"Old School" Blue Excalibur Comes Thru With A Few Golds And Silvers

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

1 hour ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

What a chorus line!  I owned one Excalibur and loved it.  Ran a WOT on it and did really well   Mine was the blue bodied one like the one in the middle.   Never did much water hunting but did the hipmount deal for years  I kept breaking the coil cables from constant flexing so finally gave up, fixed it and sold it.  One day I'd like to get one again.  It's been so long that I can't remember, what is the difference between the Excal and Excal II?

Yes, liked the WOT back in the day when I did hunt drysand.

Blue vs Green Excaliburs ... just a few differences, nothing drastic. The Blues when they first came out had way better cables than the later blues. Once the left Ireland quality suffered. But they did keep the blue shell (signature) head phones which I feel were way better then the Koss yellows. A year or two before the green excal ll came out they did go to the yellows on the blues.

As far as the PCB's/Boards all have been the same other than different vendors caused different looking components to be used on the boards. Functions/performance the same. The green excal ll did get a improvement in the coils, the old blue coils where fatter, height wise which made them heavy. The excal ll coils were lower, and lighter and seems to cut thru the water better. Some say the blues were the better machines, and I feel both were the same performance wise.. other than the head phones which the old blue HP's were great. 

I do think the best one can do for the excal is get the remote PP button, and a better set of head phones. Both well improve the machines performance and bring the machine "closer" to what's out there today. Which there are some great machines for the money on the market today. 

[Bob S.]

My dear friend and hunting partner designed and built the first housings for the Excalibur.... He says the one's that didn't leak! 🙂  Later on Minelab took over the manufacture. We were just reminiscing today about the detector. The reworked internal circuitry is actually Minelab's Sovereign BBS technology. I have another dear friend who has used the Sovereign for 30+ years and swears by it. Great bad ground detector, but I could never get used to the out-of-sync coil position and signal audio.

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

5 hours ago, Bob S. said:

My dear friend and hunting partner designed and built the first housings for the Excalibur.... He says the one's that didn't leak! 🙂  Later on Minelab took over the manufacture. We were just reminiscing today about the detector. The reworked internal circuitry is actually Minelab's Sovereign BBS technology. I have another dear friend who has used the Sovereign for 30+ years and swears by it. Great bad ground detector, but I could never get used to the out-of-sync coil position and signal audio.

Yes, Gary Storm told me about the guy who helped design the housing. Never got his name but he said he was very talented. Gary did share some of the story (Sovereign to Excalibur sword) but I never got a chance to record it. I would love to talk to your friend and hear start to finish.. even if he could type up a story about the birth of the Excalibur. I'm the ADMIN. on the Minelab Sovereign & Excalibur Face book page and would love to publish his story. I lost contact with Gary when he sold Detector Pro.

 

I use to repair Excalibur's, did it for about 5 years.. several were sword models. I came up with several improvements to the excalibur during that time. Many have went world wide and a few are now done by the Minelab repair facility in PA. as modifications to improve performance.

When I did repair Excals I came across this sword model, and your correct Sovereigns were the mothers of the Excalibur.. this maybe your friends hand writing, l can't remember the board number on this one but it was one of the first 100

 

[Tony]

Hello Joe......would it be possible to elaborate further on the performance modifications (not including remote PP and phones) over the stock Excalibur II board ?

I enjoy the "standard" performance with my Excal II but you have piqued my interest !

I run 10 x AA NiMH cells on my unit and I feel the performance is slightly ahead over the regular battery pack.

Thanks,Tony

 

[TTT2866]

On 9/13/2024 at 11:58 AM, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

Yes, the Chesapeake bay is pure murky, vis is about 10 inches. Come Jan on until May/early June its clear.. Boat season starts, it gets bad.. boat stir up the mud.

Yes, when we first got there I almost kept going. Glad I stopped.

Jeez JB that's rough. I thought I had it bad - I went out yesterday for a dive and had only about 3-4ft of vis 👀

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

2 hours ago, Tony said:

Hello Joe......would it be possible to elaborate further on the performance modifications (not including remote PP and phones) over the stock Excalibur II board ?

I enjoy the "standard" performance with my Excal II but you have piqued my interest !

I run 10 x AA NiMH cells on my unit and I feel the performance is slightly ahead over the regular battery pack.

Thanks,Tony

 

The two that do stand out the most would be the remote PP and the head phones. Those several do now. The third I will have to find my pictures, years ago it started when a guy use to do the sovereigns.. I did the same on the Excalibur's but it requires one to set up the board and head phones together......... tune to your own hearing, wearing head phones. It's one I would not recommend for the faint hearted and requires a off set screw driver. (Very Little adjusting) I only shared this modification with a few but it was originally posted several years earlier on findmall. 

As far as voltage differences, the excal is regulated..be it 16. volts or 10.5 volts, performance is the same. I used a 16.8 on the excalibur for a few years. Never really seen any improvement.

 

Here is the picture of the adjustments on the excalibur .. I feel these work best, there is so much unheard once the threshold disappears .. this mod allows you to hear beyond the stock settings 

sovereign mod, same adjustments different board. both boards the RT4 adjustment

 

This one was something I talked about with a guy who did a lot of electronic's.. back in the day I tried several.  

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

1 hour ago, TTT2866 said:

Jeez JB that's rough. I thought I had it bad - I went out yesterday for a dive and had only about 3-4ft of vis 👀

During the winter here you can see 5 feet, water is almost crystal clear.. the good here is those that do dive during the summer can't see much. I took a guy out that though he was going to clean up around a dive platform.. he had a terrible day. he had to grab a hand full of and hope he got the target, than put the handful in his large netted pouch and let it do the work. He got allot trash. 

[Tony]

Thanks Joe......I will likely leave it all well alone. I must be the only Excalibur user happy with the stock yellow phones. Must be my hearing which has been tested as very very good so that's a good thing 😁

[schoolofhardNox]

Well that was a good hunt 😅 Days like that make up for the dry times. Surprised the large ring (onyx or jet?) was 14K. If I found it, I would get 10k or 1/20th 😖. Beautiful Citrine ring as well. What a hunt!!!! 😍