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DFX user gets an EX SE

T

txbluesman

New member
I took the plunge and purchased an Explorer SE. It arrive this evening and I took it out for about 45 minutes before dark. Coming from the DFX world, the SE was different. It is going to take a little while to get used to the difference in the Tone ID. My brain has the DFX tones memorized so I rarely look at the screen. Looks like I'm in for quite a bit of screen time while I'm learning these new tones. As for the weight and balance... I'm impressed with the balance and I don't see where all the complaints about weight are coming from. The full range of adjustments of the arm cuff and the shaft allows you to fit the detector to your height and swing (are you listening Whites!). The pinpointing is not bad but not near as accurate as the DFX (even when equipped with a DD coil). In the first 45 minutes, I pulled 2 Zincolns and 2 Lincolns from a nearby park. These coins where not real deep (3-4") but I had no problem IDing them amongst the trash. I will get my first real test tomorrow at an abandon Army Airforce Base (circa 1940 - 1970). My partners and I have pulled alot of nice finds from this site. I will report my first impressions after my first hunt.
 
Be sure to scan different coins, etc, along with even junk items such as pulltabs, nails,etc so that you can get a feel for the sounds from the different items before you get it in the field as that will give you a idea before going on the hunt. Good luck to you with your new machine.
 
Let us know how it goes for you! I too switched from Whites. Excellent decision! You wont be sorry.
 
First full day hunt.

My hunting partners bailed on me, so I hunted solo today. I started out at the oldest park in town (circa 1890) and hunted for about 3 hours. I started with the basic settings so I could get familar with this detector. I picked up 1 Wheat, 1 Merc and 4 Lincolns. The grass was about 2" high and targets were between 2" and 4" deep. No too shabby for factory settings. My pinpointing was not too great as I seem to be off and had to dig bigger holes than I typically do with my DFX. I broke for lunch and then decided to head out to the Airforce Base. This site is full of iron (from where they torn down the barracks) so I was real interested to see how the Iron Mask feature worked. Once again I ran factory default settings but switched to IM -16 to hunt. Even though the threshold would disappear over iron I was still able to pickup 4 more Wheats over the next 3 hours. I also picked up a fair amount of trash targets because I was trying to learn the Tone ID. The wind picked up to gusts of 35MPH so I decided I had enough of getting blown around and headed back to town. I stopped by a park near my house and hunted for another hour. This time I turned off Auto Sensitivity and tried playing with setting it manually. I had a hard time of determining what setting was just on the verge of stable. I would crank it up to 28 and it sounded stable but then when I started sweeping the coil, it would null alot. I kept playing with it until I settled on 23. I picked up 3 quarters, 4 dimes, 2 wheats, 4 lincolns and a woman's silver ring. I also dug a few nails at 8+" because they sounded iffy. And I finally got a handle on pinpointing my target. I don't need to hit the pinpoint button unless you have two targets real close. All you have to do is wiggle the coil until you locate the X axis and then rotate and wiggle and find the Y axis. Then dig. All in all, I think I'm going to like learning this detector. My intial impression is that the EX does a very good job at taming iron while still allowing the target signal to come thru (the DFX tends to null the target unless it is close to the surface). Switching between Smartfind and IM screens really helps in isolating targets that are close to iron. I would appreciate any suggestions from other forum members on the following:

1. Manually setting threshold
2. How to interpret the signals that bounce around on the Smartfind screen. I saw alot of ones that bounced from upper right quadrant to mid-right quadrant then to upper middle quadrant. I dug any that showed to be more than 6" and they all ended up being trash. Do coins react this way?
3. Sweep speed when trying to find deep silver in your typical city park enviroment. The DFX doesn't like real slow coil speed unless you are using the 3x6 DD coil (for larger coils you must adjust the Ground Filtering and Sweep Speed settings).

Thanks for reading and I will update this post after my hunt tomorrow (i.e. second impression)
 
Ok. I got out again Sunday for a little while. After searching thru some past forum posts, I answered most of my questions. I chose a school football field to hunt as I knew from past experience there was not alot of trash. I figured I better learn to crawl first and this would be a good site to get a better feel for this unit. Once again, I was impressed with the smoothness of this detector. I tried all different sensitivity settings to see what stable sounded like as well as unstable. I can definately see that this is the key to this detector. While I didn't find any real deep targets, I had no problem picking up around $5.00 in clad within a couple of hours. I then spend an hour digging all signals over 6" to better understand what this detector is telling me. It was mostly junk with a few clad (not suprising since they re-turfed this field about five years ago). I also realized that I really miss my Sunray probe (I have a DX-1 on my DFX) when digging these deep targets. So much, that I shipped my upper shaft to Ralph at Sunray to have him put a X-1 probe on. Hopefully I will have it back before the next weekend.

