Newbie's Comparison Of GT To Whites, Explorer, Etc.

[Critterhunter]

I have another IMPRESSIVE update. Second hunt and I grabbed an easy good find again! But first, batteries...Yes, nimhs or nicads (nimhs are worse) will drop their voltage over time in storage. It's never a good idea to use them in anything unless they've been charged in less than a week or two's time. An easy way is just to top them off a day or two before using them. You can charge a good AA nimh at roughly 1 to 2 amps for a quick (would take about 2 hours for a 2000ma cell at 2 amps) but this is hard on them and they should always be monitored for heat in a safe place when trying this. I'll often "blast charge" a pack when I absolutely have to use them in a few hours. Better to charge them at a nice slow charge rate. Energizer recommends .250 amps (250ma) for 2500ma cells. I charge them at about .3 or so. Takes roughly 10 to 14 hours as these cells often hold more than 2500ma, somewhere around 3000 from my experience. There also is less chance of a false peak shutoff by charging them nice and slow.

I just weighed one of my electric RC plane Lipos. These are 3 cell packs that charge to 12.6 volts, hold their voltage to near the end, and are used in RC planes as they provide high amp draw (40 to 50 amps or so!) while being light weight. The power to weight density of these packs is incredible. A 3 cell (4.2 volts per cell) 2250ma pack is 3.3 ounces lighter than the stock rechargable pack, yet has over double the capacity and will hold high voltage to the end of the pack. I'm interested in shaving weight off the Sovereign so I might use this pack. Even with an added connector sticking out the GT box somewhere it will still probably be about 3 ounces lighter. The only risk with these packs is that should never be drawn lower than 9V or it will ruin them and could cause a fire. However, I figure I'd have at least 30 to 40 hours of use before they hit that voltage, so re-charging every 2 outings or so should be safe. You need to use a special lipo charger for this like the $35 Accucel 6, and the pack will cost you about $28 from Hobby City. You could go to a 1500 to 1800ma pack from them for less money and shave a good deal more weight as well. Again, don't mess with this stuff unless you know what you are doing.

Went back to that beach for my second hunt with about two hours to kill. I wanted to dig only repeatable signals with a good number lock on, although I didn't care what that number was. Set the sensitivity up in manual around the noon position and was getting some nulling every 2 or 3 sweeps. Is this OK? Anyway, twenty minutes into the hunt and still not getting a solid target to dig when I finally get one. It sounds deep, but is going 176, 177, and jumping up to 180 back and fourth. Dig down a good 8 or 9 inches and out pops a thin ring. Very black and tarnished to the point that I figured it must be junk metal, but then I thought "Why would it read that high being this thin of a ring?"

Sure enough, STERLING woman's ring. Looks very old. Large diamond on top. Might be real! On my previous machines I would be lucky to dig a silver dime at that depth, let alone a very thing silver ring. And it sounded loud! I'm shocked and as said VERY impressed. More good target hunting got me 3 nickles, a round tab, two round tab tails, and a piece of tinfoil (knew it would be foil). Also dug a wheat cent and a dime. That's all I dug in close to two hours of hunting. Hardly any trash! This machine is getting deeper than I've ever got before and the target ID is still solid at those depths! I just can't believe my beginner's luck again or the fact that this machine is producing good finds with me being a newbie and extremely picking on target ID. Can't imagine how much deeper it would be going if I was digging those iffy ones!

 

[Critterhunter]

By the way, I want to shave as much weight of this machine as possible. What is the weight of the stock shaft and what is the weight of aftermarket ones, and what are they composed of material wise?

