Ground Balance, Sensitivity, and something else...

[bklein]

I'm one of those not yet enamored with my EQ800 due to depth and EMI noise. I am curious why it seems overly noisy when the CTX is not in the same environment. I normally use Beach 1 or 2 at the beach only (I haven't tried parks yet and normally don't hunt them). Beach 2 is less chatty than Beach 1 although when I started with the detector I was in Beach 1 and it seemed relatively quite then. Since then I've been out 8 or more times, 4 or more hours each time, several beaches. Beach 1 seems overly noisy and really too painful to use unless Sensitivity is way down.

So this week I am starting to tweak things and take measurements. First thing I notice is Beach 1 and 2 are unreliable for noise cancel. I mean I just hold it in the same position and it gets -9, 2, -6, 2, 9, -4.... It can be straight up in the air, coil flat on the ground, or coil 8" off the ground, same deal.
What's with that? Useless and I still can't get Sensitivity up past 20 without the noise. I took it to the local park, no cell phone, nothing electrical nearby. Tried removing and replacing the coil connection, no change. So then I started going though the options. Looking at ground balance. I haven't messed with it as the manual says zero is recommended so I left it there. But now I play and see it goes to 100 and -9. Wow, wide range... Set it back to zero. Then I go to Tone settings and see it is at 5 (default). I like 50 on the CTX so I set it to 50. Darkness is setting in and the park sprinklers are almost upon me.... but I try ground balance again and it seems better and repeatable. Air detect on coins better. Had to leave at that point but curious if others have seen this noise cancel unreliability. I'm hoping this all works out for me.

Air detect distances for me originally were:

penny 9.5"

Nickel 9"

dime 7"

quarter 9"

Quarter might now be 10-11" with less noise.

All these with detector on wood picnic table 4' off the ground.

 

[jas415]

I have had a couple of times where it was very dhatty, for no reason I could find. Even when I hit ground balance there wa a constant motorboating noise. Went thru all programs and several noise cancels. I tried with some success to noise cancel, then when it settled on a number, I lowered the number or raised it thru all the numbers and tried to get the least noise number. Then with the least noisy sounding number, I ground balanced, then put it in auto track. Worked in all instances except one where I turned it off and on a few times and it stopped the motorboating sound. I do noise cancel and ground balance every time i crank it up, and yes, the numbers do vary quite bit, even over the exact same 'clear' ground.

The only real idea that keeps creeping in my head is I am not getting 'long' enough signals on deep high conductors. I have to really go slow and pick out the extremely quick tiny high tones and investigate them. Low conductors are great, long signals on those.Iron at 1 to 2 and recovery at 6 to 7.

I so wish ML would get another supplier for the small coils, this 8 month delay for accessories is ridiculous!

 

[Digger 45]

I run mine on auto tracking in beach 1 and 2 and it is real quiet, this is in California so i don't know what kind of soil you have, try taking the skuff plate off and see if that makes a difference.

 

[dbado1]

Yes, try auto track GB. Also, reducing recovery speed will make those deeper high conductor signals more drawn out.

Dean

 

[ewtaylor]

I have a nox 600 and have noticed places in my yard are completely undetectable because of the chatter and erratic numbers. Move 5 feet away and it's perfectly silent. Weird alien stuff I suppose.

 

[bklein]

I went back to the park (same time/location) and tried things again. After power up again noise cancels were all over the map.
I went to ground balance and cycled -9 to 100 and back to zero. I then did a ground balance and it chose 50. I forgot to noise cancel repetitively and see now if stable - but it was obvious the random noise was less.
I could actually run now at 23 with a little background noise and 20 for quiet.
Depths (air):
Sens: 23 20 When it was bad (20)
penny 12" 11" 9.5"
nickel 12" 10" 9"
dime 11" 9" 7"
quarter 13" 10" 9"

When it was bad I was still getting quite a bit of noise with reception. Now things are much quieter.
I can only suggest playing around with ground balance. I remember when I first took it out of the box and took it to the beach I was playing around with Sensitivity set from 23 to 25. Something changed and it got noisy and insensitive to deeper targets. I'd say if you do repetitive noise cancels and the numbers don't vary you are good, but if they do you need to try things (master reset?, ground balance?) until you get consistant noise cancel numbers and then noise and depth will be optimized.

Barry

 

[bklein]

Put more time on it today at the beach. Did a hard reset. Was able to hunt in the 23-25 Sensitivity range no problem. Found a nickel and tested depth with it in wet sand and it was sounding at 11-12”. So it is working now but unfortunately targets are few. Noise cancel still varies way too much on repetitive tries. Please speak up - at the beach are repetitive noise cancels varying all over or consistant?