Etrac vs ctx 3030

[Gannon]

Hey folks! I'm brand new to this forum. I went to intro thread and introduced myself. I live in Tennessee.

My question has been asked a thousand times, but I've settled into the silver coin hunter mentality.
I've found one merc so far, and about $36 in clad,

My question lies in after reading extensively on the Etrac and thinking of buying one new, should I consider a used CTX?

I hunt in parks, churches and some yards. Trash is light to heavy pending on location.

I'm just not finding any silver. I know masking is a huge part of it but I'm looking for a deeper machine that has good ID parameters from 6-9 inches deep.
Thanks!

 

[Daniel Tn]

I have both. There are Pros and Cons to each but in the end, the scales still stay level and not in favor of one or the other.

The eTrac by far, has more coil selections available for it. The CTX has other coils too but IMO, they still have a couple of coil size gaps that aren't filled...an 8 inch round coil and a 13 inch round coil. Both of those coil sizes are available for the eTrac and the 13 Ultimate coil is my favorite coil for the eTrac. There is a bigger coil available for the CTX but it is too big for my liking...if it were just a round 13 that would have been great but the 17 inches long makes it too big for me.

There has been talk about some of the eTrac models not being as good as the others. The general consensus is that the ones made in Ireland are the better ones. I haven't had two of them to compare but I can tell you that I believe the eTrac is deeper than my CTX when wearing the same size coils...the stock 11 inch. My eTrac is one of the older ones.

I feel that the CTX gives you more info than the eTrac when it comes to visual ID. The target trace is a huge plus for it. I like that feature a lot. However, at the same time I feel the eTrac has better info via tone ID. I've tried to set them up the same way; same pattern, and same audio options, and for whatever reason, the eTrac just sounds better to me.

8 times out of 10, I will grab the eTrac when reaching for a machine. I like both machines though; just when I talk myself into selling one of them, I talk myself right back out of it. If it weren't for beach hunting and water hunting, I would probably just have the eTrac and be just as content. I have found more silver with the eTrac than I have with the CTX but that's probably because I hunt with the eTrac more.

 

[Gannon]

Thanks for the info! So if I should look for a used Etrac maybe?

I've heard that about several machines. Fisher CZ3D for example. Older ones are better tuned than new ones.

 

[IDXMonster]

What do you use now?

 

[Gannon]

-- moved topic --

 

[vlad]

maybe consider the recovery speed also-I love my ML's,
but some situations I do not make them my primary choice. Other situations, where iron is not so abundant and targets are deep, one of them, or a CZ is first choice.
What is ground mineral like there, I know in places Tenn. has bad ground. I recommend you talk to Richard at Backwoods Detectors in Greenville, Tenn.-he is very knowlegable.
[or another fellow hunter here, Greg (E.Tn) .]

 

[Gannon]

I use an at pro and a fisher f70. Like them both, but deepest coin I've dug is about 5 inches. I have maybe 100 hours combined on both of them.
Soil here is mostly clay/loam chert.

 

[REVIER]

I hunt in Birmingham Ala, red clay soil, tons of iron infestation from small microscopic pieces mixed into almost everything including a lot of the better black dirt to larger nails and everything else.
I can tell you most around here have seen that same 5" wall especially in the bad stuff, I have, most other people I have talked to around here have also with many machines including a friend who hunts with an E Trac.
Most believe there is just a barrier there we couldn't penetrate but I have come to find out most of us could, it is just that signals get skewed and distorted when scanning deeper.
I can tell you I have figured out how to get to that 6-9" depth area with my F70, have found a ton at the 4-6" depth level and a few at the 7-8" pushing close to 9", but it wasn't easy at first...or at all for months, but I discovered a new language to be able to do it because most targets much past 3", definitely past 5", just don't act right at all so tons have been left in the ground in scoured sites.
I had many hundreds of hours using that Fisher in great soil and got deep and did well and thought I thoroughly understood it but when I moved here to the SE. I had to take a lot of time tweaking and experimenting in order to learn that new language and figure it out, many hours over the course of months, but now that i know it I have become more than successful in this devil dirt.
Old targets here are masked to the hilt and come in way crazy and in the case of the Fisher way high because of up averaging...but they are there.
I also have a friend that has been using an AT Pro for about a year and he has also dug good targets at those deeper depths but he tends to dig a lot of signals including some he calls "crunchy" while I am a bit more picky about what I go after.
I would spend hours digging up mostly iron in small areas if I wasn't.
My friend with an E Trac, who I assume is pretty good and has had it for years, has walked right over a couple of Indian heads in a very difficult site at the 5-6" area and missed them completely while I came up behind him and found them with the F70, using that new language.
Near this same area I found I found a V nickel at every bit of 7-8", might have been touching 9", that he also hunted around but didn't see.
It might be he never got his coil over that one but to me it was an obvious dig me signal while he looked at the coin in his hand, the still open deep hole, the small 5" DD coil I was using and just shook his head.
He has never gotten close to that deep around here on anything and maybe a few times only in other parts of the state with a little better dirt.
I tell you all this because I would hate for you to buy an E Trac, or CTX, and find you are still not getting much past that 5" mark with the thing.
That would be frustrating.

