Minelab Musketeer XS Pro
JOHN CASTLE
Minelab seems to be the word on everyone’s lips these days! Hardly surprising when one considers the impact this relative newcomer to the UK detecting scene has had. But they were in existence in their native Australia long before that and I first read of them many years ago when somebody kindly sent me some Australian detecting magazines. These magazines, as one would expect, were mostly full of natural gold and gemstone hunting, with Minelab detectors well to the fore when it came to recovering the yellow metal we all love. But there was the odd coinshooting article and it seemed to me then that the addition of a discriminator would enhance the sales of Minelab even more! And so it was, but the engineers who designed these innovative units didn’t stop there and their multi-frequency detectors were soon spreading across the world to the delight of their fast-growing band of eager users. All Minelabs supplied to the UK, as well as the rest of Europe, now emanate from a new factory in Cork, a testament to their successful growth. Their single-frequency units were and are far from slouches as well, and it is to one of those we now turn, the Musketeer XS.
The Musketeer XS and XS PRO are basically the same unit. There is also the entry-level Colt, which lacks the adjustable ground-balance and pin-point features of the other two.The XS and PRO differ in that the XS has a 7 inch coil as standard whilst that of the PRO is 10 inch. The PRO also comes with a ni-cad re-chargeable battery pack and charger as standard (ordinary batteries can be used if preferred, holders, etc. are supplied). The larger coil and the ni-cad kit can be bought as accessories for the XS and the smaller coil likewise for the PRO. The optional 15 inch Coiltek coil will enhance either unit even further in the right conditions.
Overall finish is black, with an ABS plastic control box and three piece shaft, the latter enabling the unit to pack into a holdall if preferred to the normal long bag. The three shaft pieces easily snap together and the top one incorporates a foam hand-grip and a combined arm-rest/stand which is fixed into one of three positions via a plastic nut and bolt. A similar, but longer, bolt holds the coil to the lower stem with two inset teardrop-shaped washers.
The coils are interesting. All are 2D widescan, but in an openwork form. They scan wider than concentrics, so the 7 inch Minelab coil scans as wide, if not wider, than an 8 inch concentric. I can remember only one other manufacturer who fitted 2Ds as standard, although users of other brands fitted them as options, where available. 2Ds are less prone to “chatter” than concentrics.
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Coils are very well made. This is the 10-inch, supplied as standard with the XS Pro. |
The coil cable should be wound snugly around the shaft if the control box is mounted thus or fixed straight up the shaft with velcro or tape if you prefer to body mount.
So now we are set up. Batteries in, shaft assembled, coil connected and we can switch on!
The Controls
Top left is On/Off Sensitivity. Always set as high as you can, but bad ground, causing “chatter”, will force you to reduce it. Bottom left is Ground Adjust. This is normally left in the Fix position, which is a factory-set ground balance. But, again, some types of ground will give better results if set manually, which can be done in either the discriminate or all-metal modes using the up-and-down “bobbing” method common to all such controls. Setting it in either mode will also set it for the other one. Top centre is a three-position switch which operates in the all-metal mode only. If you wish to manually ground balance in the all-metal mode set the switch to Ground Adjust Enable first. If you wish to search in all-metal, which is non-motion, the switch should be set to Pinpoint. Sometimes in this mode a loud and erratic background noise may be heard. This is the Musketeer telling you that it needs retuning – a good feature. Simply hold the switch for 2 seconds in its Threshold Reset position and release, when it will spring back to its central Pinpoint position. You should also do this after every target is located to re-tune the unit to its optimum point whilst detecing in the all-metal mode. N.B. Do not adjust the Ground Adjust with the switch set to Pinpoint, it will not balance properly. Bottom centre is an All-metals/Discriminate switch. Set to Discriminate and the Ground Adjust control only is used to manually ground balance, if required. The variable discriminator is also brought into play. Discriminate is the last control, found bottom right. It is a normal rotary reject discriminator which should obviously be set according to the junk type/levels on the site. The Discriminate mode is motion of course. If you wish to use Pinpoint whilst in this mode, simply leave the three-position switch in its central, Pinpoint, position and flip the bottom switch to all-metal, returning it to the Discriminate position to resume searching. Far right is a normal quarter-inch inch headphone socket with a speaker above which is switched off when headphones are used. Much goes into the design of detectors these days, they need to look right. The Musketeer is no exception, being an attractive and functional unit.
Neat control panel. Box is easily belt or stem mounted.
This is of the medium A5 format with glossy cover. It contains 32 pages of explanatory notes coupled with diagrams of each control. It is well written and laid out and should be carefully studied. The section on battery life and the audio low battery alert should be noted.
On Site
The Musketeer is not noted as a beach unit, although excellent elsewhere. But we decided to give it a go as we had promised to take my son sea fishing. This beach is covered at high tide and when we got there it was very nearly in. No point detecting so we lazed about all day, pulling in the odd mackerel, until it went out again. We noted a place where people were leaping into the sea from stone steps, which were completely uncovered at low tide.
