Compare The Competition To Your Sovereign Or Excal

[jbow]

I think the GT would have gotten it, especially if the ET hit it good. It would probably have had a higher TID than the ET though.... I think. Square or round iron (like harness rings) tend to have a pretty high TID on the GT, IIRC.

The E-TRAC will, IMO, out-do the GT every time finding masked targets, it may give a one way signal but that conductive number will be there for you telling you that what you're hearing isn't a false, (if you run it with a little disc and ferrous/2-tones). It will make good finds otherwise but for unmasking in iron... that ET setup is beyond anything i've ever used at finding targets others walk right over.

The GT is better at giving a solid two way TID of a good target at depth... it just locks on and wont let go and even if the target is at the edge of detection the tone and number will ry to rise and will usually hit the mark before falling back down again. On gold the GT will usually give an unchanging TID no matter which direction you swing from... well, really it does that with all targets but if I get a TID in the 80s through 120... that is unchanging and solid from every direction I am excitedly digging... it may be foil but sometimes it is treasure. With my other detectors the TID jumps around... but not the TID on the GT and not the conductive number on the E-TRAC.

There is a swing speed where the E-TRAC would probably hit that target and the GT would have missed it though... and while I don't swing fast I cannot stand to creep along either. I usually swing at about 2 seconds per direction which may sometimes be too fast for the GT but not for the ET, it can be swung faster than that and not miss. The ET has a very fast recovery while still going deep. It is still tied to how much the processor has to deal with. In neutral ground without much trash I think you can swing the GT as fast as you want but in minerals and trash you have to slow down.. the ET will handle both with ease and without you having to pay much attention to your speed. If I had to sell machines and I really should... the ET and the GT would be the last to to go... that would be a sad day!

J

 

[synthnut]

jbow,
I agree with you completely !!......Two machines that have me scartching my head on how they perform are the Sovereign GT and the E Trac ......I'm fortunate to have both .....and really ENJOY both !!...... The Sovereign shocks me on how deep it goes , and how good a machine it is for such a simple machine ......The E Trac just blows me away with all the features that i has , and it's STILL a FAST MACHINE !!!..... OK , FAST for a Minelab !!......There are other machines out there that are much faster , but I don't think that there is a machine on the market that has a built in processor that is as fast as the E Trac .....and they SURELY don't have the features that the E Trac has ...... I love my Sovereign GT, but the next step up in Minelab machines to me anyway , has to be an E Trac !!... BOTH machines continue to amaze me at what they can do !!.....Jim

 

[mtpockets]

I myself am going to buy a GT.. I've never Owned one myself.. I've owned an Explorer SE...

The thing that I didn't like about the Explorers was the Screen... I didn't like it on my Whites XLT years ago too..
why spend the extra $700. for a LCD screen.. their easier to damage.. their harder to see in direct sunlight..

The More complicated the machine... the more prone it's to have issues with. IMO.. the more costly the repairs...

But, Then again I'd rather have the Muscle car without the Power windows/ seats.. I can adjust to my needs..

 

[Critterhunter]

Thought you guys might like to read this three page thread in the Etrac forum called something like "My buddy with a DFX now is convinced he needs an Etrac", or something like that. I'm going to read it later but I did see that the guy with the DFX gridded a yard from two different directions and then when he was done the guy with the Etrac re-worked the area and produced coins he missed. I'm sure the same could be said if the guy had used a Sovereign to re-work it. In fact, I sure would like to read a story where a Sovereign owner re-worked a spot gridded with the Etrac and vise versa for comparison reasons.

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?63,1283477

 

[synthnut]

I did a similar grid in my yard , but it had rained for a few days , and the day after is when I gridded my back yard ....I did find a couple of coins that I missed with the E Trac , but before digging them , I went inside for my E Trac as I was pretty stoked that I found the coins with my Sovereign ..... I did get a signal from my E Trac also .....so I have a suspision that it had more to do with the rain than anything else .....This is not a bad thing ..... The Sovereign produced coins as well as my E Trac did , but the E Trac ID'd them better .... The Sovereign found them equally as well as the E Trac did though ..... To be an equal to a machine that costs twice the price is not a bad thing !!..... I'm not sure what the circumstances have to be for the Sovereign to beat out the E Trac , but there are so many additional features to help you along your way with the E Trac , it would be hard to say where the Sovereign could better it , other than cheaper and simpler .....These alone are enough for me !!....Jim