 

[Rick(ND)]

I tried rechargeable in the alkaline pack back in the XS and XS2 and never tried it in the Elite or the GT and know they seem to be good, but with in a hour they were giving me a low battery alert or shut down. At that time they were the 1700 Mha batteries and used my Sun Ray SR 12 charger to charge them. I may have to give a set of the Tenergy 2600 I use in my Explorer and my E Trac as these last a long time in our Explorers we use get a good 75% more than the factory rechargeable.The best part is they were real reasonable as you had to buy quantity to get a good deal, 60 of them cost around $1.50 each so after we seen how they worked I had ordered over 180 of them. I haven't had to order any this year yet and not sure I can get them for this price anymore as I see some sites are quite a bit more.
Like I say I m going to have to try a set in the spring and do some testing, maybe they will work in the GT or Elite being they seem to work for you.
The Tenergy 2600 are recommended for high current devices like Digital camera and metal detectors as I use them in my digital cameras too and they are great,

Rick

 

[Critterhunter]

Took the silver ring to a jewelry shop and the diamond tests real! A friend who is a gold smith is going to confirm that for me. It may be about a carat and a half. Can't believe my beginer's luck. It's going to spoil me to where I'm going to expect a good target right off the bat with the first one dug, or at least one good find at every hunt. I know that won't last.

On the batteries...Despite what I think it all comes down to just trying 8 AA nimhs 2500ma or higher and seeing what kind of run time they give before the Sovereign battery alarm sounds. This machine is unlike any I've ever used so who am I to say that they should work in it. That mysterious BBS electronics might be real picky about it's source voltage or something.

By the way, made a mistake. At 2 amps a 2500ma nimh pack would take about 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours to charge, but again that is really pushing it charge rate wise. If I want to flash charge a pack of this size nimhs I normaly won't dare push it to more than say 1 to 1.5 amps, and even that is hard on the cells and can be risky (always charge in a safe place and monitor the heat of the cells). It's much safer and better for the batteries to charge them at a lower rate, say 250 to 400ma, taking around 10 hours or so. That would also mean about 100ma for about 10 hours on the stock 1000ma pack.

I'm going to cycle (charge/discharge) the stock pack through my computer charger about 3 times. It will display the capacity put in and taken out of the pack as it goes. This should give me an idea of how good the batteries are. Often a decent cell will hold 300 to 600 more MA in capacity that labeled, where as a cheap cell or one that is running out of life will be lower than what's on the label. Exercising a pack once in a while can bring it back to life and/or give it more capacity. This used to be the rule for nicads to avoid memory problems. It's still a good idea with nimhs but for a different reason. Also, if a pack seems to be bad you can sometimes shock them into recovery by purposely charging it at a very high rate, say 3 amps maybe for a 1000ma pack. I've read this breaks down crystals that can form and cause the cells to not take a charge. After that it should be discharged and charged at a normal slow rate. However, VERY risky so make sure you know what you are doing.

A good charger will allow you to set the peak threshold, which is lower for nimhs than nicads, which is why you shouldn't charge nimhs in a nicad charger and it might not shut off. When the pack reaches peak charge the voltage per cell will start to drop rather than continue to rise. 5 or 6mv per cell on a nimh, 10 to 12 or so on a nicad. Setting this function right, which should be set slightly higher with a high charge rate, and slightly lower with a lower rate, insures that the pack will terminate it's charge at the proper time. A lot of cheap nimh or nicad chargers will false terminate and not put the true capacity back into the pack.

I might also point out a few more things about the 3 cell 2250ma lipo plane battery I plan to try. Not only do these require a special charger meant for lipos but also you need to pay strict attention to never charging them above 1C, or 2.250 amps for that size pack, which will take 1 hour to charge roughly. If you try to charge at a faster rate you risk explosion, fire, or worse with lipos. As said, they also need to never be drawn below 9V (3 volts per cell). Doing so can also cause bad things to happen, or at the very least you'll destroy the pack. In RC we have what's called speed controls or ESC's that have what's called a LVC (or low voltage cutoff) that is programmed to monitor pack voltage. When it hits 9V it kills the plane motor to let you know that you must land now or risk pack damage. Lacking some kind of 9V LVC warning using these batteries in something else requires that you pay close attention to run time and monitor the pack voltage to make sure it's not approaching that.

