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3-2-1....0 Disc and blast off!

REVIER

Well-known member
Hey all, I have been hunting with monotone and disc set at 1 for awhile now, seems to be pretty good at picking out good targets in my bad soil with tons of trash and infested with iron...it gives me a pretty good and accurate picture of what is happening down there very well or so it seems to me.
Actually, I have done really well hunting scoured sites by me and many others this way so this is a favorite setup for me as is hunting in all metal.
However, jm tn gave some advice to the W. Va. Bros. about hunting on 0 disc and they have all used it with good results.
I also read a post from rocket Tom about hunting at a site in a plot scientifically cleaned out with diggers and screens at higher disc, several more targets showing up at 1 disc and then even some more showed up out of nowhere when the disc is turned down to 0.
Might be something to this and I hate to be left out of the loop on anything so I have been practicing using this for my last few hunts because I am getting bored hunting mostly one specific park and good targets are getting sparse.
The problem for me and my F70 is the noise...just that slight change from 1 to 0 kicks it into high gear noise-wise, sites that EMI is not an issue on 1 are way different on 0 at my regular sense and thresh settings like 80-85 and -2 or -3...plus I hunt using SL boost more often than not.
Now hunting in all metal is pretty easy for me even with some pumped up noisy settings.
Not at first, but after a few years using this mode I got used to it, comfortable with and good at it and especially successful hunting in heavy iron with my crazy super high blast-through technique.
Now I can listen to this pretty easily for long periods but this 0 disc even on monotone is a different kind of noise...something that I am just not used to but with practice I can usually adapt to anything if I think it will be useful which this method just might turn out to be.

Back to my local park yesterday, my personal laboratory I use to test out any new settings at some spots I know I have hit uncountable times from many directions with different detectors and many coils under different soil conditions from desert dry to super wet.
If I change settings and find any good targets I have missed in the past in certain areas this is good data for me, the big experimenter and tweaker that I am.
I walked through an entrance area I practically live at, have found some great things in the past but now there are very good signals left, thanks to me, only iron and a few trash types I have not made an effort to dig as of yet and tried 0 disc but only got iron signals and a couple of trashy ones that were super jumpy and turned out to be can slaw.
Could be more good ones but I will come back another time and I walked through heading to another smaller site that would be a better test for these new settings.
On the way I hit a decent signal that wasn't iron, could have been trash but the numbers and behavior told me I better dig this one and it turned out to be this little zinc heart and cross combo piece of jewelry.
Junk, but at least it was jewelry so I am happy.
Not super deep but up averaging is the rule here on anything that is not super shallow and this thing at 3" that hovered in the high zinc to dime range turned into lower zinc low 50's out of the ground.
Then I made it over to the site where I really wanted to see these new settings at work.
A relatively small patch of grass in front of an iron bench next to a long sidewalk that runs around the perimeter of this part of the park.
Seems to be an area plenty of people sat around in the past because I have dug a pretty good amount of clad out of here, some quarter, nickels and dimes and tons of copper cents and zincolns...maybe kids play here while their parents sat on that bench or whatever, and I think people hung out here way before that sidewalk and bench were here in this 90 year old plus park.
I have also cleaned out a ton of beaver tail tabs, can slaw, foil and a few bigger can pieces out of here over time because of masking problems and because this spot is my prime experimental site so the cleaner I get it the better for setting experiments like this.
I still get surprised here from time to time, just a few weeks ago I found a tax token here which shocked me, but it is pretty clean with hardly any signals left but iron and a few really jumpy signals that I am pretty sure are pieces of trash I have not dug yet.
I swung over this thing with the 10" elliptical concentric I have been using for the last few weeks.
Settings were disc 0, 1 tone, sense at 75, thresh at -3 and DE speed because SL boost was just a little too much for me right now.
Noisy yea, jumpy sure but as always when my coil ran over a real target it stopped and gave me some pretty good indicators, pretty stable iron numbers over iron and a range of higher numbers that didn't drop to iron over the few pieces of trash that are still here.
I dug a couple pieces of trash, left the iron in the ground because I was looking for at least one good coin signal in the higher range of high 80's to low 90's and very few but better yet no drops to lower areas or iron, common here on most coins of all kinds in this crazy up-averaging devil soil.
It surprised the heck out of me when I got one, a very good coin signal in a spot I must have been over many, many times before and missed.
Same good solid tone and same high range of numbers from two directions with no lower drops at all at 4".
I am kicking myself now that I didn't switch to all metal or up the disc to 1 to see if I could hit it again with the same behavior which I suspect might have happened, I was in experimental mode after all, but this good signal got me so excited and I have found a silver dime or two in this area before so not thinking I just bent over and dug it.
Turns out there was a coin down there at that depth and not just any coin but a 53 wheat...a great find for me anytime I come across one.
Zincolns are ok, copper cents are better but a wheatie to me is more special and a bit rarer find even though I do find my share.
Now I don't know why I didn't dig this thing before as many times as I have been over this area in the past.
Could be I never got my coil over it but I don't think so because I have done some gridding here, maybe I hit it from just the right angle this time but it was the same from two different directions so again I think not but who knows.
At this point I am assuming it was the settings, I might have hit it before but maybe these settings made a difference in letting me notice it better or easier or something.
My swing speed didn't change from normal so I don't think it was that either and I hit this area with this coil before too among others on the F70 and three other detectors and several coils but something different happened for me this time that helped me recover this now very obvious target with this signal.

