Curious about my settings

[frogmanungar]

Ive used my CTX for going on 4 years. I got curious about different settings I could expand its abiility to maybe increase chances of finds. So I build the test garden. Plan was to test Auto 3 and switch back and forth to Manual 28-30. I measured out depths from 5 inches to 9 inches. I buried the following items: a modern dime, modern quarter, 14K womens ring, 14K womens sm gold coin ring, Pull tab, mens silver ring, and mens 14K gold band. At the first depth (9 inches), signals were just to faint or none at all. I also tested using each of 5 programs which included High trash, ground coin, ferrous coin, gold ring/ trashy area, Modified (basically like the coin). I had to reduce each of the depths to 5 inches. Then retested each item buried. Basically I found no difference between the auto 3, and the manual 30. With strength, tone or what show up on screen. I did find a huge difference using high trash program which blocked the gold rings out! As far as the programs I Had the better signals using the ferrous coin or ground coin. Both with rings and the coins buried. I know an older buried coin or ring has oxidation around it which improves signal. But clean and buried what I found was disappointing comparing auto3 with manual 30 no difference. If anyone has anything to add please feel free to respond. I always enjoy hearing some of you experts out there.

 

[cw3]

Where are you located? Is the grownd very bad?

I can hit a mercury dime at 9" at manual 20 on sensativity. It hits it with no issues very strong. It will not hit it on auto plus 3.

 

[IDXMonster]

As stated...the ground itself is a VERY high determining factor in whether or not you’ll see a coin. Having your Volume Gain maxed out or close to it may help SOME signals. The huge coil will help some deeper signals. In some ground, you won’t see a 9” dime no matter WHAT, the machine has to detect it in the first place for ANY adjustment that you make to have any effect. The transmit power is fixed. By playing with different sensitivity settings, you are effectively controlling how SMALL of a signal the machine will report. Winding up manual sensitivity in a junky place or in “bad ground” will cost you coins in almost ALL instances. And almost every different site you’ll hunt will be different than the last, soil-wise and junk-wise. You might be able to get better performance in your very specifically set up test garden by cranking the sensitivity, but it’s quite likely that those findings won’t be that useful when transferred to the real world. Clare‘s statement about using Manual 20 is just about where I like to run, and almost NEVER go above 22. EMI, trash levels and soil conditions simply do not allow it to be set higher without serious drawbacks.

 

[frogmanungar]

What may be confusing is we have clay about 12 in down, even in the garden where I did the testing. Even where I hunt around a lake we have clay. My sensitivity stays above 14-16 most of the time. Also these test coins were not high silver content. By "strong" you mean solid TID numbers for FE-CO, and strong target vis on your screen?

 

[cw3]

By strong I mean a nice silver tone the VID numbers will jump around a little bit. The target trace works to about 8 inches in my ground. I think it has a faint dot in the target trace.

Deep coins are a lot different than the shallow ones. I will see if I can make a video tomorrow of it hitting the 9" merc. If you want a video on deep coins go to cutaplug on youtube and watch this video.

"The Ultimate Guide to Minelab E-Trac & CTX 3030 Deep Iffy Signals Metal Detecting Live Digs"​

In most of the video he uses the Etrac. The etrac and the ctx use the same vid numbers, the ctx is a little more stable on the deep coins.

If, I put my ctx in auto sensativity it will usually run about 16. I can run it in manual 20-23 with no issues.

 

[cw3]

Try loading the andy s coin pattern and try manual sensitivity at 20.

What discrimination pattern you running. If I run the bill s trashy park pattern, I cannot hit the 9" merc.

 

[sube]

Looking at what your machine runs at 14 to 16 would appear to be bad ground that means your detector well have a harder time trying to get a signal because of bad ground .It has to separate the ground from the coin.
Have you tried ground coin and manually setting ground balance .
Since the ground is bad maybe a 6 inch coil well give better results not seeing as much ground .
As far as manual and auto sensitivity manual at 20 well be deeper than auto + 3 at 23 but if you run into hotter ground manual well get more noise and auto well adjust the sensitivity lower but this takes time for the machine to adjust meaning auto well be running hotter than what you should be in this time period same can be said when auto is running lower sensitivity and runs into milder ground and should be running hotter.
You can see that manual is always running at 20 hot or mild ground well not miss the coins auto misses in this time lag for the sensitivity to change but with that said if manual runs into hotter ground you well have more noise. sube