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Headhunter Diver

Price: $700
Avg. Score: 2 stars 2.4
Based on 15 reviews
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There's a reason this is discontinued.

October 12, 2011
Cute concept, but not executed robustly enough to meet the demands posted by water detecting. Throw in a saltwater environment, this little thing didn't stand a chance.

The standard refrain from the Detector Pro company is that the unit develops cracks (and loss of waterproof) due to 'abusive handling' yet if you talk to the people who wound up with broken units, they say this isn't true...

It's hard to know who is telling the truth since people and companies alike always have an impulse to blame anyone but themselves, so here's the truth.

To put it simply: These just weren't built well enough to do what they were intended to do.

The geeky, engineering explanation is: The HH Diver design, by its very nature, is destined to fail. The battery compartment amounts to a plastic compression fitting. That means it's held in place by tightly compressing against itself (think how a cork fits into a wine bottle). In time, all compression fittings wear down and develop structural fissures. 100 percent of the time.

When you incorporate the main chassis of a unit as a bearing surface for a compression fitting, you're jeopardizing the structural integrity of the entire unit. You either have to overbuild that part, or make a replaceable, sacrificial bearing. In the case of the HH Diver, Detectorpro did neither.

Hopefully, Detectorpro comes back for a version 2.0 on these and corrects these problems. The first version is too fragile.

Overall Rating 3 stars

80

Wader better than impressions left by other reviewers

August 11, 2011
Both Detectorpro Wader and Diver are water/beach hunting metal detectors. They are also lightweight, waterproof and can be broken down for backpacking. The Wader can be submerged to about 6 feet before it starts to leak. The Diver can be used for actual Scuba diving for treasure. These units are very easy to operate, only three controls, more or less a turn-on and go machines. Tuning is very stable in most soil conditions, rarely do you have to make any adjustments. They excell in finding gold, silver, jewelry, rings and coins.

Many have compared the Wader and Diver against the Tesoro Tigershark, Fisher 1280x, CZ20/21 and the Minelab Excalibur. The Detectorpro units are in a class of their own with only the Fisher 1280x having almost identical performance. The Tesoro Tigershark will only Out perform the Wader/Diver hunting in freshwater.
The Tigershark operates on a higher frequency which makes it more sensitive to smaller gold and silver. The Tigershark does not handle saltwater conditions very well, the Wader/Diver handle it much better.
Neither Wader/Diver will surpass the performance, depth capability or ability to handle salt/freshwater conditions like the Fisher CZ20/21 or Minelab Excalibur. Plus side, is that you can get into water hunting for about half the dollar amount of the CZ or Excalibur.

Wader/Diver units are excellent for treasure hunting on land. Perfect for coin and jewelry hunting school grounds, parks, playgrounds etc. If it ever starts to rain, just keep on hunting they are waterproof.

What about depth? I used the Wader on land, it's a very capable detector and my average finds are no deeper than 6" on a penny. Others have claimed finding quarters up to 10". I have yet to see that in my soil conditions. No doubt that it is possible in non-mineralized beach sands of Florida.

My Wader was also used for land hunting when we lived in the Atlanta, Georgia area for about 6 years. It was not affected by the red clay minerals to the extent as many other detectors I have tried. It would still pick up coins to the 6" mark. The Wader is not a depth demon, it does get the job done.

Now for the Nitty-Gritty on these units. The electronics are housed inside one of the earcups, batteries in the other. A great concept!! But, you never want to drop the headset. If it slides off your head, resist the urge grab the headphone cord. If you do, there is a good chance you may jank the cross-over wires. If they break, they will have to be repaired. If the headphones hit hard ground, there's a good chance the earphone cups will develop cracks. You may not see the cracks, they will show up under ultra violet light.
Those cracks will allow water to leak into the earcups. Not a good thing, batteries can short and the electronics can be damaged. Being careful with the headset and treating it with respect, the Wader/Diver will not need any service.

When replacing batteries, you may notice they slide around a little in the ear cup. Add a small piece of foam to keep them in place. When replacing batteries, before re-assembling the battery earcup, always check the o-ring waterproofing seal. Look for any burrs or nick, if you see any, get a new o-ring.
Always, clean out any sand or dirt in the the groove that the o-ring is seated into. Make sure you lubricate the o-ring before re-assembly. Use only silicone lube specially made for o-rings. Which can be purchased at most Scuba Dive & Photography Shops that sell underwater cameras and housings. Apply a very light film on the o-ring, just enough to look slick. It provides a barrier between the o-ring and and earcup assemblies, which keeps water Out.

By following the above tips, the Wader/Diver should remain maintenance free and work for many years without problems.

Setting up the Wader/Diver for most conditions is easy. Run sensitivity as high as possible to start without hearing excessive chatter and noise. The sensitivity control uses stepped detents. This may or may not be the best type of control for fine tuning. It does work OK...I find that it can be fine tuned just a tad. Run the knob maxed out at any detent setting. Back the knob back a very little and not to the point of detent clicking down one setting. This gives some adjustment bewtween detents. Clicking into lower sensitivity settings, there will be some depth loss. So always run the sensitivity as high as possible.

