A taste of humble pie is good now and then

[gear box]

I think I may have over stated my confidence and ability as a detectorist a while back. Some of you know that I bought a GT a while back and I made some statement's about being pretty sure I could master the tones with ease and I would be on my way to finding those old coin's in a flash, "not". Soon thereafter reality set in. My hearing was worse than I thought and the lack of being able to pick out tones soon became obvious, everything sounded the same AND loud. Where were those small, suttle,quiet whispers? I read with confidence all the in's and out's of the machine but good thing's were eluding me.I also used what I knew and learned on the old detector's of the past of which I did very well on. But this machine is a whole other beast. I tried to equate to the GT, what I knew from using those older machines. Another mistake. So I put it away for awile and went fishing. This next bit of rambling is directed toward's the people who have truly masterd the GT and have acquired a wealth of info,my hat is off to you. I have read numerous times that you should get to learn the tones before getting a meter. I find the opposite is true, I feel a Newbie with the GT and especially one with bad hearing needs a meter. I bought one and thing's immeaditly stated to become clearer to me. I think a meter truly does help you in deciphering what the machine is telling you all those loud signal's now have a visual reference to it. Those odd little chirp's and tones now have a number assigned to it also, a great help. The bug has bitten me again. The few times I have been out wth the meter have renewd my confidence. Not too much to brag about just yet but enough to make me feel like I''m on the right track. I've even sarted using notch and the Sovereign wiggle with ok results.
Thanks for listening and good hunting, Gary

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Gary....
You are learning where you have made mistakes.
You are learning what is starting to make sense to you.
You are probably learning that advice from others is not always the best for you some or even most of the time.
You may understand that advice is often contradictory and confusing....obviously not everyone (or even anyone) can be right with some of these contradictions some of the time.

Keep an open mind and pay attention to what your detector is telling you with different settings and motion in the places you hunt.
Try anything you hear or think of. Give it a good evaluation before you blindly accept it or reject it.
You will find out that getting the most out of your Sov requires that you think on your feet.....adjust your methods as the situaton dictates. It will come to you.

HH

 

[Willee - Texas]

If you dont like the tones flip the switch to mono-tone operation.

If it is too loud turn down the volume.
I rarely run mine more than about 50%.
If you are in an area that has few shallow targets then turn it up and listen for the deep quiet ones.

I set my discriminator to reject Iron and bottle caps ... I dig the rest no matter what the tone ... IF ... it is a good sounding signal.

Willee

 

[gear box]

Willee, I run my volume at about 75% and turn it down on the headphones. I alway's thought that on any detector you did this.
Art, you are so right. Thanks Gary

 

[Neil]

Gary the volume on the Sov is a target volume so be careful about running that any lower than near fully clockwise. If you need to adjust the loudness do it with your headphone volume like you stated.

HH
Neil

 

[babulin2002]

i agree about the volume, initially i wasn't turning it all the way up and i wasn't able to hear all the signals and their characteristics, i strongly advise to use full volume, it did wonders for me , hh

 

[gear box]

Thank's fella's I will be turning the volume all the way up again. I used to alway's have it at max but somewhere along the line I read or heard that a little less than full volume was better. I was out of metal detecting for a few year's and I just figured that maybe the new machines needed to be run this way. Thank's again, Gary

 

[Art (NWOH)]

The higher you set the volume, the harder the detector punches up the target audio....IN PARTICULAR.. for the WEAK target audio.
When you run volume at max and adjust the loudest level with the headphones, you will still have the max heard volume limited to your liking, but the weaker audio will be boosted to help get your attention and be more easily heard over background (outside) noise.

HH