Now I am a new 800 owner and by no means do I have tons of hours with this thing yet but I would definitely start with Park 2, Field 2 to get a feel for the thing.
I am not a relic hunter either but what I do hunt in is the SE., an area of the country with a lot of mineralization and where I live tons of extra iron.
My devil dirt is bad, it pretty much limits depth a lot...in some areas we can get deeper maybe down to 6-8" but signals are usually screwed up to the hilt on just about anything much past 5".
Masking is a huge issue here, I found that is a layer of great targets at about 4-6" that has been missed by every one over the years because masking is such an issue.
At some sites where it looks like it might be better black dirt and not even the red stuff looks can be deceiving, a buddy and I buried a quarter about 7" deep and neither of us could hit it.
Not a peep using an AT Pro or my F70 both with big coils.
I tried every setting I could think of including all metal with all settings maxed.
The reason I tell you all of this is to give you an idea of how bad it can get around here in our dirt.
Now the other day I was running around using my 800 and I was using Gold 2, I chose that just to mess around and get an idea of how well this thing could deal with the mineralization we have using a mode designed for mineralization.
Sense wasn't super high, I don't think it was even past 20, reactivity was on 4 or 5, iron bias was on 1, ferrous on 0.
Annnnd I was using the tiny sniper coil.
I got a signal, very jumpy from lower to the 30's but it read real deep, I got curious and went after it just to see how deep it was.
On the way down I dug 2 rusty nails, common around here, but there was still something deeper so I kept going.
Finally, at pretty much the 10" level I dug the house nozzle you see below.
Totally falling apart and brittle on the outside because it had been down there for a long, long time.
Still, I was thrilled there was something down there that deep and shocked I could get a reading on it in my dirt with that teeny, tiny coil.
Definitely learn your new rig well and try the normal relic modes but one day switch to the gold settings and see what this thing can do.
If I hunted for relics this would definitely be a mode I would be using.
