e-trac vs. vision

[JohnnyI]

I'm excited that tomorrow I'll be going back to some of my very productive colonial haunts in Pennsylvania (which I'd hit hard for many years with the old "6000" and "xlt") , and I'm going to have a real one on one comparison between my new e-trac and the new White's "vision". It should be fair, as we'll be hunting fields where finds have been fairly evenly scattered in the past, and we'll comparing each one of our "good" signals with both of our machines. I know I'll be moving slower than the White's, but hopefully some greater depth will be to my advantage, particularly in the low lying areas that have accumulated more depth of topsoil due to runoff . I intend to boost the manual sensitivity as high as possible, as the ground is very kind there, and also use some of the U.K. field patterns. A good "report" will hopefully follow Monday.

 

[big-ears]

n/t

 

[Phil]

I just got my Spectra V3 a week ago. My main experience is with an MXT and TDI so there is a lot to learn before I get a handle on the Spectra. The E-Trac wasn't hard for me at all. I think it is more user friendly but that may be because I have so many years experience with Explorers.

 

[Steve in OK]

I was using an Explorer II and my buddy was using an ID Edge. Two of our friends had the new Whites Visions. We were hunting an old park that had produced well in the past but has been hunted by clubs and lots of individuals. In a couple of hours the Explorer II with the Pro coil produced two Barbers and the Edge added a mercury dime and the new Visions found a few pieces of clad. I know this was not necessarily a legitimate test but the Visions have not performed any miracles yet that we have witnessed.

 

[Crash620]

n/t

 

[DavefromCt]

I'm very interested as well. My favorite detectors have always been white's and my buddy who still has a dfx and another with an mxt have been kicking my butt. We compare signals before digging and the etrac does go a little deeper but with just two frequencies on the dfx it gives a better sound and target id. My numbers are going all over the place on this etrac and driving me crazy. Once the coin is brought up to the surface it really locks on well but in the dirt the normal 12-46 or 12-44 readings for example shoot up to 20 something then down to 01 something etc. and I've tried many programs and coils. I think the only thing I like right now is quickmask and opening up a tiny corner on the upper right just to get clad without tons of falsing. By the way, I'm finding out that auto, even up to +3 is missing tons of stuff but it quiets the machine down. When I switch to manual I start having some luck.

 

[Willee - Texas]

Here are two finds I made today using the V3.
Both locked in on "coin ID" and were about 8" deep in sand.
The iron items that were very close to them did not seem to trouble the V3's ID at all.

 

[JohnnyI]

I'm back and the "test" was pretty much a failure. Most of the spots I'd remembered were either in high grass, or had been turned into gaudy developments. We finally settled on an "inferior" field and gave the detectors a spin. The ground was highly mineralized, and prevented any meaningful depth in manual sensitivity on the etrac, as the chatter was extreme and constant and it would be impossible to cover much ground. Auto boosted to +3 gave me a little depth, but not much. At least I could cover ground. For what it's worth, my friend's "vision" was finally put away due to the constant chatter on the machine from indivcidual frequencies, with him finally opting for the white's dfx with a spider coil in its place. In this particular mineralized field the white's dfx gave far superior depth in a stock coin mode (against the e-trac in stock coin mode pattern (with ground difficult, deep on, fast off, fairly high gain, and variability at 27.) There were no finds to speak of in this field except feed tags, harness fittings, and a partial shoe buckle, . Another spot we tried was a worked out very small school yard. In this case the white's and the e-trac got about the same depth, with the e-trac's maybe an inch greater. There were a lot of hot rocks, and the etrac had no trouble cancelling them out along the top line. E-trac was set at manual 24 here. My friend found a flying eagle at about five inches, and I found a standing liberty at about 6 inches. Both of us could read each other's signals on these. Sorry the test did not turn out as I had hoped. We'll try again next week.

 

[digitrich]

Having all three, ETrac,SE and Vision, I'll toss this out and by no means is absolute correct as I have a billion hours on the SE, several 100 hours on the ETrac, and all but 15 minutes on the Vision. With that said, it appears to me, my main bread and butter is the SE for depth, accurate ID, and tones, The ETrac to go in after and maybe squeeze a shallow keeper that was masked by iron. The Vision however, I am thinking can be tweaked to go a step further to maybe pull another partially masked target, to check iffys with the TX boost or popping the recovery speed up to insanity levels, this is all assuming the Vision will get ML depth and ID, and that is a rather aggressive assumption. Let you know how it goes. From my limited experience with the Vision....... I am impressed, there seems to be several "I wish my MineLabs could be set up that way..settings".......... And even if the Vision doesn't get my SE's depth, there is always the question if it can ID better or faster in trash, I would take either one, and both would be a definite sweet miracle....I am not holding my breath though.