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I have a problem - eTrac and AT Pro - performance!

S

Shayne

New member
This is going to seem strange. I have an eTrac and just today, I received my new AT Pro. I bought the AT Pro mostly for beach and shallow water hunting. To test the Pro, I hit a small lot ( one acre) near my house that I have hunted for nearly 40 hours with the eTrac. In that 40 hours, I have found 75 wheat pennies, several buffalo nickles, two V nickles, four mercury dimes and one Roosevelt dime with the eTrac. I was always wondering why I had not found more silver. Anyway, in three hours with the AT Pro at the same lot, I found one Indian (first one - 11 Inches), seven wheat pennies, two buffalo, four mercury's and two Washington silvers (same hole) - 17 coins. The AT Pro was nailing the silvers at over 10 inches deep (settings were Pro and Zero Discrimination).

Here is the question, how is it possible that the AT Pro is deeper and the eTrac missed all of those silver coins? I know I have walked over them in the past. I have a slow swing speed. On my eTrac, I hunt with the stock Pro Coil, the SEF 6X8 DD and the SEF 4.5 X 6 DD. I run a baseline discrimination pattern that starts at 18FE to 35FE, Fast On, Deep Off, Normal, Multi, 15 Threshold, 30 response, Manual 21-23 and everything else is pretty much standard. I did dig more iron with the AT Pro (not much), but I attribute that to my learning curve. What are your thoughts? Is there a way to test the eTrac to determine if it is working to its full potential? The machine is relatively new - 3 months old. Please advise...
 
shayne... I have always wanted an etrac I think I would like one. I will say this.. The at pro is not a joke. I found a very small piece of silver. I was getting huge solid hits with the pro! You might plant a good coin garden and do some tests. There are also folks that sell settings or you might check out an Andy Sasbach book (i dont know if he made one for the E trac) bu I believe he did. You could always sell it and get another PRO LOL.
 
The only way to compare machines is to strap one to your back. Then check each target with both machines.
 
Sounds like a good time digging new targets in hunted out place to me! Have fun and keep us informed!
 
Andy Sabisch has a good book on the E-Trac and you can buy direct from him at his site.
www.sabischbooks.com. Also look at joining the site that deals only with Minelab machines as they are good and will help you.
http://www.minelabowners.com/forum/index.php


Jim
 
Both first rate machines. But because of the different sizes of coils used on each i'd say apples and oranges.
 
[size=large]The AT Pro meets and beats metal detectors costing twice as much in many instances when it comes to depth......[/size]
 
The E-Trac is a great detector and it takes a little to get to know it, feel you need a little more time with it. On of the things we found out that the factory pattern will disc out some silver dollars and also multiple silver or clad coins too. Being you said the silver was in one hole it was the first thing that crossed my mind. Take and make sure there is no black on the upper right of the screen as this is where they will reject more than one quarter or several silver coins together. Try taking 3 or 4 clad quarters together and using your program swing them by your coil and see if they reject them or break up, with the factory coin pattern they will, but if you are using a program with the top right open they should pick the quarters up with no problem.

Being so much good has been said about the AT Pro I have a new one coming later this week, but still over 4 feet of snow on the ground here in North Dakota, but will give me time to read and ask questions before I can use it.


Rick
 
I've had my E Trac for a lot longer than my AT Pro ....My At Pro is no sloutch by any means , but my E Trac will surpass what my AT Pro does on everything except gold, the weight , and the speed !!.....The AT is the Gold King !!.... With the matrix on the E Trac , I find hunting in parks or in trash MUCH EASIER to do with the E Trac, and the E Trac I find deeper .... It's got the benifit of both conductive AND Ferrous when discriminating targets !!......Much more versitile .......But for flying down the dry sand at the beach, with little trash around, looking for jewelry ? ......You can't beat the AT Pro !!.... It's a LOT faster than the E Trac ..... but now go to a trashy park ?.....You'lll walk out with a headache running the AT Pro !!.....You DO have a methods of realizing what is and what isn't a bottle cap , but when you hit at least 10 of them with every step , the AT Pro get's old fast ......When you can discriminate them out, while still being able to hear the coins and good targets, like you can with the E Trac , it's litterally a "Walk in the Park " ....... I will and have gone on record to say that there is NOTHING that can touch the AT Pro iin it's price range for all that it does !!.....GREAT machine in it's own right .....Jim

Shayne,
Criss crossing when checking this same area would account for finding more coins wtih the AT Pro ....In other words if you criss crossed the area that you hunted with the E Trac , and you hunted at a 90 degree angle compared to what you did with the E Trac , that would account for finding more targets , even if you did that with the same E Trac !!.........Jim

BTW , Pro Zero is the setting that I use and have used all of them to check depths ,and Pro Zero is the one !!...... I run my lower discrimination all the way up to 40 !!......Jim
 
I agree with synthnut. Love the E-Trac for hunting deep coins in hard hit parks and schools and prefer the ATP when hunting tot lots for gold.
 
