Menu
What's new
Find's Treasure Forums

Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!

You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.

Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.

Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.

Click here to register!

Need Support Help?

Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you

Changed email? Forgot to update your account with new email address? Need assistance with something else?, click here to go to Find's Support Form and fill out the form.

Manual versus semi-auto sensitivity

C

Charles (Upstate NY)

Well-known member
I have tested this in the field many times on targets before they are dug and neither approach was 100%. I have seen good signals running semi-auto turn to crap when I switched to manual or vanish altogether and I have seen the same thing when running manual and switching to semi-auto. Soil mineralization or the lack thereof and the current moisture content is a huge factor as is EMI/RFI interference.

One point to remember is that the Explorer transmits at 100% strength at all times, none of the settings including sensitivity has any effect on the strength of the transmit signal into the ground and target. There is also no preamp or curcuitry in the coil itself so the recieve signal in the control box is what it is. All you can do is manipulate this receive signal via your settings, boosting some with gain or deep ON, filtering, narrowing the sample window and recovery time as you sweep via Fast ON, etc.

I wish there was a single "best" setup that would get it all but there isn't. Maybe thats a blessing in disguise. Like Golddigger was saying, if your site seems pounded clean don't get in a rut, change your settings around and try a new approach.

Charles

PS: You guys who are going to try semi-auto like golddigger,I seem to recall hearing a few years ago that he also runs his gain at 10. That could be a factor.
 
The way I read the Manual, or what I THINK the manual is trying to tell me is that gain is really nothing more than a SIGNAL volume control....????:shrug:
 
For the most part I usually run in semi auto. On occasion I will switch to manual. The only time that I switch is when the ground conditions require me to change other settings. Happy Hunting Grounds,

Savage (EX-II)
 
Yeah, like the more you run up your gain the more a deep targets sounds more like a shallower one. And if you keep it below something like 6 then your "deepies" will sound deep. That was the way I thought of the gain function. And so if you have decent hearing and good headphones then raising the gain would only serve to confuse. I like my deeps to sound deeper than my shallows. I usually run mine at 5 or 6 but have tried 7 and 8 as well. It's on 6 right now.

So Charles, am I understanding it correctly or is there more to it?
 
The Explorer is computer pure and simple, it has a stereo sound card incorporated into the electronics very similar to what a home pc has on it's motherboard.
Bottom line is to think of that sound card and your settings the same way you would a equalizer with multiple options. Every adjustment, whether it's gain, sensitivity, fast, deep, and even the threshold strength affects one or more settings on the sound card and how the Explorer sounds and reacts to the changes made.

Mike
 
Target response in terms of volume works like this, deep targets (weak signals) sound fainter than shallow targets (strong signals). As you increase the gain the machine begins to amplify the volume of deeper (weaker) signals while leaving the shallow (stronger) signals alone. With your gain at 10 (the max) all targets sound the same in terms of volume.

So why might this be an important piece of information when running semi-auto sens?

First take my normal setup. Manual sens, adjusted on the stable but hot side manually so its a bit noisy and I can hear the ground signal as well BUT both are faint and easily ignored with my gain set to 7. If I raise my gain to 8 or 9 or 10 these high pitched false ground signals now sound so loud and strong that I waste a lot of time investigating them. Half the time they sound off once then when you sweep again theres nothing there or they turn out to be a tiny bit of iron.

But I'm fine right, coins will sound off loud and clear? Not always.
Deeeeep silver and silver on edge can sound nearly identical to this high pitched ground/iron falsing as it turns out and it can sound flat and lack those fluty tones we are used to listening for. Its a case of not being able to hear the forest for the trees, with so many false signals how do you pick out the occasional faint silver signal that sounds nearly identical?

I came across one of these signals almost by accident once. I was swinging away, heard one of these flat, faint high pitched signals, ignored it at first and kept going but something didn't quite add up. That sounded just a touch too pure for a false signal. I went back and although it was just a peep of a signal it repeated from several angles. I dug one of the deeper dimes on edge that I have dug. I can say that most days I would not have been able to tell that signal from the frequent false signals.

Well so what would happen if I switched to semi-auto instead of manual? Would that lower my sens to a more resonable level and get rid of most of the falsing while preserving the faint silver signals? Now if I then boost my gain to 10 those faint silver signals are going to sound really loud. Might this be how some people manage to dig 500-600 silver coins a year? I don't know but its interesting.