These packs are 3 cells that are sort'a thin and flat wrapped in aluminum like material. They stack on top of each other and are wired in series to produce the 12.6 volt peak voltage. The store well and don't drop voltage. However, they are much more volatile than nicads or nimhs, in that if you don't charge them right, overdrain them, or puncture the somewhat soft foil wrap they are in and you risk explosion or fire. I always store them in a metal container in my refrigerator (cold temp helps prolong pack life when stored), and I use the charger to put them at a "sleep" voltage which is best for them when I don't plan to use them for several weeks.

 

[Critterhunter]

Got out for my third hunt with the unit. Once again on that beach, and once again I looked for only solid target IDs, regardless of what the number read so long as it locked on. Believe it or not my first target once again was another ring! But, it turned out to be a junk one. For a second the large diamond had me going until I saw that it was an obvious junk aluminum ring. Also dug two tiny earrings (junk), a wheat penny, a deep nickle, and only a couple trash targets. I'm impressed with how little trash I'm digging by being very picky with the VDI lock on.

We only hunted there about an hour and then headed to the woods looking for old coins along a river bank. Screwcaps are killing me. What's the trick for avoiding them as they are IDing as a good high coin number. The only thing I think I've noticed thus far is the audio tends to have a "hollow" or echoing sound to it, sort'a like the sound is in a barrel. Still, I need somebody to tell me what to look for to avoid those things. On the QXT I could hear a skipping or scratchy noise to ID them easily.

After a total of about 7 to 8 hours hunting it's obvious that the unit is way too heavy with the box under the armrest. I was really worn out. Decided to try hip mounting the unit using the Minelab bag and the strap thrown over my neck/shoulder. Went out yesterday for about an hour and it seemed much better, but the box is hanging in my way when I kneel down. I could wear the Minelab bag with a belt around my waist but I need an easy place to put my new Harbor Tool Pinpointer. The holder the pinpointer comes with isn't making it easy to remove it.I found a leather utility belt in my garage which fits the box nicely and also has a seperate pocket for my pinpointer that makes it much easier to remove. Seems perfect and some test use in the yard puts it all where I need it, with a leather belt around my waist and the box and probe on my left hip out of my way. The utility belt even has a loop tool holder which nicely holds my digger, and a nice screwdriver holder for my metal coin probe. This seems custom made for the GT and all my tools.

Once I get out and hunt another 7 or 8 hours I'll know if the GT hip mounted like this will be easy on my body. I suspect it will make it a lot easier, but if I still am having problems then I may be forced to sell the unit off. I don't see it being a problem with it hip mounted, though.

Yesterday on my hour hunt I hit a spot with heavy minerals/hotrocks/iron that only the Explorer was able to get somewhat decent coin signals out of, though they were only about 90%. With it I managed 3 large cents in seperate holes, all with iron, and a barber dime and indians. None of my previous machines were able to get stable there and, although the Explorer still had problems, it managed my only finds at this site. This is one of the worst spots I've ever hunted in terms of mineralization. Anyway, with limited time I planned once again to only dig 180 signals. The Sovereing managed to get me an old copper woman's compact a little bigger than a quarter in size. It gave a nice good repeatable signal and was about 4 or 5" deep. I for sure missed it with the Explorer because I had gridded that spot with it. This proves to me once again that the GT is getting targets that the Explorer missed, though I don't know if this is due to the fact that I don't know this machine yet and thus haven't fallen into any bad habits about what is worth digging.

I had trouble getting the sensitivity to stabilize here. Not surprising with the bad minerals. Still, I'm confused as to what is the best approach to set it. Do you sweep around while increasing it until it starts to false, or do you pump the coil up and down and play with it? Problem with sweeping around in one spot is that as you increase it the unit is of course going deeper and deeper so I'm not sure if I'm just hitting deeper targets in that same spot like iron, causing the threshold to drop out, or if it's the sensitivity too high? I don't like auto as it way overcompensates in my testing. I need advice on setting it. Is there a problem with setting it a bit high to where it drops out and comes back every 3 or 4 sweeps? What's the disadvantage to setting it too high? I for sure need help here. Once in the woods I was once again able to max it out to full with no falsing.

