how to hit a 9+inch coin.

[swater]

Been finding a few silver coins at a park-old ball field this summer. Most old coins are 7" to 9". My garett propointer is 9" so iv been using that to check the depth.
My question is does my se with the stock coil have the ability to go any deeper? I run the sens. at 26semi auto. fast and deep off. I like to know if the target is deep so my gain is at 5.
All other settings are maxed out. I feel there is some cions (wheats and dimes) that are deeper, but what would be the best way to squeak a bit more depth out of it?
I do swing "low and slow" and noise cancel often. Iv dug a bunch of iffy targets and all have been iron. Would a different coil be worth the investment? Any ideas?
thanks.

 

[wildherre]

You didnt say if you have the slimline coil or the Pro coil.. If you have the Slimline coil the Pro coil or 10X12 SEF will give you more depth in good soil. If you already have the Pro coil a 10x12 can give you a little more depth in clean soil but is quite a bit heavier.. . I almost always get better depth in manual sensitivity, I run in manual & go up & down as needed to control falsing & nulling. You need to turn you gain up to 9 or 10, 8 minimum .. The next time you get a deep iffy signal play with those settings & see what helps.. wildherre

 

[Hotcz70]

Over actual in field targets BEFORE I dug them...probably 100 or so....with my gain ANY lower than 8...I would have left at least 50 silver coins in the ground this year in the 9" to 10" range.

I run mine jacked at 10. With a setting at 6...almost all of my coins 10" and deeper completely disappeared in the field. In fact...many of them were weak enough with it set at 7....I probably wouldn't have dug them.

 

[Johnlightning]

Low and slow is the way to go. I run my gain at 6 or 7 with sensitivity as far up at it will go without falsing. Like also said, the less trash the bigger coil you should hunt with. The pro coil has been very good to me. My number one choice.

 

[NealNoIN]

punch from manual to semi-auto for a quick test scan. I'm thinking a ball field might be clean enough to try opening it up like this.
Neal

 

[swater]

thanks guys.
,
Maybe im confused on the gain. I thought it was only a volume amplifier. That it did not make the machine any deeper. I use a good set of headphones with the volume up as high as I can stand.
My thinking is with a higher gain, wouldnt that be the same as turning up the volume on the head phones?

 

[JJ]

I run mine jacked at 10. With a setting at 6...almost all of my coins 10" and deeper completely disappeared in the field. In fact...many of them were weak enough with it set at 7....I probably wouldn't have dug them.

I thought I understood the gain setting but now I may be confused. I guess I understood the gain setting to be more of a depth gauge for your ears whereas deeper targets would emit a tone at a lesser volume to your headphones and a shallow target would be louder. I believed this had nothing to do with actual depth loss/gain but was more how the machine processed the output of the signal to your headphones. I have played with various settings and found I like gain set at 9. I like shallow to half deep targets to sound blatantly obvious, and half deep to deep targets sounding slightly less blatantly obvious.

Bryce, my question to you is this: At a lower gain setting, are deep coins completely disappearing because of hearing loss or are you getting a threshold tone where these deep coins were sounding good with a higher gain setting? Thanks, JJ

 

[Jason illinois]

I ran my ex2 with gain of 7, I am using 9 on the SE according to others advice and I notice a difference. because I can hear deeper targets, only not as loud as shallow ones, where I do not think i was hearing them at a gain of 7. Running gain too low might not make the deep coins loud enough to notice them. Maybe deep ones are out of the audible range when gain is too low and when the gain is set higher it limits how quiet it will be able to get?

 

[NealNoIN]

if you're hearing BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, then a soft beep, then BEEP, BEEP. You might miss that soft one. Turn up the gain and they are all equal.

 

[Hotcz70]

Gain controls the amplication of target responses in respect to the original signal... according to the manual.

My thoughts and opinions on this are just common sense to me at my sites.

All the sites I hunt are pounded to death...so I have no need for a low gain setting to distinguish a shallow target from a deep one. There is nothing left in the ground at the sites I hunt less than 7" deep...so why not hear those deep faint coin signals as loud and clear as I can...hence highest gain possible.

Step 2 for me is to run my sensitivity at semi auto 26 which allows the SE to run smooth with very little or no falsing from running high the gain I do.

Some people say you lose some depth running semi auto sens...but I'm NOT one of them. I have no problem hitting coins from 8" to 10" with these settings. My opinion is pretty simple...My SE can "overcompensate" in semi auto all it wants to as long as it keeps finding me 10" deep silver.

If you choose to run manual sensitivity with high gain...it can be even more effective and the SE is even hotter. Sometimes though...this backfires on me and I get too many falses and chirps which can actually cause me to miss deep targets. I usually end up going back to semi auto and creeping along listening for chirps through the nulls or deep faint chirps to investigate. Too much falsing and chirping is detrimental to my hunting style. In clean ground though...I'll use manual sometimes.

The seated dime I just found at 10" deep last week is another one I experimented over with gain.

