ferrous/conductive

[Anonymous]

What are the advantages and disadvantages between these two modes?.Just thought i was getting the hang of conductive ,but am going to try ferrous to try and improve my older coin finds. Are tones for targets different..for example, would a silver dime sound different in ferrous as opposed to conductive? This machine is a beast!..Thanks for the help..Chris <img src="/metal/html/confused.gif" border=0 width=15 height=22 alt=":?">

 

[Anonymous]

What I like about Ferrous is the nails I get signals on that sound good in Conductive now will be low tones. What i dont like is the rusty bottle caps now will sound high tone like a coin does.
What is happening is in conductive tones everything that reads on the top of the meter will be high tones,everything on the bottom will be low tones. Now if you run ferrous everything that reads on the right side of the screen will be high tones and those on the left side will be low tones. Now a silver dime or quarter reads on the top right of the screen, so in either ferrous or conductivity tones it will read the hight tones. Where you will see the difference is in the nickles as in ferrous tones the nickle will not be as low of a tones as in conductivity, but the silver coins will sound the same as top is high tone for conductivity and right side is high tone for ferrous and this is where the silver read top right.
If i am in a area with a lot of nails or run a iron mask of -10 to -16 i will use ferrous tones. If the area is full of rusty bottle caps I run a pattern with the bottom right blocked off so i dont have to listen to all the rusty bottle caps sounding good.
Rick

 

[Anonymous]

Great post and right on and why I like ferrous. I block the lower right so high tones are the upper right half. With the other settings I use it is nice for picking coins from iron.
HH, Cody

 

[Anonymous]

Think I understand. Im just worried about 'nulling' out the threshold by blocking the bottom of the screen for bottlecaps and crowns. guess Im trying to find the perfect combo. Sounds like in high Iron, Ferrous would be better, and in Trashy bottlecaps,screwcaps,beavertails,etc...go conductive. This can be confusing..One more note..I had read here that a DEEP silver coin will sound low..That confused me..any answers for that one?..I love this forum, You guys are great! Chris, NY

 

[Anonymous]

Chris,
THE BASICS
Every target has a Ferrous and Conductive component. This is easily displayed on the Smart screen or the Digital display. But, the Explorer can only produce one tone at a time. That tone represents either the Conductive or Ferrous component of the target depending on which mode the user desires.
SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
In my area rusty nails are by far the most annoying trash.
* In the Conductive mode rusty nails sound somewhat higher (very high "squeek) than silver coins (slightly lower "squeek"). The seasoned hunters are much better than I am in distinguishing the difference. The real problem is when there is a rusty nail and a silver coin under the coil.
* In the Ferrous mode there is a world of difference between the sound of rusty nails and silver coins. The rusty nails "growl" and the coins "squeek". Sometimes the rusty nails are close to a coin. The rusty nail tends to dominate the sound, but the coin "squeek" sneaks through from time to time. It is easy to hear that "squeek" in Ferrous mode but more difficult in the Conductive mode.
* In areas where rusty nails are not such a problem, then I use the Conductive mode
HH,
Glenn

 

[Anonymous]

[No message]

 

[Anonymous]

Ah, we gamble when we use a detector even if we don't know it. You dig it all and still miss some good tagets for many reasons. Which slot machine to play is a problem. I try to get the odds as much in my favor as I can. My concern about missing a coin fused to a nail is somewere around nothing and negative nothing. My concern about missing a coin that is masked by iorn that is close to the coin goes up depending on the size of the iron. So, I don't worry about the nail and coin but focus on how to pick the coins from iron that is close to the coin.
HH, Cody

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for help clearing that up..I got alot of work ahead of me..HH , Chris

 

[Anonymous]

In conductive sounds with lots of iron around you can drive yourself crazy watching the screen to see if that high tone is a coin or iron. In ferrous sounds you can pretty much do it by ear and not look at the screen.
Lets say your machine is set up to play the musical note "C", two octaves below middle C for the lowest iron tones in ferrous. You're swinging your coil amongst all the nails hearing C, C, C, C, C, C, and all of a sudden you hear a "C#" or a "D". That's your que to check it out. Go back over that slightly higher toned target and see if you can make it go even higher. Sometimes if you change your sweep angle you can make it much higher and you know you want to dig it. If I'm at a site where lots of old goodies have been found I'll even dig the "C#" target or at least open the plug and stick my probe in. I hope you've got a Sunray X-1 probe because they save so much time while investigating targets.
Just to reitterate, in ferrous sounds the iron is always the same low tone and anything higher than that low tone is nonferrous. Could be just a little higher or it could be alot higher. And you can change how wide you want the musical range to be by changing your variability and limits settings.
And YES silver and copper coins can sound off quite low in ferrous sounds. You'll find that the cursor can sometimes be pretty far to the left side on the top of the screen and still be a copper or silver coin.
HH
Neal

 

[Anonymous]

Neal,
Two comments about using Ferrous mode:
#1 It has been my experience that for colocated coin and iron that often, on a single sweep, that you will hear both targets sound off very close together in time. The high tone "squeek" will jump out and grab your attention in ferrous. It is easy to miss the slight tone difference if you are hunting conductive.
#2 I do agree that often a silver coin will hit well to the left on the screen and will not produce the "squeek" that gets you attention in #1. That is something that you have to be careful of. Even then, I think that the tone difference is easier (at least for the less experienced hunter) to pick up in ferrous than in conductive.
HH,
Glenn