Sovereign GT help ?

[SWMO Mark]

I was reading where you could turn off the iron mask on the GT. What advantage if any does it make to turn it off. Is it deeper Off? Just curious. Thanks, Mark

 

[matthias]

According to the GT owner's manual depth is greater with Iron Mask ON.

 

[Critterhunter]

It's a bit confusing the way Minelab has worded Iron Mask being On or Off. One would think that with Iron Mask "ON" that it is doing it's best to eliminate iron signals, and that with it OFF it's not. In reality on and off is the exact reverse of what you'd think. With it ON the Sovereign is doing it's best to "see" any non-iron signals through the iron signals, and so the machine will let false hits caused by iron to sound off a bit more than if you were to turn Iron Mask OFF. It's rare but I've heard some say that they prefer Iron Mask OFF to quiet the machine down a bit. With it ON I find the GT to be as quiet and well behaved as any machine I've ever owned, so like most out there I keep it ON all the time to give me full ability to unmask any coins that might be laying with iron. I myself sort of look at Iron Mask as a more robust iron reject function, or in some ways a hot rock rejection found on some machines. I never use hot rock reject because it can smooth out really deep coins, and I prefer to not use any iron rejection so that I can have full potential with it comes to hearing masked coins as well as achieving maximum depth. What is different about the Sovereign, however, is that it also has unique abilities to "pull" a good coin signal out of iron or other trash. By turning Iron Mask OFF you are to a small extent limiting the machine's ability to do it's thing and find those coins. Mainly people who find iron mask ON to be a bit noisy or confusing are those who are new to detecting. With any kind of experience you'll find that you want to use your ears to discriminate targets, and that this machine is very stable and quiet compared to many others on the market.

What I found hard to get used to on the Sovereign is that iron elimination is for the most part built into the discrimination mode. I've never owned a machine that wouldn't allow me to crank the discrimination all the way down and thus hear everything including iron signals. I liked to do this to get a "feel" for the layout of a site and also because it will give you maximum unmasking ability and depth. However, first you should realize that the GT can be ran in an All Metal mode which will allow you do hear everything at a site. Second, and most importantly, don't confuse it's "preset" iron rejection in discrimination mode with having less ability at finding masked coins than other machines that allow you to crank discrimination all the way down and so accept even small iron targets. Even with it's preset iron rejection a Sovereign will still unmask coins in iron and othe trash better than any other machine I've ever owned. That's due to both how the coils hit the multiple targets in the ground and also (and mainly) to how the Sovereign picks apart the "dual target signal" and throws out or mostly ignores the junk signal and sounds off to the good one. I've seen no other machine do as well at this, from fast "recovery" speed machines to even my Explorers. The Sovereign can sniff out the good stuff in junk or on edge, yet get deeper than anything on the market as well. It's a lethal weapon that many overlook because it has the "look" of something older and outdated. Witness how many people run to some fancy computer screen detector. I've owned most of them and let me tell you that you should never judge a book by it's cover in both people and detectors.

 

[SWMO Mark]

Critterhunter, thanks for the info. In your opinion do you think the GT will go deeper than a Etrac? What kind of ground are you hunting in? Thanks, Mark

 

[HaroldILL.]

That was a great post! I own a E-trac and have been kicking around the idea of getting a G.T. for a while now as a second machine so I am also intrested in your comparison. Also does the G.T. have the modulated audio were the deeper targets are softer sounding than the shallow targets? If so is it built in or adjustable like the volume gain setting on the E-trac? also how is the weight and balance compared to E-trac? I know you can chest mount the detetor ,But I never liked doing that unless I had to. Thanks for your and anyone else's response!

 

[Beachcomber]

I agree with most of what has been said in these Posts but it's funny that no one seems to have noticed one interesting thing about hunting with Ironmask On or Off. I hunt mostly beaches some with a good bit of Iron some with practically none. I am also probably one of the few people out there who hunts primarily with the Ironmask feature turned off. As was mentioned with the Ironmask turned on the machines falses or pops and makes annoying sounds when going over iron which after an hour or two gets really annoying. By turning OFF the Ironmask feature the machine quiets down and is much more enjoyable to hunt with as it will just null when going over a piece of iron and yet you can still recognize a good target that is mixed with a piece of iron. But the one biggest thing that I have found is that by turning off the Ironmask I can run the Sensitivity up 1-1.5 steps without increasing the falsing gaining a definite improvement in depth. You can also hunt a bit faster with the Ironmask off as you don't spend as much time investigating the false signals trying to determine if there really is a good target alongside a piece of iron. So maybe some of you that have never tried it the next time you are out just try turning off your ironmask and try raising your sensitivity from the setting that you normally use with the ironmask on and just see how much higher you can raise it while still maintaining stable operation. JMHO

