Hey Ray,
Here is my understanding of your experience in your yard with your explorer. You have dug a bunch of nails at 12", have dug one silver, have found several wheaties, dug alot of indian heads, dug sheild nickels, and dug a seated dime. You are doing great! That sounds pretty good for only having your explorer for 2 weeks! You are asking about what to do to your explorer to adjust it for your Kentucky soil. I don't think you have a soil problem. What leads you to believe that the soil is disrupting your XS? I think you are experiencing the "overlaping" sounds of rusty nails and coin sounds. I am going thru the same thing myself right now. The experts on the internet have said to set up the machine and then leave it alone. Don't question the experts like Mike Moutray when you are a beginner. Just do exactly what they say to do. Learn on those settings and don't change them. After you gain experience, do whatever you want. But for now, they say that you should check out each signal that sounds good. By checking them out, you should rotate around them and see if you can get the signal to repeat in one direction for both right and left swing directions. If the signal will repeat in one direction, dig it. Imagine a clock with the target in the middle. Check the signal at 1 o'clock. Check it at 2 o'clock. Check to see if you can find a swing angle where you can get a repeatable signal for both right and left swing directions. If you are not sure about the signal, dig it. You will find an association of "barking" sounds, monotone sounds, signals that don't stay in one place, broken signals diluted by nulls, and lack of signal repetition, with the presence of unwanted iron targets such as rusty nails. This is my criteria for identifying rusty nails. Some of those nails will closely mimic a coin with repect to signal behavior. This is the overlap region between rusty nails and coins. I am still working on refining my criteria in order to narrow this region of overlap. I dig both nails and coins. Monday I detected for 2 hours. I dug 3 holes: 2 rusty nails and 1 merc @ a measured 7 inches. Tuesday I detected for 2 hours. I dug 5 rusty nails. Today I detected for 45 minutes: I dug 2 rusty nails and one 1897 barber dime. I was detecting in a park where the targets were about 5" to 12" away from each other. There were many signals to test. My swing rate was about 1 foot per second. I made no adjustments to my manual sensitivity of 27. The experts say that if you are in an area full of iron and your threshhold is silent, then you should adjust your manual sensitivity down until you can keep at least an intermittant threshhold. I was using my 7.5" seach coil. I never look at my screen and go by sound only. I use the X1 target probe as a tool for identifying target composition. If the target is iron, then I don't waste any time digging the target out of the hole. I then recheck the hole for hidden coins. If the probe says the target is non-ferrous, I carefully dig around the target until I think it is on a pedestal. Then I use a plexiglass tool to expose the coin, and then blast it off with a spray bottle full of water until the coin dislodges from the matrix (to avoid scratching the coin). I recommend that you consult an explorer expert on the internet for machine settings. Stick with these settings and study signals in the field. A test garden is a great way to learn isolated coin sounds at depth, and to practice using pinpoint mode. Unfortunately, you cannot immediately reproduce the false tone environment around rusty nails that you bury in your garden. Rusty nails appear to need plenty of time and moisture to form the classic pain-in the-*** false tone environment that can easily trick explorer users into believing that they have a coin. I feel I have covered your question. Good luck and practice 1 hour every day.
Mike
"> well that was in indiana where the soil was so sweet to my coil, but here at home I seem to only dig nails at 12" but I have found 1 silver in my soil and several wheaties, Now I know there are indians in this ground as I have dug alot here in my own yard to include sheild nickles and seated dime. What I'm asking in a long winded way is how do I adjust the explorer to my kentucky soil, I know what it takes for my cz5 and it gets down there (with digging alot of nails). any and all help will be greatly recieved and tried.