Question about calibrating a meter.

[JASONSPAZ1]

I just got one of those awesome Ron's meters for my Sovereign GT. I have heard some people calibrate the meter to read 179 on a quarter and some people calibrate it for 180 ( the traditional way). What is the benefit for calibrating to 179 over 180? I just want some opinions as to what you guys do.

Take Care
Jason

 

[Critterhunter]

There is no benefit to calibrating the meter to 179 versus 180 I don't think. One thing I do though is calibrate the meter to just barely read 181 on a silver dime. This is tricky to do....You want to raise the number just enough so that it now reads 181 so that you are just on the edge of 181, like 181.1 or 181.2 in digital terms. What happens then is a clad dime will read 180, while a clad quarter will either read 180 or 181 (I think it'll read 181 then). A silver quarter will read 181. It can be tricky to set but if you get it just right you're fine tuning the meter to make a split in numbers. Where as if say you calibrated a silver dime at the mid 180 number like 180.5 then probably clad dimes and clad quarters will also read 180. See what I'm saying? You want to get right to the edge of the number by very carefuly tuning the pot to where it just ticks over to 181 on a silver dime.

I'm not sure what kind of resolution the Sovereign has in terms of it's meter output but let's guess and say it's on a 10 digit scale, from 180.0 to 180.9. If you fine tune the meter just in that upper range to where it just ticks over to 181 on a silver dime it changes things I think. It's not easy to do. You have to just hardly move the POT to 181 on the silver dime. I like being able to see 181 on clad quarters while ignoring 180 signals as most likely clad dimes.

It would be interesting to see somebody using a meter with a XXX.X scale, as to whether you could make distinctions between coins that way having the extra fourth digit. It all depends on how much resolution the Sovereign has in it's output to the meter. I would guess there is some form of resolution because how else would it determine to tick from say 179 up to 180 in strength?

Keep in mind that I don't rely on the meter to decide to dig or not, but I get extra excited when I see a 181 on the meter when calibrated this way. I mostly go by two rules when hunting and coming up on a coin signal at a worked out park. If the coin is shallow I won't dig it unless it's near trash or is giving me a bad coin signal. That tells me that it could be an old coin that nobody has dug yet because of being masked. The other coins I dig besides shallow masked ones are of course deep coins. Say 6" or deeper. If I know how deep wheats start at a site that's the depth I use to decide to dig or not.

I use that trick for hunting rings to. If I know how deep pull tabs go at a site I'll start digging ones that sound deeper than that in the hopes of something good. It's a little tricky to judge target depth by sound but it can be done if you know your Sovereign well.