 

[Critterhunter]

I'd say from what I've read and heard that, as improved as the VDI is on the Etrac over the Explorers, there still comes a point in depth or bad ground where the Sovereign is going to give you a more solid ID lock. I've read that in comparison to it here and there. I've also read that at some sites FBS machines just don't work well for some reason while the BBS Sovereign seems to run smooth as silk. I still say that's either due to certain minerals reflecting the higher/more frequencies of FBS machines or just simply that they are more prone to picking up more circuit noise in a given area.

I have no doubt that the Etrac can unveil targets in trash very well. I do have doubts that it will ID a deep fringe target as stable as the GT will. I also wonder if just how well the Etrac unmasks targets is really due to improved electronics or more due to the stock 11" Pro coil's design. I know the GT's already impressive unmasking ability and hitting on coins on edge is improved even more by the SEF coil. I've owned faster machines but none of them has unmasked or separated targets as well as the GT or this coil. Perhaps some merit is owed to the electronics in the Etrac but I'll put my money on more of that ability coming from that Pro Coil than anything else. Strap an SEF on your Sovereign and you're jaw will drop. This monster 15x12 seems to separate left/right width wise better than coils I've used as small as 8 or 9" on other machines. It's that outstanding at it.

The real curiosity factor for me would be to see somebody do separation/mask tests on the Etrac versus a GT using a 12x10 SEF coil. I'll bet the difference in ability will be non-existent or so close that it's hard to draw conclusions. Detecting field size has more to do with unmasking/separation ability than detector speed or any other software/electronics IMHO.

I've asked this before but look at it this way...Would you rather have something fast (or at least faster in terms of the Etrac) with a big fat detection field at the coil, or would you rather have something "slow" but with a very tight field to investigate targets with? I'd rather have the smaller detection field, and any lack of "speed" can more than be made up for with proper sweep and coil investigation techniques.

Many machines with much faster recovery speeds and typical concentric coils seem to have less ability at target separation or unmasking than the GT. As good as DD coils are at separation it seems even better with the SEF coil. I'm fairly sure the detection field width has been compressed compared to typical DD designs. Not that the 10" coil isn't awesome in it's ability, it's just that you will notice an improvement even going to the much bigger 15x12. I can only imagine how much better the 12x10 is in this respect. It might even be pushing well into the 8" or smaller coil sizes in terms of it's ability to separate, at least when compared to concentrics if not double Ds.

When I first was considering a GT I was not too big of a fan of DD coils. Based on my experience with my prior Explorers I felt that concentrics such as the 9.5" Whites had better separation ability. I've since come to understand that it wasn't really true and finally understood what people meant when they said a DD was better at separation. The bad pinpointing (much worse than a GT!) of the Explorer and it's sloppy/sluggish VDI response is what had colored my perception to DD designs. It was only when I used the 10" Tornado on the GT that I really came to understand just how much better a DD's separation was at any depth, versus best ability only at the deepest part of the detection field on a concentric. In the same respect, as good as the 10" DD Tornado was in comparison to those other coils, I can easily say that the 15x12 SEF seems like an even larger improvement in separation, pinpointing, and all other aspects. Sure, it's length can get in the way when trying to pick out targets compared to the 10", but that's usually easily compensated for by working your way around the target to avoid anything that might be underneath the rest of the coil. I use the tip of the SEF to try to isolate targets, so I'm always conscience of just what might also be under the center of the coil. But in terms of left/right separation width wise the SEF really shines. It just can get in there tighter IMO.

It's unique detection field also seems to hit on masked coins or ones on edge better, or at least is able to see different masked/on edge targets more easily that conventional concentric or DD designs seem to have a problem with. It might be that certain masked or on edge coins hit better on a typical DD or concentric, but by my way of thinking those ones that are "different" in the way they are hidden to those coils can more easily be detected by the SEF's morphed field. What that means is more of those "different" types of coins on edge/masked are still out there to be found if you know what I mean. Coming full circle on this, I have my suspicions that any inherit ability of the Etrac over the prior Explores in this respect may be more due to it's new 11" Pro Coil and how much better that is than the standard 10" coils the Explorers used to have. I found those coils horrible in many respects, where as the 10" stock coil on the GT is so much better to me. As said, I'd *really* like to see some mask testing using the GT and 12x10 in comparison to the Etrac with the 11". Place your bets!