I continued to hunt around this area but changed the thresh to -6 and that quieted it down a lot more, most signals seemed to sound a bit more solid and I was able to pick out a few more obvious targets from the trash and iron around this area...it got way easier.
I know low thresh supposedly cuts out the smaller targets as you get lower but I have found ridiculously tiny things at -5 and -6 thresh settings before so I figure coins and rings should not be a problem.
A really wrecked up eaten away zincoln popped up here too, another surprise find I should have dug in the past but didn't.
Then I moved on to another area a little further away from this place trying out these settings and dug a few more hidden clad coins.
I played with the speed a little switching back and forth between DE and SL on several targets, mostly jumpy trash.
Not much difference except I did notice on most if the little deeper ones SL had higher numbers than DE by about a 5-10 number range.
Don't know why but maybe SL was gathering in and sensing some deeper iron or more of the iron that is infused into most of my soil or even just the normal mineralization caused it and up-averaged which is common around here as you get deeper.
More experimenting to do but this really does not matter to me, I usually dig signals that aren't iron and stay within a consistent range of numbers from two ways even if they are considered too jumpy by most others no matter where those numbers seem to be.
The only signals I usually get that are considered normal by most hunting in normal soil are iron with usually no more than a 1-3 number jump but even that isn't in stone.
I also get lots of high range coin numbers here but with consistent drops to iron which I learned are rusted iron nails and junk 99.9% of the time.
That is just part of the new language I had to learn to hunt around here deeper, nothing is super stable like back in Kansas soil but they still have repeatable behavior I have noticed whether it is coins in the higher range of numbers, flat buttons in the lower zinc range or anything else.
Really super jumpy stuff is usually trash that I rarely dig unless I am cleaning out a site, I dug enough in the past learning this stuff to have confidence in that right or wrong as I might actually be, but non iron signals that I consider stable using these new parameters are all fair game because they could be anything at numbers you would not expect...like three very old flat buttons and an old French coin I have dug in recent weeks among others that were all way different in the ground than when air tested out of it.

As I hunted I got used to the different kind of noise I was hearing at 0 disc a little as time went on, not exactly comfortable or at ease with it yet but all the other noisy settings I like and use like all metal and everything else took time so I have patience and as always practice makes perfect.
Now time to switch to other coils and see what all this does...I think the big DD coil can work but the smaller DD sniper would be even better with maybe even a bit more noticeable and stable signals so stay tuned as I continue to experiment...especially you WV62 as you are just learning about this little wonder.
From what I have seen so far all of this bodes well...this will probably be another arrow in my quiver of tricks I will eventually have to use in all kinds of sites in the very challenging dirt I am currently hunting.
 
Revier, you've got the patiences of Jobe there is no way I can listen to all that noise like you do, I've tried and after a little bit I'll set my disc up and cut down on the noise. These areas we hunt are extremely trashy and I just can't handle all that noise. My big brother WV62 can dig pull tabs for hours trying to clean out an area from masking, I've seen him empty his trash pouch over and over, different strokes for different folks.
 
still looking 52 said:
Revier, you've got the patiences of Jobe there is no way I can listen to all that noise like you do, I've tried and after a little bit I'll set my disc up and cut down on the noise. These areas we hunt are extremely trashy and I just can't handle all that noise. My big brother WV62 can dig pull tabs for hours trying to clean out an area from masking, I've seen him empty his trash pouch over and over, different strokes for different folks.

