Charles....Congratulations and 'Have fun'....Investment in an E-Trac must surely be a safer bet than a bank !!!!.......MattR.UK.

[MattR]

Hi Charles....."He who dares, wins"

Welcome into the growing band of Tracker.....Your wealth of experience from the past, and your imminent contributions will be eagerly awaited.

A lots of us found the initial familiarisation curve of E-Trac learning, a little hard to accept because of our own previous dogmas.

That was an unfortunate constraint, but one we had to go through.

The moment you give the machine a chance to demonstrate its own 'personality' and wealth of control abilities there 'at the touch of a button', that is when the excitement begins.

Please, please, please don't be constrained from investigating a target by applying old impression of audio consistency, apart from its repeatability and hint of 'positiveness'.

It is as well to realise, that with the extra Fe resolution below Fe12, there then is a wider tonal variation if you use more than 2 tones. This may lure some folk to mentally ignore checking that target.

I only use two tones with Fe audio for that reason, even then I'm attentive to apparent iron signals.

If they're not solidly iron then I want to know why.

The mapping of the E-Trac, though somewhat controversial, has been formulated from a vast range of data input.

That in turn, has evolved only after a lot of thought by Minelab's best technical minds.

Have they got it right? Well, the answer to that should only be judged AFTER you have made a genuine effort to give this new machine a chance to prove itself.

It is a natural tendency to want to rush out and 'try it', before we have really become acquainted with even the basics, like how the E-Trac controls it's own channel sensitivity when in AUTO.

Then to learn how to interact with auto, from the key-pad control. At the touch of a button you can toggle from auto to manual and see the effect on a target's detectability.

Or flick from your Smart-Screen into an alternative Quick-Mask, and hear the difference in target response.

The ease with which you can modify a screen to optimise current situations, and flip it into your working screen, is so effortless.

Forget the Fe12 issue, that's a dead duck now, (for me anyway.) Holding onto the legacies of the past, will inhibit you moving ahead and enjoying what there is yet to be discovered.

Even if you don't believe you're getting items deeper than before, ( which is not what I'm finding), then you cannot fail to appreciate the radical and pleasing functionalities of the E-Trac.

May I offer one piece of advice.........yours to ignore if you wish.

If you get a target that audibly catches your interest, don't quickly dismiss it even if it is flickering below into the 'Limbo' region of the Fe15 to 20's.

Look at the depth guauge.....deep?....say over six inches. Check for accurate depth with pin-point. If it is deep, the go for it, regardless of all other variable indicators.

I personally am having more success with my unit than with any prior detector,and that includes the Exp II. (Never owned the SE)

Well, I'll stop 'rabbiting on' Charles, and just say that I wish you lots of happy hours with your new 'baby'.....................HH.........Matt

 

[Jim upstate NY]

Did you switch too ferrous tone tones because of high tone falsing on iron in conductive.. I know what you are saying about ignoring teh 12 ferrous reading, as I am finding more and more stuff that read out of the 12 range.. However the iron falsing is really making me stop and check too many targets that while I think they are not good, the tone stops me in my tracks.. this happens in the iron spots almost every swing.. I am finding iron spikes reading fairly solid up ion the 20 ferrous range and high toning.. cond 46.. pinpoint shows it as a small target while it can be almost 2 feet long.. I guess thats good if looking for bayonets
So far I must say the general rule has been good targets hit pretty solid, and most of the bad sound crappy..but again I haven't got anything good deep yet either..

Next time to the place I am testing I will go to ferrous, although 2 tones I am not sure of.. what pattern are you running? a nail reject or just a quick mask type like iron mask and set to what.. I am finding things that read as low as 23 ferrous that are actually not iron, but that low the iron falsing in cond drives me nuts.. be OK ion spots with low Iron I guess

 

[digitrich]

Is your "high" falsing hitting at 1-29,1-30,1-31,1-32 range? That's what I am getting and it's killing me. I believe someone posted digging "deep" coins there. Every time I dig those numbers, they are nails. Have you ever found a good target there? I have considered taking my skill saw and chopping the numbers 1-29 to 1-32 out of the screen but I am thinking that might void my warranty. It seems mostly to happen to me when I am in "difficult soil" and conductive tones and no where near as much in the settings of neutral soil and ferrous tones. Of course, when I am in ferrous tones, I have the bottom right side of the screen wide open. I talked to Dick in Vegas again today and he told me something sounds off and I should send it in so I am going to. After explaining to him about the lack of any deep coins yet found after 45+ hours of hunting, us having damp soil here, and having had found some deeper targets with my SE and than not having the ETrac be able to locate those same targets regardless of the settings I tried; he thought it would be a good idea to send it in. I will let you know what they tell me.

