Sovereign Elite - can anyone help?

[Den]

I am not a beginner as I have been metal detecting now for several years, but I am hoping for some advice from anyone who has a Sovereign Elite as well. I have read the instruction manual for the Elite from front to back and although there are instructions for getting started and setting the switches at the dots, even for putting it on to automatic for straight-away detecting, there are no examples of where to set the controls for the notch or the disc apart from those 2 spots to start off with. In your detecting on various lands what settings would you suggest I try so that I do not miss any hammered coinage? This is the first machine that has stumped me.

Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated. Thank you.

 

[Rick(ND)]

The Sovereigns are a little different than any other detector in the fact it gives you much info and let you decide what to dig and what not to. In this case the disc and notch are to be left off (counter clockwise all the way) so you can hear all the different tones and look at the meter if you have one for ID numbers. Now even with the disc and notch all the way off the Elite will not pick up small iron, so what you hear will be all the non ferrous items starting with the low tones of alum foil and going to the higher tones of copper and silver depending on the conductivity of the target. Now some will turn up the disc until it will disc out the smaller pieces of alum foil, but not much higher as you will lose nickles and gold rings too. Now if you ever use notch on any detector you know that this is another disc that is set higher than what the reg disc is set at and only covers a small area of disc. So now if you have no disc or very little disc you can swing the coil over any item you don't want to pick up like a pull tab and turn the control until it will null on this target. Now when the detector sees this target it will be a broken signal or a null. Both the disc and notch will not reject alum screw caps, or our zinc coated pennies we have here or anything higher reading. I think you will find most that use the Sovereign, Elite or the GT run no or very little disc and use notch only when one target is really a problem one, we go by the tones to tell what is good or bad targets.
It takes time, but it is one great detector.
For hammered coins I feel you will have to run no disc or notch at all so you will only be rejecting iron and use the tones and meter to ID your targets.

Good Luck!! You have a great detector that takes a little time and some patience to know, but when you do you will love it.

Rick

 

[kaustin]

I have a Elite and I had the same issues with it but as Rick said it has a learning curve that is different from most detectors. The first thing I did was picked up a "Coin search coil"and that helped a whole bunch. My coin finds went up 75%. As Rick said best to run no "DISC or Notch until you get the "feel" of the machine. I agree with Rick about the sounds, you will learn in time what the Elite is telling you. Go slow!If you have a meter only use it to verifiy the sound the target is making. The biggest thing I found about the meter is it changes numbers based on the depth of the coin. A coin, say a quarter would read 160 at 4" but at 8" it might have a different reading, so I dig all sounds until I know the machine better.
Keep bugging Rick he knows them the best.
Good Luck,
Keith

 

[Den]

Many thanks to you both for taking the trouble to reply. I will give your advice a go this week, if the weather improves, and let you know how I get on.

 

[adam in cal]

hope to see some old silver coinage being posted after you get in tune. The elite is a killer ,best thing is you do real well even while learing it,stay with it ..it just keeps gettin better. Even on the deeper coins you should still know its a coin,the only time I struggle is on the way hunted out places I tend to always talk myself into digging what I know to be iron,if you wiggle the coil long enough over a rusty nail it will read and begin to sound like a coin....Cheers man good luck

 

[Den]

Well everyone, I'm back. The weather hasn't been bad, a bit dull with sunny spells. I have taken the advice of you all and put it all together. I also purchased a 10inch coil and i am using both - but not at the same time! (I'd like to).

I have slowed down with the machine and I must say this has been a big help. I have also set it to auto on all switches except fixed tone which I have kept. I kept the threshold down pretty low and over the last few days this is what I have found:
3 musket balls
Bronze thimble
3 bronze buckles
Several dandy buttons
Half a dozen old pennies
Medieval horse's shield pendant - quite worn.

I have tried it on corn stubble, ploughed field and I have also taken it onto a field where the crops are rotated - onions one year, potatoes the next. I noticed the onions planted there have over time corroded whatever was there far more than normal corn would. The onions must interfere with the chemicals in the ground; they also interfere with the machine. Therefore I clicked on to automatic, it seemed to cure it.

Thanks to you all for your help, when I have something further to report you will be hearing from me again. In the meantime if you have any more thoughts, this Elite novice will be glad to hear from you. I have had every other machine bar a Tesoro and a Garrett.

Over to you.....

 

[UK Brian]

You should really have asked on a British forum as hammered coins are one of the main items your searching for. Nothing anti U.S. but there's nothing similar in the States to hammered except thick foil which everyone there is trying to avoid.
Discrimination at minimum is almost to high for the U.K. and notch would rarely if ever be used. Very few bother with a meter and tones are hardly necessary as the variety of finds in our fields mean only ferrous/non ferrous discrimination is needed (and only small ferrous at that).
Volume at the machine should be as high as possible, reduce it at the headphones. Unless you have a problem area like you mentioned, always try to get out of auto.
You may have got headphones with the machine but there's many that don't get the best results, especially when using tone mode. If you post on www.minelabowners.com you can find out whats recommended for the Elite.