No tone on silver halves and silver dollars.

[ldhrelics]

I was hunting an old school ground the other day where I had found several silver halves with my E-Trac, and thought I could find some that I had missed with the CTX. I only had a couple of hours to hunt, so I created a pattern that only accepted the upper right quadrant of the screen. I had the tone set to combine. I only found one silver coin, a 1910s Barber, and a couple of wheat pennies.

When I got back home, I took out a bunch of silver coins and experimented with them. The cursor would show up in the correct position for the silver halves and dollars, but no sound. I decided to create a pattern from scratch using the auto accept, and got the same problem. I rejected everything on the screen, and when I ran silver dimes and quarters across the coil, I got a tone, and the rejected area changed to an accepted area. But, when I ran the silver dollars and halves across the coil, the rejected area changed to accepted, but I didn't get a tone on either of the coins. I repeated this with at least 20 other halves, and got the same result. When these coins passed over the coil, the threshold would null as if they were being rejected. When I return to the normal detect screen with the created pattern, I still didn't get a tone from the halves, but the cursor would show up in the correct position, but a rejected cursor would show up in the lower right hand corner of the screen. This tells me that I may have passed over many silver halves on my hunt and not even gotten a sound from them.

The original coin program works correctly, but when I save it to a new program and edit the pattern by rejecting all, and either manually or using auto accept, I have the same problem; no tone on halves and dollars.

I talked with a Minelab technician, and decided to do a factory reset. Once I did the reset, everything seems to work fine. So, the point of this post is to make you aware that this may happen and prevent you from finding the find of a lifetime. I hope this is not a problem with my machine or the software in general; time will tell.

If you have any thoughts on this issue, be sure to share them with us.

 

[Larry (IL)]

Thanks for the heads up Larry. Goes to show that anything that runs on software can get contaminated.

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

Very interesting I had some unexplained things happen the last day or so. Got a target tone and TID number and dug the target but once out of the hole laying flat in plain sight no tone but TID the first was a penny then I had a dime and quarter do it. I'll try a reset after I check to see I have all the programs saved in Exchange II.
Thanks
BCNJ

 

[JT in Virginia]

I think there

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

After reading this original post I picked up the manual and read through some parts. Found on the side bar page 41 Note: "The Ferrous Coin Setting May Not Always Give An Audio"
Idhrelics does not mention his setting in his post, and I don't recall what my program was at the times I saw similar results. But this gives a reason why it may happen.
BCNJ

 

[ldhrelics]

My initial setting was Ferrous Coin, but I couldn't get a tone on any of the other settings either until I did a Factory Reset. I've experimented a lot since I did the Factory Reset, and I can't duplicate the problem.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Use Gone Huntings settings on the CTX 3030, problem solved. It will hit everything!

 

[ldhrelics]

When I discovered the problem, I wasn't wanting a program to "hit everything". I was wanting a specific program for that moment in time. The Gone Hunting program as well as all the others I have tried worked fine. It wasn't until I tried to create a pattern using Auto Accept that I discovered this issue. The pattern I created in the field was created manually, but would not produce a tone on halves and dollars when I check it after I got home. After the Factory Reset, everything seems to work fine.

I've got a huge collection of coins and relics I have found over the years, and I've been able to create patterns using them on the other Minelab detectors that really increased my finds and saved a lot of time. Any of the "wide open" patterns will "hit everything", but there are times I want to hunt for specific coins/relics without hearing all the trash signals. My pattern 2 is always wide open.

I have owned the Minelab XS, Explorer II and E-Trac and would consider myself a power user with many great finds. I also now own a Garrett GTI 2500 and White's V3i as well as the CTX 3030. In the past, I have owned a White's TDI, a Fisher 75 LTD and a White's 6000 Pro XL. All of these were great detectors, and have their place, but I love the challenge of the "new" hi-tech detectors and enjoy learning and using their many great features.

So, I guess the point I am trying to make is that I would not have addressed this issue on this forum in the first place had I not verified that it was indeed and issue.

Factory Reset worked for me this time, but this issue is always in the back of my mind.