Help with a NEW Explorer SE

[Still-looking]

Hi all new member here although I have been reading posts for about a month now. I took the plunge and bought a new Explorer SE after being very satisfied with a Tessoro Silver Saber Umax. Well It has been six days now and I am begining to get a little frustrated with the machine. It seems that now I find targets EVERYWHER and then when I dig on them they are not there or sooo deep I need a shovel to get at them. This in addition to Iron falsing. my other BIG disappointment was with the pinpointing feature.. could it be there are so many targets in the ground so close to each other? I am using the stock coil. PLEASE advise.. what am I doing wrong? any suggestions?

 

[ellis]

okay still looking_i don't have the experience that others do on this forum,,,but don't get frustrated and sell it.2 things to do is turn sensitivity down and find a cleaner spot to hunt til you get better acquainted with it.also try pre-set in the middle of a ballfield for a a few trips...it takes time to learn this one.i'm sure others will offer much help--one more thing--when you get good info here ,,print it out so you can sit down and look at it and think with info in hand.some times when you come back to the puter the info might be hard to find.i probably printed out 40 or 50 pages as i progressed.(that is to where i am now,but i still print'em out)lol andhh

 

[BlackX]

Yes, there probably are that many targets in the ground. (The only other thing that would cause that much noise is electrical interference.) The SE is a HUGE step up from the Silver. I started with a Sidewinder uMax (a very similar Tesoro) and how much more the SE sees under its coil is a BIG difference from the Silver. The SE is not only seeing everything under an 11" strip in the center of it's coil (as well as some under the edges and out from the edges (zincs are especially bad with that), it sees about three times deeper. I had the advantage of having a Sovereign in between so that helped me a lot. At first the SE sounded like R2D2 on a bad acid trip to me. (My first hunt was in the dark and I couldn't even tell when I hit the noise cancel--it was just one more sound on top of a million others. (Though I still found more in that one hunt than I had in any one hunt on the Sidewinder.)) Now that I've gotten past the steep part of the learning curve, that only overwhelms me once in a while and I just back off the sens and/or go to masking until my brain/ears adjust.)

Good advice from Ellis in turning down the sensitivity and start in the default modes. I can't remember what the defaults are anymore but, if it's that overwhelming for you, turn on auto-sensitivity if it isn't already on and turn it down to something like 12. (It'll still be getting about twice the depth of the Silver.) Also dropping the gain to 6 if it's not there already will help with the iron falsing.

On pinpointing: do the X if you aren't already. The pinpointing on it confused me as well at first and I still don't like it all that much. One key factor is that it's a "ratcheting" pinpoint. i.e., as you sweep it back and forth, it gets tighter and tighter on the target. And it's imperative that you switch to pinpoint away from the target. (Turning it on with the coil up in the air wouldn't hurt until you get used to it.) But, if you do the X, you should be fairly close even without using the pinpoint mode. If you can afford it, get a SunRay X-1 probe as soon as you can afford to. I wouldn't be without it.

Listen for the high pitches. (And, if you know how to edit it, you might want to restrict your screen even more to just have the top-right quadrant of the screen open for a while. That will get rid of most of the pulltabs, except for rectangular ones, as well as can slaw and crown caps. Also, if you know how to edit and you have hot rocks in your area (the NE is rife with them), with the smallest cursor edit out the top right corner (0,31).)

More tips later if you ask and I notice but it sounds like they wouldn't mean much to you yet. (One of the biggest things I was taught after the initial learning has to do with setting the Threshold Tone. (I can't thank Doug enough for that one!))

Hang in there. It's a FANTASTIC machine once learn it. (Not counting all the extra silver, Indians, etc., I've found about seven or eight colonial coppers (note the Fugio for my avatar) with the SE in the 7 months I've had it--only one in a year with the Sov and none with the Sidewinder before that. (Was detecting with a friend with a Silver when I hit one of them and it was clear as a bell to me but he couldn't hear it with the Silver no matter what he did.))

 

[Jaichim24]

If you do one thing, read the information in this site http://www.treasuregizmo.com/settings.htm every week for the next month, and every two weeks for the following 3 months. Burn it into your mind! I really found it very helpful in reducing the learning curve on my SE when I got it. (and notice how I still mention 4 months to learn it well) I would read it once, take in a portion of information and go detect for a week. Read it again at the beginning of the next week, see what you were doing right what you could do better. Rinse and repeat until you get the hang of it. The farther along you are in learning your SE, the more you take from the fine points the author makes.