 

[synthnut]

I wouldn't even think twice about the SEF doing a better job picking up more coins, or at least a better signal on coins that are on edge as compared to the standard Pro Coil on the E Trac .... That's just one more design quality of the SEF coil ....What I'd like to know is if this design is what makes the SEF run so much more quiet compared to the Pro coil ? ...... It's got to be something about the way this coil is wound that makes it more versitile .......

I'm seeing a lot of tests in my future ..... I will be doing most of them in sand since you really can't get a good read on coins freshly dropped in soil anyway ... I can't speak for the Sovereign , but I can speak for the Safari .....The E Trac CLEARLY ran deeper , and was way more versitile than the Safari .....When it came to those extra precious inches that were needed to find DEEP Silver in some of the parks that I frequent , there was NO DOUBT that the E Trac was hitting coins that the Safari could not even get a faint singnal on ..... With all the features that the E Trac can run at the same time, my guess is that its processor is faster/bigger than that of the Safari for sure , and maybe even the Sovereign ....Again , I have not done tests yet to know for sure ...The reason I own an E Trac is because of the fact that it would CLEARLY show is superiority to the Safari in challenging situations that I witnessed first hand !!.... Jim

 

[HaroldILL.]

I can't wait for your test result's! I have owned an E-trac since a month after they first came out,And every thing you say is true. I hate to say this but it is almost to good. All the newbee yuppie's in Chicago are getting them and finding deep silver rite out of the box without paying there dues like most of us had to do. Having said that I have always been curious about the sovereign gt. Be side's nobody around here user's one and I always like to be different. One question though,Does it have adjustable modulated volume like the E-trac where you can make the deeper hits softer? And how different are the tones compared to the E-trac?

 

[synthnut]

The pitch is different on these machines .....The Sovereign will hit Gold and have a deeper tone that if you hit coins , but that deep tone doesn't seem like it goes as deep as the E Trac ....The higher Sliver tones don't seem quite as high as the E Trac either .....This being said , there is a WIDER ptich range on the E Trac .... The volume featrues are NOT as adjustable on the Sovereign as they are on the E Trac .... It's a much more simple , yet VERY effective machine ... There is a limited amount of control that you have with the Sovereign , whereas you can fiddle for a while on an E Trac to fry different settings to see what will work for you when trying to recover a deeper target ....This is not to say that it will go deeper ...I'm simply saying that there are more filters and features on the E Trac to aid you in finding your target ..... Again, you may find the target easier using the Sovereign but not always ..... There are also more ways of telling what your target is when using the E Trac .....Your Sovereign will give you one metered number if you have a meter, and tones to aid you .....You will work harder ID'ing your targets running the Sovefreign .....On the E Trac you get BOTH conductive AND ferrous numbers of your target ..... You can even swtich your screen to show smaller font ferrous/conductive numbers and a larger matrix screen that will show you where on the screen your target is hitting as well as the depth of the target .....OR you can have LARGER font numbers and a smaller matrix screen if you are more in tune to checking just the numbers ..... It's really layed out quite nicely , and will take someone more time to learn , but once learned , it's really a very valuable tool !!!.... The Sovereign is way more simple , and faster in a lot of respects because you are not wading thru menu's ...You are limited as to what controls you have at your disposal, but these controls are VERY powerful controls, and the machine will not disapoint .... For me , if I didn't have the money for an E Trac , I would buy a Sovereigh with a meter on it .......If I had the money for an E Trac , I would opt fot that ....I'm in an area where my finds will pay for my machines in 3-6 mos time , so I have both of them and bought my Sovereign used ...For a low cost machine , you can get the Sovereign with a meter, and have a machine that will detect ANYWHERE !!....Beach, Parks, Schools , old home sites, historical sites ( if they will let you hunt there ) dry sand , wet sand , etc ....... It goes DEEP, and ID's well, and has a good collection of coils that you can buy for it .... Heck, look at some threads and you can even make a water detector out of it ..... I heard so many people talking about how the Sovereigns tones would drive you crazy .....I don't see that at all unless you use to hearing a single BEEP all the time ......THAT would drive me crazy !!..... As far as Yuppies buying E Tracs and not paying their dues , I could care less ....I look at it like the more people that enter this hobby/sport , the better machines companies will try to come out with to accomadate us !!! ...Look at how far Minelab has come over the years .....Heck , just about ANY company has come over the years .... Jim

