What's the deal with the SE falsing on rusty nails?

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

My SE seems to be falsing considerably worse on rusty nails than my XS or II does. I noticed this on the NJ shore beaches and in Oregon on two seperate trips but wanted to test this first on my home soil at a site I have hunted hundreds of times before making a final determination. I did that yesterday and the rusty nail falses about drove me nuts. I was tempted to give the thing a Ric like javelin toss!

Now, an Explorer XS or II 'will' false on a rusty nail but they seem more forgiving than this SE. The XS and II seems to correctly ID a rusty nail and give a low tone even if the coil is not absolutely centered on the nail. In fact one can be quite a ways off to one side of the nail before it will false high. My SE by comparison will false high on a rusty nail unless I am absolutely centered over the nail, it is much less forgiving and so I waste quite a bit of time chasing high false signals around that then turn low.

Another very annoying thing I have noticed is, sweep a nail from left to right it falses high, sweep back from right to left and it sounds off low, and is quite repeatable in this behavior. Again an XS and II will sometimes do this but not nearly as frequently as my SE.

Yet even another very annoying thing I have noticed is, small rusty nails about 1 inch long false high when swept from multiple directions. Virtually unheard of when using my XS or II. The only time I have seen that is when the nail was bent, or two nails were crossed in an X configuration and even then I had a pretty good idea it was a nail.

There are quite a number of things I really like about this SE but I'm afraid I'm going to have to get this iron falsing stuff sorted out or go back to my XS and II.

Just for general info, it's not dirt under the coil cover I keep mine clean. And I'm not even running the SE hot. I normally run my XS and II with my sens at 26-28 and my gain always at 7. I have the SE setup with my gain at 6 and my sens at 24 and its falsing like a mother.

I have very little info as far as testing right now. I did mark one target and then sweep he same target with Ed's XS. Falsing was less. Oddly the target was noticably fainter with Ed's machine which is odd because he was running his sens at 28 and his gain at 7, in theory the target should have sounded louder on his machine. This might suggest the SE is stronger on targets, why I don't know but it was noticable.

Is it the gain? In our soil a gain of 7 is ideal with an XS or II. There are lots of faint high false ground signals but with the gain at 7 they are not loud enough to get your attention. Turn the XS or II gain to 9 in our soil though and the false ground signals are loud enough to drive you batty. But here's the thing, this also effects the X1 probe. With my gain at 9 I can't even touch the soil with the probe or it squeals. So if the SE gain of 6 was say equivilent to a gain of 9 on an XS or II then my probe should have been squealing yesterday and it was not. I think that rules out gain.

Could it be the coil? Certainly this is a different coil than was used on the XS or II and I'm going to test this at the first opportunity.

Could it be that I have a bad coil? Maybe, hard to say without testing another SE coil or at least a XS or a II coil.

So I have no answers really, only a few field observations and will need to do some more testing. If I can get this SE to settle down and stop falsing so badly its going to be a great machine. Many of you have a big head start on me with this machine. I only have about 20 hours on it. What have you noticed?

Charles

 

[RepManVT]

Yeh, Charles, I noticed the same thing with my SE last fall. Got it just before the winter closed in on us, and haven't tried it again yet this spring. The few times I've been out recently, I've used my XS and EX-II. I'll try the SE again if it EVER dries out here. Another 6-12 inches of snow for tonight, so it won't be soon. It seemed a little better with the SE using an older coil, but still more falsing than with the older units. As wet as it was last fall and so far this spring, the falsing just makes the SE unusable. I had high hopes for the new coil - solid and lighter, but not too encouraging so far. I'll post if I get a chance to try it again.