We did that cardboard nail-test created by Monte in Finland with many detectors. Sorry to say, but E-trac managed this test very lousy. I wouldn't go in iron infested place with E-trac. It just can't find coins amongst nails and other trash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUd939-EOWU

AT PRO did much better. Even ACE250 with stock coil did better than E-trac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmmsGTtN6O8

http://www.youtube.com/user/huuhaa02#p/a/u/2/o1QmzpMBygE
 
I have both detectors and in my test garden the E-Trac is deeper. If you dont have a test garden you may want to make one......;o) I think some people swing the E-Trac way too fast. I know you said you have a slow swing speed but with the E-Trac you can go real slow. I have found many coins that I would not have found if I had not been swinging the E-Trac real slow. You may only get a small blip at first pass but if you stop and investigate you can usually get a better signal and then dig. Bryce on the explorer forum is known for pulling deep coins from hunted out parks. I think he just creeps along listening for the slightest little blip in the nulls. You can hunt real slow with the AT Pro too.

It may be like someone else said, it could have been that you walked one direction with the E-Trac and then hit the target from a different direction with the AT Pro. If there is an iron close to the target you may only get a good signal from one direction or angle. Both machines are capable of finding good targets in the junk.

I bet if you go over the area again with the E-Trac or the AT Pro just creeping along from different angles you will still find more coins.
 
The video is exaclty what I am talking about with the E-Trac swing speed. It was way too fast. Notice when he slowed down for a second he started to get a signal then he sped back up and lost it. If you swing it that fast you will miss a lot of targets. I would like to see the E-trac video done with a real slow sweep speed.
 
I think there is some misconception that you "have to" run the AT Pro "noisy". That is not the case. If you run it in Pro mode, with Iron audio off, the low iron tones below the iron discrimination setting should be silenced. Use the iron audio to check individual target for those pesky bottle caps.

In standard mode, I keep hearing it is like an Ace 250/350. But, the AT Pro can be ground balanced, the Ace operates at a pre-set GB, so the AT Pro, even in standard mode, will be a more versatile hunter.

I think the AT Pro might be a better park hunter than some are giving it credit for...from most reports, it is good at separating targets...given the trash in many parks, that would seem to be a good attribute. To the original poster Shayne, perhaps you were finding masked targets missed by the Etrac...all detectors seem to have their blind spots. At the very least, the AT Pro did a fair job at finding more targets at a well hunted lot.
 
Bill_S said:
The video is exaclty what I am talking about with the E-Trac swing speed. It was way too fast. Notice when he slowed down for a second he started to get a signal then he sped back up and lost it. If you swing it that fast you will miss a lot of targets. I would like to see the E-trac video done with a real slow sweep speed.
Click to expand...

Well, here is a another test and even the E-trac with SEF 6x8 coil did poorly in that nail board test in my opinion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdPwtBE4VM

Test coin was a 10 cent euro coin, sensitivity was 13 in this video and results was still poor and we tried to swing slow and fast. Also tried adjusting many different settings of the machine and still the same poor results.

I was almost surprised of the result it got, even my cheap Bulgarian Golden mask 3 walked all over the E-trac in this test.:detecting:

If someone is not satisfied of these tests, try it yourself and show us the video.:smoke:
 
Hello ets....Finder82!

Put that video here with Golden Mask 3 too. You can't get everything with money. So to speak, you don't have to pay thousands of your detector that will manage excelent with iron mask.
 
One thing about the the ATpro. You can swing it ultra fast or mega slow. It's not sweep sensitive. It doesn't need much movement to produce a positive target reaction. I guaranty that if in the video he just barely moved the coil a very strong tone would had been heard also. I still think there is more silver and gold next to trash then there is deep silver next to no trash. So I would give up depth for separation any day. Plus being over a pound lighter and waterprooof. That's a real bonus. I wonder what the big brothers to the ATpro will be like if it were fetching $1500? Just my opinion. There could be others that agree with me? Don't know?
 
Thanks for posting the videos. I still think you were swinging the E-Trac too fast. If you slow way down you should get better signals. I'm not saying the AT Pro did not do better but to be fair the E-Trac needs a lot slower swing speed. If you swing it that fast in a trashy area you will probably miss most of your good masked targets. I may have to make a nail board too and try it out. Did you get the plans from somehere or just look at the design and try to copy it?


I found it online at this link.

http://ahrps.org/_tipsAndTechniques/Nail_Board_Performance_Test.pdf
 
Bill_S said:
Did you get the plans from somehere or just look at the design and try to copy it?
Click to expand...

Here you go: http://ahrps.org/_tipsAndTechniques/Nail_Board_Performance_Test.pdf

Just copy the page 4 to a A4 paper, find 4 rusty nails for the spots on the paper and fire away.:)
 
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