Hunting in all metal vs. disc question.

[rufus3898]

I have only used my gt 3 months last season before the snow came, now that spring is here I am ready to go out and give'r but i have a question. last year I can remember finding a few canadian large cents at about the 8 inch depth that sounded off nice in disc but were hard to locate in pinpoint. after hearing all the chatter about hunting in all metal in books and online seems to lean to all metal giving max depth. so why can a coin sound deep but clean in disc but so hard to find in pp mode? am i missing something here? i thought that pp is similar to all metal but it makes no sense to me that in disc the signal is so much better than pp. i am using a s-8 coil and would love to know if it is better to hunt for deep coins in all metal than disc and why is my pp so weak on good deep disc signals. thanks all

 

[Neil]

If your hunting for canadian coins you would do well to buy some books by a guy named clive clynick. he hunts up in canada and uses a sov and excal alot and addresses the issues with hunting with those type of coins, what they are made of.

now whether all metal or disc is deeper seems to be an area issue more than anything if you go by this forum. one thing I would mention is when your tuning your sovereign to hunt, setting up your sensitivity that is, you have to do it for both modes. one mode you may be able to run higher sens which would show up in the depth your getting out of a mode. the amount of falsing and listening to your threshold will help determine how high your sens should be as well as actually adjusting your sens to various in ground targets to see how your sov responds.

 

[OldBeechnut]

I'm a excal all metal hunter and Neil is 100% on it. I will do everything I can to hunt in all metal, and it just does not work everywhere. I do a little traveling and use the excal's on different Beach's, and what works in one area may not work in another. So get to know your machine, In time you will hit a area and within a few minutes you will be able to determine what will work the best for you at that location....Good Luck ..joe

 

[excalme]

I would agree with Joe, as in regards to finding what works best for you in the area you are working. As on other posts I (like yourself) found my Excal to be going deeper and giving clearer signals in discrim. Although every other detector I ever had always went deeper in all metal. Very odd but there you are.
But its best to check. What I do is once detecting I try a few different setting on various signals from decent bangers to faint dodgy sounding whispers. Mark the target then walk a few feet from the target, set the detector in another mode and go over it again seeing what difference in signal. Do same again but perhaps altering your sensitivity this time, again come back onto the target and see how it responds. I sometimes found that knocking my sens down I actually got better response. Imagine it being like trying to drive in fog with your high beams on your headlights on. It doesnt work. same with sens set too high etc.
Its quite fun and doesn't take long and you soon find out which setting you are getting on that area works best for you that day.
best of luck and may the sun shine on you. Martin.

 

[Critterhunter]

Excellent point about setting sensitivity for disc and for all metal before judging which is doing better at depth at a particular site. As I've said numerous times, I've found disc to go deeper than PP or all metal on my GT but now I have to question if I've tweaked sensitivity for All Metal when comparing. I always just assumed it was stable because the machine wasn't eratic, but perhaps it can get a little higher in sensitivity than disc can and achieve a little more depth. Regardless of what any of us has to say I'd say it comes down to each person testing his particular machine at his particular site, which is far more specific than even the area he is living in. So far PP and All Metal have not been as deep as discrimatinate for me but I'll have to tweak sensitivity and a few other things a bit farther to further prove my findings. Good point you made. What bothers me is that there have been some really deep targets I can hear well in disc on my GT but not a peep out of in PP or all metal. Perhaps re-adjusting sensitivity will compensate. Regardless, I look at hunting in such a "primative" form of detecting as PP or All Metal as a time consumer. Even if it was getting slightly more depth discrimination is already getting deeper on the GT than pretty much any machine on the market so why kill my time by searching in PP or AM which is going to bother me with every single iron signal it runs across. On the beach if iron is not heavy then that extra depth could be a deadly weapon but I bet in 95% of all beaches even it's going to put a drag on your totals by checking out what discrimination would instantly tell you is a "null". Remember, it's not like the Sovereign is lagging behind other machines in discrimination and so needs any edge it can get. You're right there with the best if not beating them (Etrac/explorer) on depth in discrimination so why go "80's" with detecting modes to try to beat non-existant competition. If you are all about that then buy a PI, which *might* get deeper than the GT. Then again, why not go SEF on everybody's *#s and put your GT into an orbit than no other machine can probably match?