Auto Sensitivity Question

[DFXer]

The SE manual does a poor job at explaining auto sensitivity. If it attemps to keep your setting "near" where you set it, why do you need a manual sensitivity control? Both are adjustable.

What is not being explained in the manual?

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Mike Bearden]

That pretty much sums it up. It just gives the user a choice.
The auto mode will TRY to keep it close to whatever setting the user has it on but will self adjust up and down for inconsistent ground conditions whereas the manual setting leaves it locked to whatever setting the user has it set to.
Some folks like to set it on manual and leave it there because they feel it will lose depth, others run in auto because their ground condition changes quite often.
There will be times when the manual/locked setting will hit a target that may not have been heard in auto because the Explorer self adjusted at to low of a setting.
I emphasise the word MAY as I'm still not convinced that manual works better than auto in most cases, especially where I live and hunt because the ground is loaded with iron ore and clay.

Mike

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Paul,

That statement in the manual causes much confusion: In auto sensitivity can vary greatly. If you put your sensitivity at 1 in manual it will only detect something very close to the coil. Switch to auto and you'll get much greater depth, about what you would get at 16 or so manual. And the reverse is also true. At high settings the auto sensitivity may be many clicks below the same manual setting. Many of us feel that auto sensitivity will detune the dectector too much. Alot of people will say they are running say 30 auto sensitivity, but the detector may have lowered the sensitivity down to about the same as 14-15 manual. It might make you feel good to see that big number for sensitivity but it really means nothing.

In town around power lines I can often only run upper teens manual sensitivity and have a reasonably stable detector. I can switch to auto and crank the sensitivity up much higher, and usually the detector is more stable than the upper teens manual sensitivity. All this means is that the machine dropped the sensitivity lower than what I was using in manual mode.

Whether or not that detuning is a bad thing had been debated on these forums forever. People make good finds using either method.

Chris