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Auto vs Manual Sens
- Thread starter Ray Hogan
- Start date
deepdiger60
New member
tigger is right just turn the knob until it click,s that is your max sen,s i use auto alot to keep the falsing away unless i get a very faint signal then i use max . Jim
Auto sensitivity will not get you the best depth, but will make the Sovereign easier to use and understand until you get to know it better. Auto is the best for a new person to help learn the Sovereign and recommended by Minelab to begin with.
Now manual will get you more depth plus knowing your Sovereign well as it will not run as smooth so you will hear more of what the coil is seeing. I know many run the lower sensitivity looking for a smooth threshold, but they can lose depth the same as too much sensitivity. Myself I find that I can run mine no lower than the 12 o'clock position and have run it at max in a few areas, but it is mostly around the 10-11 and sweep my coil a little slower if it nulls too much. I find if you can hold you coil in the air and it is not chattering it is fine, but if it chatters a lot I turn down the sensitivity or switch freq on my GT. I have got some real deep coin signals and when I turn down the sensitivity to anything lower than 12 I lose the signal and in auto it cant even see a target. I have dug pennies and dimes at 12+ inches with a 8 inch coinsearch coil and around 14 with the Sun Ray S12, but you have to go slower, listen more and know your Sovereign well to get these signals.
Now manual will get you more depth plus knowing your Sovereign well as it will not run as smooth so you will hear more of what the coil is seeing. I know many run the lower sensitivity looking for a smooth threshold, but they can lose depth the same as too much sensitivity. Myself I find that I can run mine no lower than the 12 o'clock position and have run it at max in a few areas, but it is mostly around the 10-11 and sweep my coil a little slower if it nulls too much. I find if you can hold you coil in the air and it is not chattering it is fine, but if it chatters a lot I turn down the sensitivity or switch freq on my GT. I have got some real deep coin signals and when I turn down the sensitivity to anything lower than 12 I lose the signal and in auto it cant even see a target. I have dug pennies and dimes at 12+ inches with a 8 inch coinsearch coil and around 14 with the Sun Ray S12, but you have to go slower, listen more and know your Sovereign well to get these signals.
Critterhunter
New member
Auto will give you respectable depth compared to a lot of detectors on the market running at max sensitivity. I've dug coins in Auto 7.5" deep, which is pretty good for my soil considering most of the machines I've owned would struggle to get that kind of depth even with sensitivity maxed out. I use Auto in really bad ground that contains a lot of hot rocks such as old stone paths and such where otherwise you would get a lot of falsing. For some reason I feel Auto may get coins in these situations that manual sensitivity might miss due to changing ground conditions. Meaning, one setting for manual might be good in one spot but ten feet away it's set way too high for the soil matrix. Too high of a sensitivity setting in a case like this can cost you depth just like too low can. I also have the feeling that in iron infested sites Auto might do a better job and adjusting to things and sneak out a coin signal you might otherwise miss.
Still, in most situations manual sensitivity is what you are going to want to use for max depth. To calibrate it most people just set sensitivity as high as they can without the threshold dropping out too much. If it does drop out try moving the coil slower or as he said switching frequencies before turning down the sensitivity. By the way, most of us try to use band 2 as it gives IDs that match the ID charts better, and some think it goes a little deeper than Band 1. I like to calibrate the sensitivity by sticking a silver dime in the ground at about 7" deep and then playing with sensitivity until I get the easiest response. I keep raising it until the ID gets distorted or is harder to achieve. More often than not the sensitivity ends up being around the 1 or 2PM range. Many times though max stable sensitivity is going to give you the best depth and easiest ID.
Still, in most situations manual sensitivity is what you are going to want to use for max depth. To calibrate it most people just set sensitivity as high as they can without the threshold dropping out too much. If it does drop out try moving the coil slower or as he said switching frequencies before turning down the sensitivity. By the way, most of us try to use band 2 as it gives IDs that match the ID charts better, and some think it goes a little deeper than Band 1. I like to calibrate the sensitivity by sticking a silver dime in the ground at about 7" deep and then playing with sensitivity until I get the easiest response. I keep raising it until the ID gets distorted or is harder to achieve. More often than not the sensitivity ends up being around the 1 or 2PM range. Many times though max stable sensitivity is going to give you the best depth and easiest ID.