 

[Erik in NJ]

I think someone air tested coins on edge and they supposedly read there - was it you? Why not just disc out those numbers and hunt in conductive tones. No one here has ever proved to me that you lose depth with digital disc on the Expl and especially the ET so I don't understand why so many are howling for an AM/ferrous mode on this machine and I've never been convinced by anyone (with any evidence) that it was needed on the Explorer other than hearsay ... I'm from Missouri (wish i was so i could be closer to Rays courthouse).

 

[mattockman]

It's about time Digi....finally getting some results from the Shop!....Hope it comes back to you like it should have been fresh off the shelf. Good luck

 

[Jim upstate NY]

Its a preference thing, I want a ferrous multi tone, where I can open the screen and listen to all targets by ferrousity.. not by a simple 2 or 4 tone zone... you just cant do an open screen in conductive and not have iron drive you crazy.. maybe it would on the etrac anyway. but I dont know if iron is bouncing all the way to the top of the screen. I guess it will high tone false in ferrous too, so it would be a mute point... or maybe like the other guys something is wrong with mine too.. if you guys are hunting in iron and not getting high toned hits from iron even in coin mode then there is something wrong with mine... it doesn't matter if in auto or manual sens.. normal or high trash, and neutral or difficult ground.. I get lots of iron falsing.. I did not get that on the explorer in ferrous mode

 

[EddieB]

Hey Guys, I am having no problem with depth with my ET,wheats, with the X1 down in the hole up to the top cap in bone dry soil. I have seen that the ID on deep targets are all over the grid. And that iron falses no less than the SE in conductive, where I've always hunted. Just a hunch, but I think the ET will prove to be deeper than the Explorer. Only my opinion. HH EddieB

 

[Erik in NJ]

I have not had the pleasure of getting out with my E-Trac yet so I can't comment on the iron falsing issue, but I don't see why it should false worse than the Explorer in conductive sounds with a bit of Iron Mask added. I agree with you that I probably would not feel comfortable with 2 or 4 tones - I'm not sure why they even added this feature to the E-Trac. I guess what I'm trying to understand is this: with all of the iron at some of the sites that you've described, why would you want to hear it with a wide open screen and not discriminate out the iron? Sort of like using a radio with a squelch knob and wanting to listen to all of the noise that the knob is there to cut out. I understand that in ferrous you get a low tone for the iron as opposed to a high tone, but its still lots of noise and the trade off is that all of the things that hit near the bottom right on the Explorer (foil, crown caps, etc) give a nice high pitch and they are mostly junk - like iron, there's lots of this stuff around too. It seems to me that the most natural way to handle iron would be to try and disc it out as opposed to transposing the tones and assign them low tones. Maybe the answer is a tonal equivalent of QuickMask which works along two axes such that you could assign low tones to the left side AND bottom of the screen....of course an even better approach would be to change the timbre of the sound along one axis and the pitch along the other, but that gets us back full circle to the less than visionary capabilities of the guys that write the software for these Minelab miracles. Sadly, as you are now well aware, simple software features can make a huge difference in the useability and general acceptance of a machine. I give their hardware an A and their software a C- or a D+. Maybe you do have a bad machine - c'mon down here and run my ET and SE side by side with yours. Not sure why people are afraid to post the serial numbers of their machines here, but mine is XQ1 12875 - the "X" is literally the letter "X" in this case. Maybe there was a bad run of units somewhere along the line - I don't know.

 

[D&P-OR]

What's the S/N on your E Trac digitrich?---C'mon--you can tell us -it won't start a panic!---Mine is S/N 14195 and I am getting really good depth with it.-------Del

 

[coinnut]

n/t

 

[Jim upstate NY]

as far as I know I just havent gone over any deep ones, except perhaps ones that are just masked out because of iron.. Anyway I only think it may false more in ferrous because iron is jumping up to the top on the etrac more than it jumped to the right on the explorer..
flat iron on the explorer read far right but would be a bit below coins in that area.. nails on the other hand went far right once in a while but definitely nulled more than falsed.. where they etrac I seem to get them in the coin range more... so tougher to ignore.. the real high toned falsing in ferrous was actually above coin tone on the explorer.. on the etrac some of the high toned falsing is coming in at 12- 46 cond.. which is good coin reading.. stop and check.... the audio is the same and in ferrous it would also be the same, being they come in the 12 range alot.. I havent dug many nails with the etrac, so can say after messing with the target I think I can pretty safely ignore, but what if coins in iron sound that way? I dug quite a few of those signals, and they disappear after opening the hole and null with the probe.. so I assume I am safe passing them... just hoping a good one mixed in doesnt sound the same

