I am trying to salvage my love affair with the SovGT but i'm losing hope...

[jbow]

The ground here is bad... BAD. Iron infested red clay. Iron hills. There have been commercial iron works here for 200+ years.
The Gt was my first detector and I really want to love it but it just does not stand up to either my T2 or my Tejon. I can hunt a small area with the GT and then go back with either the T2 or the Tejon and find relics that the Gt missed. I have 4 coils for the GT, a 12, 10, 8, and 5. An inline probe and a digimeter. I run it usually in auto because the ground is just so bad that I cannot get it to stabalize in manual, ever with it on 4:00, but one place in particular where I hunt is on a slope and I actually find bullets and eagle buttons on the surface. Everything is shallow there so the auto/depth issue is not a problem.
I run in disc with both the disc and the notch all the way down. I usually run a slight threshold tone, 8" coil, and go slow...

I am thinking of trying one more thing before I sell it. I am thinking of trying to hunt in all-metal then checking signals in disc... I don't know what else to do.

I am thinking that the GT is just not good in this ground. I took one of those rare earth magnets out in the yard tied to a string and drug it three ft... it was literally covered in small rocks... lots and lots of iron.

Any ideas? If I sell it I am going to buy some high end machine but I do not want another machine that will not handle this ground. I am considering an Explorer SE. Do you think it would be better here?

BTW... I have used the GT at other places, far from here, in better soil and at the beach and there it worked well so I am sure it's not the machine, but the ground.

Thanks for any help.

Julien

 

[Art (NWOH)]

I may catch some crap for this..........

If you consider that the SE or any other EXP is pretty much a souped up Sov, I would expect that it would also have a devil of a time in that dirt.

No matter what you use, so much iron will prevent the coil's magnetic field from penetrating the ground because of the magnetic premeability of iron......it traps and conducts lines of magnetic flux. This not only prevents penetration of the transmit field, but also blocks the returning field produced by metal objects in the ground. I would also suspect that that much iron would also cause a considerable increase in the coil's inductance, shifting it's resonant frequency downward.
Bad news all the way around.

You could try all metal because of the very fast tracking it has. Will probably be very noisy.
Listen for "bumps" in the audio that stand out from the background warbling that you will hear. You will probably get a bad response in disc mode, if any.
Expect to dig some of the larger or hotter iron rocks.

I will also suggest something that I would never say under better conditions if using all metal.......
Turn the volume and/or threshold down enough to drop the background variations in audio to a weak level, then concentrate on signals that distinctly are higher in response (volume and tone shift).

That's about all I can do for you.

HH

 

[Dang]

Oh man. I think I would have to move to where the ground is better.

 

[Rick(ND)]

Julien,

Been thinking on this one for a few days and I have run into some areas too with a lot of iron in it, mostly nails as they are everywhere. Now with the GT I would recommend running iron mask on as it may false a little more, but will see good target close to iron a lot better. I would also run manual sensitivity and set it according to what it can handle plus use either the 5 or 8 inch coil and go very slow. I did some test on my bar floor full of nails and I can even get my stock coil to read a coin next to all the nails in the floor. Now if I run auto it seems like it is harder to get a signal with all the nails.
I have had the T-2 and the Tejon and they are good detectors and will see between the iron some times, sometimes even do better than the Sovereign too at times, but find if I go real slow with the Sovereign I can pick up most all the good targets where the Tejon and the T-2 just get iron that will fool them.
Now on the Explorer SE if you were to try it I feel you would have to run all metal and ferrous tones so you would hear everything and go slow too to separate the iron from the good targets.

 

[JohnNZ]

I agree it sounds like extreme conditions for any detector..
JOhn

 

[NamVetLesTreasureSeeker]

HAPPY NEW YEAR JBOW, Another option is to use you T-2 or TEJON for your BAD SOIL, and save the GT for different areas. Such as beach, or if you travel out of your area to a MORE FRIENDLY Detecting Environment. I know having (3) detectors can be costly (i have (7) detectors MYSELF), but if after a couple of yrs., you don't really use the GT, you can always put it up for sale!! Personally, if it is still under the MINELAB WARRANTY, I think keeping it is a BETTER OPTION. Just MY OPINION, BEST OF LUCK, whatever you decide, HH, LES

 

[UK Brian]

I moved house to an area with more iron mineralisation and the Sovereign has now been relegated to beach use only. The Explorer as Art suggests doesn't really offer a better solution.
With either machine a smaller coil and slower sweep speed helped but then the ground coverage per hour was extremely bad.

 

[jbow]

to my Tejon. It handles the ground, on this particular site, better than either the GT or the T2. I alway's find something there though.. so I am not complaining!!

Thanks for the input... Art too..

J

 

[jbow]

The ground is bad but I pulled 7 Eagle buttons, 10 assorted CW bullets and three equipment buckles out of this one site in the last 3/4 hours of hunting. Yeah, there's a lot of iron and lot's of ore but there's also lot's of relics!! It's just the GT that has a hard time here. Some places it does ok but some not.

J

 

[jbow]

I am going to keep working with the GT. I like a challenge. I just bought an 8" coinsearch after hearing you guys talking about it in another thread. I tried it today on this same site. I did find one minnie with it. I switched after about 30 minutes and went over the same area with the Tejon using the 5" coil and found several square nails, also found some with the GT, and found a shotgun brass with the Tejon that the GT missed. Could have been the difference in coil size but I really don't think so. That bothered me a little because it could as easily have been a button. I may just set the other machines aside for a couple of weeks and go back to just using the GT. I think that is the only way I will ever be sure about what I am doing and about the abilities of the GT at a bad site... I just hate to feel like I am hunting and possibly missing stuff.
I appreciate the help.

J

 

[jbow]

n/t

 

[jbow]

it's not only the GT that is having a problem. My T2 is a bit overwhelmed too, it hear's too much. The only detector I have that handle's it well is a Tejon with the 5.75" coil. That setup will handle it well. I guess it really is a good thing to have multiple detectors. There certainly are other sites where the GT will work well... very well!

Thanks,

Julien