I don't know anything about the Sovereign GT, but I do know that experience with your detector is key. So, it's no surprise that you do much better with the machine you are used to vs. the new one. When I got my Explorer I had to forget what I was used to with my Fisher CZs, and learn a new language. Challenging for sure, but with over $1,000 invested in a machine there's some motivation to get your money's worth out of it! I don't have my machine here right now, so I can't give you my settings, but I'm not sure just the settings will help. I set it up to my preferences and what works in the types of sites I'm hunting, based on what I was used to with the Explorer. The E-Trac is much easier than the Explorer to learn. Set it in default coins discrimination mode, if it beeps high tone and the meter says 12-13 ferrous and the conductive number is between 41-48 dig it! If there is silver there, the Minelab will find it.
There was no magic in making these finds. This represents about 20 hours of detecting (that's a lot of swinging. You should see my forearm!) in sites where I have found old coins in the past, or knew had some people present a long time ago (parks, schools, picnic areas, amusement parks). As you noticed I dug a lot of junk, but I also dug a lot of goodies. I'm pretty sure if I had not been digging junk signals, I would not have dug 1/4 of what I got. By no means did I dig ALL the junk, but I dug what sounded good to me and typically had depth showing on the meter greater than 3". Had I been discriminating out screw caps, or not digging them, I for sure would not have dug the gold ring.
Generally speaking, I run Iron Mask, use the numbers not the Smartfind screen, run Sensitivity high on manual (but recommend for starting out using auto), gain at 18 (to hear some of the difference between deep and shallow), variable tones (silver will come in high). Reading Andy Sabish's book and understanding all the settings and how they work really helped me to make the right adjustments. I had it pretty close already, but I was able to make some more adjustments that helped. The Minelab Explorer and E-Trac are still much easier to "program" than the White's XLT, in my opinion.
There are good days and bad days. Saturday I was swinging for 5-6 hours, not finding much. I think I had less than 25 cents in modern coins and a wheat or two before the war nickel came up. Compared to Thursday evening, when I found 5 silvers and a bunch of wheats in about 3 hours. All depends on the site you're at.
One more thing, sweep slowly. Especially in trash, you want to hear every beep and decide for yourself to dig or not. If you are sweeping fast over trash you will miss the good targets mixed in. I'm amazed at how well these machines separate targets, even with the 11" coil. I've been told I should get a small coil, but I was able to separate and dig 22 wheats and one silver dime out of a 2 foot x 2 foot area, and if I can do that, I think the small coil can wait.
Oh, another thing is having confidence in your machine... sometimes it just takes finding that first silver coin or deep oldie to convince your brain to have confidence in the machine. I know I feel confident once I have been over an area with the Explorer or E-Trac, I've really covered the area well, and if I didn't find the good stuff it was either because it wasn't there, I was sloppy or lazy and didn't dig when I should have or wasn't going slow enough or overlapping my sweeps. Basically, it's my fault, not the machine's fault.
Since you say the Sovereign GT smokes the E-Trac, I'd go out and mark targets somewhere with the Sovereign GT - use sticks or pencils. Once you have a dozen or more, go get the E-Trac and see what those same targets sound like on it. If you need to make adjustments, make adjustments until you can pick up the targets you want. Hope that helps, good luck!