HH

Beachcomber

 

[Tony]

I agree with most of what has been said in these Posts but it's funny that no one seems to have noticed one interesting thing about hunting with Ironmask On or Off. I hunt mostly beaches some with a good bit of Iron some with practically none. I am also probably one of the few people out there who hunts primarily with the Ironmask feature turned off. As was mentioned with the Ironmask turned on the machines falses or pops and makes annoying sounds when going over iron which after an hour or two gets really annoying. By turning OFF the Ironmask feature the machine quiets down and is much more enjoyable to hunt with as it will just null when going over a piece of iron and yet you can still recognize a good target that is mixed with a piece of iron. But the one biggest thing that I have found is that by turning off the Ironmask I can run the Sensitivity up 1-1.5 steps without increasing the falsing gaining a definite improvement in depth. You can also hunt a bit faster with the Ironmask off as you don't spend as much time investigating the false signals trying to determine if there really is a good target alongside a piece of iron. So maybe some of you that have never tried it the next time you are out just try turning off your ironmask and try raising your sensitivity from the setting that you normally use with the ironmask on and just see how much higher you can raise it while still maintaining stable operation. JMHO

HH

Beachcomber

Thanks Beachcomber.....I will definitely try with it OFF when I hunt the beach soon.
Any means to increase sensitivity is really important to me.

Tony.

 

[crazyman]

I played with the iron mask off briefly in my yard and did notice it seemed to run a bit smoother. I've been beach hunting quite a bit lately but I haven't tried it on the beach yet. I'll try it on my next beach hunt. My ground is pretty bad and so are our beaches and it does say in the manual that iron mask off should work better in high mineralization.

 

[Critterhunter]

When I was considering the GT over my prior Explorers or going straight to an Etrac I asked in this forum. Do a search and you'll find a thread about 8 months or so old with a lot of comparison info. Also, while I can only say that *for me* the GT is deeper and unmasks targets better than my Explorers did, I can say that I also got quite a few PMs from people who own or owned an Etrac and found the GT to be deeper, at least in some sites where FBS machines seem to have problems with stability more than BBS machines (meaning the Sovereign). Thus far I'm confident that I'm as deep and probably deeper than an Etrac based mainly on those opinions and other numbers I've dug up on the depth of coin finds, but I have only been exposed to an Etrac for a VERY short time in the field and so can't offer my old actual field comparisons. I will say that the Etrac fixes many complaints I had with the Explorer, balance being just one of them. Either way all 3 are awesome machines and based on your personality and hunting style you will prefer one over the other. Remember too that to get the best depth and performance out of a machine you have to understand it and also need to be "telling you" what it's seeing in the ground in the way that your personality and hunting style wants to hear it. That very grey and subjective area is where opinions are formed on the depth of one over the other.

 

[Critterhunter]

Beachcomber, that's a very interesting observation. What I'm wondering, though (and this is no slight at you so don't take it that way) is if the perceived extra stability allowing slightly higher sensitivity settings and thus depth is more imagined then real. Meaning, are you sure you can't run the machine at the same exact sensitivity level with Iron Mask ON as it is OFF and not that it's just you having trouble determining what is a false signal versus what is real? Probably made that more confusing then it should be. What I mean is perhaps the machine is just as "unstable" with it OFF (and even more so because you've cranked up the sensitivity), but it's not allowing the unstability to sound through as much with noise reduction OFF? Still probably not very clear, but I think you know what I'm asking. It can be two different things- either OFF is drowning out some of the falsing from too high a sensitivity or ON is just "doing it's thing" by little any little peep through which is different than being unstable due to too high of sensitivity. Now I've confused myself...

 

[Critterhunter]

What kind of ground are you hunting in? Thanks, Mark

Mostly we have limestone bedrock and clay around here, but also deep black soil. Some areas also have shale. The PH of the soil is very neutral thanks to the limestone and limstone clay in some spots. I've heard that we average moderate to high minerization but haven't confirmed this for myself. I do know I have a few spots where the ground minerals are very bad, causing lessor machines than my GT that I've owned to have problems with depth, stability, and target ID. GT is smooth for me in those areas that gave other machines fits.