The tide duly went out but the sun and sea lovers came in such droves that we were thwarted again. So it was home with a determination to get there real early the next day. The next day dawned, as it always does, and two wheels seemed a much better idea than four. So with Musketeer packed in the top box and Maureen perched on the pillion 5.30 AM found us rumbling through deserted streets on our latest bike, a Harley Davidson. A great way to go detecting! Too early for the car park attendant, so that’s £1.50 saved! (We’d had to pay the previous day). The tide was right out, just on the turn. To minimise ground noise from the wet salt I put a 7 inch coil on the Musketeer, set Sensitivity about three-quarters full and found, to my pleasant surprise, that it worked well on the wetish sand. So we made a beeline for the stone steps, or rather the beach below them, where the sand was really wet. First coin out was a 50p. We spent a couple of hours there and recovered 32 coins, all decimal, yet another toy car and one ring, of brass unfortunately, only three ring-pulls and an oblong alloy object with a spirit level set into it. Obviously part of something bigger. All very pleasant and I noted the following: The Musketeer performed much better than I had expected. There were false noises, but these were easily recognisable and there weren’t too many of them even on very wet sand. The trick is to keep the gap between coil and sand as constant and small as possible without hitting the ground. Maybe I should have used the 10 inch coil after all! The Musketeer will read iron-cored 1ps and 2ps as good if they are quite deep in the sand, but dig them out and they can be rejected. I deduce from this that the unit can read the copper coating as good if the coin is away from the coil, but when close to it it senses the iron and rejects it. So a good target that disappeared when dug out was soon located in the spoil in the all-metal mode. They gave a half-bad signal at shallow depths. This could apply to other plated objects and perhaps other detectors too. Something else learned! Then, tide coming in, it was everything and everyone back on the bike and rumble home again, just missing a heavy shower.
My next foray was to a farm site, all fields stubble at this time. One gets blasé about motion detectors on such sites, they all deal with the invariable bad ground extremely well, a far cry from the “old” days of non-motion units which had to be swept slowly and frequently re-tuned. The Musketeer was no exception and acquitted itself well on the bad ground and ubiquitous iron nails, only revealed when the all-metal mode was tried. Minelab coils are comparatively heavy, useful for bashing through stubble although this was quite soft following recent rain.
Finds, never prolific on this site, came slowly, the scraps of non-ferrous we all find on such sites coming out at intervals. Some were very small, indicative of a sensitive detector. Notable finds were a few Roman grots, a buckle and a small crotal bell – intact for a change! Not a bad day at all and I particularly like the sharp signal response which had quite a high-pitched tone which I prefer.
Pin-pointing was a bit vague sometimes, but lifting the head slightly to “narrow” the target response was the answer.
This particular Musketeer had two V brackets, one in the usual place in the front underside of the crank in the stem, the other at the rear below the forearm. I tried both positions. The rear position is best for balance, especially with the large coil, but the controls are then not so easy to get at. Mounting the box at the front position and using a Bunjee harness might well be a better solution for those who find the unit a bit on the heavy side and don’t like belt-mounting the control box. I don’t want to exaggerate the weight of the Musketeer, it isn’t that bad and I know plenty of users who are happy with it configured normally.
A local common is criss-crossed with roads and paths. It has been heavily searched over the years and every detector I have owned or tested since moving into Kent has been used here. All have produced and, yet again, the Musketeer was no exception.
Life is just a bowl of ... er goodies. With a Musketeer that is!
A not-very-well-tended playing field on another part of the common did not contain so much junk as I knew from previous visits, so I tried the large coil. Ground coverage was twice that of the small one and depths were enhanced, especially of the larger finds such as old pennies with no loss of sensitivity to small ones. The ground is mostly pretty good here (except for what must have once been a bonfire site) so I was able to use high sensitivity levels. The day was chilly and dank so very few other people were there. Soil soft and moist, lovely easy digging! I flicked out a few surface targets, ring-pulls and the odd decimal coin. And that was it once more.
Final Thoughts
The Musketeer range of Minelab detectors are certainly a force to be reckoned with in a quite crowded detector market. They are easy to use, well made and work very well indeed. They are excellent all-rounders for the money and wet beach performance was better than I had expected. If I were in the market for a medium-range detector I would look no further than the Minelab Musketeers. There are, as I said earlier, three of them (perhaps they should be called Athos, Porthos and Aramis!): the Colt with fixed ground balance and 7 inch coil standard, the XS with the same 7 inch coil but with variable ground balance, and the XS Pro with variable ground balance, 10 inch coil standard and re-chargeable battery kit.
All are available from Joan Allen Electronics Ltd, 190 Main Road, Biggin Hill, Kent TN16 3BB, UK. Telephone: +44 (0)1959 571255, Fax: +44 (0)1959 576014, E-mail: sales@joanallen.co.uk. Order online by credit or charge card at Joan Allen's main Minelab product pages by clicking here!
Visit the Joan Allen web site at http://www.joanallen.co.uk.
© Reproduced with kind permission of The Searcher Magazine.