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E-Trac can't find gold?!?!

GoVidGo

New member
I have no idea who ever said, and it always goes around... 'the ETrac can not find gold'.
Maybe someone who never tried the ETrac?
Maybe someone who just hates the success people have had with the ETrac?
Maybe someone saw it posted somewhere and just repeating it?
...I have no idea, but some gold last year, and first gold for this year.

Today's HUNT

PLACE: local park. baseball field. third base line. people sit and watch the game under trees.
WITH: my GF (DiggerBee) using my AT Pro (to her it's 'her AT Pro') w/ 8.5x11 coil
DETECTOR: ETrac with stock Pro coil.
SETTINGS: stock coin program, auto sens +2, rec deep OFF, rec fast OFF, trash LOW, multi tones

FIND: '10kt' stamped gold girl's ring with light blue gem stone

We were hunting under trees that people sit under watching the baseball game at a local community baseball park. I keep the 'Display Timeout turned OFF, so that the last target hit stays on the screen until the next target is hit. As you can see in the picture, this is what I hit the the ring on on the ETrac screen. Depth was pretty much 'spot on'! Gold ring was about 3" down. We found a lot of clad coins and the ring HIT just as hard as a coin does. It hit solid both ways, never nulled, and held the 10-5 reading the whole time. I looked at my 'ETrac Target Card' and knew I had to dig it. I had a feeling it was a gold ring.

What's funny is that after I found it, I put it back in the hole and put the plug over it and my GF, DiggerBee, went over it with the AT Pro (standaard coin mode, sens set 2 bars from max) and it hopped around 40s-50s and she actually said 'she would not have dug it'. I probably would not have either. OUCH! Nice thing to be aware of as I use the AT Pro as my back-up when the weather looks like rain.

First gold of the year!
 
I just responded to a question about ML machines and relic hunting. If it is metal a ML will find it. Congratulations on your ring and it won't be your last gold find. HH :minelab:
 
Nice find!

I think you're missing what is really being said. No one has said the E-Trac won't find gold, what they've said, and it is 100% true, the E-Trac doesn't do well on small/odd shaped gold.
 
The Minelabs don't do very well on small gold like earings and such, and some machines do hit harder, have better/longer "more telling" audio, and have a wider VDI scale in the low and mid conductor range to better split hairs on targets.

The Etrac has roughly a 1-40 VDI scale for low and mid conductors (basing that on where copper pennies start around 40), while the Sovereign for instance has about a 60 (foil starts around 60) to 180 scale (copper pennies read 180) to split hairs on targets more (avoiding certain tabs, for instance, while digging nearby targets), along with long drawn out detailed audio.

From personal experience my Explorers didn't hit as well on gold rings as my GT does, nor were as helpful in relating audio qualities of the targets to decide what sounds like junk versus what sounds "round" and such. This is not just my opinion. I recently dug up a bunch of quotes and some testing from Sov or Excal owners who also have an FBS unit that said the same thing in order to a prove a point to somebody who didn't agree. If you want a copy of those quotes I'll send you a PM as I don't want to post it in this forum.

The Whites MXT series of machines also do very well on gold rings. I know a guy who land hunts only for gold rings and it seems like he's always coming home with the goods. He swears he can hear the difference in sound between a gold ring and a pull tab that have the exact same VDI reading.

All that being said....Yes...The FBS machines do just fine on gold rings, but there are other machines out there which will do better on gold rings in terms of the audio quality or VDI resolution, let alone hitting better on smaller gold or chains (which the Sovereign also isn't any good at).

Tesoros, for instance, are a good example of that. But there is a drawback to being so sensitive to the small stuff. Used to own a few Tesoros and I got real sick of digging real solid/good sounding hits which turned out to be tiny bits of foil. I'd rather have a machine that isn't as sensitive to tiny low conductors so that it will make them sound junky like they should.

But there's also another more positive way to look at it. Some machines may hit harder or do a better job of reporting some gold, but they likely aren't able to reach a gold ring at the same depths of the Minelabs...In particular in bad ground. That's a trade off in it's self when say beach hunting, or trying to dig potential ring targets and avoiding tabs by digging signals deeper than the depth of the old round pull tabs. That's a favorite trick of mine when conditions are right...."Traveling back in time" in a sense to before when pull tabs were invented by digging deeper signals than they are. Some machines just can't reach those kinds of depths, especially in mineralized ground, but Minelabs can.
 
I know the ET can find gold , i have found many gold rings with mine including a very thin 1.4g 22 k early in 2010 , also had a Quarter Stater too. More than anything it depends on the programme and settings.
I even pick up thin foil with it, the above screen programme is for beginners , it needs tweeking . :)
 
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