 

[kered]

Well i have atmo XS2apro, GT , Excalibur 2 and etrac(apart from the others). for gold hunting i prefer the sound of the first 3, theres something about the sound of the Sovereign when you go over a gold ring that you can't mistake whereas the etrac gives you that same sound that relates to the Fe-Co content irespective of its shape or form or if its a gold ring or pulltab. With the sovereign you can almost draw the shape, if a ringpull is flat you can hear the bridge in the middle(modern sort) if you pass in the right direction, with the etrac you just get the 12-14(or there abouts) sound irespective of shape. Amongst iron the etrac for me is King by far(sorry) I have zones that i just can't get through with the sovereign due to the iron, yes it will pick up targets through the null although at relativly short depths and lock on, a smaller coil would help but with the etrac its not necesary.
The worst zone is an old slipway that was used to shotblast hulls, you can imagine the ironflake and shot mixture that there is, its had the slip removed and a new covering of sand(taken from the water at the end of the slip) and its just imposible, with the etrac i just turn to ferous sounds, quickmask open screen and away you go, you get an earbashing, 20-50(or more) iron grunts per pass(as fast as my f75) but it just cuts through it like a knife and the good stuff comes through no nulling, with the sovereign even motionles with the coil placed on the ground, slight arm tremour is enough to null it. I've had the etrac since march 2008(i think) so have some practice in.
What i dislike is the delay for the numbers to come up so i hardly ever use them(the sov was good training to go by sound alone) the Sovereign numbers are instant if you use a meter.
As to depth, i won't go into that lets just say i use the etrac mostly and XS2apro second(not enough confidence in the GT so far but its not looking too good)

 

[synthnut]

I can't relate to the Sovereign and iron with a good target next to it when running really deep, but I can with the E Trac , and the target will SURELY come thru the null with the E Trac .... Running a smaller coil like a SunRay X-5 or similar , and its even more effective ..... On your E Trac try putting your "Response" setting on "Long" or "Smooth" ...Try them both ...You might get more of what you hear with the Sovereign ...It's not exactly like it but it will give you more to listen too .....For this reason , I'm not sure that Critter is going to "Connect" with the E Trac like he does with his Sovereign , but with all the other features and tallents that the E Trac has , it may not matter .... I like the E Trac and the Sovereign both for what they do .....They are not the same machine , but they are both great machines ... A lot may have to do with how familiar you are with a machine ......Jim

 

[kered]

Yes, Both those responses do come closer but in really iron infested sites it slows the machine down(or thats my impresion ) as the sounds run into each other(tried fast too but don't like that at all, too choppy). Having said that they are good for picking up targets that the coil hasn't passed over and helps you home in, especially the long(a bit like all metal). Man the etrac is so configurable for all occations/terains. Anyway we better leave that for the etrac forum or we'll get a warning:clsoedeyes:

 

[Critterhunter]

I really hate being put in the position of devil's advocate and having to "bash" the Etrac, or at least point out possible potential problems with it. That's not my intent. As I've said I fully intend to buy one down the road. I do miss having a detector with a display and various computer settings for the rare situation where I'd like to play with them. Mainly that kind of control doesn't really mean more depth, but it does mean the ability to say ignore a very specific target that seems to be all over a particular site. In a situation like that I would very much like to use a learn reject function and just knock that one pesky target out for that day's hunt. That's the same philosophy I use when running the GT's notch in order to shut up the endless sea of tabs at some of my sites. My nickle count seems to go way up and I'm more prone to investigate other non-coin numbers that I know aren't going to be yet another tab.