Ha!
Lots of practice over the years from my first lousy BH unit with many problems that falsed on almost every swing, (try starting out learning the basics of the hobby using a tool like that...not fun), to my F2 I used on highest sense everywhere to my F70 that I use on such high settings sometimes that many think I am bonkers.
The only detectors I have ever used quietly, or set up to be quiet are my Tesoros
It's all about spending time getting used to things and adapting as needed and luckily I found I am pretty good at that.
I can and do use way lower settings from time to time, quiet settings and do experience what actually is considered silent search, but since I am used to a good amount of noise all that really seems normal to me now I don't mind and I am not bothered most of the time and I think I have been pretty successful by most measuring sticks.
Honestly I consider myself more successful than I ever thought possible when I started in this hobby, if I found only 1/3rd of my treasure total to date I believe I would still be blissfully happy but pushing myself to get better on every hunt is part of the fun for me and I am ecstatic those few times I have breakthroughs and it all adds up over time.
I do all kinds of logical things but also some strange things and it has made me the hunter I am today and a satisfied one at that.
It might very well be I can lower down these settings posted in this thread and even others like my all metal blast through settings or other high settings on disc and still be successful but I usually don't for a couple of reasons.
I do know and understand about the power of this thing and how deep it actually can go on lower settings in good soil, and I also know that hunting in mineralized soil too much power might be a detriment with a bounce back effect that could actually get you less depth, not more like bright settings on your headlights being way worse in fog than lower settings or fog lights.
However this soil I hunt in is not normal great soil like I had in Kansas where confidence is high on lower sense settings and I have dug enough deeper targets here, and futzed around with a few settings on many before I dug, to see a few things I noticed.
I have had targets at deeper levels, and keep in mind the primary area I am aiming for around here is a usually hard to reach and/ or understand target rich level of 5-8", that did not come in very clear, solid or sometimes not at all unless I used SL speed and higher sense settings in disc.
Same thing on all metal, even with sense say at 80 there were some deeper targets I could not get at all until I turned it up into the mid 90's even on SL speed.
It just seems to me right now this soil is so difficult and weird that normal and logical rules don't apply,
I have experimented enough to believe at this point that higher settings around here have at least a little more punch through power to get through this stuff and get down deep enough to the levels I need to be and still get at least a piece of a good target with a signal I can recognize.
It took a lot of time and effort to get to this point and I have many great targets from deeper regions in some really difficult sites including several that have been hunted for decades that proves it to me that I have found at least a couple of ways that work.
Can I find others on much lower and much quieter settings that work just as well one day, I hope so...this is one reason I experiment so much.
Lower settings experimentation takes time and I do that but since I already know ways that are proven to work for me, as noisy as they might be, I would rather spend more time doing that so I do that more.
Since higher setting hunting is what I know best and what seems to work better here that is what I started to use as a baseline in leaning these 0 disc settings...then I will tweak up and down from there.
Are there perfect and optimum and the very best settings for every different site out there, probably.
Can I find those exact settings through experience and experimentation, I am not sure there is enough time for me to exist on this planet to accomplish that goal so I do and learn what I can and hopefully come close and be happy with what I find.

Oh...then I also love to spread these crazy ideas around just in case someone as nutty as me wants to try them hoping they work as well for them.
 
One thing for sure is you are enjoying your hunts and all this experimenting is part of the hunt. My big brother WV62 loves making charts and testing all the machines with different settings and different equipment, that takes a lot of time but for him that's not work, that's fun. The good thing ( like you Revier) he shares this information and is glad to help anyone who needs help.
 
still looking 52 said:
One thing for sure is you are enjoying your hunts and all this experimenting is part of the hunt. My big brother WV62 loves making charts and testing all the machines with different settings and different equipment, that takes a lot of time but for him that's not work, that's fun. The good thing ( like you Revier) he shares this information and is glad to help anyone who needs help.

