any disadvantages in using the se in am mode all the time besides breaking ur back!?

[jackhammer400]

lately ive been using my se in am mode ferrous is there any disadvantage to this? Besides digging up everything that might be junk..Im doing this to learn the macine and tones. and so that i dont miss anything, any comments on this technique?

 

[Eu_citzen]

It works great for none ferrous relics and on the beach. But in a modern park it can take your sanity with it into the ground.
In a modern park and such I use conduct, much better and use the display to confirm that it's either a good or bad target.

 

[jeff & Maria]

I used in hunt in all metal all the time. What I have since found is that the Explorer can sometimes lock on a iron piece if it overpowers the smaller conductive target. The signal then becomes a ferrous sound. I have found a few coins under large iron pieces like pot belly stove parts since using the Etac in a disc mode. These are in places I pounded with the Explorer II. If you run all metal it's probably best to reduce the sensitivity as much as you can.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

First, a correction: When you are in ferrous mode, with the screen wide open (nothing blacked out), it is a mis-nomer to call that "all-metal". Because you could/would still use tones to decide what to dig verses what to pass (ie: audio discrimination). To be in TRUE all metal, would be to go around using the pinpoint mode, where there is no TIDs of any sort.

But getting back to the other part of your question, the difference (IMHO) between ferrous and conductive, is that conductive makes the tone "distance" between the highs and lows further apart. So for example, in ferrous: a square tab and a zinc are closer together (in tone), zinc is further from copper pennies, low conductors sound better overall, etc.. etc.... And in conductive, the foil-type-lows don't sound as good (d/t they are thrust waaayy low on the tone scale), but copper and silver sound way good (so good, you can almost hear a difference between silver dimes vs clad dimes).

So you would use ferrous in a relicky or beach-jewelry type situation, where you want all the items on the TID scale to be closer together, thus mids and lows sounding equally good. But if you're in a junky park, and electing to pass some foil, round tabs, etc... you may elect to go conductive, where the high conductors will "stick out" better. Just depends on your hunt environment, goals, etc...

 

[Erik in NJ]

I agree with you about the all-metal misnomer...the guys that call opening the screen up as "all metal" are confusing things and unfortunately even Minelab seems to have adopted this when in Iron Mask as the lowest setting (I don't remember if this is on the ET or SE) instead of showing a number displays AM! I believe you're right in that detecting in all-metal would be to go around with the pinpoint turned on.

My question is (and this one got me thinking)...why are the distance between tones greater in conductive? I went back and checked the manual as I never hunt in digital - both the Conductive and Ferrous axes have a resolution of 32 (0 - 31)...so in other words the tonal difference between the higest tone and lowest tone (on either axis) would consist of 32 "semi-tones," no? Interestingly enought on the E-Trac the cond and ferrous axes have been transposed and the resolution on cond is now 50 with 35 on the ferrous, so there would seem to be a bigger tonal jump between adjacent elements on the ferrous axis as opposed to the cond axis. I don't recall anyone ever pointing this out before and I'm not sure if it's in Andy's book as I heven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet.

So please give me some clarification on what you are saying in your post......thanks.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Erik, first off, in re-reading my post, where I said: "...zinc is further from copper pennies..." (in regard to ferrous tones), I meant to say that zinc and copper pennies are closer together in tone, not further apart.

To answer your question of why this is, I don't know. Just try it for yourself:

1) take mid tone items like round tabs and square tabs, for instance, test them in ferrous, and you'll see that the tone-spread isn't that far apart.

2) take a zinc penny and a copper penny, in ferrous they won't be that far apart.

3) Now do the same tests in conductive, and you'll see that the spread is more. The lows seem lower and the highs squeek higher.

4) last test: take a piece of foil (like a gumwrapper size flimsy foil) and test it in each mode. Notice that it is bolder and higher tone in ferrous. But in conductive, it's wimpy and lower sounding.

So all I can say is, ferrous puts all the tones closer to mid-range, accentuating the lows, and not giving as much high tone to the highs. It just brings everything "towards the center" of the tone range a little more. Why that is, when the #'s and cross-hairs haven't changed, I dunno. It just is

 

[Erik in NJ]

I think the reason that you're seeing the closer tones in ferrous with these examples is because items like the copper and zinc cents tend to align on the same ferrous axis - that is they have similar ferrous values, but slightly different conductive values. Probably same for the tabs. The foil sounds "wimpy" in conductive mode because it yields a low conductive value and a relatively lower ferrous value as well, but the ferrous scale on the Explorer is inverted so you get a higher pitch - the E-Trac has a much more logical ferrous and conductive scale layout as well as increased resolution along the conductive axis. I don't understand the fascination with the ferrous sounds as I think it's much better to hunt in conductive with some iron mask than with a wide open screen in ferrous and listen to all the crap in the ground - there's an aweful lot of foil in the ground in parks from gum wrappers and candy and such.

 

[dewcon4414]

I know the DFX works a little differently than the Explorers, but freq has a lot to do with distance of the tones. Its possible that when a channel is selected those chosen freq affect rather its closer to 1kHq or 100kHz meaning at the lower freq pull tabs and nickels are close, but at the higher freq they start to spread.

 

[Eu_citzen]

Hey Tom, I donno but all metal and TRUE all metal aren't the same thing from what I know.

I guess they call "minimum disc" for all metal because it will react to all (or most) metals you'll find in a average park.

True all metal is what many prospectors want, but an average park hunter does probably better with disc of some sort.

So if you ask me, it's not a misnomer but they are two completely different things. But it might be easy to confuse them with each other.
And old veteran that was with from the early days might not agree with the modern terminology, as for them all metal was no disc at all, but time has changed and so has the terminology it seems.

Regards,
Eu

 

[NH Bob]

One reason is in conductive, all nonferrous metals fall in a certain range giving you a sampling of the conductivity of each Low foil to high silver.
In Ferrous sounds the scale runs from Ferrous items to the left to Highly conductive metals (that are in that nonferrous range) to the right. Thus iron drone to high pitched sweet conductive metals..
Pulltabs run in an imaginary line from nickels to pennies- All aluminum but different sizes. Iron to pulltab is just that, ferroue to nonferrous. Different jump, different sound.