector is better in saltwater, that's only partially true. Which sounds better, to have to dig every target that responds, including all the junk metals with a PI machine, or to dig the targets most likely to be gold, silver and platinum using a VLF? Believe me there are far more pieces of junk in the sand than gold and during a limited amount of time, such as when on vacation you'll simply find more gold using the correct VLF detector. The Minelab Excalibur is such a machine and utilizes BBS or Broad Band Spectrum technology. While most VLF detectors run on only one frequency, some have the ability to cancel out the negative effects of salt and poor ground conditions by operating on 2 or more frequencies simultaneously. With BBS technology the Minelab Excalibur runs on 25 frequencies simultaneously and while more isn't always better, in this case it is. With that many frequencies the Excalibur can cancel out the responsive effects of saltwater as well as poor ground conditions. Also the range of frequencies are better able to detect both small and larger targets at the same time. The science behind detectors is rather complex, so my explanations are basic at best. My point is that the use of multiple frequencies, is a reason why the Excalibur is so good even in saltwater and at finding valuable metals. For those who want to comprehend this better I would suggest researching the complex subject of metal detection frequencies. Otherwise know that BBS technology is very good for detecting gold, silver and platinum jewelry. Really the best.
  Because of all those frequencies the Excalibur can respond to various metals by tone. By this I mean while using an Excalibur most metals respond within a different tonal range. This makes the Excalibur primarily what I call a "Sound Machine" and it sure plays some beautiful music! Basically with an Excalibur the higher the conductivity of a particular metal, the higher the target response tone is and for the most part silver responds with a higher tone, gold and platinum respond within the medium range and lesser metals by low tones. Excalibur’s also utilize something called Iron Mask, which serves to block junk iron from responding like other metals, making iron responses easier to differentiate. Iron Mask also permits the detection of more valuable metals such as gold or platinum even when in the close proximity to iron. With lesser detectors junk iron can mask good targets nearby.  Often and after several repeated passes of the coil, the Excalibur masks the iron response, letting the good metal response through. 
  The Excalibur is an easy to use machine and that's very important when working in the water or a pounding surf. The fewer adjustments one has to make, the more time is spent searching for gold. As an example with and Excalibur one never has to worry about what is called ground balancing. Ground balancing which is basically canceling out the metallic ground mineral response, has to be done quite often with lesser  machines to achieve the best target response capability. With an Excalibur ground balancing is not necessary as the Excalibur automatically compensates for ground and salt, another benefit of the BBS 25 frequencies. 
  The Excalibur has 5 adjustment knobs and for the most part once they've been set, one forgets about them and hunts for treasure, making only slight adjustments as desired or needed. All Excalibur adjustments are fairly basic and well explained in the included operations manual and I mostly hunt with the same basic settings everywhere. So again an Excalibur is easy to use which sets you free to concentrate more on the hunt!
  The key to finding gold with your Excalibur is by using it often and at first to dig every target that responds. Soon your brain will relate the various tonal responses and quality with the actual targets recovered. It's kind of like learning to ride a bike and once you learn to, you never forget how. Eventually you will be able to accurately guess what a detected target actually is by response and a prior to recovery. You will learn the response of gold and there are times when I'm certain a piece of gold jewelry has been found by target response alone!
  I should mention the Excalibur detection coil is of the DD type, which sends a long and narrow knife blade like signal into the ground and performs sort of like a windshield wiper blade on your car. The DD coil design allows for wide ground coverage swipes the full length of the coil and the narrow ground signal pattern has less ground volume to process. Basically this coil design is good for better ground coverage and target separation. The Excalibur II 1000 comes with a 10 inch DD coil and the 800 model a slightly smaller than 8 inch DD coil. These 2 coils are hard wired to the Excalibur, so the coil size desired will have to be chosen at the time of purchase. So how does one select either the 1000 or 800 Excalibur? Well I use both and can report that neither size finds more or less gold than the other. Over the years I've discovered that I've pretty much found the same amount of gold, silver and platinum pieces using either an 800 or 1000. Both coil sizes have certain advantages, yet those advantages seem to cancel each other out and why they're pretty much a wash at finding the gold! Both the 1000 and 800 find gold, with the 1000 perhaps a bit better at ground coverage and the 800 perhaps better target separation and easier target pinpointing? So which to go with? Well for many years I've traveled with both an 800 and a 1000. Having 2 machines on a Caribbean treasure hunting vacation is a smart thing, as one can serve as a back-up machine in the unlikely event one quits working or forbid gets stolen! Neither of which thankfully has happened to me. The Excalibur II is built tough and all the bugs have been worked out. The machine borders near perfection! Anyway traveling with both an 800 and a 1000 did create a sort of daily dilemma- which machine to use? As it turned out no matter which I chose, I found gold and pretty much in equal quantities. So I can only conclude choosing either an 800 or a 1000 is a great choice! One just can't go wrong picking one over the other. With this said which machine should you choose? I suppose some might ponder this for quite some time and not to be able to come to a satisfactory conclusion. But really the choice is pretty simple. How will you use the machine? If you intend to mostly hunt in the water get an 800. The smaller coil has a bit less resistance/drag, so is a tad bit easier to swing underwater for hours at a time. Target recovery and pinpointing is also a bit easier with the 800 coil and that can help especially in murky waters. By no means is the 1000 coil difficult to swing in water, nor is pinpointing difficult. It's just in my opinion the 800 is more suited towards shallow water hunting and is a reason I may start traveling with 2 800 machines. But if you think you'll spend equal amounts of time detecting in the water as on land or wet sand beach, the 1000 is the way to go and will cover a bit more ground. So your intended use is how one chooses between the 800 and 1000 and really you can't make a wrong choice. With my treasure hunting group most used the 800 and just recently switched to the 1000. However several including myself will most likely go back to the 800. As to which goes deeper I've scooped some very deep gold rings with both and perhaps in the range of 18 inches! Keep in mind a BBS machine will not air test well compared to some other detector brands. The only thing that really matters is how a machine detects in the ground and BBS technology needs to see the ground for best performance. Thus the Excalibur can find stuff deeper than any air test! While I'm on the subject of depth, detection depth is not the most important aspect when searching for gold. Since gold and platinum are heavy metals, in many ground types they sink pretty deep and often beyond the detection range of any detector! Sorry that's just the way it can be. So when hunting for valuable gold, silver and platinum jewelry, it's far better to concentrate on the lost pieces one can find and that are within detection range. Yes there are detectors that may detect a bit deeper than an Excalibur, but I've found when struggling to hear the tiniest and deepest of signal responses, it becomes frustrating and more like work and I simply find less gold!  As many things in life are some sort of compromise the Excalibur is no different. Yes the Excalibur can hit deep targets, but the fact that the Excalibur is the most efficient jewelry detector out there, is far more important than a machine with just raw depth! Casual detecting with an Excalibur is far more enjoyable and productive. I also find that when I cover more ground I find more.   
