My old girl, the Fisher 1280-X Aquanaut VLF submersable, metal scope (m-scope) metal detector

I have used this detector exclusively for over 10 years and it was great. I never washed the salt water off it and never had a problem (besides wearing out the battery holder) . I could not wait each time to go out and find coins and jewelry with it. 

I know there were times, but I really cannot remember coming home empty handed. And while it has helped me find many things, I have probably lost a girlfriend or two because I spent too much time with it!

This waterproof machine is awesome at the beach in sand or in dirt. It works good underwater but in the salty ocean it can give false signals like most VLF detectors unless properly adjusted, usually at the cost of some depth. It can be annoying in the ocean and is the reason I finally got a Garrett Infinium Pulse Induction Unit (PI) for salt water but it is not as annoying as most other VLFs and has better depth than some others because of it's relatively low operating frequency (2.4 Khz).

When using the 1280-X,  and you get a target signal, it sounds like a mosquito buzzing near your ear and with practice you can most times tell by pitch what the buried target is. You will at least become a very good guesser.  If no targets are near, the sound is silent (silent search).

It with see most gold rings and pendents but will not see small gold or chains.

I have kept a few things I found with it in the past 10 or so years, but at times I sold items to help pay bills. There was also TON of clad coins and trash not shown. Most silver is black like coal when I find it, nothing a little Tarn-x cleaner can't remove. My next purchase will be a small jewelry polisher to shine up the jewelry.

The coin looking medallions on the right are from a leather hat band I found buried in the sand on an old beach in Tampa bay. The beaches in there have a lot of trash. I would tune them out with the discrimination knob (also tuning out any gold),  then blast through the garbage getting signals from coins and silver... only having to dig once in a while. A lot of these items were also found in parks, old vacant lots and homesteads.

I don't use this machine like I once used to, since getting a Garrett Infinium and AT Pro. The AT can drive you crazy sometimes near salty sand and also from interference because of its high 15 Khz operating frequency that enables it to see very small gold. It is at these times (when not searching for small gold) when I need a lower frequency machine like the 1280-X with the discrimination that the Infinium (Pulse Induction) does not have. There are old Minelabs and other VLFs that have a frequency switch for this very reason. It seems the lower frequency you go, the better the VLFs will do in salty water, but the lesser they find small gold.