My only suspicion/caution/doubt (whatever you want to call it) is that the Etrac's high resolution on various coins might make a deep fringe coin signal or one mixed in trash seem rather "iffy" or suspect to me. That was always the battle I fought on my Explorers. Even if the coin wasn't all that deep or masked it's ID was more like a house of cards to me that would come crashing down with any kind of real intense investigation of that target. You've got more balls to juggle in a sense when you run that kind of resolution on coins. Sure, it can be handy when trying to cherry pick a specific non-clad coin out of a nice lawn, but I'm not willing to trade that for a good solid ID lock that says "Dig Me". I always went back and fourth on that with my Explorers. Sometimes it was nice to say "Hey, I think this is a silver dime", but more often than not that kind of resolution had me guessing targets more than digging them.

That's not to say you can't split hairs on coins with the GT. I'm still learning that but I have noticed differences in audio or VDI response for coins above a copper penny. Trust me, once you hear a few deep 180 targets on the GT you'll be able to pretty much tell it's a silver dime based on it's smoother/softer audio compared to something else.

If the Etrac is much better in this respect (ID stability) then that's great for me and I'll probably be happy with it, but if it's got that feeling like I said of a car going down the road with bad shocks then I'll have my issues with it. Based on what I've read and talked to people about on the Etrac I just get this feeling that a deep coin isn't going to give me as consistent or solid of a ID lock compared to the "wider net" of the GT in that respect.

My other concern is about it's gold ring ability while avoiding trash. With my Explorers I tried to develop a tab program to block most of them out and still get a lot of gold rings. What I found was that it looked too close at some of these tabs and the resulting areas I was blocking were much more wide. It made it much harder to put my finger on what should be blocked and what shouldn't. The expanded VDI and tone resolution of the GT in the lower and middle part of it's scale may or may not be as "high" in resolution as it is on the Etrac. Never really investigated that. But even if it is less it seems to me to at least be the perfect balance between too high and too low of resolution. Right where I needed it to develop a tab "program" or notch on the Sovereign and the numbers proved that I could in fact avoid most tabs while still recovering more rings. That kind of pattern was never apparent to me on the Explorer and was more or less a blurry mess. All the other machines I've owned for the most part had too low of resolution when it came to trying to work something out. They just didn't have the resolution needed to really split hairs all that well on these targets.

The other concern I have is with the audio on the Etrac. Is it going to afford me the same long drawn out rich traits of a target that I can pick apart? Up until now the only machines that offered me this much information via audio were Whites units, but they of course didn't offer me all the tones of the Sovereign. I found the Explorers too short in response. More processed words on targets than nice long sentences that the Sovereign seems to be telling me. Even ignoring the VDI/Tab failures in trying that, the audio of the Explorer wasn't as "telling" to me with gold rings I scanned over versus some other piece of trash. It just didn't have enough "meat" or detail in it's audio to sort those finer details out. That's where I'm wondering if I'll be saying the same thing about the Etrac. Is it going to speak to me in nice long sentences or is it going to cut it's communication to shorter ones that lack in the details? Is it going to give me a nice round/warm/smooth sound when it's a gold ring and lock onto that one VDI, or is it not going to have enough detail in audio to see these slight differences. Is it's VDI going to be unstable enough to have me thinking that it might be a piece of trash nonuniform in shape rather than a ring, or is it going to lock a ring into a good solid VDI like most do on the Sovereign so I know what I'm looking at is at least round in shape?

The above audio issue is one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan of "fast" machines when it comes to locking onto and noticing targets at extreme depth. It's not just the more solid VDI lock, but also the more noticeable report on a deep target that I might miss with a machine that wants to keep it's report to as short of a sentence as possible. As with my Whites, I can work the coil on my GT slowly over a target and it will relate more details to me via the audio without trying to cut things short. Try it some time....When a target's potential really has you curious move the coil slower than usual over it to "scan" it more in detail. Often that's when the telling jagged edges of a piece of junk will sound off and tell you what they are. It's kind of hard to communicate what I'm trying to say here but it's one of a few concerns I have with the Etrac's potential.

Now, so long as I keep talking smack maybe I'll start seeing some used Etracs at a reasonable price on the net. Really, where else are you going to go from a GT or an Etrac but to either one of them. Nothing else from anybody else really has as much potential for the most part.

I'm not surprised about your findings with the Safari. A friend had one or both and I wasn't all the impressed at all. Dog slow even compared to an Explorer. In that respect the VDI on the GT is very "instant". What you hear is what you see right now on it's display. If I wanted to spend that kind of money I'll buy a used Explorer cheaper than one of those and have so much more.