I can tell you this, with my current setup I dig a LOT of masked coins hiding near iron and trash but I DON'T dig a lot of deep coins.

Charles
 
Ah, that old black magic! Well Charles, once again another great post. And it's nice to see you making so many lately...really nice. I have observed pretty much everything you stated. And it's a curse really, the constant desire to tweak and push the machine and to try so many different things...it's pretty much the reason I got rid of my DFX a long time ago. I was very successful with it for the 6 months I had it. I was a regular poster on the DFX Classroom forum and always had a lot of stuff to show for it. Ultimately I moved on for the sheer simplicity, raw depth, and just plain damn competent performance that I get from my CZ-70...one hell of a fine machine that I will never get rid of. But I had the desire to once again practice the "black arts" as it were, so strayed into the Minelab camp. And since them have had the Elite, the Quattro, the Explorer II, and now have the Excal and the SE. The Excal has done me REAL well, paying for ALL my machines several times over. So that and the CZ are keepers for life. And until Minelab comes out with something better than the SE, that one will be too. I think I was born to "tweak" and love the versatility and "voodoo-tech" that Minelab has bundled into the Explorer. The last 4 or 5 times I've gone out I have dutifully packed my CZ along as well but for some reason it always ends up sitting on the bench. :)

HH!
 
Hi Mike,

You talking about black magic prompted me to post this pic of the SE, my Son is a graphic designer so he made me a couple of decals for the SE.
He figured that anything that you waved across the ground and up came money had to be magic
All the best.....Boony
 
I'm not sure how my post came off but the truth of the matter is the Explorer does have a true stereo SOUND CARD unlike anything Whites, Fisher, Tesoro, Garrets or any others I've used over the years.
Plug in a set of good quality headphones that you would use on a home stereo (like Bose) and listen to the true bass and flutey sounds of the Explorer and you will hear exactly what I'm talking about.
No other detector even comes close in sound quality.
Way different than our detecting phones, unfortunately they just won't hold up to the punishment in the field.
Hope that better explains my post about the settings and the affect on how the Explorer reacts and what the end user hears.
Like Charles posted, the Explorer has the same detecting power in very low sens settings as it does when turned up. That's a fact.
Every selection made to the audio, fast, deep, and so on may or may not give positive results. All adjustments are site dependent and up to the user to learn what, where, and when to make those adjustments work to their advantage.
Sensitivity is just that, it makes the audio more responsive to the target, but it can be over-driven as can the other adjustments we all like to play with.

Now that I've got everybody confused ... I'll say good night :)
Mike
 
Funny, because I actually put those stickers on there a week or so ago, just for grins. But I agree...the machine is a cut or 3 above the rest and the sound is top notch.
 
Oh yeah, Koss Headphones instead of the Jolly Rogers. The ground was wet, it rained yesterday. Lots of Grunting & High pitched signals that I DIDN'T dig because I deciphered them as Iron???? 00-00 I got a LOT of them & by sweeping at different angles they always came back with at least 30-00 for at least a couple passes of the coil, so I'm PRETTY sure they were Iron (Decomposing Bottle caps???)...numbers or crosshairs seemed to stick in Deep Mode so I switched to fast and slowed WAY down & everything semmed to clear up pretty good...I didn't have but about an hour so I didn't really have enough time to thoroughly check headphones & settings...I did however lower the Sens. on the digs to 22 & didn't see much of a change...Maybe on the positive side for the lower sensitivity, But with lower Sens. there was not nearly so much grunting or other signals...I don't think I'll be hunting FULL BORE very often as I have SEEN that it Does affect depth on the negative side at times...I also got a lot of signals that didn't repeat when in the Higher sens. The wheaties were all in an area about 10' square & about 4" deep...after I hit the first one I did a small grid of the immediate area & out popped the other two...1927 S, pretty good shape,1925??? Pretty bad shape & 1919 that is not TOO bad...I'll be going back to that spot in the near future...About 100 yds. from where I found the Barber Dime...TT
 
Yep, the sound & tones can't be beat...I forget who it was that said they liked the Darth Vader look...I think it was Mike in Va. Beach...but if you fiddle around with it you CAN actually make it sound like the light sabers....TT
 
Charles, great post. Am I to understand from your last post, that when you hear a iffy signal that you hit your back button and change your gain to 10 and see if it sounds better. Thats an interesting way to hunt. I've never tried that.

Thanks Charles.

Tom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top