Good luck

Jai

 

[Jim upstate NY]

n/t

 

[dewcon4414]

Another way to pinpoint is when you hit a good target wiggle the coil side to side and move it slowly back from the target until the tone disappears at that point you know its at the tip of your coil. Like was said, you maybe getting EMI because your sensitivity is too high or you need to noise cancel. Also check to ensure you dont have dirt under your coil... it doesnt take much. Ive also found that occassionally you need to start the machine in factory settings just to reset it. You will get a lot more high tones in Conductive than the Ferrious setting as well especially off of large pieces of metal. There wont be nearly the learning curve in Ferrious or those targets that disappear. At this point if you plan on turning up your sensitivity id recommend it first in Auto rather than manual. Increasing your sensitivity in Auto will allow a smoother sound and give the machine a wider range in which to adjust itsself.

 

[NH Bob]

Did the new SE come with the 11" Pro Coil ? If not, you need to get one. This will stabilize the machine as soon as you use it.
When you turn on the SE do you noise cancel before you do anything else? If not, you must do.
To start learning the SE, run it with auto sens, this also quiets the SE.
As for iron falsing, that problem should also diminish as you follow these suggestions. Every machine falses on the edge of iron but not consistently.
Lessen for the clear repeatable tones and learn them by digging those signals. This is the most logical way to learn the Explorer.
There are many good suggestions out here for you to learn from but you have a few mustdo's that are very important to Tame the awesome Beast.

 

[mattockman]

n/t

 

[BlackX]

After thinking about it a bit more, I think the earlier advice to find a cleaner place to hunt might be one of the best things to do as well. Locations with that many targets can be hard to detect even after you've learned your machine pretty well.

(Doug: yup!)

 

[Still-looking]

Thanks for the Many suggestions. My settings with the unit have all been pretty standard. I hunt with all the factory preset discriminations. I have crossed out pulltabs foil and bottletops etc leaving coing and Jewelry open.and left sensitivity on automatic (I think) I have lowered the threshold slightly but have not altered the gain on the machine which several people have mentioned lowering to 5 or 6 which is what I will do next. I The beaches in my area seem to be yielding up thier secrets now but that whole pinpointing issue is still there.. I have a handheld pinpointer that Kellyco sold me with the unit and that works well but it is another arkward instrument to carry out into the field. Some have suggested other pointers.. oh yes I am using the stock double D coil which I think is 11.5 inches round. Someone mentioned seeing if there was dirt or soil under the coil... I wasn't sure there was a scuff cover under the coil that was removable or not. It did look like there was a thin plastic band surrounding the outer edged of the coil that sand and soil sometimes does get into. I wasn't sure if I could remove this band and clean it as there is nothing in the manual about it. Thanks to all those that have responded with suggestions.. I am finding that it takes me a much longer time to cover an area with this machine than with the Tesoro.. it seems like I am spending my time in a much smaller areas digging on a greater number of targets with about an 80% sucess rate. So there is no doubt that this machine is way more sensitive than my old Tesoro. It was just that with the old Tesoro you could grab and go! With this one it seems that a greater degree of skill is necessary in mastering the unit. I guess I can FORGET HUNTING IN TRASHY AREAS with this thing! (until I learn how to use the settings a little better. Yestarday I found 15 cents and four bullet heads in about 45 minutes and they were all within about a circle with a twenty foot diameter. Couldn't spend any more time as the kids were getting antsy watching daddy stare at the ground! I do listen for high tones in the conductive mode and then check where the position of the cursor is for ferrous content and coins all seem to be in the upper right. there are times when the unit will sound off in a high tone, then when scanning back over the threshold will blank. In those instances I do not dig on the target. Or I will look at the screen to give me an indication where the crosshairs fall and if it is close to or near the discrimination patterns I do not dig on them. One interesting thing I might add in closing.. with the factory presets (I think) the unit did not detect my wifes gold ring on her finger. I had to manually go in and select the setting for jewelry! While it sings around my silver wedding band. Thanks to all the people who have posted will now go out and reduce the gain to 5 or six and see what happens..

Bye all..