So 2nd impression is positive. I'm beginning to get a feel for the power of this detector and can't wait until I have enough time with it to fully understand everything it telling me. I will update this post after my next hunt.
 
Well, I had Ralph at Sunray attached a X-1 probe to my new ESE. I can't wait until tomorrow. It may sound funny, but I'm pretty excited to have this probe as I really loved it on my DFX. I will post on my third impression of the ESE tomorrow evening.
 
The SE is a great machine for sure. As far as pinpointing is concerned. I like the wiggle method. When I sweep over a target I sweep back and forth so I feel it is centered under the coil. I wiggle back and forth slightly just enough to get a signal and pull the coil back to me until I hear the signal began to disappear. the target if it is shallow will be right at the tip of the coil. If deep a bit further back. Either way works. I think the ppl knocking the SE just havn't tried it. I have mostly been hunting shallow targets as being new to the SE I am trying to learn what it is telling me before I put out the effort to dig deep holes. If I have to dig deep I want to know what is there first.
 
Today I went to another city park that was built in the 1930s. This park is about a mile from my house, so I have hunted it on numerous occasions with my DFX. In fact, my hunting partners have hunted this park more times than I can remember. We have all pulled a few good finds but mostly clad. Rarely have I pulled anything out from past six inches except rusty nails. I figured this would be a good place to further my testing of the ESE.
As I got started, I tried cranking the Sensitivity up 25 and it appeared stable. After about fifteen minutes, I bumped it up to 26 and it remained stable (but at 27, the threshold started nulling out). I basically hunted the whole time with either 25 or 26. I think I'm finally understanding how to set the sensitivity on this unit.

I quickly found that I was digging holes that were well beyond my typical DFX holes. Wheats started popping out at 6 and 7 inches, followed by silver at 7 and 8 inches. The ability to switch between IM and Smartfind really makes a difference on those "iffy" signals. Although, I still pulled quite a few rusty nails, my ratio of bad to good targets was significantly higher than the DFX.

My third impression: WOW! I'm beginning to think that my DFX will be taking a back seat to the ESE. Today I hunted for about five hours and netted the following:

1903 V Nickel
Unknown Buffalo Nickel
1944 Silver Jefferson Nickel
Merc dimes: 1937, 1942, 1944
1942 Silver Quarter
Wheats: 1916, 1919, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1937, 1940, (2) 1941, 1944, 1945

Arizona Sales Tax token from the 1940s

16 Lincolns
11 dimes
6 quarters
 
I was using the stock coil. I have ordered the X-8 and X-5 from Sunray. Hopefully I will be getting them sometime next week.
 
I slipped out for a couple of hours before football started. I tried another nearby park next to an middle school. There was a tremendous amount of trash, too much for the stock coil to navigate and still maintain a threshold. I moved around the park until I found a section that was not as bad. I managed to find two Wheats (1916, 1944), 1964 Rosie, two clad dimes and 2 Lincolns.

As soon as I get my smaller coils for Sunray, I'm going back and hunting the trashy areas as I have had good luck in the past with my DFX and shooter coil.
 
Hey TX, don't worry to much about the threshold leaving, the Explorer will still nail the good stuff even if you loose the threshold but do try the smaller coil on the same area when you get a chance.HH,
Steve(MS)
 
n/t
 
The saga continues...

I went out today for a couple of hours at another nearby park. It was cold and windy so I decided to keep my hunting focused on a small 20' x 20' patch of ground that I had problems detecting in the past with my DFX. I decided to try the strip mining approach and dig every target deeper than 6". Well needless to say I spent most of the time on my knees digging up rusty nails and other old pieces of iron. But I still managed to pull out 5 wheats (1917, (2) 1919, 1920, 1940), another State of Arizona Sales Tax Token, 5 lincolns, 1 dime and 1 quarter. I have decided that the Minelab BBS technology is proving to perform better in MY mineralized soil than the DFX. Two of the above wheats were sitting on edge (90 degrees) when I dug them at 6 inches but I knew they where coins before I ever set the detector down. I feel sorry for my DFX as it is going to have very lonely life as its not going to see much action so long as I have my ESE.
PS. I purchased a couple of Andy Sabisch's books and think I'm going to sit down and read them tonight. Then tomorrow I going to go find some more silver!
 
