DisappearingTones

[hftrsrskr]

Still hunting up here in Western NY. Can somebody explain where a good tone goes? Nice tone- pinpoint it- dig a plug and its gone! Scan the plug- nope and the hole is silent too. Ideas?

 

[hatpin]

Could be a coin got turned on its side .

 

[SkiWhiz]

Might be a small bit of a rusty something or other and when you dig the hole it breaks the halo and is no longer detectable. Or if this is a new detector or a new to you detector the ground balance might be set too negative for your soil and it is falsing. Just a couple of ideas, I very well could be wrong. I am in upstate New York (St. Lawrence County) no frost in the ground yet but most of the ground is covered with a light layer of snow and has been a bit too cold to hunt.

 

[thump7]

I agree with it possibly being a rusty washer or some iron. In wet conditions I find a lot more of those signals, VCO pinpoint or the All-Metal mode finds them every time (with the exeption that a coin fell out when I wasn't looking).
1 trick i use to catch those signals on sites that have a lot of iron in them is to put my digger or shovel in the ground and move the ground around a bit first, pull it out and recheck the signal. This will help to either verify it is a good target or you might loose the signal alltogether.
trick #2, Moving the coil from left to right gives a good signal, now try front to back. If it breaks up pretty good could quite easily be iron. If I am using a shovel I will usually just pop out a plug and check for sure if it is iron or not. Hope this helps.

 

[Canewrap]

Hi, did you find any shotgun shells in the area? I don't know what Tesoro you might be using, but the Tejon is good at seeing small groupings of birdshot. One of the ways to tell is to go into all metal and size the target. If you're getting a bunch of close together signals over that area its probably birdshot and the signal breaks up once you dig the hole.

 

[hftrsrskr]

Thanks everybody. I'll try all the suggestions.

 

[POLEWAGGER]

Bits of foil that crumble or turn on side can be a pain and waste time just like rust balls. Look for a dark red or orange spot in your plug. Old foil can turn black and fall to pieces when disturbed, making it almost invisible. One reason I like the cheap little CenTech pinpointer. It REALLY nails the little stuff fast + I can locate coins with my eyes closed with it. Try that with almost any other "pinpointer"...good luck!

 

[Marcus Detectus]

The first 2 replies right below your post will probably cover about 90% of what causes it. Most detectors today are powerful enough that you're not going to lose any object still in the plug or right by the hole.

 

[dixiedigger57]

all of the above! a friend's property is full of #10 birdshot. lead, old stuff. drive you nuts! if you completely loose signal and cant reclaim it, i believe its a halo effect too.

 

[Hombre]

n/t

 

[Calif_quake]

I have experienced the same thing

 

[hftrsrskr]

Hi- No bird shot ( I hope!) because it's a ball field complex. I have found shotgun slugs before- those are a loud sound. I have a Garrett pinpointer which does save tons of time but when the tone is gone, it's gone. Makes me wonder if I'm hearing things. It's very wet up here and there is an abundance of foil- gotta go with the halo/rotting foil idea. I will definitely try the stir the ground method. I have noticed the side to side signal is often stronger than the front to back tone. Is that a reliable cue that it's iron/foil? Thanks for the input.

 

[slingshot]

Still hunting up here in Western NY. Can somebody explain where a good tone goes? Nice tone- pinpoint it- dig a plug and its gone! Scan the plug- nope and the hole is silent too. Ideas?

It would be somewhat easier if your settings were known. All metal?

 

[Monte]

Still hunting up here in Western NY. Can somebody explain where a good tone goes? Nice tone- pinpoint it- dig a plug and its gone! Scan the plug- nope and the hole is silent too. Ideas?

There are times when we get a 'hit' on a target and pinpoint it. Then, disturbing the ground, to include cutting a plug, we re-scan and don't get a response. When this occurs there can be several causes, such as these as an example:

1.. The target was smaller-size and located close to the surface. Removing the dirt to a pile might put the target just a little too deep to respond well. Often it might be something like a tiny piece of foil, an earring stud or something similar.

2.. The target was somewhat shallow, but plugging caused the target to fall to the bottom of the plugged hole and it is then more difficult to detect.

3.. A target might have been disturbed and the angle is changed and that might make it more difficult to get a response.

4.. A very frequent cause is that while the detector was set to handle the ground signal and still respond the the buried target, once the ground is disturbed and there is an exposed hole, the detector ([size=small]depending upon the make and model, the coil used, the settings used, especially the Discriminate control[/size]) might not respond to the metal target, even if laying flat in the bottom of a hole, because there isn't a smooth or consistent feed of ground mineral signal due to the void caused by the hole.

When these different situation occur, such as #4, it is more difficult for the detector to analyze the combined signal and only ignore the ground mineral signal if the Ground Balance is improperly set, and surprisingly it can happen if there is too much Discrimination. You might detect a target with one setting, but exposing a void can cause a pronounced disruption in the signal from the ground and the filtering or processing of the total signal ([size=small]ground and target[/size]).

