Minelab Excalibur tips

Because I am fairly well known as a Minelab CTX 3030 user, people often ask me why I still own and use a Minelab Excalibur. 
My answer is always the same, I have found so many excellent finds with my Excalibur that I could never imagine not owning and using one. 
Here are a few Excalibur beach and water hunting tips that have helped me fill my pouch with platinum, gold and silver.

Keep within the speed limit

A rapid detecting pace will kill your chances of detecting valuable targets, even at beaches with a moderate amount of trash. 
A slow sweep speed counters the effects of both ferrous (Iron) and non ferrous target masking. 
Excalibur users should be the slowest walkers and coil sweepers at the beach.
The main advantages of using an Excalibur at the beach, are ease of use, its ability to cancel out the effects of saltwater, and its excellent responses to a variety of detected targets. 
The slower you use the Excalibur, the more targets you will hear and detect, as your target recovery speed increases.
Remember, once your search coil passes over a ferrous target, you are not detecting anything until your threshold (background hum) returns. 

Avoid digging pesky bottle caps

I normally just rely on the Excalibur built in iron mask feature as my default discrimination setting,  but at trashy tourist beaches sometimes you need a little more help.
A discrimination control setting of 2 or 3 is the perfect answer, if you are detecting a large amount of bottle caps.
Any level higher and you risk not detecting 10K gold, every good metal detector I have ever tested has a cut off point to 10K gold.
With the Excalibur, do not be afraid to turn the discrimination knob a little to improve junk target identification. 
Good spongy sounding responses to corroding bottle caps, can easily be turned into crackly sounding responses, saving you valuable beach or water hunting time not having to dig bottle caps. 
Using an ultra slow sweep speed with a little discrimination, will make sure you still hear other targets close to rejected bottle caps. 
In my opinion, way too many Excalibur users worry about what they may miss instead of what they may find by turning the discrimination knob a little. 

Believe and wiggle

This 1932 Scottish masonic with 3/4 carat diamond is why I love the Excalibur, the legendary detector is just so damn good at the beach when you are searching for specific targets. 

I recovered this old gold ring at an iron infested beach site, it resembled a green coral golf ball when found.  
All you need to hear is the slightest low tone of gold or high silver tone, to stop you in your tracks. 
If you heard it the first time, believe your Excalibur you are both not mistaken. 
I learned the value of the "Sovereign wiggle" many full moons ago, the Excalibur wiggle is exactly the same.
If you think you heard a slight low or high tone, you can coax a better target response by wiggling your search coil over the same area you heard the initial tone.
A shorter wiggle from side to side over the potential target, will enhance the target response.
I have found so many fantastic pieces of platinum, gold and silver, after stopping to investigate and wiggle mouse fart low or high tones.
They are not always deep targets, many are just targets located very close to other larger targets helping to mask them.