 

[D&P-OR]

This is getting me curious.--Could there possibly have been a run of a "few" units with a little less than perfect depth capabilities??--I'm not trying to stir anything up here.--This has been "hashed over" a lot, so I guess I'm not stirring anything new up.---Maybe I can be a "little" helpful with what I am going to say.--I spent quite awhile in my test garden yesterday afternoon doing some tests with various settings etc.--My wife & I both got E Tracs and as I said--my S/N is XQ1 -14195---her's is XQ1-14047.----They both got good depth in these tests --8 inches plus (very easily) on a freshly buried dime.--I tested them with the Sunray probe mounted & without it mounted--and it made absolutely no difference either way as far as depth capabilities is concerned.--So for me, that lays to rest the idea that a mounted Sunray on the E Trac can affect depth (it doesn't).--I also switched stock coils and got the same good results.----As far as real life hunting "in the wild"--we have dug coins at a max. of 10"--but I know they will go deeper than that because those tones came "easy".---So that's been my experiences (so far)--hope this might help somebody out a little.----I do think that if you are haveing trouble with depth & have tried different settings--it would be helpful to simply try a different stock coil before you take it any further.-------Best regards, Del

 

[digitrich]

Yeah, I have been feeling like a one legged guy in a butt kicking contest. Thanks Matt.

 

[Erik in NJ]

I guess I'm trying to understand why with digtal discrimination, folks find the need to hunt in AM, and by doing that are forced into Ferrous Sounds. What is the drawback of adding a little Iron Mask and hunting in Conductive Sounds thereby not hearing the ubiquitous iron? I know that some claim adding any disc loses depth - is that true on the Explorer/E-Trac or just an old wives tale?

 

[MattR]

Did you switch too ferrous tone tones because of high tone falsing on iron in conductive..

Not primarily for that reason Jim, but it is the secondary reason for using Ferrous.

My primary reason for ferrous tones is because the most sort after targets in the UK, are the thin hammered silver and small gold coins. On a par with that is jewelry and rings. Remember, the commonest gold rings lost here in the UK are only 9 crt alloys. That in conductive tonal terms relegates them into the trash regions. Also, the more valuable rings with diamonds set in a platinum bridge, can read lower than a cheap 9 crt ring.
Psychologically, such low tones don

 

[Erik in NJ]

n/t

 

[digitrich]

Well on my machine and I believe Jim's it falses over and over and over to 1-31 even if I disc out that number. I am talking 2 out of 3 swings over iron. In ferrous tones it happens less, like 2 or 3 out of 5. Still gives a high tone in either case, enough to stop you dead and check. And yes it does repeat in 4 directions some times and every time I dig it I find small nails. Once, I found a wheat on edge.

 

[Erik in NJ]

Well I was hoping that someone could edumacate (sic) me on the desire to hunt in AM-Ferrous on the Explorer rather than adding a touch of Iron Mask to silence out the iron. Not sure about you guys, but in my parks there's also lots of foil in the ground that will give a high pitch in Ferrous - no? And crown caps, no? And other junk that reads in that bottom right-hand corner of the Explorer? I'm not one of those that have made the conversion to Ferrous from Conductive, so I imagine that I will miss it less on the E-Trac than some. Is hunting in AM "really" neccessary with a machine of the caliber of the Explorer or E-Trac or is this simply a vestigial feature of those that have been MDing for years with less complex machines prior to the Explorer?

On the E-Trac can you not disc out 1 - xx and 2 - xx and maybe 3 - xx?

 

[digitrich]

The weekend the ETrac first came out, many all metal hunters, especially me, had heated discussions on the lack of an all metal mode with ferrous tones and still having different tones for different coins on the ETrac (since they all hit near ferrous 12, then they all give the same tone in ferrous) . I even came up with a simple software solution that I emailed MineLab. The information you are seeking is thoroughly discussed in those posts in great depth.

 

[Erik in NJ]

If you have a chance I'd appreciate it if you could direct me to those posts with a link. They should have been moved over here and I'm sure that I took part in that discussion at the time, it's just that I've never gotten the resolution I've been looking for to that question - different people seem to have different (and conflicting) answers. So I've been trying to get guys like Jim to explain it from their point of view. I think you mentioned loss of depth at the time and the duration of the null taking too long to reset and loss of signals. Some have said there is no loss of depth with digital discrimination and others have reported getting clear signals through a constant null....so I'm confused as to what's real and what's percieved to be true.