Lots of things come into play here and that you should consider...
Not all dirt in Tennessee is the same and can go from not so bad to medium to pretty hot.
I can say where I hunt I GB in the mid 60's to low 80's sometimes and deal with amounts of other iron you might not believe here in the city so it doesn't get much worse than this...and both I and my friend with the AT Pro have hit your wished for depth marks.
It could be my friend that has the E Trac might not be as good as I think, doubtful, or their could be a deeper language or patterns of behavior he just doesn't know, can't say for sure but I have found many targets past 5" he could/did not while hunting together so there is that.
Plus you have two units already that have been proven to work and get deep in some pretty bad conditions so even if you have those hundred hours on them you might be lacking some clues, knowledge of deep target indicators that you just don't have at this point using either machine.
I never held an AT Pro in my life but I have written extensively about where I hunt, how I hunt and what I have learned about target behavior and specifics of the different Fisher language I discovered to do it and be successful.
They are peppered throughout the F Series forum and go back over 3 years.

I suggest the best thing you can do, if possible, is track down someone in your area that uses a Minelab in your dirt, not in other parts of the state but yours.
One of those units might work extremely well in your area...or it might not.
I would definitely want to know before I spent the money because I would never assume.
My friend with the E Trac did, he also was crazy for silver coins and got that thing specifically because of all he read about others finding deeper silver coins but that was in other areas of the country and even this state.
The reality here, in this crazy dirt, was quite different.
That 5" depth level you mentioned makes me suspect you might be closer to my soil conditions than to others that could have way better dirt than you.
In a coma both your existing units should get past 5" easily in decent dirt, in the rougher stuff it is entirely possible you have gone past 5" and acquired good targets but just never knew it because they acted so unusual with non normal numbers and behavior.
Nothing I have ever dug here past 4" has ever acted normal which is exactly how and why I found them and so many others missed them over about 6 decades.
If that is so you can change that by learning a few new things using what you already have and an entirely new machine might not be as helpful as you may think.
Or maybe it could...only more research can tell.

Good luck.

 

[cz70pro]

I hunt in East Tennessee and I LOVE my E-Trac. It does extremely well in the soils here and my finds have been awesome since I got it. Once you learn the machine and it's tones you will be amazed with it's performance. It is hands down the best machine I have ever used for coin shooting and is very respectable relic hunting as well. I did well hunting with my CZ70 Pro before I got the E-Trac but honestly, I know some of the targets I have dug with the E-Trac the CZ would not have touched. There are some features on the CTX that I like but I just do not see the extra 1,000.00 worth. Coils for the CTX are very costly compared to coils for the E-Trac as well. I also like the tones on the E-Trac a lot more than on the CTX. Just my two cents.

 

[sprchng]

I have to agree with everything said to this point with the exception being that the Irish ones are somehow better. It's a possibility I suppose but I've seen nothing but rank speculation and hearsay to back it up , so,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The biggest difference to me is the speed of the CTX. It makes reverting back to the etrac seem like slow motion , and the ergonomics make it more nimble. If I could find a good used CTX with some warranty to verify it didn't have any flies buzzing around it that was even close to the cost of a new etrac , it would be hard to decline.
It would be a tough choice which is why I ended up with both.

 

[vlad]

the Whites TDI in the situation you describe say it really opens places up-the difference between it & other pulse units is the ground control in conjunction
with the tones from high/low conductors.

 

[Gannon]

Thanks for the info!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

IMHO, the biggest problem with the CTX 3030, is that it doesn't allow for an inline sunray probe. I also found the 3030 to be much more complicated than the earlier generations of explorers (II, SE, etrac, etc....).

As far as depth: If you're using commensurate stock coil (11"), then IMHO, the depth is about the same. But the 3030 WILL admittedly go deeper on coin-sized targets, when using their 17" coil. Contrast to the Etrac where .... going to monster coils like that (Wot, or other such coils larger than the 11") and all you do is increase coverage. Not depth (assuming coin-sized targets).

But to avail yourself of that added coin depth that the 3030 + 17" coil affords, and it's a steep learning curve of fishy warbly performance and crazy hard pinpointing. I hate hand-held loose pinpointers (much prefer the in-line sunray).

I would certainly take time to learn the 3030 better, so as to have the waterproof for beach storms. But the lack of sunray was the deal-buster

 

[vlad]

they are not only very sensitive [yield according to the detector's sens. setting], they discriminate also.
The downside is they are detector specific-being part of makes/models of detectors [literally a soft connected very small search coil-of negligible weight.]
While they are more expensive-they are not unreasonable-and no electronics to speak of to break [as compared to handheld].

 

[mascard1]

Sunray..What's that...is that..that thing you see in Morning...does it point to Silver?

IMHO, the biggest problem with the CTX 3030, is that it doesn't allow for an inline sunray probe. I also found the 3030 to be much more complicated than the earlier generations of explorers (II, SE, etrac, etc....).

As far as depth: If you're using commensurate stock coil (11"), then IMHO, the depth is about the same. But the 3030 WILL admittedly go deeper on coin-sized targets, when using their 17" coil. Contrast to the Etrac where .... going to monster coils like that (Wot, or other such coils larger than the 11") and all you do is increase coverage. Not depth (assuming coin-sized targets).

But to avail yourself of that added coin depth that the 3030 + 17" coil affords, and it's a steep learning curve of fishy warbly performance and crazy hard pinpointing. I hate hand-held loose pinpointers (much prefer the in-line sunray).

I would certainly take time to learn the 3030 better, so as to have the waterproof for beach storms. But the lack of sunray was the deal-buster

 

[vlad]

it does kinda/sorta "shine the light" (a little faster) on a target.
The quicker you make a determination or recovery, the faster you are on to the next target.......more targets, more chances to score, big.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

When I used the CTX and free-standing hand-held pinpointer, I NEVER KNEW how much little ancillary junk exists in some locations. When I'd turn on the pinpointer to isolate the target, I often found myself pulling out teensy little nails and junk that were in the same hole. A real time-waster. Contrast to the sun-ray inline probe, and you're immediately going to the conductive target.