New Discovery

[pescadore]

I have had the E-trac for a couple of weeks now and have been using a modified coin program with multi-tones. I have noticed that I seem to have hearing loss with certain tones especially real high tones so I have had to adjust the settings accordingly. I also noticed that I could not seem to pull the nickel tone out of the rest of them so I was not finding any nickels to speak of. I was reading some information on the E-trac and I saw where some US coin hunters use 4 tone Conductive instead of Multi tone. I thought that I would give it a try today and I was amazed at how it improved my finds. With all my usual targets giving a high tone (but one I could hear clearly) it seemed to just settle things down and eliminate my hearing problem. I also discovered something else ... Nickels !!! Since nickels signals fell in the mid tone area I was able to hear them easier and checking the screen for the appropriate numbers. The biggest discovery today about nickels was that they did not read the same as air tests in my soil. I have been digging 12-13, 12-14 signals and an occasional 12-15 target and with very few exceptions have always found pull tabs or small pieces of aluminum. Well today I got a nice sounding 12-12 and decided to dig it. What did I find? A nickel !!! Well I started digging 12-12 and 12-13 signals only and found nickels almost every time. I double checked myself and dug a few more 12-14 signals and every time it was a pull tab so if a 12-13 jumped immediately to 12-14 or 12-15 I passed on them and concentrated on 12-12 or 12-13 signals. I am sure this is elementary stuff to all of the experienced E-trac users out there but it was like turning on a light bulb for me and I developed a new and improved love for my E-trac. Please give me some advice if using 4 tone Conductive is going to be a problem because I have a big hunt planned for in the morning and plan to use the same settings I used today. I hope I am not giving up anything by using these settings because it really seemed to make targets easier for me to hear and identify. They had a Carnival in town for the last few days and they shut down last night so I went to the park where they had the rides set up expecting to find a lot of recent drops but I found the opposite. I found about $3.50 in clad but most of the coins were 3-8 inches deep with only a couple of exceptions. I also found this 1972 Kennedy Half that I thought was a quarter. Nothing really special but they don't come around every day.

 

[Damar2003]

Congrats on the finds!

 

[Sailorman]

One of the nice things with the E-Trac is we can tweak things around to a point to find what works best for us. I found the multi tones difficult at first because my high range hearing is a mess. But I sort of adapted to it and found some headphones that helped me do better. If four tones are what's going to work for you then that's a good solution for you! I don't think there's so much a right and wrong, especially for those of us with hearing issues, as what works best.

 

[moose]

nice take. Nickles in my soil ring in around 12-13 to 12-15, unfortunately so do pulltabs. If I can lift the coil about 5" off the ground and pass it over target and still get a signal, I can usually count on a pull tab. I'm not one to pass up a good signal so I end up digging them anyway.
Also, if I pass over a nickle, I get a steady number. When I pass over a pull tab, the numbers tend to jump between 12-13,12-15 and even into 11-13 range. With that being said, most of my V-nickles fall into the 11-13,11-15,12-14 range. Normally when I get these numbers, I pay attention to the depth. If it's deep I dig for sure and if it's shallow, my curiosity has me digging anyway. just incase it's a shallow V.

Thanks for post.

 

[spark456]

You know I have had the same thing happen to me. I got my E-trac about a month ago now and I haven't had one nickel come out of the ground. I was going to put up a post about this but didn't want to be a pest asking stuff all the time. So i was thinking it was my setting so today I ran it wide open and still no nickels but I did get put tabs. When I had it wide open I dug everything just to make sure I didn't miss any thing.I was using the coin setting and then I would do combine picking coins jewellery good good stuff and X out pull tab, iron and other bad things ran it the hole day and got thinking hmmm no nickels so I took one out my pocket and did a air test and nothing E-Trac didn't pick it up.. So now I haven't been in to much trash and been running it wide open. Now I'll change mine to 4 tone and see what happen.. Thanks for you info and now I have to go back over all the ground that I already have done...... Spark