Does anybody know what the aftermarket shafts consist of (just upper or lower too?) and how much they weigh compared to the stock straight shaft? If I can save enough weight I'd go back to mounting the box under the armrest.

I drilled out the two rivets holding the v-clip to the shaft and then used two 5" bolts with 6 washers/nuts to mount the V-clip about 4 1/2" higher and slightly tilted back. Now I can easily see it over the hand grip. $3 in parts and about ten minutes worth of work saved me $30 for an aftermarket adaptor. I had to grind down the heads on the bolts a bit so they would sit more flush on top of the V-clip and not block the meter as it slid on. Really made the meter more user friendly.

I plan to put a plastic marker cap over the adjustment for the meter to avoid bumping it. I'll cut the end of a marker off where the cap clicks onto the marker and glue that onto the meter around the dial. Then the cap will just snap off when making adjustments and snap back on to protect it. I've found myself bumping the dial as I often grab the detector right in that area when getting up from the ground.

 

[Critterhunter]

I got out with the GT today for it's fourth hunt. This time I went to a high ridge way back in the woods that overlooks a river. I stumbled upon this spot by accident when hiking one day. I had a feeling that it might be a good picnic/revival/or hunting camp by it's layout and it turned out it was used for one of those purposes. We gridded it twice using a QXT Pro and a 6000 Pro XL, digging any and all signals above iron as the trash content is very low. In fact, no modern coins or even pulltabs have been found at this spot. The most comon trash item would be shotgun shells and rifle casings. This site produced roughly about 20 to 30 wheaties and another 20 or so non-wheatie coins, including two barber dimes, a v-nickle, a few buffalos, 5 or 6 mercs, a few indians, and a barber quarter. All the coins dated roughly from 1880 to 1920 or so. A friend also found an ax head there.

Anyway, since this spot was gridded at least twice and also hunted randomly by us, combined with the fact that I'm confident it's never been hunted by anybody else due to being remote and also the ease of finds, I figured it would be a good test once again for the GT. The soil isn't very mineralized but some spots do have moderate to a lot of iron signals. I only had a little less than an hour and a half to hunt so once again I figured I'd dig any signal that would lock on with a repeatable tone and VDI number, though I didn't care what that number was. Ran the GT in disc, threshold, zero discrimination and notch. Unit was once again stable at full manual sensitivity. Still looking for info on cranking up the sensitivity inside the unit. I'm guessing this is what one of those "performance" tunes does, allowing the external dial to control a higher window of sensitivity.

Although my time was limited and I once again was real picky about getting a good signal, the GT produced several non-ferous targets we had missed with the other machines, including two wheats. One was only 3 or so inches deep but checking the hole after recovery confirmed that iron had masked it from the other machines. It still gave a good 179/180 signal on the GT and sounded good. The other wheat was down about 7 or 8" and not only did it ID perfect, it also sounded really loud. I'm pretty sure it was just beyond the reach of the QXT Pro and 6000 Pro XL, as a penny in the 8" range is pushing it for either machine. This hole did not contain any iron after recovery. This particular spot we had hunted particularly hard, as it's only about ten feet away from where 3 mercs and the barber quarter were found.

As you can see from the photo, total items recovered include 2 wheats, 1 round led bullet, 5 shotgun shells, two 22 casings, two larger rifle or pistol casings, two lead sinkers, what looks like a very small pawn for a tiny chess game, and some kind of metal mesh wire with connector. While no silver or other coins were recovered I'm fairly confident that with more time to hunt the GT will produce other coins from this site. Remember, we had already dug every signal above iron with other machines, gridding the area at least twice and randomly hunting it. What the picture shows is that the GT is finding non-ferous targets that we simply didn't get, probably due to either iron masking or depth. I'm anxious to get back there with more time within a day or two.

Tonight I plan to hunt the small beach again as I still haven't hardly hunted that spot and it's produced two good rings, one junk one, and two junk earings in no time at all.

PS- The utility belt on my left hip with a belt around my waist is a winner. No problems thus far, but won't know for sure until I've hunted a good 6 or 7 hours straight.