JimmyCT
Well-known member
Hi Ray,
This past Spring was my first year with the Sovereign GT and for the first several months the only thing I used was AUTO sensitivity. I wanted to learn the machine before "letting loose" on the sensitivity. Towards Fall time, I started playing around with the sensitivity and (based on information I read here on the forum & a book entitled, Finding Gold, Silver and Coins with the Minelab Sovereign and Excalibur by Clive James Clynick) I adjusted the sens to around 3pm and started learning from there.
I can tell you of one incident that is very clear in my mind to this very day that makes me re-think one has to "tweak" or adjust in manual. I was hanging out at the old carnival grounds swinging along with my 8" coil, iron mask ON, and sensitivity at 3pm. I hit a target that had a nice one-way high tone / 180 meter reading. So I said to myself, "self, time to start fooling with the sensitivity and see what happens to this target."
From 3pm position on the sensitivity knob, I placed it back into AUTO and swept over the target - nothing. Not a peep. (just nulled) hmmm I was intriqued.
I then turned the sensitivity (back into manual) all the way down (far right (clockwise) as possible) I swept over again -a sound broke slightly but very unclear and I would not have dug. Turning the sensitvity up to around the 4pm position, I suddenly heard that nice sweet high tone (not a skip in audio just nice and smooth) (only in one direction) When I turned 90 and swept it nulled out. So I dug.... out first, a wheat cent, second an iron nail.
From the 12pm sens position, all the way up tothe 10pm position the target was nice and clear. After that, the signal actually was audible but it started breaking up and started sounding like broken up pieces of multiple iron targets.
Mind you, I have been using manual sensitivity before this but didn't quite understand how manual made a difference. All that I knew is what others were saying and writing about on this forum and where they were placing their sensitivity settings - this incident somewhat cleared it up for me. Will I still dig iron - sure I will. But this incident is etched into my mind how manual sensitivity even at the 4pm setting cleared the signal where as in AUTO there wasn't even a peep. Had I been hunting in AUTO and swept over this area, I would of never even heard that there was a coin in the ground.
hope this helps - in my opinion, start out in AUTO and learn the machine. Then once you get the hang of things, then start adjusting the sensitivity. I feel if I started off with manual sensitivity I would of tossed the detector into the pit in my backyard lol. ( I almost did with it running in AUTO) But Thanks to this forum and the many great people that helped me, I now LOVE my Sovereign GT!
Best of luck and I look forward to your finds / posts. - Jim
This past Spring was my first year with the Sovereign GT and for the first several months the only thing I used was AUTO sensitivity. I wanted to learn the machine before "letting loose" on the sensitivity. Towards Fall time, I started playing around with the sensitivity and (based on information I read here on the forum & a book entitled, Finding Gold, Silver and Coins with the Minelab Sovereign and Excalibur by Clive James Clynick) I adjusted the sens to around 3pm and started learning from there.
I can tell you of one incident that is very clear in my mind to this very day that makes me re-think one has to "tweak" or adjust in manual. I was hanging out at the old carnival grounds swinging along with my 8" coil, iron mask ON, and sensitivity at 3pm. I hit a target that had a nice one-way high tone / 180 meter reading. So I said to myself, "self, time to start fooling with the sensitivity and see what happens to this target."
From 3pm position on the sensitivity knob, I placed it back into AUTO and swept over the target - nothing. Not a peep. (just nulled) hmmm I was intriqued.
I then turned the sensitivity (back into manual) all the way down (far right (clockwise) as possible) I swept over again -a sound broke slightly but very unclear and I would not have dug. Turning the sensitvity up to around the 4pm position, I suddenly heard that nice sweet high tone (not a skip in audio just nice and smooth) (only in one direction) When I turned 90 and swept it nulled out. So I dug.... out first, a wheat cent, second an iron nail.
From the 12pm sens position, all the way up tothe 10pm position the target was nice and clear. After that, the signal actually was audible but it started breaking up and started sounding like broken up pieces of multiple iron targets.
Mind you, I have been using manual sensitivity before this but didn't quite understand how manual made a difference. All that I knew is what others were saying and writing about on this forum and where they were placing their sensitivity settings - this incident somewhat cleared it up for me. Will I still dig iron - sure I will. But this incident is etched into my mind how manual sensitivity even at the 4pm setting cleared the signal where as in AUTO there wasn't even a peep. Had I been hunting in AUTO and swept over this area, I would of never even heard that there was a coin in the ground.
hope this helps - in my opinion, start out in AUTO and learn the machine. Then once you get the hang of things, then start adjusting the sensitivity. I feel if I started off with manual sensitivity I would of tossed the detector into the pit in my backyard lol. ( I almost did with it running in AUTO) But Thanks to this forum and the many great people that helped me, I now LOVE my Sovereign GT!
