New Explorer user... what is this "Threshold" all about?:yikes:

[Socal Hopeless]

I metal detect in search of coins, and really nothing else, (besides rings and jewelry ofc) so please keep this in mind when helping me!

I've been running with discrimination set to only allow high tones (Quarters, Dimes, Pennies) and slowly broadening what is allowed into my pattern (I.E Zincs and below) as i get to learn what to dig, and what to leave.

I'm putting my sensitivity to mid-high 20's depending on what seems reasonable for the location. But I'm also using the Noise Cancel button, not sure if this is a bad idea. I dont know about what channel I should be using either... is channel 1 okay? I know I'm green.

I also don't really understand the "Threshold"... all I know right now is that it goes away when I swing over a target, I just want to know, is there an optimum setup for the threshold? should /Can I turn it off all together?

Thanks Everyone, I'm definitely learning, just a few questions. !

 

[IDXMonster]

Socal,the manual is a MUST read....what I'd type here is in the manual.

 

[DougF]

Read the post titled "First outing with Explorer SE Pro". Lot of good info there from Charles(UpstateNY).

 

[Socal Hopeless]

really quickly can i get some info on the channels 1-11 from anyone? thnx will get to reading my manual thoroughly today, have been reading that post that Charles is giving all the good info in.

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Noise cancel just shifts one of the two square waves transmitted by the Explorer by a slight amount - hold the search coil next to your headphones while you are wearing them and you can hear the shift. The explorer uses the two square waves transmitted to create the (28?? I think) receive frequencies which vary from around 1k hertz to 100k hertz (I think)

Basically it shifts and listens for signals over ten frequency shifts, the channel with the least signals gets chosen. That is why you are supposed to not move the coil during a noise cancel, you are trying to eliminate signals caused by electrical noise in the environment. If I remember correctly some channels don't process info from certain frequencies because they land on 50 or 60 hertz power line frequency harmonics and are likely to be noisy.

There are some detectors that have a single transmit frequency, say 7k Hertz. Other detectors may transmit at 15k hertz. One frequency may be better at finding small gold or other low conducting non ferrous items. They explorer is only varying one of the frequencies by a small amount of hertz, perhaps changing the lowest frequency processed from 1k hertz to 1.1k hertz and the highest from 100k hertz to 110 k hertz.

Basically with the FBS detectors you are always using a wide range of frequencies so it doesn't make any difference in performance which channel gets used, other than avoiding local EMI.

All sorts of other settings DO make a difference, don't worry about the channels.

Chris(SoCenWI)

 

[Socal Hopeless]

I deeply appreciate the info Chris, when I feel like I'm having trouble hitting targets there's a million different options I worry I might have wrong - I can rule this one out now, thank you

 

[IDXMonster]

Absolutely well explained Chris, I was just too beat last night to give it a go,though it wouldn't have been as thorough anyway...

There are so many reasons why a person may not be "hitting the coins" but I will guarantee anyone that not having your coil over the target is the biggest. You can have a downright shizzy setup but if you scan enough ground thoroughly you WILL find coins. Maybe you won't find all of them that your machine is capable of finding but looking for them where they're NOT is a good way to get the detector into a closet for good. To put some perspective to it...I've found a couple of clad quarters at close to a foot all the way to my best coin,1844 Large Cent,at 5" and a lot of stuff in between. ANYTHING CAN BE ANYWHERE AT ANY DEPTH. Lots of people get hooked on spending lots of time tweaking for what they hope is magical amounts of depth when in reality,with a modest and stable setup you will find many things. I found a 5 silver coin spill at a school that I could've detected with my pinpointer. Now ME....I've cleared a local park of shallow to medium depth targets pretty well so I am a tweaker,as it has become a necessity to keep the place producing. Hopefully SoWiChris will be able to help me achieve that goal...

Threshold is constant background hum that has purposes:
1) Tells you about the stability of the machine. Nice and smooth constant hum means it's stable,but perhaps not optimized.
2) While you're swinging,it will go SILENT as the coil passes over a DISCRIMINATED target. That way at least you know that there was a target there if for some reason you want to check it out further.
3) If you have a lot of loss of threshold(nulling) in DISCRIMINATE mode you may have a lot of closely spaced items or "bad ground" I.e. Mineralization,iron oxides,etc. To get the threshold back to a stable hum you may have to lower your Sensitivity some or slow way down. Larger coils will be more susceptible to this as they are dealing with more ground and targets all at once.

I have a 5" Detech Excelerator coil that is UNREAL in trash and for depth. No kidding...I've found coins at 7-8" with this little guy. Problem is,it doesn't cover much ground so you have to use something like that where the medium and large coils just won't perform as well. I also have a Sunray X-8 Stealth coil that I was a bit wary of at first but is now my favorite coil. An 8" coil that can find coins at 10"?? It's much lighter than my 1050 coil and it's great wherever it goes,what's not to like? I'd like to get the Pro 11" coil just for the weight savings in addition to possible increases in depth detection but my stock coil is so SMOOTH its hard to pull the trigger on that right now.

To wrap it up,and I may get some dissenting opinions but....keep it simple right now until you get to know the machine a little while. Running in factory presets will find you stuff reliably and won't be overwhelming. DONT assume everything good is way deep,it isn't. Many good things are simply where others haven't looked,or they've missed. Advance with some overlap of sweeps and TRUST THE MACHINE to do what it's designed to do. You spent good money on it for a reason,and it wasn't the free hat! Start slow and work your way up. These guys here have oodles of experience and ideas on how to get every last thing out of these machines,but an understanding of the basics is needed first.

HH!
Kevin

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

My two cents worth, these are two of the really simple set and forget settings.

Threshold - just loud enough to hear it, a tone you find pleasant and comfortable. With good headphones you will probably never have to change it once set.

Noise Cancel - I just push the noise cancel button and let it do its thing, coil on the ground motionless during the cycle. Its rare that this needs to be adjusted again once set at the site and on the beach I rarely had to do a noise cancel at all. I detected about half a mile from some huge radio antennas near Boston once, you could not lift your coil off the ground at all, even the X1 probe picked up that noise. Underground AC power lines pretty much suck as do electronic dog fences. I seem to recall reading some posts years ago about how certain noise channels were supposedly better on silver blah blah but I never tested it. With the Explorer on an oscilloscope the two square waves barely budge as it cycles through the channels.

 

[Socal Hopeless]

Thank you very very much, I am still messing around with the machine and putting hours on it, some days feel like a step backwards, some a step forwards, but man. It's tough to stay confident.

 

[Nuke em]

I did not read all the posts on here , sorry but when i saw your post Socal i nearly broke my jaw on the floor

Yesterday i found on a beach a nice 11.6g Platinum wedding band and that was a low tone , i also found way over 150 coins that come in from fairly low to very tone .
Dont set patterns up that disc anything on the right half side of the screen .

Threshold is a way to hear or not hear ! when you have discriminated out a section of screen , you will get a null if a target is found in that area .
Thing is if a target that is nulling is found and it is next to a target that is disc'ed then you will lose both targets .

Just because you have discriminated a section it doesn't mean that the machine is not finding targets there , it means that you have chosen not to want to hear them .