 

[Critterhunter]

I spent several hours in the garage conducting air tests and recording target IDs to make myself a custom chart I can carry with me. One thing I found that's nice to know is that all the rings and coins I tested would still produce the same audo and target ID even on edge. I think this is the first machine I've used that would do that. All the others tend to drop lower on the scale audio/ID wise.

I also played around with Iron Mask ON using a medium size nail touching a dime. Very impressed that the ID and audio were a perfect 180 with a medium to fast wiggle over the target. However, If you slowed down or swept wider the audio and ID would degrade, and if you moved 90 degrees and swept over the target it's audio/ID was bad no matter what you did. For this reason I plan to dig any targets I can wiggle a 180 signal with good audio out of in places with iron, even if the signal goes bad when moving 90 degrees.

I'm happy to see some patterns as far as comon trash targets go in terms of both audio and ID numbers. It should be much easier to split hairs on targets when ring hunting in trashy areas. I also can notice a distinctive smooth tone to the gold rings I tested versus the harsher or more hollow sounding pulltabs and other trash. With a lot of practice I'm hoping to be able to tell the difference with the audio even when the target ID is the same. Still, it should be easier than many of my previous machines to avoid a comon trash target and dig all the potential gold rings that don't have the same ID number.

Plan to post my chart once I've done some more testing and edited it a bit.

 

[UtahRich]

What size coil were you using on your ridge hunt?

 

[ToniSteve]

Great detail work Critterhunter. Like I said before you have a great approach to all this!

Best Regards,
Steve

I spent several hours in the garage conducting air tests and recording target IDs to make myself a custom chart I can carry with me. One thing I found that's nice to know is that all the rings and coins I tested would still produce the same audo and target ID even on edge. I think this is the first machine I've used that would do that. All the others tend to drop lower on the scale audio/ID wise.

I also played around with Iron Mask ON using a medium size nail touching a dime. Very impressed that the ID and audio were a perfect 180 with a medium to fast wiggle over the target. However, If you slowed down or swept wider the audio and ID would degrade, and if you moved 90 degrees and swept over the target it's audio/ID was bad no matter what you did. For this reason I plan to dig any targets I can wiggle a 180 signal with good audio out of in places with iron, even if the signal goes bad when moving 90 degrees.

I'm happy to see some patterns as far as comon trash targets go in terms of both audio and ID numbers. It should be much easier to split hairs on targets when ring hunting in trashy areas. I also can notice a distinctive smooth tone to the gold rings I tested versus the harsher or more hollow sounding pulltabs and other trash. With a lot of practice I'm hoping to be able to tell the difference with the audio even when the target ID is the same. Still, it should be easier than many of my previous machines to avoid a comon trash target and dig all the potential gold rings that don't have the same ID number.

Plan to post my chart once I've done some more testing and edited it a bit.

 

[crazyman]

The biggest misconception is that the Sovereign doesn't do well in iron. So far the Sovereign has been doing an excellent job in some of my iron infested ghost town sites. I had planned on a start in making a two part video this morning comparing the Sovereign with the Advantage which has a very fast response time and excellent iron discrimination but we have another storm passing through here today. First part will be testing known good targets with different size pieces of iron above ground in my yard. Good targets will placed below the iron but outside of the iron at varying distances. This is a better test as good targets above iron or on the same level are much easier to pickup.The second part will be in a virgin ghost town site where anything goes. I think some people might be very surprised how these two very different detectors stack up head to head and just how well the Sovereign does in heavy iron. There are a couple of other misconceptions about the Sovereign that I have found but that's for another day.

 

[Critterhunter]

Thanks, I know I get long winded but I'm real big on details when researching projects and conducting tests. Without specifics conclusions are meaningless in scientific circles. Just look at how well that works in politics.

I was using the stock 10" Tornado coil. Only one I have at the moment. Plan to buy a Sunray 12" and S5 in the near future.

