E-trac..fast on/off deep on/off...Sensitivity

[jhen999]

Been using the e-trac awhile know, I have always gone back and forth on these settings, was reading a post on another forum, that a lot of guys with e-tracs are turning the fast and deep off, and setting there sensitivity to auto minus numbers...and where talking about how much more they were finding by doing that..?

 

[ironsight]

Here's my take right or wrong.
You got to be careful what settings others claim success with at previously detected sites. Sometimes its just luck-toss of the dice, others since cleaned out junk, differing soil conditions, different sweep directions, phase of the moon, etc......been there done that more times than i care to remember.
In other words, there can be numerous variables involved other than settings.
Add to this some settings are inter-related leading to further confusion to the settings issue.

For example Deep-on and gain accomplish similar end results.
Fast recovery with its less filtering can allow faster sweeps and can also better differentiate trash from nearby good targets at the expense of less accurate jumpy/iffy IDs especially for moderate to deep targets. Again experience required to recover the good target.

The sensitivity thing IMO is a personal preference based on experience and the specific site to be detected.
An area with known shallow targets and shallow iron junk might work well with the reduced Auto settings but you ain't gonna find foot deep silver..
A higher say manual sensitivity setting in an area like that would increase iron indications possibly to the point of swamping out (iffy/jumpy IDs) a good nearby target especially if its a large piece of iron junk. An in-experience user would likely walk right over that good target. All these different settings have a time and a place, thats why they're there.
Summing it all up, one setting size does NOT fit all situations and all users.

On the other hand if one is searching an area with known deep silver, its full speed ahead with hi manual sensitivity and open screen, my favorite for some of these areas.
Not recommended for newbies as the falses and junk tones using this setting would drive a newbie crazy.

 

[surfchunker]

might have been my post, Evan Granger and Bart Davis both told me to try both deep and fast off, with fast on it degrades the audio, and with gain up unless you are after super deep targets there is no need, the minus Auto is for only when I'm in heavy iron and my machine stays nulled out. going minus lets me hear the good targets being overwhealmed by the iron, think of driving with your high beams on in the fog vs low beams,

 

[surfchunker]

takes time learning your machine to know when to do what and especially why ... I have been running manual more often here lately but depends on what the ground is like, like today my mine was running only 19 with +3 so I switched to manual 22, it was a little more unstable but slowing down worked, but if +3 is running 25 or higher I probably will just leave it alone. every site is different