Interesting email concerning the Sovereign Elite

[Jim Vokes NY]

G'day Jim,
I am relatively new at the detecting game as I have had my Sovereign Elite for 2 years now and I love reading tips on how to get extra performance out of this amazing machine. I was at a beach here in Brisbane (Australia) a little while ago when I noticed a strange thing; The beach has a clay base about 15" to 24" down. Above that is heavy, black sand mixed with rocks and shells. I was hunting in "disc" and was only getting the occasional null in the threshold and out of boredom I decided to dig them anyway. Imagine my surprise when out popped an old gold ring!! Sure enough, there was very little iron on this old beach but the old targets had sunk down and settled on the clay base and would only give a null, that was all the machine could manage. Now I use all metal mode on this beach and dig everything as I know I'm on the limit of the detector's depth. I've found over 20 old gold rings this way as well as loads of old (for Australia) coins from the 1910s 20s and 30s. It really goes against all I've heard about signals in discriminate mode.
Cheers, Bob Hirst

Hi Robert,

What you say somewhat surprises me as well. I am not an expert on beach hunting but I have experienced for example that old Spanish silver found on the beaches of Florida sound and read like "Lead"! In my area of western New York State, signals sound and read as they are advertised. The only exception is when two targets are adjacent to each other like a nickel and a silver dime. Then the sound and signal tend to average out so I too, tend to dig everything. Most successful hunters of old coins and jewelery do.

I know also that to find old coins on Florida beaches, one must hopscotch the miles of beach and dig a hole to see how much sand is on top of the base. Sometimes as much as ten feet. If the base is deeper than 12-15 inches, one should move on to find an area that is within that range if looking for old coins. If one is looking for recently lost jewelry, then hitting the more popular beaches is the trick.

Sounds like you have a great place to detect and I envy you for sure. You are way ahead of the pack, because you have "learned" what your machine is telling you in the area you hunt.

May your finds always be golden!

Jim Vokes NY

 

[Beachcomber]

Hi Jim,

I hunt the beaches here in NJ and the Southern NJ Beaches have a layer of black sand like those mentioned in your Post. I rarely use the meter on my Sov GT but one thing I have noticed when I do is that when enough of the upper layer of sand has been eroded and the detector is seeing the coins down in this black sand layer that the target ID reads much lower than normal. A deep quarter can read down in the Nickel range. So it is entirely possible that under those conditions some of the nulls could be gold rings or nickels. So far everytime I have dug a null to check it has been iron but I keep hoping that someday one of them will turn out to be a gold ring

HH

Beachcomber

 

[adam in cal]

I have to say that is why you need to listen carefully to the threshold, on deep targets the machine makes no audio response other than a null in the threshold when the threshold comes back the pitch of it will be different than when it comes back over iron , its very subtle but that is the difference, I have seen many deep targets that dont hardly move the meter nor make any blip, just the threshold disappearing , its when the threshold comes back that you can determine if it passed iron or a potential deep coin beyond detection depth, that is the only way to get them 15 inch deep coins it aint like they sound like anything you would normally dig... I am glad you are seeing what the elite can really do, It took me along time to figure out the difference between deep iron and deep, deep coin , because you have nothing to go on other than the sound of the threshold when it comes back, and that is a very subtle change , I have mentioned this before and I am glad you have experienced it first hand and reaped the rewards for being paitent and inquisitive in your digging, Its definately something most wont fully understand until they have a firm grasp on the sovereign , but this is one of the things that make it such a strong capable machine,... I think people just expect it to sound off loud and clear on a super deep target,and as you see thats clearly not the case you need to be aware of the threshold at all times....... Very good work

 

[alaskaseeker]

In Hawaii in Dec using my Excal, I found a lot of very deep coins just listening for nulls, this does work in an area where you know there may be deep coins or jewelry, usually when you kick a couple of inches of sand away you start getting a regular tone again. I didn't dig past to see if there was any kind of a hard pan or reef, but there could have been in places. I did this when the surf was too rough to hunt the water plenty of stuff in the dry sands areas.....Geo

 

[Beachcomber]

That is the reason I usually don't even put the meter on. I would rather just listen to the sound rather than listen and look at the meter. By knowing that the really deep targets read lower than normal on the meter makes it even more important to learn the sound of a deep or fringe area targets.

HH

Beachcomber

 

[Rick(ND)]

Most people don't see this, but as I read your post plus the one that Jim posted I see you are seeing what I have seen over and over again.
This is why I do not like the silent search as you never will hear the null of a good or bad target and listen for that little tone change that sometimes only when you go super slow over this target. These are the deep ones many walk right over as they may null as they are deep and by going slow you can get a positive signal on them to know they are the ones you want to dig.
For those deep signals you have to have a threshold, you must run manual sensitivity and you have to go real slow in order to hear the change in the threshold plus have a good set of headphones. Once you have heard a few of these signals and dug the deep targets like the guy that E Mailed Jim you will find these are easier and easier to find.

Good Luck and I feel now that you see what a deep target sounds like we will see more posted by you.
I also find that the Explorer has this null too just before a good tone, only worst for me on a deep target.

Rick