Best of luck and I look forward to your finds / posts. - Jim
Ray Hogan
Member
I've detected for a number of years now, and like some, with all the top-end detectors, some even multiple times. I'm used to "maxing out" a detector and hunting with a lot of chatter in the background. I can usually tell when a different, more decent signal breaks through, but can't really explain why it seems better. I'll start in Auto for a while with the GT and after a while check targets with different settings. I'm going to chest mount the control box and meter so that I can handle the weight and more easily switch between various coil/rod setups. Thanks much for your response, I really appreciate it.
Ray Hogan in Waco, TX
Ray Hogan in Waco, TX
Critterhunter
New member
I should probably clearify. I only use Auto these days in really bad ground such as places containing hot rocks, where I just can't seem to get a stable threshold no matter how low I go. I believe in situations like this too much sensitivity can hurt you. In these situations the ground matrix is changing rapidly and I feel in a sense Auto is acting somewhat like ground tracking in that it is adjusting it's self all the time to the changing ground conditions.
A good rule of thumb I use is that if setting manual sensitivity as low as say 3 or 4PM doesn't smooth things out then I might as well switch over to Auto. I believe Auto adjusts it's self due to ground conditions and RF noise. The worse those are the lower it's going to set it's self. I've found that at some sites that Auto will get about the depth of probably 4PM, so if I have to run it that low I might as well run Auto and have things much more stable. This varies with the ground matrix and RF noise so it can be a different setting at some places.
All I know is that if I'm running super low with the sentivity and things are still rough then I will flip to Auto. This doesn't happen very often because the Sovereign and it's BBS technology is excellent at penetrating the worst of ground conditions, so the site has to be really bad for the manual sensitivity to get that low and thus might as well run Auto.
One thing I have found is that the higher you set sentivity the slower you want to move the coil for best performance, and vise versa if you are running sentivity at say 2 or 3PM or lower I seem to get the best target response with a slightly faster sweep speed. These things can be hard to judge so that's why I like sticking a silver dime in the ground at say about 7" and then playing with sensitivity and my sweep speed. I'll keep raising the sensitivity until the ID degrades or gets very hard to do a 180.
One thing for sure, running in Auto will teach you how the machine and it's threshold is supposed to act, so when you do flip over to manual you'll know how the machine should be behaving.
Sensitivity on the Sovereign doesn't adjust the strength of the signal being put into the ground. It instead changes the gain or how much the recieved signal is being amplified. Too high of gain and the quality of the signal gets degraded. This is where noise (such as RF interference in the air) or the ground signal introduce bad qualities to the signal the machine is trying to process. Think of it like turning up the volume on a stereo too high to where the speakers start to distort the quality of the sound.
A good rule of thumb I use is that if setting manual sensitivity as low as say 3 or 4PM doesn't smooth things out then I might as well switch over to Auto. I believe Auto adjusts it's self due to ground conditions and RF noise. The worse those are the lower it's going to set it's self. I've found that at some sites that Auto will get about the depth of probably 4PM, so if I have to run it that low I might as well run Auto and have things much more stable. This varies with the ground matrix and RF noise so it can be a different setting at some places.
All I know is that if I'm running super low with the sentivity and things are still rough then I will flip to Auto. This doesn't happen very often because the Sovereign and it's BBS technology is excellent at penetrating the worst of ground conditions, so the site has to be really bad for the manual sensitivity to get that low and thus might as well run Auto.
One thing I have found is that the higher you set sentivity the slower you want to move the coil for best performance, and vise versa if you are running sentivity at say 2 or 3PM or lower I seem to get the best target response with a slightly faster sweep speed. These things can be hard to judge so that's why I like sticking a silver dime in the ground at say about 7" and then playing with sensitivity and my sweep speed. I'll keep raising the sensitivity until the ID degrades or gets very hard to do a 180.
One thing for sure, running in Auto will teach you how the machine and it's threshold is supposed to act, so when you do flip over to manual you'll know how the machine should be behaving.
Sensitivity on the Sovereign doesn't adjust the strength of the signal being put into the ground. It instead changes the gain or how much the recieved signal is being amplified. Too high of gain and the quality of the signal gets degraded. This is where noise (such as RF interference in the air) or the ground signal introduce bad qualities to the signal the machine is trying to process. Think of it like turning up the volume on a stereo too high to where the speakers start to distort the quality of the sound.