Its audio 1 on the Ex II though. Air a test a few good and bad targets with it. The good round coins will give a great signal compared to iron flases. In fact try to fine a bad signal/iron false in the ground and lay a coin next to it on top of the ground. Go slow and you will the hear the coin sing out compared to the bad iron.

Hope that helps you some.

HH, Stoops
 
I am using Long Audio and like it. I wasn't complaining about digging iron. The point of my exercise today was to better understand my dectector and identifying deeper targets. I would estimate that 90% of the iron targets that I dug, I had correctly identified prior to digging. By digging every target, I was able to confirm my initial impression of the target. While this exercise is not something that I will do often, I have found it is a good way to keep me "on my toes" when it comes to what my detector is telling me.
 
I use audio 1 also. My approach to digging the iffy's is on each site I will dig a certain amount iffy signals to get an idea of what how to expect the results to be. Then if I get very similar signals I will keep moving for a little better sounding ones. This is not an exact science and at times I will dig them just to see if they are iron just to make sure. I was at a site the other day and dug some really crappy sounding signals and found some high conductors mixed in with the iron but some of were nails also, mostly the bent ones and the nails with lumps on them, then you know that you are taking the right chances, at least that's the one I do it. So take extra chances at times,if you have a longer time to detect. These are generally the lower percentage of good finds to junk finds but can be rewarding too.
 
Went back to the same park that I hunted yesterday. Today I was hunting with a buddy who also has a DFX. After about 3 hours of hunting I had we both had a handful of clad and I had two wheats. He made a comment about not finding any wheats the last couple of times he has hunted this park. So we decided to move to the older section of the park and hunt an area that produced some good finds for me last weekend. After about 20 minutes of hunting, I have three more wheats in my bag and he asks me how I'm finding them. I told him that I'm digging any iffy targets that are 6" down and pinpoint like a coin. He says OK and moves away to hunt. I immediately get another one of these iffy signals. I pinpoint it and put a plastic bottle cap to mark the spot. I call my buddy over and ask to scan the target with his DFX. He says he doesn't hear anything but the display shows a VDI bouncing around +11 - +18. He says Junk. I bend down and dig 5 1/2 - 6" and pull out a wheat. He just looks at it and walks away muttering something. I go back to hunting and about 10 minutes later I call him over again and ask him to swing over the plastic bottle top again. This time I turn OFF my detector before he sweeps. He gets no audio and once again his VDI is bouncing between +11 - +18. I ask what program he is using - Coins, factory settings. I have him bump up his PreAmp to 3 and AC to 73 and sweep again. He doesn't get any audio but his VDI numbers jump up to +40s. I then take his detector and change his discrimination pattern to Accept -40 to +93. He sweeps again and now gets audio but he still get VDIs in the +40s with an occasional +62. I finally dig the target and at 6" out pops another wheat. We hunted a little longer until his battery pack ran out of juice. We called it a day.

I'm not try to put down the DFX but I found it interesting that with the ESE, I felt 85% confident that I was going to dig a wheat but he would have passed by each target dimissing it as junk. I know part of his problem was his restrictive discrimination pattern in addition to his conservative AC and PA settings. Also, I was using the Minelab stock coil which is a DD configuation whereas he was using the Whites stock coils which is concentric. I think the coil pattern may have been why his VDI numbers where so skewed because the nearby iron targets (and/or our very mineralized soil) where distorting his readings. But still, it felt good and made me even happier that I have joined the Minelab camp - "Finding More, More Often".

So for the day...
Wheats - 1912, 1926, 1936, 1938, (2) 1940, 1944
Clad - 10 Quarters, 8 dimes and 20 lincolns
Silver - NONE :( ***but I feel confident that I didn't pass over any or else I would have dug it***
 
Don't worry, the silver will come, if you are digging wheaties and no doubt some of them are cruddy then it just a matter of time you will be pulling silver out of the ground, the cruddy wheaties are generally tougher signals than the silver ones, anyhow, I know you had to smile at your friend and you may convert him yet:lol:
 
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