 

[Critterhunter]

That was a great post! I own a E-trac and have been kicking around the idea of getting a G.T. for a while now as a second machine so I am also intrested in your comparison. Also does the G.T. have the modulated audio were the deeper targets are softer sounding than the shallow targets? If so is it built in or adjustable like the volume gain setting on the E-trac? also how is the weight and balance compared to E-trac? I know you can chest mount the detetor ,But I never liked doing that unless I had to. Thanks for your and anyone else's response!

Even deep coins at the fringe are plenty loud enough for me on the GT, much louder than some of the other machines I've owned which also get softer as the target gets deeper like the GT. But, even at the very fringe of detection in my tests the audio is well above the limits of "soft" for me and I have no problem hearing the proper tone, not to mention getting a good VDI. Seems as soon as the coil can pick it up it's "right there" in both audio and VDI, which I and pretty impressed with. I've also noticed that once a coin on my GT gets past say 6 or 7" the target seems to get louder again and I can hear some white "noise" (kind'a like turning on an audio amp) in the background as I wiggle over the target. For that reason I think the GT either has some form of audio or at least RX signal amplifier in it that kicks in once a target gets past a certain depth. I am starting to wonder if this is stock on a GT or if the previous owner may have had the Dixie Mods done to it. He didn't mention that but maybe I should ask.

The GT weighs more than the Explorer and so probably than the Etrac as well, but the big difference is balance. Even without the box hipmounted a stock GT will feel less heavy to you and wear you out less than the Explorer and (from what I felt in the limited time I had one in my hand)..an Etrac. There are also many simple ways to lighten up a GT that would just about require brain surgery to do on an Explorer or Etrac.

 

[Neil]

That was a great post! I own a E-trac and have been kicking around the idea of getting a G.T. for a while now as a second machine so I am also intrested in your comparison. Also does the G.T. have the modulated audio were the deeper targets are softer sounding than the shallow targets? If so is it built in or adjustable like the volume gain setting on the E-trac? also how is the weight and balance compared to E-trac? I know you can chest mount the detetor ,But I never liked doing that unless I had to. Thanks for your and anyone else's response!

Even deep coins at the fringe are plenty loud enough for me on the GT, much louder than some of the other machines I've owned which also get softer as the target gets deeper like the GT. But, even at the very fringe of detection in my tests the audio is well above the limits of "soft" for me and I have no problem hearing the proper tone, not to mention getting a good VDI. Seems as soon as the coil can pick it up it's "right there" in both audio and VDI, which I and pretty impressed with. I've also noticed that once a coin on my GT gets past say 6 or 7" the target seems to get louder again and I can hear some white "noise" (kind'a like turning on an audio amp) in the background as I wiggle over the target. For that reason I think the GT either has some form of audio or at least RX signal amplifier in it that kicks in once a target gets past a certain depth. I am starting to wonder if this is stock on a GT or if the previous owner may have had the Dixie Mods done to it. He didn't mention that but maybe I should ask.

The GT weighs more than the Explorer and so probably than the Etrac as well, but the big difference is balance. Even without the box hipmounted a stock GT will feel less heavy to you and wear you out less than the Explorer and (from what I felt in the limited time I had one in my hand)..an Etrac. There are also many simple ways to lighten up a GT that would just about require brain surgery to do on an Explorer or Etrac.

Critter have a look over on the mods forum(I think its the mods forum), Keith Southern modded an explorer, looks pretty simple, said it weighs 3lbs. the rear battery pack setup should be readily available from Tesoro(what they use on their Cortes/Deleon/Tejon). its not the one he used but its the same setup really.
also note he has the stock XS/EXII coil on it so if it was fitted with say a pro coil or joey coil that could be a bit lighter. Ive picked up a few explorers lately and I might give this one a try myself

 

[synthnut]

Critter ,
I was reading your comments on whether or not Beachcomber might be confusing his findings.....This brings me to something in one of the Minelab manuals which talks about the "headlights in the fog " issue .....Perhaps in highly mineralized soil (fog ) turning the I.M. OFF allows for an easier read of targets, hence the feeling of going deeper ? .... In sand, or in soil that is NOT highly mineralized , perhaps YES, the Sov. will go deeper with the I.M. ON , but in the opposite soil conditions , maybe it's better to be OFF ...... like dimming your headlights in the fog ....You can see better on low beams in the fog, but much further when there is no fog with your headlights on high ..... I'm also interested in reading that the Sov. will null on iron , but the good targets will come thru .....This tells me that the Sov. discriminates iron very well ..... It makes me want one for a 2nd macine to add to my E Trac .... Hope I haven't muddied the waters here ......Sincerely, Jim

 

[crazyman]

I will have to play with it more but I think turning iron mask on/off is like opening up the discrimination range similar to the hot rock on/off switch on the Whites 5900/6000 or the +95 acceptance on the XLT, the black sand switch on the IDX/IDX Pro and/or noise cancel on the Quantum/QXT series. Shifting the discrimination up or down depending on the detector provides less or more filtering or bias to ground minerals and/or hot rocks and "iron". The less bias to iron you have the less masking you have. From what I've seen so far turning iron mask off makes it false less but I haven't tested it yet when it comes to using higher sensitivity or masking.

