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Legendary Detectors Of The 60s Through 80s


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I gave my original 1991 Whites Eagle spectrum to my second oldest grandson 25 years old a week ago. Memory is some thing that needs prompting at my old age, required to get by or great/dreadful/survival memories that are easily remembered. He has gone out and brought the accessories coin shovel, pin-pointer and detector harness as soon as he could with no input from me, but his choice was not too bad. As I was given the detector by the wife of my boss who I showed my methods of chasing gold in the 1980 to 1999 (he was the Charge Engineer at a 1500 Megawatt Power station where I worked) when he died 20 years ago. At that time gold in West Aust. was more important that learning his detector. So far my grandson has been air-rating his dad lawn 🤣 that is completely full of junk that it is hard to find a square foot of area of no junk. So far he has got a few coins (including a USA 1 cent and I got a Canada 5¢ coin) and a lot of their broken small cars and othertoys. How ever he played with the setting before he went to a beach and found he could get only a inch or two on coins. When I tried to adjust the setting I manage to pick up the Canada coin at 6" which was a great improvement on his setting. He has seen most of my coin and gold finds he thinks this OLD granddad is an expert and knows how to set it up better than him. This resulted in me doing some research on vintage detectors to find what I was dealing with.      Anyhow I found this article that might interest/revoke memory of you guys. 

 Are Old Metal Detectors as Good as the New Ones?

.......Souce LINK.......

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One of the first things I noticed was that old metal detectors were made primarily of metal..some even had metal on top of or near the coil...I also noticed that some of the detectors in that article had the coil on backwards..on purpose I suppose? 

strick

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OK, I haven't nitpicked in at least a couple..., weeks, err days, err, OK, hours....  The author is Michael Moore (not the documentary film-maker, if the photo at the end of the linked article is legit).  His history is way off, saying Garrett (along with Fisher) were the first to produce commercial metal detectors -- not even close.  George and Carl have the history of metal detector creation down pat, just another reason to own their book.  I don't say that to diminish Charles Garrett's accomplishments as his influence is amazing, covering the full spectrum of detectorist/treasure hunter, designer/engineer, author, business entrepeneur, and champion of the endeavor.  But there were quite a few companies that popped up in the 1960's that beat Garrett to the punch of designing, building, and marketing/selling detectors, if only by a few years or even a few months.

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Yeah, Fisher existed for over 20 years before Garrett even got into business in the 50s.

Metal detecting technology became mature around 1990, especially VLF. Anything made since then is still halfway decent. For point of reference, the 50 kHz White’s Goldmaster II came out in 1990 (15 - 19 kHz was standard before that), and the Minelab SD 2000 in 1995.

But from 1960 until 1990 huge advances were being made on a regular basis, and I’m talking just basics like ground balance, and discrimination. There are a few interesting models from the 1980s, like the 19 kHz Gold Bug in 1986, but most models made before 1990 are dinosaurs by todays standards. For a look at the state of the art in 1990, see this 1990 White’s catalog. White’s at the time was making cutting edge product, second to none really, including the first digital models from any manufacturer. People would be surprised if they ran a Goldmaster 2 against any of the current crop of VLF nugget detectors… very little has changed there in 30 years! The coin detectors from Compass, Fisher, Garrett, Tesoro, and White’s were also pretty decent, though nothing like modern multifrequency existed. PI nugget detecting did not exist yet either, and despite early efforts from Eric Foster it was not until Minelab came along in the latter half of the decade with the SD series that things really happened there.

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Somewhere are another I’ve said this before on here about Whites and if you had a Eagle and wanted to update it to a Eagle 2 White’s would do it. The cost was a 125.00 and as far as I know know that was the first time they done that. I don’t remember them ever doing that again.

 My Eagle 2 is still going strong and my TR 66 it as well but a friend has it.

 Chuck 

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I still have a Eagle 2 SL 90 like the one on that catalog cover. What a great machine that was when it came out. It's still a great machine for land hunting if the targets are 8" or shallower. It was pretty worthless at a salt water beach in the wet sand or water though. The 6000 DI Pro machine was no slouch either. IMO the best of the analog all-around machines.

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