I got one of the first E Tracs and you may recall that I said I would post after 100 hours on the machine. I have taken the machine to 3 park sites that were hunted with Se's, and a 10 day trip to the UK. I have a 10 day beach hunt planned and will post again after that in late November. For now here is what I see after the first 125 hours.
It's the best machine I've ever had, and I've owned and used every major brand and model machine built since 1972, and you would expect that to be the case. The stability and accuracy is phenomenal compared to previous units. The improvement over the SE is very subtle, but very apparent after about 75 or so hours under the phones. I believe that coverage of ground in the UK is paramount, and I've been on 14 tours now. If your searching a rolled field you can slow down and go for deep, or you can speed up (losing depth) and make up the ground by simply moving across more area and taking shallower stuff. I prefer the faster approach as that is what I have seen produce the best results over the years. The E Trac allows you to really cover some ground without losing much in the way of targets. On this trip finished, among numerous hammered and roman coins, I found 3 hammered farthings, one quarter hammered, and 1 silver Celtic unit slightly larger than a pencil eraser. These are really small finds for those not familiar with UK finds. Really small. Finding these items while swinging fast is a trick few machines will accomplish. I suspect that the processor has something to do with it as well as the fast recovery option. To make matters more complex, I decided to block out the entire screen except the areas between 08 and 17 ferrous to prevent excess digging. Nothing else I've used can equal these results.
In the USA parks I selected them for learning purposes as I had searched them many times before with 3 prior Minelabs including the SE(not the pro coil version). At first it was frustrating for several reasons. First, there just wasn't much there after the scouring I previously gave them, and second, I was looking primarily for better depth. Turned out there just aren't a heck of a lot of targets suspended in the extra inch or so of depth. A few, but not a lot. After about 25 hours in parks I tried something really odd and it paid nice dividends. I noticed that if I ran the E Trac in any mode that was set for FAST recovery I could zip the coil across a trash area with multiple signals, ignore the digital numbers, ignore the sound on the first pass, ignore the screen, and concentrate on the depth indicator. Seems the recovery speed is so fast that the depth indicator zips up and down over each target at the right swing speed. I isolated the deepest target in the trash pile on the second pass. Once you get used to the strange pinpoint among trash (with a very short signal) you can lay a dime over the target and be right on. I switched to Jimmy Sierra's 2 1/2 inch hole hog with teeth due to the dry ground and never scratched or hit a target with it. I dug an Indian and an early Buffalo within the first 30 minutes using this maneuver at about 7 inches each. Why would I get excited about this? I cover previously frustrating areas at speed. I believe these targets were there because it takes way too much time and patience to check each signal with previous machines, most of which will not accurately differentiate between depth of an inch or show it quickly enough. On previous Minelab detectors the depths on the gauge aren't accurate enough or fast enough to accomplish this feat(in my experience). Not the E Trac. Again, I think it must be the processor that allows this to happen for two reasons. It can show more detail on a single depth gauge screen, and it can process the signals fast enough to accurately catch all of them at any reasonable swing speed.
I don't recall reading any Minelab marketing material that touts the E Trac as a machine that allows the user to cover more ground, and that's not why I bought the E Trac. After 125 hour however, this is definitely why I will to keep it as my go to unit. I am really curious to see what it can do on a beach as the ground coverage approach really applies in that arena.
Will post again after the beach hunt..........................good luck and cheers to all.
It's the best machine I've ever had, and I've owned and used every major brand and model machine built since 1972, and you would expect that to be the case. The stability and accuracy is phenomenal compared to previous units. The improvement over the SE is very subtle, but very apparent after about 75 or so hours under the phones. I believe that coverage of ground in the UK is paramount, and I've been on 14 tours now. If your searching a rolled field you can slow down and go for deep, or you can speed up (losing depth) and make up the ground by simply moving across more area and taking shallower stuff. I prefer the faster approach as that is what I have seen produce the best results over the years. The E Trac allows you to really cover some ground without losing much in the way of targets. On this trip finished, among numerous hammered and roman coins, I found 3 hammered farthings, one quarter hammered, and 1 silver Celtic unit slightly larger than a pencil eraser. These are really small finds for those not familiar with UK finds. Really small. Finding these items while swinging fast is a trick few machines will accomplish. I suspect that the processor has something to do with it as well as the fast recovery option. To make matters more complex, I decided to block out the entire screen except the areas between 08 and 17 ferrous to prevent excess digging. Nothing else I've used can equal these results.
In the USA parks I selected them for learning purposes as I had searched them many times before with 3 prior Minelabs including the SE(not the pro coil version). At first it was frustrating for several reasons. First, there just wasn't much there after the scouring I previously gave them, and second, I was looking primarily for better depth. Turned out there just aren't a heck of a lot of targets suspended in the extra inch or so of depth. A few, but not a lot. After about 25 hours in parks I tried something really odd and it paid nice dividends. I noticed that if I ran the E Trac in any mode that was set for FAST recovery I could zip the coil across a trash area with multiple signals, ignore the digital numbers, ignore the sound on the first pass, ignore the screen, and concentrate on the depth indicator. Seems the recovery speed is so fast that the depth indicator zips up and down over each target at the right swing speed. I isolated the deepest target in the trash pile on the second pass. Once you get used to the strange pinpoint among trash (with a very short signal) you can lay a dime over the target and be right on. I switched to Jimmy Sierra's 2 1/2 inch hole hog with teeth due to the dry ground and never scratched or hit a target with it. I dug an Indian and an early Buffalo within the first 30 minutes using this maneuver at about 7 inches each. Why would I get excited about this? I cover previously frustrating areas at speed. I believe these targets were there because it takes way too much time and patience to check each signal with previous machines, most of which will not accurately differentiate between depth of an inch or show it quickly enough. On previous Minelab detectors the depths on the gauge aren't accurate enough or fast enough to accomplish this feat(in my experience). Not the E Trac. Again, I think it must be the processor that allows this to happen for two reasons. It can show more detail on a single depth gauge screen, and it can process the signals fast enough to accurately catch all of them at any reasonable swing speed.
I don't recall reading any Minelab marketing material that touts the E Trac as a machine that allows the user to cover more ground, and that's not why I bought the E Trac. After 125 hour however, this is definitely why I will to keep it as my go to unit. I am really curious to see what it can do on a beach as the ground coverage approach really applies in that arena.
Will post again after the beach hunt..........................good luck and cheers to all.