I'm spent about four hours over the last few days building, tearing down, and re-working a chart I can carry with me (protected with clear box tape). I don't trust the few charts I've found already out there for the Sovereigns. Not that I think they are bad, just that I tend to trust my own numbers when it comes to this sort of thing. I already found a few differences, namely in where various nickles (v, shield, buff, jeff) land on the chart, as well as where square, round tabs ID, and most foil ID as well. I'll have to conduct more tests and also record ID numbers of undug real targets in the field to confirm my suspicions. Of course differences in things like pulltab numbers can be explained by the most comon types found in my area versus what was produced elsewhere, but I still think it's more than that.

I know the tired old slogan of "dig everything" and that's entirely reasonable at a place like the beach or in areas with low trash targets. However, most of the time I find myself at a place that is too large to dig "anything above iron" and is simply loaded with one, two, or three specific trash targets. In those kinds of situations it would take years to dig all non-ferous targets. I do manage to do this in smaller areas, though. However, it's much easier to improve your odds when say ring hunting by avoiding certain specific numbers and digging everything else. Or, at least only digging that "trash" number when it's deeper than the depth/age of that particular trash target. Another useful tool is to only dig targets that are repeatable in both ID and sound no matter which direction you sweep from, as trash often isn't uniformly shaped and so tends to ID differently depending on which way you are sweeping over it.

I have a friend who has several hundred or more gold and silver rings he's found with the Excalibur in the water. Since he dug every target above iron the pool of numbers shouldn't be biased (a person who digs only certain zones of targets looking for gold is altering the test sample). I plan to record the VDI numbers from every one of these rings, run them through some statistical processing, and then list on my chart what percentage appear within what number ranges. This should be very useful for those who ring hunt. I'm primarily a coin shooter but I can see myself doing a lot more ring hunting with this machine as well. Interesting enough, I've already found that even the smallest/thinnest of gold rings lock in at one ID number and have good audio, where as foil (even bigger pieces the size of a quarter) have a much lower VDI # and a very fuzzy/sick sounding audio response. Some may beg to differ but that's what I've found thus far, which may change as I sample more ring targets.

 

[Critterhunter]

The biggest misconception is that the Sovereign doesn't do well in iron. So far the Sovereign has been doing an excellent job in some of my iron infested ghost town sites. I had planned on a start in making a two part video this morning comparing the Sovereign with the Advantage which has a very fast response time and excellent iron discrimination but we have another storm passing through here today. First part will be testing known good targets with different size pieces of iron above ground in my yard. Good targets will placed below the iron but outside of the iron at varying distances. This is a better test as good targets above iron or on the same level are much easier to pickup.The second part will be in a virgin ghost town site where anything goes. I think some people might be very surprised how these two very different detectors stack up head to head and just how well the Sovereign does in heavy iron. There are a couple of other misconceptions about the Sovereign that I have found but that's for another day.

That should be real interesting. I can say that there is a difference between ultra fast recovery speed and "seeing" through the iron to ID a good target. The QXT Pro has the fastest recovery speed of anything I've laid hands on, to the point where I've seen it seperate coins/trash better with the 9.5" coil than a machine using a 5" coil. In fact, I found no advantage to using a 5" coil on it when comparing targets to the 9.5". However, there is a difference between the two methods...ultra fast recovery or "seeing" good targets in iron. For example, target distance reaches a point of no return where no amount of recovery speed can compensate. For instance, I could seperate a silver dime and a square tab laying side by side touching each other with the QXT, but as the pulltab begins to lay over the dime the seperation becomes non-existant. Now the target is averaged...IE: The coin and the squaretab become "one", splitting the difference in numbers and producing an VDI number and audio response somewhere halfway betwen the two on the conductivity scale. From what I'm seeing the GT doesn't do that (average numbers). It will take the highest conductivity target (silver dime) and display it's VDI and audio response while ignoring the iron. I'll have to conduct further tests to see if it does the same thing with a silver dime and a non-ferous target such as a pulltab.

Keep us posted on your research!

 

[Critterhunter]

Here's my early proto-type chart with other useful information for both newbies and seasoned hunters...

