New to E-trac??

[JiminBama]

for years I have have been using Whites detectors. Now I have bought a Minelab E-trac any good advice for this old newbee????
Thanks for you input Jim

 

[khouse]

It truly makes your old spots new again. Get ready to dig deep ones. Run Bill_S's trashy park pattern.(sticky at top of forum) Make sure you have ground set to difficult and trash set to high. Run your sensitivity in auto while learning. Then later when you get the hang of manual sens go back over your spots again to find even deeper treasure.

 

[JiminBama]

Thanks Kenny for the info I need all the help I can get>>

 

[E-Trac-Ohio]

Welcome to the forum Jim !

There's lots of real nice people in this forum that have alot of time in the field with their E-Trac's.
Read their posts and post any questions that you have - this is a great place to learn about your machine.
You also can visit the Findmall - "E-Trac Classroom" forum.
And if you don't already have one - be sure to get a copy of Andy's - Minelab Explorer & E-Trac Book - it goes way beyone the factory manual !

As mentioned above - I'd go back to any of your sites that have given up older finds in the past - take your time - swing low and slow and listen for the good deeper signals.
One of the E-Trac's claim to fame, is the that it can find the deeper Silver that other machines have missed.

Good Luck !

 

[Surfinsafari]

The E has a learning curve so don't get frustrated with it. I started in factory coin and had a blast at old picked out sites. One day the E will just " click" in your head and you will realize how easy it really is to run. It has tons of features but I won't use anything but 2 tone ferrous, all metal, and I go slow. It is astounding what this machine will sniff out if you give her time. You can play with some of the settings and it really won't matter much, get metal under the coil and it will tell you. The key to FBS machines is go SLOW. That was the hardest thing for me to learn after years of using a Whites beep and dig. The stock coil is amazing at separation if you go slow. I use the 8x6 SEF coil in really trashy sites and it is even more amazing. I bet all Minelab users would agree with me that the whole secret to the Etrac and any other FBS machine is to go slow. I bought my son a Garrett Ace 350 and he runs like a mad man and gets frustrated because I follow him and dig out everything he missed. Overlap your swings and go slow and you truly will clean out a site with the Etrac. I couldn't be happier with mine.

 

[Hopskippy]

It truly makes your old spots new again. Get ready to dig deep ones. Run Bill_S's trashy park pattern.(sticky at top of forum) Make sure you have ground set to difficult and trash set to high. Run your sensitivity in auto while learning. Then later when you get the hang of manual sens go back over your spots again to find even deeper treasure.

Great advice! This is exactly how I learned my Etrac. After learning the coin sounds and ID numbers using the Bill_S trashy park pattern ( going very slowly), I opened up the pattern ( Andy S pattern) and started digging the other numbers. Go watch all the Etrac videos on YouTube, that will help you tremendously! Bill_S (DirtFishing) has some GREAT learning the Etrac videos on his YouTube channel ( http://www.youtube.com/user/DirtFishing/videos?flow=grid&view=0 ) as well as several other Etrac users there.

Good luck, You are going to love your Etrac! HH

 

[Tired Rooster]

Congratulations on your new Etrac. Good luck Jim........

 

[elzorro49]

Does your Etrac make a humming sound when you turn it on?

 

[surfchunker]

the humming is "threshold" and you want to adjust it to where you can just barely hear it.

 

[khouse]

If you search Bill's "Dirtfishing" (remember to put a capital "D" on Dirtfishing) vids for "Metal detecting a local park with a couple Minelab Etracs" You'll find us trying to make an entertaining video. Plus you can see the disc patterns we are using for this site. My youtube channel is "mowerdog". These are mostly ring finding hunts.