Just paying it forward...I have never had a hobby where participants share so much so I do what I can because I have benefited from others advice and experience too.
I would never have even considered trying this 0 disc stuff if I hadn't read about it in one of you three brother's posts.
Which one, not sure, it was probably the good looking one that posted it. :poke:
:rofl:
 
OK Sometimes I will hunt with 0 disc. The only way I could hunt for any period of time was to up the Thresh -6 -7 -8 and I always thought that I would be loosing depth with the high neg thresh!!!!!! When going to SL & DE do you GB after the switch???? Thanks for your post and for me its too hot& dry in WPA.to hunt. I think the ground is dry down to China ---------GH--------------after1
 
Revier, I'd like to know why you hunt in 1 tone mode only. There must be a reason to endure such torture. :)

I sometimes hunt in zero disc but I use the 2 tone mode to separate iron grunts from the rest. I'm in awe at anybody who can effectively hunt in all metal or 1 tone discrimination mode and not go mad from the noise.
 
dfmike said:
Revier, I'd like to know why you hunt in 1 tone mode only. There must be a reason to endure such torture. :)

I sometimes hunt in zero disc but I use the 2 tone mode to separate iron grunts from the rest. I'm in awe at anybody who can effectively hunt in all metal or 1 tone discrimination mode and not go mad from the noise.

Torture?
Totally the opposite for me.
In my sites the lower three tone choices are the quietest ones at the highest sense by far,
This is well known by many, one hunter that was having fits at certain places even on lower sense was told by Dave J. to switch to monotone...that did it.
Several others use 1, 1F and 2F exclusively for several reasons and here are mine.
Least mentally fatiguing than using multiple tones.
At my usual high settings multi tones have a whole lot of extras to it, some falsing some blips and jumping that tires me out way more than listening to just one tone.
DP does too.
Even using 1F and 2F, which I do use, that modulation can get to me in areas of heavy iron in time, monotone is a breeze all the time, every time.
Monotone is the absolute most responsive choice for me in my bad soil but even when I used to hunt in better soil...especially in disc 1 my usual choice of disc setting.
You have to watch the screen but I also listen close to the tones.
In heavy trash or iron hunting in Disc this thing seems to grab onto good targets in a nest of trash faster and quicker, sounds more solid to my ear when it does and even scanning a bunch of close jumpy trash I can usually tell what each one is.
DE is faster in processing, SL is a bit slower but in monotone SL seems to still be blazing fast and a tiny bit faster than in higher tones...or it appears that way to me.
Also rocket Tom has put down some interesting data about finding some deep silver around massive iron and even in normal good soil and just the way certain types of deeper coins behave where due to wraparound issues the best shot you have to recognize some of them that could imitate iron is use monotone and monotone only which will lift them out of that iron area.

I do use multi tones, 3H and 4H in parks looking for coins and jewelry for sure and quick brooming for the shallow stuff although they can get deep too and I have.
That's all I used at first coming from a 4 tone F2 that I used for close to 1000 hours because it was the most similar, and I love that high nickel tone because I am a gold hunter at heart.
I have dug coins in the 8-9" area, plenty of trash and for some reason beaver tail tabs at 10" and even a few other targets up to 15" in 4H and all kinds of disc settings but all in better Kansas soil.
When I want to get as deep as possible here in the crazy south and specifically in my strange soil with more tiny iron infused into it than you can believe on top of the normal heavy mineralization monotone is the deepest most accurate most stable least fatigueing most responsive tone selection I have.
Your mileage may vary if you don't hunt where I do.
 
After-1- said:
OK Sometimes I will hunt with 0 disc. The only way I could hunt for any period of time was to up the Thresh -6 -7 -8 and I always thought that I would be loosing depth with the high neg thresh!!!!!! When going to SL & DE do you GB after the switch???? Thanks for your post and for me its too hot& dry in WPA.to hunt. I think the ground is dry down to China ---------GH--------------after1

Dry?
I didn't hunt for over a week because the heat and humidity was so oppressive but mostly because the dirt was so dried out it was impossible to dig a good plug in the little bit of black dirt I have around me and I don't carry a pick so I can get deeper than one inch in the concrete like dried out red clay areas.
We have had some rain in the last week or so so it is much better right now, temporarily anyway.

I never GB going from DE to SL but I do check that setting from time to time because my dirt can and sometimes does change as much as 5-8 numbers as I move around.
Sometimes I forget but I am not sure GB has as much effect here in this devil dirt as it might searching for really deep stuff in better soil because I still seem to get to the same depth levels with the same responses even if my machine isn't optimal.
Again I am only trying to get to the 5-8" area here in the bad stuff, it is a miracle that I figured out how to do that at all, and the dirt is so hot and filled with so much junk GB might be less effective than normal but I am glad I have it and use it anyway.

As far as really high negative thresh losing depth maybe so.
I know the thresh and sense are related and high low setting combinations will effect readings and signals but they also affect noise levels too.