 

[Big Fang Coin Biter]

I have not really noticed a difference with my SE. I do use the Sun Ray Stealth 8" coil most of the time.
Good luck,
BF

 

[Mike Bearden]

Your entire post mimics exactly what I found when I first started running the SE and encountered more falsing than expected.
It took me a few outings but came to the conclusion that the SE was simply more sensitive across the board ... I started adjusting everything down.
Seems the entire circuitry and software is just faster and more powerful on the SE.
But ... after I got it tweaked the extra sensitivity turned into a GOOD thing for me, especially since I like to run wide open iron mask. Realizing that the SE is also WAY MORE SENSITIVE to smaller items than my XS or 11.
Bottom line, now I get more depth, better audio and separation from all of my coils on my SE than I got from previous Explorers.
You'll get accustomed to it after tweaking it and the extra falsing will seem to go away.
And BTW, after using the stock 10" SE coil for awhile, I like it better than the old style 10.5

 

[digitrich]

My SE never falses in four directions, left right, turn 90 degrees left and right again, several times it will say silver on the first swing but when I turn 90 degrees it will never say silver again if it's a nail it says nail. However, when it is a very deep target, if it says silver in two or more of the four sweep directions, I always dig it and a large portion of the time those are my best finds. But yes the SE seems very attracted to that iron halo. The lower the gain the less it occurs, I don't know why, but that's what I've noticed on mine. Hope this helps.

 

[Dennis 2]

Mike , you said you started adjusting everything down .In your soil what did you finely end up with in you settings ? Gain etc. compared to the way you had your EX 2 set at ?
Thanks
Dennis 2

 

[coinscreenz]

I have been finding coins on the site of an old iron forge, you can imagine the levels of iron present here - very high , nails , coke , iron ore , the lot. The Explorer SE has out performed my old explorer 2 on this site without a question of a doubt. Also i have found the SE easier to use in the all metal search mode , more stable and easier to hear coins next to iron. I am extremely pleased with my SE on these kind of sites. No problems its good , really good and probably on par with the xp gold max power on these iron infested sites.. I have not had it long but i feel it has something that the explorer 2 lacked on iron infested. I honestly rate the SE amongst iron as been very good. The faster response of the SE matched with the smaller 10 inch coil is what does the trick here , you can here the tone of a coin come through clearly along with the iron low tone , those super high pitches screaming noises are also iron usually , higher than silver tones and i find easy to tell iron from other targets 90% of the time at least. "Iron falsing" is something i have not had a problem with hardly at all. I feel the SE is going to be Extremely hard to beat on these iron infested sites. I think that minelab have produced a real corker of a machine here with the SE. I can say that with 100% honesty - It may not be a detector for a novice to get the best out of it though on iron infested, it takes practice. put maybe 100 - 200 hours practice in at least. I Know iron infested sites are one of the hardest site's to work with any detector , some detectors i have had wouldn't even work on some of the ferrous contaminated sites i search on but i manage to work these sites pretty well with the SE and thats with the stock 10 inch coil. I am going to try my detech 8 inch and 5 inch excelerator coils out on my next visit and see if i can find even smaller non ferrous. A nice detector minelab thanks

 

[Mike Bearden]

Threshold Tone > 4 ... no lower than that EVER! I believe you can go to far down on the threshold tone when using Ferrous sounds making certain ferrous targets squeal out more than normal and sound more like silver.
Iron Mask > Wide Open Screen
Sensitivity > Wide Open in Auto, let the computer do the work, especially in fast changing soil matrix.
Ferrous Sounds
Gain > 6 ... sometimes 5 but usually it rest on 6
Variability >10
Volume Max

Works for me

 

[Dennis 2]

for the info.I Have a ex2 . But thinking about getting a SE .

 

[Dennis 2]

Please let us know how it works out for you . Wish someone would do the same on the F75

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

I'm going to check in with Minelab on this falsing issue.

 

[swingman]

I had the same problem, but when I changed to 'ferrous tones', I now dig fewer nails. Like one poster said, doing a '360' around the target gives me info. on whether I dig or not. I have Iron Mask set at 30 - can't bring myself to hunt in all-metal...yet.
BTW - with the SE's pinpointing, I'm VERY impressed with how the machine can pick a good target from close-by trash. Again, the '360' will give you important information.