Newbie Explorer Observations

[berkeley bottle boy]

I bought an Explorer about a week ago and spent a good 15 hours working it this weekend.

I found that Semi-Auto 13 wouldn't pick up a quarter at 6" but Manual 13 would.

I started with Gain at around 7, but lowering it to 5 and raising vol by a notch gave me a much better feeling for depth. Gain at 7 made everything sound the same.

I'll have to try Audio 1 again now that I have a different gain setting.

It is rather different from the Sovereign. With the Sov there is a clear response to a sweep of the coil whereas with the Explorer the sound feels slightly disconnected from the motion of the coil. Also with the Exp even a tiny tiny motion of the coil is sufficient to keep up the response -- so much so that I sometimes had a hard time keeping the coil still enough for silence on a steep hillside.

Pinpointing is a snap. I guess I've done enough DD PP that the PP mode is an unexpected luxury.

 

[Dan-Pa.]

I would advise you to run in quickstart for a bit before you start playing around with advanced facets as when you get into the adanced facets you will understand them better.
Gain is nice to give you a modulated effect and many prefer a lower number to tell the deep from the shallow, however it is possible you may miss that real deepie if you don't have the gain at 10.
Two schools of thought on semi-auto as some feel it may overcompensate and cause loss of depth, but then at manual can you set to be as accurate as the unit itself in seni-auto...
Heck learn what normal is telling you, before you jump to audio one as quite a difference.
Using many machines over the years they all differ so treat it as an Explorer as its not a Sov.
Having said all the above feel you are an experienced detectorist and feel in the near future may be answering questions, but the post was made lest some newbie go too fast and really fry his brain.
So many are intimidated by the small tel. book and the many facets and strange flute like tunes so feel the average detectorist take it slow.
Actually many have proved the Explorer is only as easy or hard as you want it to be and many excell with different settings..whether they be just a step over quickstart or perhaps rather quite involved.
I guess the choice is up to the individual operator and feel a debate on various facets can be helpful to all whether newbie or experienced..

 

[berkeley bottle boy]

Thanks Dan, its good advice to go slowly and change only one thing at a time. The various interacting settings is a lot more complex than turning a single (or sometimes two!) knobs on the Sovereign.

Jacking up the gain initially did confuse me a bit in that I couldn't tell shallow from deep(er) targets. I also need to take both detectors out so I can compare what I know with the new.

I can only imagine what it'd be like coming from a single/few tone machine. Brain fry I suppose!