I know somebody that has a vid on YouTube with his F70 hitting an 8" nickel in his coin garden easily.
His thresh was at 4 if I remember correctly but his sense was all the way down to...get this, one.

Turn one up you can turn one down to hit less noise, good response and deeper depth levels at all ranges, the exact optimum combination has to be figured out on-site for each hunter.
I would probably never think about turning the thresh much further down than -2 to -3 looking for targets at extremely deep levels in great soil like 9-12" or more, but here that really low thresh might work to quiet down this 0 disc setting and still let me get to where I need to go.
I have dug really tiny targets fairly deep like at 6-7" with thresh settings at -5 or maybe once -6 so I don't know how low I can go to hunt confidently and believe I am not missing anything good at quieter levels.
Only time and experimentation will tell.
 
Just to touch upon that less thresh, lets depth thing.
Short but interesting hunt yesterday.

Settings...0 disc, sense at 75, thresh at -8, DE speed, monotone.
Really quiet in most places, a bit of noise in outskirt areas near some homes but very manageable.

Hunting in a few areas I have scoured before, mostly just tab, can slaw and tons of iron signals but I was looking for any signals that were not iron or acted like trash, seemed to be non ferrous and decent and I was interested in the depth of anything I came across that wasn't iron.

Found a few nice things, dug some trash I knew was trash but seemed deeper and was pretty impressed overall.

A few of these targets in the pic were at the 4-5" level, normal around here, some of the can slaw trash was at about 6" but larger types like can tops so no really useable depth data there.
I would have loved to have found a coin at at least 6"...either I didn't come across one because those are not all that plentiful here or I couldn't get down to the 6"+ level because of that really low thresh.
Can't say for sure but next hunt I will raise that thresh up a number or two, see how quiet it is and get more data.
Maybe a little lower sense and a bit higher thresh could get me to the 6-8" level quietly here...we will see.
I wish I had a coin garden with targets at known depth levels instead or this hit or miss thing in the wild but I am still enjoying doing it this way and now I own a copper and zinc cent, a bullet and bullet casing, an old brass electrical connector and a big ol' Ford key...says it came from a Family of Fine Cars on the other side.
Like all families all members aren't fine because I used to own and drive a 74 Pinto so part of the family but a black sheep type in my opinion.

Pretty cool, got deeper than I thought I might on this really low thresh, in really great soil it would not surprise me but here in this garbage so far so good.
How deep can I really get on 0 disc and low thresh quietly?
More to come.
 
Thanks for the info, As I was reading and thinking of what you were saying about thresh, my thoughts were.-What is one number up or down going to do? I then thought of Disc. What a difference there is going from 0 to 1-------------------------- --To have a test garden, If I would have put one in when I first thought about it it would be 10 yrs old. I did put one in about 5 weeks ago . Wheat penny -nickel-silver dime -all 6''deep- ----------after1----------------
 
After-1- said:
Thanks for the info, As I was reading and thinking of what you were saying about thresh, my thoughts were.-What is one number up or down going to do? I then thought of Disc. What a difference there is going from 0 to 1-------------------------- --To have a test garden, If I would have put one in when I first thought about it it would be 10 yrs old. I did put one in about 5 weeks ago . Wheat penny -nickel-silver dime -all 6''deep- ----------after1----------------

Yea, we moved around some, stayed in rented places and even putting in a test garden I still wouldn't trust the matrix to become normal and useful till after several years of settling occurred.
As I said, a huge difference in noise from 1-0 in disc, I love 1 and all it can do and find and see in my mineralized and iron infused plus trashy soil so maybe 0 disc can be even better.
I am picking up a few targets in heavily hunted small areas with 0, could be just luck orI just didn't run over these signals before but I don't know...these were all mostly obvious diggable signals and these areas aren't huge and I can't even count how many times I have hit them so I should have dug at least a few of these before.
All part of the great world of experimental metal detecting.
If I am not concentrating hard on finding treasure in fresh sites I am learning and trying new things to squeeze out a couple of good ones in older worn out sites by gaining a new edge if possible.
Both challenging, both thrilling when I find or learn something thing worthwhile and both way up there on the fun scale for me.
Funny thing is I sometimes can't remember the silliest most common things, birthdays, phone numbers, everyday simple minutiae but when it comes to this stuff all the numbers, settings depth levels and everything else I should be putting down in a spreadsheet for safekeeping and study I seem to remember fine and accurately.
Priorities I guess.
 
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