 

[Critterhunter]

I can't wait for your test result's! I have owned an E-trac since a month after they first came out,And every thing you say is true. I hate to say this but it is almost to good. All the newbee yuppie's in Chicago are getting them and finding deep silver rite out of the box without paying there dues like most of us had to do. Having said that I have always been curious about the sovereign gt. Be side's nobody around here user's one and I always like to be different. One question though,Does it have adjustable modulated volume like the E-trac where you can make the deeper hits softer? And how different are the tones compared to the E-trac?

If I understand what you're asking- The audio of the GT does get software as the target gets deeper. In that way you can easily tell just how deep it is. I never used the depth meter on machines that featured that anyway as it wasn't as accurate as just judging depth by the target's volume.

I know what you mean about always being curious about the Sovereign. I remember back in the day years ago with the first Sovereign model that somebody brought along to one of our hunts. We were taking a break near an old camp fire. Not a pit, just a spot where somebody had burned a camp fire in years gone by. I had previously swept over this spot but the charcoal and such wouldn't give me any kind of good signal. This guy just as a second thought swept his Sovereign over it and the next thing I know he starts digging. If I remember right he popped two or three mercs out of the ground under that mess. That was the first time I took noticed and thought maybe the ability of these machines wasn't been exaggerated in the worst of ground conditions.

 

[kered]

Once you start to discriminate things out be it by learn, notch disc, or by using a preset you start to slow things down and also introduce the null, i prefer to hear the unwanted target for example a nail than just get a null as on the Sov, this speeds things up as any target directly alongside or even underneath with be heard imediately. The audio on the etrac is not the same as the sovereign by any means but it has its own caracteristics that you get to know and is also adjustable to give a longer drawn out sound as Synthnut suggested. as an example a coin at say 45

 

[Critterhunter]

Yesterday a friend and I were out hunting an old coin site. The conditions were very dry and the soil is a powdery black texture almost like talcum powder. I was using my GT using the 10" stock coil and he was using a 6000 Pro Xl and 9.5" stock coil. Mostly I was hunting with my sensitivity calibrated on a buried dime (around 11PM on the dial provided best target ID) but as we winded up the day's hunt we hit a section of ground where this soil seemed to contain a lot of tiny hot rocks. I decided rather than play with sensitivity again I'd just throw it into Auto as I was tired and ready to go home anyway.

After a few minutes I came acrossed a deep coin signal that gave me good audio/VDI swept from any direction. It was softer but still plenty loud enough to hear, and I estimated it's depth at some where around 7" based on it's volume. I called my friend over to check it with his 6000 and he said that it was just at the fringes of his detection ability. That was interesting to note because even in Auto this target didn't present much of a challenge to my GT. After digging down about 7 to 7.5" deep out popped a wheat penny. I was very impressed with not only the machine's depth in this ultra dry, powdery, rough soil containing what seemed like tiny hot rocks, but also with the fact that this machine did that well in this type of soil even in Auto sensitivity.

At another spot I got a nickle signal. It wasn't totally locking on like a nickle but rather going up and down the VDI by about 4 digits, from like 144 to 148. Still, being that deep in this soil that might be a nickle at the fringes as it sounded over 8" deep. My friend came over and swept over it and said his machine was all over the place with it's meter since it was pretty much past fringe for him. I dug down and was ready to give up when at about 8.5" deep I finally recovered the target. It ended up being a light bulb's threaded socket for like a car, smaller than the normal size of a house light bulb's threaded end. I was once again impressed that even in Auto the GT got something roughly the size of a quarter at that depth in this bad/dry soil, and that the GT's ID was pretty much true to the target. I wouldn't expect something like this (it was crumbled) to lock into one ID and it should have reacted just like it did, bouncing up and down the nickle range. This was a low conductivity target too. I have no doubt that had it been a silver quarter I would have easily detected it with good audio/proper ID.