 

[Critterhunter]

Looks like I can't figure out how to save the Word file in a format Findmall will accept. Will try later...

 

[Critterhunter]

I did some additional target masking tests last night. What I found (with iron mask ON) is that even with a nail laying directly over a silver dime the VDI and audio is still perfect, provided the sweeping is kept short and fast over the target. Moving 90 degrees and sweeping, or sweeping slower or wider, will either give a bad/jumpy audio and VDI#, or the target will totally null out. I'm shocked that iron mask is able to do this well at seeing a coin directly under a nail, and without averaging the target! Sweeping over only the nail alone without the coin produces a complete null.

Next I used a square pulltab to try to mask the dime. Since this is a non-ferous target I found the results to be different. The coin laying directly next to the pulltab or even with the pulltab laying directly on top of the dime produces a smooth ID and audio response, but now it's averaging somewhat. The VDI was somewhere in the 170-175 range, depending on which direction I swept over it, but the VDI and audio still remained stable! There appears to be a distinct difference between how non-ferous and ferous masking targets are processed by the machine. All this is very impressive!

 

[UtahRich]

Next I used a square pulltab to try to mask the dime. Since this is a non-ferrous target I found the results to be different. The coin laying directly next to the pulltab or even with the pulltab laying directly on top of the dime produces a smooth ID and audio response, but now it's averaging somewhat. The VDI was somewhere in the 170-175 range, depending on which direction I swept over it, but the VDI and audio still remained stable! There appears to be a distinct difference between how non-ferrous and ferrous masking targets are processed by the machine. All this is very impressive!

Critterhunter, next time you're experimenting, try placing a desirable target of lower conductivity (i.e. nickel or smaller gold ring) beneath a pull tab, round or square, and notch out the pull tab. Will the Sov still pick it up?

I have a hard time doing any of this at home because of electrical interference around my house. I don't have any major power lines overhead, but there is some electrical interference that drives each of my detectors nuts.

Rich (Utah)

 

[kered]

if you disc out pultabs you will lose most gold if not all, when i first got the etrac i loaded the coin patern, rejected out pulltabs and foil then with the edit/learn passed and accepted a good few gold rings, chains and pendents, by the time i finished the disked out shadow had gone, lesson learned.
If you disc out pultabas using the disc you disc out ALL metals up to pulltabs, if you must get rid of a particular pulltab use the notch, although i would not advise anyone to do it epecially on the beach

 

[Critterhunter]

Yes, it's valid to say that notching will cost you some rings, but it's just as valid and in many cases the only logical solution to increase your good-to-bad odds by using notch or splitting hairs with the VDI. Without (yet) testing the width of the notch by air testing close numbers I don't trust it. I need to know exactly where it starts. I already know where it'll end if I move the notch slowly up until it finally kills a certain tab. Sweep over the tab and that's the VDI number the notch is ending at. But, exactly how far down the scale is it going? If it's very wide it may be killing a good many lower targets as well.

I tend to trust using no disc. or notch and then just watching the VDI, splitting hairs on numbers to avoid pulltabs specific to that area and then digging everything else below it down to about 90 (foil range, but foil tends to be jumpy), and everything above it. I'm thinking that provided I only dig repeatable ID and audio targets that will also eliminate a good deal of trash, as all my ring testing is finding total lock on and smooth audio, even if the ring is standing on end. Yea, I know nearby trash, depth, or mineralization can cause unsteady numbers/audio, but once again I'm talking about increasing my odds here on the good to bad.

I just finished about two days and roughly 5 hours of trash testing. I recorded the numbers of square and round tabs, round tabs without tails (they mostly read in the same range as the ones with tails!), shotgun shells (most comon targer in the woods), 22 casings, and several other more comon trash targets. I grafted a total of 57 round/square tabs and the results are encouraging. I'm finding a very high probability of them being in a specific few numbers. This includes at least 5 or 6 square tab types, and other 5 or 6 specific round tab style types. Variations in design doesn't account for much change in numbers if any at all, so that's encouraging. What I did find was that a broken tab (or one with a crack in it) would drop vastly on the scale. Since they are way less comon that intact ones I'm exluding those numbers. What's also interesting is that round tabs with their tails in various positions (from curled in to pushed flat) are not really changing the numbers, nor are round tabs with the tail missing!