The discrimination control for most of my hunting is set at no higher than "2". When water hunting I just want to disc. out the skinny hairpins. Then again, I also hunt with the disc set so I will pick up the hairpins. This will allow you to find most gold and silver. Hunting on land I also set the disc. To "2". Still find the nails, you can usually tell the sound of a nail. Nails give off a distinct double-beep signal. Two coins will also give off a double-beep slightly sounds different in sound of a nail.
The volume control can be set to where it's comfortable to you.
Your Wader/Diver should air test a dime at 9". It may only sound off with a click. This is how Detectorpro sets them up at the factory.

The Wader is one unit that will find modern Canadian coins that other units will disc. Out. In case you wanted to know.

If you want to read more and learn how to internally adjust (for the brave only) the trimmer pots to get extra depth, visit my website:
www.treasurelinx.com

Overall Rating 5 stars!

33

Buy one and weep

February 09, 2011
The headhunter pro wader,,this is by a long way the worst detector I have ever had the misfortune to buy,they have a nerve calling it a WADER,,its splashproof only,(whatever that is) has the sensitivity to pick up a 5 pence piece at almost 4 inches in air,(awesome),(my Sovereign .gt and XP adx 250 picks them up at 10 - 12 inches),and the headphones worked intermittently as a cable had cracked in the first few hours,,,build quality must be the worst,and their after sales service,,,WELL,????,,, If this was the only metal detector in the world,then o.k.,,but until then,,????

Overall Rating 1 star

20

Mix feelings

May 03, 2009
I have owned a diver for 5 years now and been detecting for 10 years, I hunt land and beaches, I live 5 miles from the ocean and have 5 beaches in my area, and that is why I bought the diver (new). In the third year the ear phone cup spit a little, so I don't think it's waterproof anymore, but I only go waist deep so it's ok. The wire to the had phones have been repaired twice by me, I can't afford to send it to the company, money and time is the problem, but it works still, and I broke the plastic piece between the coil and the rod too,I use it on dry, wet sand and in the water, the more water over the target , the deep it reads, I like the control and the weight and I do find some nice stuff, it has paid for itself a couple of time, the main dislike is target sound and all the signals come in at the same volume, I hear no whispers, but it's a good machine and I like it, but no machine is perfect

Overall Rating 3 stars

71

Headhunter Diver

January 07, 2009
Bought new,the sales hype on the manufacturers site was very convincing...
AGAINST- very disappointing depth and poor volume (and ive good hearing) on all but the shallowest of targets.
FOR- compact, ideal for traveling, build quality ok and never leaked, good battery life.

But... sold it at an immense loss (no-one wants them over here!!) and bought a Minelab Excalibur, went over the same ground previously searched and found LOTS of signals previously missed by the HH Diver and haven't looked back since.

Overall Rating 1 star

70

DetectorPro Diver

June 19, 2008
The o-rings are extremely hard to replace. The saltwater ruined this detector. I don't recommend this detector.

Overall Rating 1 star

91

My New Diver..

May 24, 2008
I recently purchased a Detector Pro Diver to use in area's of the beaches I hunt that are full of iron and where I don't want to use my PI.. I was impressed by its discrimination, My second time out with it I found a 14 carat gold wedding band.. I ran the Diver with sensitivity set at 9 and the discrimination at 1 and was impressed with its depth on a few of my finds. It was nice not digging iron trash from the wet sand.. I dug 1 bottlecap and after I learned what they sounded like I did not dig another one.. I'm happy I purchased the Detector Pro Diver and ignored some of the reviews posted here..

Overall Rating 4 stars

123

Reviews with mis-information

July 18, 2007
Amazing so many poor reviews, but they all failed to mention that they must have been used units, and not new ones. I say this because new ones have a 2 year warranty against most anything happening, and Detector Pro Company is very liberal with its warranty policy.

So for free, they would have had it fixed.

This is the same company that designed & gave us the Excalibur, before selling the rights to Minelab. Most detectorest use Gray Ghost headphones. This is the same company, and the Headhunter detectors use the exact same headphones as the Gray Ghost phones. I donâ??t understand the complaint about poor quality headphone on the Headhunters.

One needs to read between the lines a bit, and ask if the reviews you are reading are true, and fact full.

I use a Diver, and a PI. I have had not problems with either. I started with a Wader years ago. They have been on the market since the mid 90â??s. My Diver air test a dime at 10â? so thereâ??s nothing wrong here. The PI hits on a nickel at over 12â?. There isnâ??t any other PI units out there for the money that can compete against a Headhunter PI. They are tops for jewelry hunting.



M.Shane

Overall Rating 5 stars!

117

Not for me.

May 02, 2007
This machine was not for me, I have owned six water machines including the cheap "Viper" and it is sad but true the Viper out performed this one, I am not sure how Detector pro has stayed in business selling such a poor qulity prduct, my headphones started cutting out on the second use and of course the first time the headphones got wet they leaked, needless to say I sold the unit and will not look back, for the money there are many better units available, one more thing, the depth was very poor, it never was close to the claims made by the company. Well there ya have it, hope you find the info usefull.
Shawn

Overall Rating 1 star

64

Wader/Diver reviews

April 22, 2007
I had good success with both detectors. Fortunately no breakdowns. I always ran in almost Max sens & low disc. I did notice that some targets were just squeaking, not any solid signal. The same targets were checked by another detector & were found out to be good targets. I assume now that the squeaky target signals were on the maximum edge of the detectors potential. The Headhunters Series is so light & tireless...ya can hunt all day.

Overall Rating 3 stars

21

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