There is just something about Auto sensitivity when conditions get really bad. I prefer it on old trails of packed dirt/clay that contain rocks, which often means hot rocks. It seems that Auto will get easily 7 or 8" deep and yet keep the threshold so much more stable, where as in manual something as low as 2 or 3PM wouldn't smooth the machine out in conditions like this some times. From my experience I believe Auto gets about the depth as around 2 to 3PM on the dial (getting coins about 7 to 8" deep) and seems to "follow the ground" much like Auto ground tracking in that it is constantly compensating for changing ground conditions by adjusting sensitivity up and down the dial as the ground conditions warrant. I've even dug some silvers out of pounded out spots I've hit with my Explorers yet they missed while Auto didn't. I believe that Auto shines when the ground conditions and/or RF noise are at their worst in providing as optimum of a sensitivy setting while keeping the machine as stable as possible. Based on the 7 to 8" deep coins I've dug in Auto and how hard they hit, I would suspect it can detect coins another inch or two deeper with no problem under most conditions. Think of it this way- Even in Auto your Sovereign is getting more depth than most machines on the market, and those machines that can keep up are riding at such an edge of high sensitivity that they are not nearly as much of a pleasure to hunt with.

 

[synthnut]

I can't speak for the "Auto " area much on the Sovereign as I have not owned it long enough to jugdge .....I can however speak on the Auto section on the E Trac ... On the E Trac you can choose "Auto " or "Manual" and one of the nice features on the Autio AND the Manual mode is if you think that the ground can handle more sensitivity, you can adjust it to be Auto and then add +1, +2, or +3 .....If you think that the Auto Sensitivity is too hot for an area , you can also go the other way to "Auto" =1, -2, or -3 ....... The soil in some of the parks that I hunt changes from time to time , so I hunt in Auto +3 for the most part .....This allows for changes in soil conditions and I can always change it if the soil dictates I do so .. I won't say that this is the OPTIMUM setting , but it surely does a darn good job at finding targets without me having to ride the Sensitivity all the time .... It's a comfortable average to hunt with .... On really deep targets , you will still get a signal but not THAT strong of a signal ...Enough to make you want to go back and investigate ..... I use my Sovereign in the same manor .... I will start out in Auto , and if I get some IFFY signals , I will then take it out of Auto and start around 3 o clock and work my way to noon with the Sensitiviy .... About the only time that I will not start out in Auto is on the beach .....Jim

 

[Critterhunter]

I just think Auto can reveal certain targets in certain bad grounds that a static manual setting may have problems with. Perhaps Auto is able to come back sooner from a null and thus see a coin next to iron more directly. A static manual setting can "null out" as it passes over say iron, hot rocks, or a mineral pocket, where as Auto is constantly adjusting to try to keep a steady threshold. I have not tested the unmasking ability of the machine in Auto versus a manual but I figure it's either going to go one of two ways-

Either Auto will as said bring back the threshold from a null quicker and so see nearby targets better, or Auto might try to smooth out the threshold when a coin and iron lay next to each other and so make the masking worse. I suspect that Auto does a better job just based on the coins I've found in gridded out spots that I had worked to death with my Explorers. On the other hand, I've also dug coins in the 7 to 7 3/4th inch range in Auto that had no form of masking or iron around them at all. On several occasions I've scratched my head and said "How did my Explorers miss that?" Perhaps a static manual setting wouldn't keep track with the ground conditions and as the ground becomes hotter or colder it may miss a target as it's now either too high or too low for best depth. I keep planning to test Auto's unmasking versus manual and sooner or later will post a report on that.

There are rough ground conditions where no perfect manual setting seems to provide the most stable of IDs on targets. When conditions cause your VDI and audio to become fussy even at shallow 4 or 5") depths then you are either choking on the ground matrix or picking up stray RF noise. Even super low sensitivity settings don't seem to help much, and now the depth has suffered greatly to get the machine stable by lower it. When that happens try flipping over to Auto on a picky target that is shallow enough that you are reasonably certain it shouldn't be giving you such trouble to lock on. I've found in those rare situations for what ever reason Auto will take a jumpy VDI and greatly stabilize it. Perhaps the ground contains randomly changing ground conditions due to hot rocks, minerals, or as said there is just stray RF noise in the air. If it's the ground then I believe Auto is acting much in the way like Auto ground tracking on some machines and keeping the sensitivity at least in the ball park of "best". If it's RF noise in the air then perhaps it isn't constant, which would allow you to find a good manual setting, and so it's constant flux plays havoc with a static setting where as Auto can compensate as it comes and goes.