 

[Beachcomber]

Actually I understood what you meant..that in itself is a little scary One of my favorite things about a Sov is how smooth they can run..especially the GT. I have been detecting for over 25 years now and using Minelab's since 1995. My first Minelab was a Sov and I have an Explorer as well. Had an E-Trac but didn't care for the new screen layout and the fact that they moved gold into the trash area of the screen. Not a good move in my book. I mostly hunt with the Sov GT. Like you I like to mod things and I waterproofed one Sov and built my own coils much light than what is currently available so my waterproof Sov only weighs in at 3.5lbs with coil shaft and batteries. But getting back to the falsing vs non-falsing and higher sensitivity. I could deal with the falses if I wanted to but because I Minelab has chosen to give me a way around having to listen to them and raise the sensitivity at the same time I take advantage of it. If the feature wasn't there I would deal with the falses....actually that isn't true either as I defeated the ironmask feature in the Sov XS2 that I waterproofed. It's a simple mod that was on Sov Modding Website by Wildherre.

When MInel first introduced the GT I bought one as it had a lot of features that I liked. When I first started hunting with it I hunted with the Ironmask on and it was a bit noisey and then I found how much better behaved it could be with the Ironmask off. But I also wondered why Ironmask Off didn't mean that the detector would now detect iron. I made a few posts about it back than and one of the people from Minelab emailed me and said that basically the difference between ironmask on and ironmask off is just a difference in the filter settings and that ironmask would false a bit more especially in iron infested areas as it was designed to do this. The reason being the filtering of the iron was being narrowed or made more critical in order to make it easier for the machine to give you an indication of a non-iron target very close to an iron target. This causes a bit more falsing of iron targets when your coil sweep doesn't go directly over the center of the piece of iron but it does what it's supposed to do in that it will signal you to a good target very close to or even on top of an iron target (depending in the size relationship of the two targets. When I hunt beaches that are loaded with iron and several of the beaches I hunt are I hunt with the ironmask on and with lower sensitivity settings. When I am on a beach where I don't need the ironmask I turn it off and crank up the sensitivity and set the GT free to go for max depth. Oh and it isn't perceived depth increase( no offense taken) as over the years on several occasions I have detected barely audible signals with the Ironmask off and the higher sensitivity and when I turned on the Ironmask and lowered the sensitivity to where it was huntable I could no longer hear the targets at all.

Hope this clarifies what I had said in my previous post without making it even more confusing.....it would have made a lot more sense if turning ooff the ironmask actually just meant that the GT would now detect iron I think rather than calling it Ironmask On/Off it should have been Ironmask 1 and Ironmask 2 and explained as one for trashy areas and two for non-trashy areas. I think there would be a lot less confusion about it that way. JMHO

HH

Beachcomber

 

[synthnut]

I'm wondering then if it would be fair to say that with the filters that Minelab has on the various machines, that they might slow down the processor or the the processing power of the detector as you add more and more filters yielding less depth ? .......Less filtering = more processing power = more depth ? ......Just gussing here ....No factual data ....The Safari is said to go slightly deeper when in Low Density Trash mode as opposed to High Density Trash mode ....Here we have filters , whereby High Dens. would be working harder, using more processing power, equalling less depth ..... ?????......Just guessing ..... Dry beach sand ....easier to penetrate , less garbage , can run higher sensitivity , less filtering , = deep reading .....In essence what I am saying is more filters use more processing power , equalling lower depth ......Jim

 

[Critterhunter]

Thanks for the info/opinions. I may play with Iron Mask On/Off with some nails and coins and do some testing to see if ON seems to unmask better. I'm going to take as shot in the dark on my opinion on what it's doing. I'm thinking it may have more to do with some kind of processing in the detector that is not so much level of iron rejection, but rather a function of the processor in the machine that tries to take apart a "dual target" signal and ignore the trash or iron one while sounding off to the good one. If anything, it's more than just a level of iron rejection because it seems to see coins in iron better than other machines I've used, even if they are using no iron discrimination at all. It also doesn't seem to average signals or at least not much at all. All I know is it's a great feature on this machine.

