:ausflag: Re Help with Settings advice for a GTI 2500

[limpy]

Hi Everybody,

Can I ask for some advice about what sort of settings I should use as a "Default" or "Rule of the thumb" general settings on my GTI 2500 that will help me to understand my machine in "Average" circumstances (If there is such a thing???).

I went out yesterday afternoon on a lovely sunshiny afternoon (The first one down here in our neck of the woods for weeks. (Geelong Victoria ) It was still pretty cool (Bloody Cold (for me anyway) - about 8 degrees Centigrade) along the beach but pleasant none the less if you kept away from the breeze.

My reason for posting these questions is that I hadn't realized just how little I know about the settings and how to utilize them, and which ones I should be using for different types of detecting. I have been around some play parks which have bark chip coverage and have had some reasonable success but when I went onto the sand along the beach for the first time ever yesterday, I was in a different world. I couldn't seem to get much sense out of the detector and even less success in searching results.

Some of my questions relate to - what is the norm for sensitivity settings say on both the park and then or also on the beach??? Is there any advantage in using the "Salt" mode??? what is the better "Mode" to search in - meaning Jewelry, Zero, all metal etc.???? Here in Aussie-land I feel we have to use "Jewelry" for searching for coins, otherwise the machine blanks out a lot of our coins with the setting set on "Coins". I have found that if I try to use "All Metal" I am lost. In "All Metal", I cant seem to get a distinctive signal and when I do get a target and there seems to be a hell of a lot of other mixed signals which make it difficult to differentiate between a true target and what are probably ground noises. I have a feeling a lot of this is because I haven't got the machine set-up correctly. (Maybe one of the legacies of owning a machine which has so many "Bells and Whistles" and me having so little experience???)
Does anyone feel there is any advantage in searching in any particular frequency, or is that facility mainly for changing your machine when there is another detector working close by???

As you can see I am floundering quite a bit and I would welcome any help and suggestions. So any help and advice would be welcome.

Kind regards, Barry.

 

[Pyrites Pete]

limpy
Try searching in CUSTOM MODE USING 3+ all the way to 9
Sensativity at 8+
Salt Elimination ON
This is my beach setting . Sure you will detect pull tabs
but you will get rings to
Pyrites Pete [in Melb.]

 

[John-Edmonton]

You have noticed....different settings for different environments. We all have to make adjustments for different locations. Electrical or high mineralization areas usually mean turning down sensitivity. For electrical interference, adjusting the frequency sometimes make all the difference in the world.

Now working in salt environments can be a challenge for all single frequency machines. The 2500 can be manually ground balanced in high salt and or high mineralization areas. This can be only performed in the true all metal mode, and you must use the true all metal mode to get the benefit of this feature. In discriminate mode, you usually have to turn down the sensitivity and eliminate some of the discrimination icons to stabilize the machine a bit. When you switch to the salt elimination mode, this automatically makes some of these adjustments for you.

As a rule of thumb, run with as high of sensitivity as possible in any given area. So....this means you might have to increase/decrease the sensitivity several times before you get it right. Also, try to use the most of your icons in the discrimination as possible, so you don't lose too many signals. Hunt with the bell tone turned on, and also with the audio tones turned on.

You have a very good detector in your hands.......learn it well and it will really surprise you. You are going through a learning curve with it, and it takes time to get comfortable, and a lot more time to master it.

Good luck Limpy.....keep plugging away!
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[Uncle Willy]

First of all bud, stay off the beach ( at least the wet sand part ) until you've got enough hours under your belt to familiarize yourself with the 2500. It has a bit of a learning curve. Bark chip playgrounds are a great place to practice and learn your machine.

Hunt in coins mode with your sensitivity at 6 or 6.5. Set your threshold to a very faint hum ( so you'll always know your machine is on and working ). Scanning slow works best with the 2500. If you have problems pinpointing, although pinpointing with the 2500 is a snap ) tape some coins to the back of a piece of cardboard and scan and see if you can center each target correctly. Use something sharp pointed to probe through the cardboard.

Stay away from all metal and ground balancing until you've got a fair amount of hours on your machine. Centering the target correctly with the 2500 is crucial for correct readings and imaging. Sloppy centering will just screw up the readings. The pinpointing on the 2500 is dead on when you have it mastered. When centering a target watch the cursors at the top of the display ( signal strength indicator ). When they line up all the way across the target is centered and will be under the center of the coil.

Don't mess with frequencies unless you're around powerlines and are having problems or you are hunting next to another detector and get cross talk. If you get odd signals, broken signals, one-way signals, use my twitching procedure to turn some of them into good signals ( whipping the coil rapidly over the target in short strokes.)

Tape the coil cable straight up the shaft for about a foot to eliminate falsing. The coil will pick up any movement of the cable and respond. And remember, the sensitivity control is not a depth control. Turning it up higher will not make the signal go deeper into the ground so leave it set where I stated until you've got some hours on the machine, then you can play with it at higher settings. I leave mine at those settings 90% of the time. Hope this helps.