I'm thinking it may very well be a workable strategy to avoid these and target other numbers for gold rings. My strategy will be to dig a few probable pulltab signals at a new location, note where they are on my scale, and then avoid those. If the variance is too great, in that the numbers are coming up anywhere within my grafted chart's range of tested numbers, then I'll switch to avoiding that entire number range.

Right now I'm finding most round/square tabs to read right at 158, with the majority of others reading between 153 and 165. Only 9 out of 57 read slightly out of this number range slightly below 153 or slightly above 165, by no more than 4 digits (down to 149, or up to 169). I'm planning to list percentages within those numbers, like say 50% at 158, 25% from 153-157, 25% from 159 to 165. I have them on a graft. Just need to crunch the numbers. I'll post this chart once I have something worth looking at.

 

[Critterhunter]

Next I used a square pulltab to try to mask the dime. Since this is a non-ferrous target I found the results to be different. The coin laying directly next to the pulltab or even with the pulltab laying directly on top of the dime produces a smooth ID and audio response, but now it's averaging somewhat. The VDI was somewhere in the 170-175 range, depending on which direction I swept over it, but the VDI and audio still remained stable! There appears to be a distinct difference between how non-ferrous and ferrous masking targets are processed by the machine. All this is very impressive!

Critterhunter, next time you're experimenting, try placing a desirable target of lower conductivity (i.e. nickel or smaller gold ring) beneath a pull tab, round or square, and notch out the pull tab. Will the Sov still pick it up?

I have a hard time doing any of this at home because of electrical interference around my house. I don't have any major power lines overhead, but there is some electrical interference that drives each of my detectors nuts.

Rich (Utah)

OK, I'll get around to testing that. I'm going to guess that (provided the notch isn't too wide) notching out the pulltab and then placing it over a nickle may in fact still produce a signal. Look at my test of a squaretab placed over a dime. It decreased the VDI by roughly 5 to 10 because of averaging. If the notch is turned out to just knock out the pulltab and then it's placed over a nickle I'd suspect the number would average as well, with the signal now being somewhere between say 158 for the pulltab and 145 or so for nickle, so perhaps it'd be 152 or so. But all that depends on just how wide the notch is. It's end would be set to just kill the tab at 158. Only some close target number testing is going to show just how wide the notch is. I wonder if anybody has ever done that? It'd require various targets at roughly 1 to 2 digit changes over a certain number range. Maybe various lengths of copper wire could be trimmed to set the numbers, but based on my tests with round tabs with and without tails I don't see any great variations. Most are reading the same with or without it. Something I'm glad to see because it's going to make hair splitting on rings a little easier.

 

[Critterhunter]

if you disc out pultabs you will lose most gold if not all, when i first got the etrac i loaded the coin patern, rejected out pulltabs and foil then with the edit/learn passed and accepted a good few gold rings, chains and pendents, by the time i finished the disked out shadow had gone, lesson learned.
If you disc out pultabas using the disc you disc out ALL metals up to pulltabs, if you must get rid of a particular pulltab use the notch, although i would not advise anyone to do it epecially on the beach

That's a problem I had with the Explorer as well. There can be such a thing as too fine of resolution on targets. With the dual ferous/non-ferous numbers identical tabs can jump over a larger (although still small) area and block out a good target, and the reverse being that opening windows for rings can let a lot of junk in. It's so fine of resolution that even seemingly identical tabs with set other slight variations in numbers. After you scan enough "identical" tabs in the window gets bigger and bigger with wider and wider variations. It can be useful to have a machine average certain targets into a less fine resolution. Patterns are a little easier to see in some respects. I liken it to trying to get too close to an object with binoculars. Instead of zoning in on what you want to see you've got a blurry mess that doesn't make much sense. Others may and probably will disagree.