Printing out the rest of the thread to read in detail later. Anxious to hear what others have said as well as Beachcomber on this subject. You've got me thinking now about just which might give best depth in certain situations. More to test and play with...

 

[Critterhunter]

So YOUR the guy I think I saw in the Geotech forums with the light homemade 15x12? If that was you wasn't it like 16 ounces? Sure wish you would post some details on the gauge/windings of the coils inside it, and did you use a salvaged amp circuit from an old coil or build one yourself? That's part of the reason why I bought the 15x12 SEF, because I think I remember whoever it was saying that after much experimentation they found 15x12 to be about the perfect size for max depth while still retaining small target sensitivity. If this wasn't you or I've mixed two different threads on a homemade coil of that size I apologize in advance.

I can't beleive you've got a Sovereign that light, let alone a waterproof one! I'm wondering how you are lighter than me. Well, the coil would explain much of that I guess. Are you saying that weight is of the entire unit on the shaft or are you chest/hip mounting anything as well? That's impressive. I'd love to see some pictures either way.

I've thought about buying an older Sovereign model to build a water proof machine because they are fairly cheap and can be had for probably around $300 or so, yet they'll blow the doors off pretty much any other non-PI (and some PI's!) on the market, regardless of what people paid for a machine. Essentialy it's of course an Excalibur. I've been kicking around ideas for waterproofing one. Rather than going the waterproof dial route, or just enclosing the unit after adjusting with no way of changing things once sealed, I've thought about putting two heavy rubber or latex fingers from the thumb and index finger on a glove on the case. That way I could stick my fingers in those and adjust things as needed, sort'a like a Sovereign bubble boy.

That was some great info on what the guy from Minelab had told you. Makes sense to me, and it sort of jives with what I was thinking if I understand it correctly. The machine is in some way trying to allow non-iron signals to come through with Iron Mask ON. Like I said, it seems to me much more able to unmask targets in iron or trash than machines I've setup with even zero iron discrimination. It sure is doing something, regardless of the specifics of how it gets there.

Now I'm going to have to play with the Iron Mask On/Off and see if sensitivity is able to go higher, allowing more depth like you say. Only place I'd figure it wouldn't matter is when I can run at max sensitivity at a site with it ON, and since I'm finding the SEF allows me to do that at probably 95% of my sites thus far I'll stay with it ON. Next time I'm hunting where sensitivity can't run full blast I'll flip over to OFF and see if I can get sensitivity higher. Again, great info to investigate. Thanks.

 

[Critterhunter]

I'm wondering then if it would be fair to say that with the filters that Minelab has on the various machines, that they might slow down the processor or the the processing power of the detector as you add more and more filters yielding less depth ? .......Less filtering = more processing power = more depth ? ......Just gussing here ....No factual data ....The Safari is said to go slightly deeper when in Low Density Trash mode as opposed to High Density Trash mode ....Here we have filters , whereby High Dens. would be working harder, using more processing power, equalling less depth ..... ?????......Just guessing ..... Dry beach sand ....easier to penetrate , less garbage , can run higher sensitivity , less filtering , = deep reading .....In essence what I am saying is more filters use more processing power , equalling lower depth ......Jim

Maybe so. I think though that the reason why some machines give more depth with various deep versus fast settings and such is more due to how fast the machine resets between targets. Faster resets, recovery, SAT, or whatever else you want to involve tend to give less depth because they will try to smooth over things and so might do that to a really deep coin. Slow recovery, SAT, and other functions that revolve around this will have more time to grab onto and "see" a deep target from my experience, and also give the user more time to notice the target signal at the very least. That's one of the reasons why I do not like or trust automatic ground tracking, as it can have the same effect on really deep targets.

About the best ground tracking I've seen on any machine would be the 6000 Pro XL. When I owned one or two of those units in years gone by they found me coins in quickly changing ground conditions that I had missed with other machines in the same small areas previously. This way due to some fill dirt being laid in a thin strip over an area. Unless you balanced right over that strip you wouldn't see those coins with a machine, but the Pro XL kept track of the ground well and was able to compensate as I moved from the one soil to the other. Other than suspected spots like that where I knew the ground was going to change fast I would always keep it OFF on any machine. Moving over iron or other heavy trash might throw off the balance, for a while anyway.