Bill

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

I was reading your comments John about turning the bell tone on. My question is, what sound is there in it's place and is this feature on the 1500 as well?
Mick Evans.

 

[John-Edmonton]

You just get a flat audio signal like a non-coin sound.

 

[limpy]

Hi Bill, John and P/Pete,

many thanks for the great advice and suggestions.

Bill, I welcome your suggestions about what setting I should have my sensitivity set at - 6 or 6.5. That's the sort of advice I feel I need (Actual numbers are easier to relate to), [size=large]BUT[/size] your advice is a little confusing, because you say in your last paragraph Quote - And remember, the sensitivity control is not a depth control. but on page 70 of the GTI 2500 Owners Manual, the page description heading reads "Setting Sensitivity (Depth)" and it goes on to describe that the Garrett Engineers designed your GTI 2500 for maximum detection depth power Etc, Etc,. but it does become vague about actual settings or how it should be determined where they are set at??? I have no doubt that your statement is based on your experience and knowledge, but when there is conflicting advice like this, it is somewhat confusing particularly for an already confused newbie like me.

I also feel that your advice to hunt in "Coins" does need to be "Australianized" because a lot of Australian coins are discriminated out with this setting. I wonder would "Jewelry" be the better mode????? Perhaps some Aussie owners could suggest which is best???

I will take you advice and steer clear of the "All Metal" mode until I learn to understand the machine better, but can someone confirm something for me about Ground Balancing - Are my assumptions correct that the manual ground balancing is only applicable or can only be set in the "All Metal" mode and in the other modes it is Automatically set ???????

P/Pete, thanks for your advice and for giving me your actual settings. As I said to Bill, I find that being able to relate to actual numbers or stated settings, make them easier to understand. Even if I don't go to the beach for a while, your settings will give me a yardstick to start from and to try as soon as I feel I am game enough to venture onto the beach. I dare say that if I was to leave the "Salt" turned OFF the setting that you have given me probably wouldn't be too far out for ordinary use????? Your setting using the "Custom" mode creates a new venue which I have known or read about, but I haven't played with - but I might just leave that on the back-burner for now. It's good to know that there is a fellow GTI 2500 owner who lives not too far away from me. Maybe we can get together one day???

John, As usual, a wealth of information and advice and some of my questions about your comments have been covered in the segment that I addressed to Bill, and please don't be offended by these comments, but it is difficult for me to follow you when you make comments like "As a rule of thumb, run with as high of sensitivity as possible in any given area. So....this means you might have to increase/decrease the sensitivity several times before you get it right" because I don't know what your settings were when you started, I don't know where to "increase/decrease the sensitivity several times" from. In other words I would find it easier to understand if you had said, Starting at the setting of 7 increase/decrease the sensitivity several times I get a bit confused if I don't have a "Starting Point" to work from. I understand that [size=medium]YOU[/size] know what you are talking about and operating your detector is just another everyday thing to you, but Dumbos like me don't follow you as easily.

Just a matter of interest while on the subject of sensitivity, If I have my Sensitivity setting too high, say at 8 - 9 (If that IS too high???) will that give me incorrect depth readings on the size and depth scale???? The reason for asking that is the other day I was hunting at a school virtually across the road from my house and got a target under a play apparatus which indicated a "B" size target at 12" I dug it out and it turned out to be a $2.00 coin (Aussie naturally) at about 2 1/2 inches in chip bark, Ironically about a foot away I got a very similar target response again at 12" which this time turned out to be an American One cent coin (My 1st American coin) again at about 2 1/2 inches. Could this be caused by having the sensitivity set too high or what is it that I haven't set correctly. Both targets were at least 2 feet away from the nearest metal of the play apparatus.

Having said all that, thanks everyone, I really appreciate all of your help and advice and I have no doubt that I will call for help again very soon.

Kind Regards, Barry.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Manuals are written by Tech writers not engineers and "depth" is an easier buzz word to toss out there rather than a lengthy explaination of sensitivity. If it was truly a depth control then the word "sensitivity" would be totally excluded and would appear nowhere, not even on the control panel of your detector.

Manual ground balancing can only be achieved in all metal mode and allows one to tune the detector much finer than automatic can accomplish. In the other modes it is automatic.

On the two coins you found next to each other you were probably experiencing target separation problems and the coil was seeing or catching bits of both targets which confused it. You have to learn to dig confusing targets as no detector made is 100% accurate in ID or depth. They give probable readings after averaging the target or targets out and reaching a reasonable conclusion.

And don't feel bad about being a "dumbo". We all started out dumb as a brick and we didn't have any of the tons of info available today so it was a long, hard, haul.

Bill

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Are you saying that you only get a single tone for all targets, or are you getting 3 tones with the high tone just being a single tone?
Thanks.
Mick Evans.

 

[John-Edmonton]

You still get the three audio sounds, but the coin audio is flat, not that 'boink" sound.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Sounds good to me John. Thanks.
It's a shame I can't put it on the Ace.
Mick Evans.