When I dropped it to 9...it was still a nice diggable signal. Dropping it to 8...and it was still a pretty nice signal...but not as clear and distinct as the higher setting.

When I dropped it to 7...it became a weak intermittent signal...much like falsing or chirping...and I might or might not have stopped to further investigate it.

When I dropped it to 6...the signal was no longer there...completely gone.

For me...it's a no brainer...and has proven itself to me over and over in the field.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Go manual Sens. Don't use the auto sens. mode. If you use auto, you are allowing the machine to pick the sens, for the most stability. It will always over-compensate, in the name of stability, in my opinion. You are better off just finding the exact point where you *start* to hear a little flutters, chatter, etc... Put up with a little of chatter. Just check to see if signals repeat. If they don't, then they were just flutter.

I have often-times pinpointed a deeep silver/copper coin signal when in manual. As an experiment, I've turned on auto-sens, and noticed that often-times, the signal will totally disappear! This tells me that auto-mode is indeed over-correcting in the name of stability.

 

[dewcon4414]

Reading your question.... you asked if there was anything to improve your depth with the STOCK COIL. Boy....id say you are doing well hitting 9" coins with the stock coil. Have you considered there arent any deeper in the area you are hunting? I would adjust the gain at least to 6 or 7 so those weak signals can break the threshold. You will still get modulation which tells you the difference from deep and shallow targets. Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on it. A change to one of the larger coils would help as would slower movement just because the stock coil doesnt seperate as well as the newer larger coils.

Dew

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Nothing personal Bryce....

If you switch to manual and hear more chirping and other noises than you do at semi-auto at that number...... It just means the explorer turned the sensitivity down lower already. You can lower the sensitivity in manual to the same point of stableness. Most of us manual types run the sensitivity just below unstable. And semi-auto seems to think it should be lower than that.

I agree that deep coins can be found in semi. But they can also be found by people that run learned in patterns. Once in a blue moon they will hit a deep coin in clean enough ground to hit where is should on a consistent basis. They therefore conclude that tight patterns work. I don't think anyone that makes regular finds uses more than a moderate amount of iron mask.

Two years ago I decided to give semi another try. I headed to one of my favorite sites. I looked away from my detector and hit the semi/manual button several times in a row. I did not look to see what mode I was in. I found a couple of deeper coins that I was surprised to see that I was in auto, (I looked after I dug and then did another random number of presses before starting again). What I remember was while detecting I realized that I had had a stable threshold for the last 20-30 feet. The whole place is littered with junk; should sound like a pinball machine. And yup, I was in semi. Switched to manual and backtracked and found several coins.

I've also tried switching between the two and checking signals. One thing that many don't try is once you find a coin in manual, switch to semi and instead of just swinging it over that target, go detect for a few yards over trashy ground and then come back and check the signal. Often gone. It sometimes takes some time for the machine to detune itself.

And as for Depth, a bigger coil can make a big difference and hunting when the ground is nice and wet is even more important.

Chris

There are certainly many that hunt exclusively in semi and do well, can't argue with success. But when I met with James N.D. and Tim and Dale up at Rick's(ND) bar for a club meeting I found that they all hunt semi auto. I've always wondered why they find so few seated (and IH's for that matter) when they get several hundred silver per year. I'm suspecting semi-auto is the cause. I understand that that part of the country is a bit younger than farther east, but seated should have circulated for 30-40 years there. The site where I did the test was not used until 1900 and I have pulled a dozen or so seated from that location.

I suspect that those that do well in semi would do even better in manual; but you do have to remember to run it up and down as conditions permit. And about the only condition that makes a difference is proximity to power lines or other sources of EMI.

Chris

 

[justdigging50]

Great info on the gain settings. I'll be cranking up my gain on my next hunt. Hope it will pay off.

 

[Rick(ND)]

I too Chris is a die hard manual user with the Explorer, but with the E-Trac I like the auto +3. The reason on the Explorer is I have seen and did test on actual coins in the ground and see what auto set too high can do for depth in some trashier area (Couldnt seen a dime on top of the ground unless you touched it with the coil when I used 32 auto). Manual I have seen a little more unstable, but quite a bit more depth.
I think Tim run Manual too as many of his finds are very deep.

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Rick,

Now that the Etrac actually shows you what sens it is running what are the results. Can you see it go down when you get near power lines? If you detect in a very trashy area and them move to a clean area can you see it go up and down?

Where does it typically run?

Chris

 

[Coinseeker 78]

I use auto 26 on sensitivity and compares my buddies reading in manual 24 and read the same depth as he does. We both use gain at 10. I find that I don't have a problem going deep and have found dimes, quarters and pennies deep as 10 inches and an easier time separating trash from coins with my pro coil.

 

[Rick(ND)]

Chris,

I look at it a bit, but not alot and I have only seen it change a number or 2 around power lines, no real big number changes. Where I notice my sensitivity will run is anywhere from 16-27 with mostly running at around 23-24.

Rick