detector help

[mooser]

Hi i am a newly retired guy that bought a used cibola metal detector.Iam having a hard time with the tone on this machine as i have some hearing problems.This
machine seems to hit hard on nickel coins and pull tabs sound like good silver coin hits to me.When i try and get rid of all pull tabs and just get silver coins the detection depth seems to suffer. Is there another brand of detectors that hits hard on silver coins and has more in seperation between pull tabs and silver coins.A machine with 2 tones that do not sound the same,good depth, with a meter or not and is easy to learn or operate. (or am i dreaming)

 

[Ron from Michigan]

Mooser,a lot of people like the Cibola but it never worked for me.My favorites non meter Fisher 1236X-2, third over all pick any Fisher CZ,any Explorer my second choice,the Sovereign works best for me.Any of these detectors would work for me stuck with one detector.All these units like silver. Good Luck.Ron

 

[BarberBill]

All machines lump nickels and tabs close together. If you hope to dig nickels and a good share of jewelry, you have to live with digging some pull tabs. That said, I use a DeLeon as one of my detectors and it IDs nickels pretty accurately although I still dig a few tabs. This is also true with my Whites MXT. If you have hearing problems, a machine with target ID display may be more helpful for you. My two bits.
HH
BB

 

[Nauti]

Unfortunately no machine exists that can distinguish between silver and aluminium with 100% accuracy....no matter what anybody tells you.Silver coins and pull tabs can give all sorts or readings depending on differing ground conditions and how the objects lie in the ground.A good example of this was seen at a club dig i attended a while ago.I found a signal and out of curiosity i asked somebody with a target id machine to see what he thought.His response was it is trash.....my response was that it was non ferrous and could easily be a silver coin.This chap was adamant that silver coins had never shown up as the reading he was now getting on his machine......it turned out to be a small hammered silver coin.If you use a meter and rely on what it is saying about silver and aluminium i guarantee you will be missing some good stuff.The only way to be really accurate on non ferrous finds is to use the least discrim possible to knock out iron and dig everything else...this may be harder work but the more you put in,the more you get out......and thats how it's always been.

 

[go-rebels]

However, given the ground conditions I have hunted in the Southeast and Midwest, the Minelab Sovereign/Explorer/Etrac and the Fisher F70/75 can differentiate between silver and aluminum with better than 99% accuracy. Now the difference between gold and aluminum is an entirely different story...

 

[Nauti]

Wish my sovereign could......There is no way it can tell the difference between a small silver coin and a small piece of aluminium.Tell me the secret,i'd love to know.

 

[go-rebels]

I'm sorry, I used a "180" (Sunray?) meter on my Sovereign. The Minelab branded meter ("550") also will suffice and both will easily differentiate silver coins from aluminum tabs.

The only time you dig aluminum in error is when you find a crushed can right under the coil.

 

[Nauti]

Thanks for that...may try the meter myself at some point

 

[UK Brian]

I've a test bed with a range of pull tabs/ring pulls, plain alloy, red and gold anodised, square and round shapes and they overlap "silver" coins, if by silver you mean cupro nickel and nickel. The situation is better with pure silver but meters or notch systems don't really help much. Better to accept that you will have to dig a degree of unwanted items. The big plus is that there may well be a good find at depth that others have missed as its been masked by a rubbish item or the by use of notch or meter.
I would worry about your problem with the Tesoros audio. Have you tried other headphones ? If a change of headphones doesn't improve things it could be that a machine with several distinctive tones could be a better choice.

 

[go-rebels]

By "silver" I mean 90% silver, 10% copper pre-1965 US dimes, quarters and halves.

 

[silversmith]

There's no easy answer to this. And, it's compounded by; every detector's different, and every dig site is different. You just got to adjust your discriminator for "coins lost vs. time wasted" at every site. Look at a pull tab, it's a ring. Discriminate out pull tabs, good bye light rings, nickels, some silver coins. At other sites, you'll spend your day digging pull tabs. ALL YOU GUYS out there are doing yourselves a major disservice when you don't trash out these pull tabs. Most of use habit the SAME places over and over and wind up digging up THE SAME pull tabs over and over.