I often demonstrate these types of things in some hands-on instructions, such as laying a penny, totally in plain sight, between two rocks and then challenging anyone to sweep across the rocks from two directions and see if they can get a signal on the plain-view penny. I use this challenge to see how low the detector's Discriminate level can actually adjust because it calls for a true 'Zero' discrimination or ED-180 acceptance range to get a good hit. I hope to have some videos ready to post on our website in a couple of months to demonstrate various makes and models with four simple sets of challenges.

I also often read posts on forums, or written in book or just brought up in discussions that some people will NOT recover a target if it only produces a one-way signal. Could that be caused by trash? Yes, but more often than not I also find a desired coin, token or nice artifact that was simply partially masked by a near-by rejected target. Hunting in nail infested sites causes this to happen a lot.

If I get a 'Beep' it might be good. If it is a one-way, two-way or from multiple sweep directions, I am wise to recover it or I could leave a good target for someone else.

hftrsrskr, you didn't mention the particular model used, the settings used, and we can only guess the search mode used. If it was a Tesoro Vaquero, and if you were hunting in the Discriminate mode, and if the Discrimination was set to reject nails and other smaller iron, it could cause you to miss other targets. Someone in this thread mentioned they didn't get a response to some shotgun shell base, and that isn't a surprise.

Some shotgun shells have a plastic base with a metal insert. Most use a brass type of metal for the shotgun shell base. Some of the older shotgun shells and/or separate bases I have found were made of a light steel and, if you are rejecting iron you're usually going to reject them as well. They can signal in the threshold-based All Metal mode, but can be easily rejected in the Discriminate mode.

Monte

PS: As Hombre mentioned below, having a good pin-pointer will really help on these types of 'mystery signal' challenges. My suggestion is the Garrett Pro-Pointer.

 

[hftrsrskr]

Hi-Great summary of possibilities. On this particular day, I was using a Compadre with the factory ground balance, 5.75 inch coil and the disc set just above iron. Sometimes the tone would disc out a little past nickle (going high to low and low to high) although several times it was even a little better than that. Heard the tone- Dug- Scanned again- Gone! Even in all metal. When I wrote the original question, I thought it had happened with my Vaquero too but now I'm not so sure. With that,I hunt with a 9x8 coil, usually disc right above iron to search, sensitivity in the 8 to 10 range. It was a trashy area. On the day when my frustration peaked, after about the third time, fearing that I had knocked the target to the bottom of the hole, I stubbornly dug nearly to China,scanning about every tablespoon, and enlarged the hole waaay to big. Fortunately I kept all the dirt on a little tarp and it all went back in nicely. I will keep digging one-way signals as I find stuff that way too. I almost lost my eardrums on a shot gun slug that I think must have hit an engine block as it was about the size of a $.50 piece and weighed about an ounce. I was using my cheaper earphones without the limiter. Never again. I am a religious pin pointer and love my Garrett. Sadly, it did not help me with the disappearing targets, other than to confirm that they were truly and totally gone.

 

[RicS]

Happens to all of us on occasion. For me it's generally been something very small and close to, or at the surface. Lifting the coil over the target as you sweep will tell you a lot. If the signal fades quickly, it's either deep, or very small. For these targets, I dig a shallow plug. . ..maybe 2", then check the plug. If it's something really small, you should get a signal if it's in there. Check both sides of the plug. If nothing is there, then you should get the signal back over the hole.

 

[slingshot]

Hi-Great summary of possibilities. On this particular day, I was using a Compadre with the factory ground balance, 5.75 inch coil and the disc set just above iron. Sometimes the tone would disc out a little past nickle (going high to low and low to high) although several times it was even a little better than that. Heard the tone- Dug- Scanned again- Gone! Even in all metal. When I wrote the original question, I thought it had happened with my Vaquero too but now I'm not so sure. With that,I hunt with a 9x8 coil, usually disc right above iron to search, sensitivity in the 8 to 10 range. It was a trashy area. On the day when my frustration peaked, after about the third time, fearing that I had knocked the target to the bottom of the hole, I stubbornly dug nearly to China,scanning about every tablespoon, and enlarged the hole waaay to big. Fortunately I kept all the dirt on a little tarp and it all went back in nicely. I will keep digging one-way signals as I find stuff that way too. I almost lost my eardrums on a shot gun slug that I think must have hit an engine block as it was about the size of a $.50 piece and weighed about an ounce. I was using my cheaper earphones without the limiter. Never again. I am a religious pin pointer and love my Garrett. Sadly, it did not help me with the disappearing targets, other than to confirm that they were truly and totally gone.

Aha! The Compadre has an automatic retune and sometimes a nulled object will overshoot at faster sweep speeds but disappear at slow speed, especially if it 's near the cutoff. I have this happen quite often in some grounds.It will also find the teeniest of items near iron reject. I have often set in tot lots with pebble matrix and sifted and sifted till I finally quit this on teeny hits. I once found a washer shaped object smaller than a bb. I'll say it again and again, the Compadre is awesome for the price.

 

[hftrsrskr]

OK- That makes sense because the more aggravated I got, the slower and more meticulously I scanned. Compadres do rock.

 

[:Left4Dead]

Loved the Avdive on the one way beeps , so true. Leave them for me.

Mike

 

[hatpin]

I lost the signal today on a deep hole. I stuck the coil down in the hole on all metal mode and could still here it. Turned out to be a clad Kennedy half.