   While most of us have or develop our own detecting style, none is wrong especially if it works for you! So when it comes to the Excalibur there really are no special secrets on its use. While there are some basic adjustments and techniques that improve your odds of finding, the Excalibur loves gold range targets so much, one still can find gold with it and even if one might be doing things wrong! That's how forgiving the Excalibur is. The more you read up on basic Excalibur techniques and especially the more you use the machine, the more you'll learn and find- it's that simple! The key is to stick with the machine and to be willing to learn with each outing. Eventually everything will start clicking and the Excalibur will become a natural extension of your body!  That's when you begin to find one piece of gold after another and then start expecting that gold will be found! One very important thing I've found to be true and no matter how silly it may sound, is to hunt with a positive mental attitude and expect to find gold. When you do this it's almost as though you're lead to gold by some kind of mysterious force! Hunt with a negative attitude and think you just won't find anything of value and guess what? You find nothing! Your positive attitude has to start before you enter the field and before you arrive at and overlook a particular beach prior to the hunt. You just have to know that lost gold is there and waiting for you to find it!  Please know that at just about every beach and especially those beaches where people gather or have gathered in the past, there is gold to be found. I've scooped gold even at beaches that you'd never expect to produce! The gold is there and most likely is constantly being replenished.  It's in your best interest to know this and then go looking! Then find you will. The Excalibur is simply the best tool to meld along with positive thoughts and that's when the magic begins! Eventually I’ll write about and share more about my gold hunting techniques and will save that for another article or book.

Every now and then things come together just so and I believe this to be the case with the Excalibur. When one considers the combination of BBS technology, Iron Mask, DD coils and simplicity of operation, these help to create the perfect combination to find gold. I guess another way to say this is the Excalibur clearly favors gold range targets like no other machine I've used! The Excalibur is a proven gold finder and for its intended use and purpose, is better than any other detector out there! 

The Excalibur has been around for some time now and to date nothing better has come along, except perhaps the newer Excalibur II model. The first Excalibur model is known as the Sword. It was very well made and had an 8 inch horseshoe shaped coil. The next model Excalibur was the blue one and referred to as Blue Tubes. The Blue Tubes have/had the best gold tone responses but are long out of production now. The newer lime green Excalibur II model is simply the best Excalibur ever. While the tonal responses of the Excalibur II are close to the earlier Blue Tubes, the Excalibur II is a vastly improved model. The Excalibur II has a better and thinner Tornado coils, detects deeper and runs more stable in the sea. The Excalibur II is my detector of choice!
  The Excalibur II is a precision made instrument that excels at finding lost gold, silver and platinum jewelry in the sea, lake or on the beach wet or dry! As such this is not an inexpensive machine. Currently an Excalibur II retails just under $1,500. While that's a good chunk of change, really it's not. Consider the price of gold now around $1,200 per ounce and the Excalibur easily has the potential to pay for itself in short order! In that light the Excalibur is a bargain at $1500 and it would not surprise me if the retail price of this detector jumps to $2,500 soon!  Even at that high of a price the Excalibur would still be a very good investment, and keep in mind an Excalibur holds its value very well. 
While there are many outlets to buy an Excalibur II, I highly recommend to purchase yours from George Streeter. George owns Streeter Electronics located in Marlborough NH (www.streeter.org /603-876-4443) and has been metal detecting the Caribbean since the late Seventies! George is a Treasure Trove of knowledge and at his website you can read about his Caribbean exploits and finds in the travel section. But the best reason to buy from George is, when you purchase a new Excalibur from George you'll get a personal invitation to join him on a Caribbean treasure hunting vacation! No other metal detector dealer will make you such a fabulous offer! Should you choose to accept, you'll travel to a beautiful Caribbean Island in search of gold, silver and platinum at an affordable price or share portion. The trips are limited to 6 and you'll be privy to years of hunting experience and secret locations! These are not tours for profit, nor are they detecting classes. They are a great opportunity to join up with fellow treasure hunters in search of gold! The trip experience is worth far more than any gold you'll find and most likely you will find gold! Should you doubt that then consider on our last trip to a beautiful Caribbean Island, a new member on his first trip with us scooped a stunning heavy 18K gold bracelet in just inches of water! Why the scrap value of the gold alone pushed $1,000!  He'll never forget that find and the moment and I'll never forget the look on his face! His detector of choice? An Excalibur II of course!
  Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have- [email protected]
May the Clunker Gods be with you, Chris.