I wonder how many of you have played with the Volume Gain setting. If you have it set high, everything, even an aluminum or cast metal nugget the size of two grains of rice will sound pretty loud. Then you hit a coin at 3" and blow your ears off. But if you have the Gain set too low you might miss a diamond stud earring or gold filling... I usually have had mine set at 30 or thereabouts and was dealing with small things that would fall through the shovel holes - but I did find the diamond stud earrings and a gold filling... But some days (like yesterday at San Clemente), when you get a lot of aluminum at the beach, it might be better to drop it quite a bit down to just find the recent drop coins etc.