I know at some locations (like packed dirt old trails containing clay or rocks) any amount of manual tweaking doesn't seem to find me a happy compromise. In that case Auto makes the machine smooth as silk and as a result I've found some good targets that otherwise I might have passed over as just another false in manual.

From my testing of Auto it seems that it mostly calibrates to somewhere in the 3 to 2PM range on the dial. Often a target that Auto won't see will start to show up once sensitivity is raised to about 3 to 2PM on the dial. As I said, even though Auto might not give you best possible depth it will at least get you in the ball park, and even still it's depth is still well beyond that of most other detector brands. You could hunt in Auto all the time and be beating the depth of almost every other machine on the market IMHO. That's kind of cool to think about, isn't it?

I've told people this before- If you have a favorite spot that you think you've worked the tar out of and recovered all there is, I would suggest doing an experiment by re-hunting that site yet one more time but this time in Auto. You might be suprised at what it finds when you thought there was simply nothing left. Whatever that's due to as discussed above is open for debate. What is not debatable, to me anyway, is that Auto seems to uncover more targets that were in some way too difficult for even the best manual setting. Save this "test" for sites that should show a difference. Mainly this means sites of higher minerals, hot rocks, or iron, or other trash. If it's a nice clean site with not much in the way of minerals or iron then I wouldn't bet on seeing any more targets show up. Use it at your rougher sites for any of the above negative conditions, including stray RF noise.

 

[crazyman]

Critter, because of the mineralization in my area I almost always use auto sens. with the 10 inch coil for both land and beach hunting but I use manual sens. most of the time with the S-8. The worst thing you can do is use to much sensitivity with the Sovereigns in bad ground. I have dug coins on some nasty beaches at 12+ inches with the 10 inch coil using auto sens. and on land silver dimes at 8-9 inches so far with the S-8 coil in manual sens. If the ground or beach is really bad I'll turn iron mask off with both coils using the same settings I normally use. When hunting in thick iron I will sometimes use auto sens. with iron mask off also with the S-8.

 

[Critterhunter]

I was digging through some old 12x10 threads in the Explorer forum to brush up on people's opinions on it since mine will be here in a day or two. Anyway, ran across this little gem in one of the threads concerning the stability of the Etrac's ID at depth. Mainly, just like the Explorer the ID can get jumpy and is not a reliable way to judge targets past 9" in depth or so. I'm sure it's improved over the Explorer but it still is a problem. After I saw this thread I did a little more digging and opinions seem to agree that just like the Explorer the ID at depth can be eratic. Opinions are to go by the sound more just like the good old days with the Explorer. As I've said before having a "bigger net" in the coin "zone" on the GT makes deep coins more stable in ID much like I always felt they were on my QXT Pro (which only had 8 total zones, the highest being "COINS"). It's nice to have resolution on coins some times but more often than not I find it more to place doubt in my mind due to the unstable nature of that high of resolution at depth or in bad ground or trash.

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?19,1140862,1141858#msg-1141858

Again, I still plan to buy an Etrac down the road because in a computerized detector there is nothing better, and it's still a huge improvement over the Explorer in certain ways. There are a few features that I'll find a use for in certain situations. Incidently, in scanning through a bunch of old Explorer/Etrac threads for other reasons I haven't really seen any depth numbers that are beyond the Sovereign's ability. I still feel at depth the Sovereign is probably going to be more apt to give you a more stable ID.

Also, I noticed digging back through some old Sovereign threads here and elsewhere and found that quite a few people say the audio on this machine is much more telling on gold rings than the Explorer/Etrac. I know it is for me compared to my Explorers. Better than any machine's audio I've ever used for that. Along those lines I just noticed Kered's remark further up in this thread...

"Well i have atmo XS2apro, GT , Excalibur 2 and etrac(apart from the others). for gold hunting i prefer the sound of the first 3, theres something about the sound of the Sovereign when you go over a gold ring that you can't mistake whereas the etrac gives you that same sound that relates to the Fe-Co content irespective of its shape or form or if its a gold ring or pulltab. With the sovereign you can almost draw the shape, if a ringpull is flat you can hear the bridge in the middle(modern sort) if you pass in the right direction, with the etrac you just get the 12-14(or there abouts) sound irespective of shape"