e-trac initial impressions

[texastreasures]

I've had my e-trac for about a week, and have found around 15 wheat pennies, a merc, two silver rosies, a silver washington, and lots of clad. I don't seem to get much deeper than my old White's M6, but I am pulling targets out of trashy areas that my White's couldn't handle. The machine definitely has a learning curve, but once I master it, I'm sure this machine will rock!

Here are a few of my initial questions:

1) I often can't get a target to lock-into a consistent co-fe range, sometimes even with a few sweeps of the detector! Is this typical?
2) Very deep targets over 7" seem to have a significant audio lag, and I can only pin point by sweeping the coil over the target in both directions until the audio delay is equidistant on both the right and left sweep. Problem is I'm often off by quite a few inches. Is this the best way to pinpoint very deep targets. Is the pinpoint function usable for targets below 4 or 5 inches? Can I trust the fe-co reading on the pinpoint? In trashy areas, it seems to ALWAYS be off.
3) Many people seem to hunt using tones, ignoring the fe-co. If I open up the discrimination screen down to an fe of 45, many "good tones" seem to be iron! Do people who rely primarily on tones do so by rejecting more FE?
4) With my old White's, I could easily distinguish screw caps from coins by VDI and audio. With the e-trac, I often dig screw caps since their numbers come in close to coins. Is there a way to distinguish them based on characteristics of the audio?
5) I don't feel like the threshold is helping me hear "whispers" since the threshold pitch is very different then the target pitches I'm looking for. Does the threshold on the e-trac really help you get better depth by detecting whispers, or is it primarily to help you hear the "blanks" caused by your discrimination pattern?
6) I hear this machine is a nickel magnet, but I'm not having luck with the nickels (never have with any detector). Clearly nickels are dropped in the same areas as pennies, dimes, and quarters, so if I'm consistently digging the rest, I'm passing over the nickels. I try to find the nickels by watching for co of 12 to 13, and when I get those numbers, it's usually a nickel, but it happens so rarely. Should I rely on audio and dig regardless of numbers (even if they are 11 or 14 for example)?


I plan on putting in many hours with the e-trac, and will probably develop answers to some of these questions simply with experience. I also have Andy's book on order. I want to master the e-trac quickly but I'm certainly not a master yet. I worked a quadrant of a field with my e-trac and came out with some clad, and only a couple wheats. Then I worked that same quadrant of the field with my White's m6 (which I've put WAY more time into and have more experience with) so the White's pulled four silvers and many more wheats (deeper targets) than the e-trac in the same area (even after my e-trac had slowly combed it). I'm sure it comes down to my lack of experience with the e-trac! I think I heard those same deep targets with the e-trac, but couldn't make sense of the location of the target when trying to pinpoint since they were down around 8 or 9 inches, so I assumed their were ghost signals.

I'm confident that the e-trac will be my 'go-to' detector after I learn it.

 

[texastreasures]

I'll bump this up since I don't have any answers yet! Any thoughts regarding my questions are much appreciated!

 

[Arturo de Zorro]

3) Many people seem to hunt using tones, ignoring the fe-co. If I open up the discrimination screen down to an fe of 45, many "good tones" seem to be iron! Do people who rely primarily on tones do so by rejecting more FE?
4) With my old White's, I could easily distinguish screw caps from coins by VDI and audio. With the e-trac, I often dig screw caps since their numbers come in close to coins. Is there a way to distinguish them based on characteristics of the audio?

#3 Conduct tone was never meant to be used with little discrimination because conduct mode gives most iron a high tone like a coin sound but a coin sound will be slightly different like a whistle filled with water or a old timey bicycle handle bar bell (low highs and high highs). The iron high tone is more solid, uniform in length. So when using conduct multi tones you have to use the factory coin pattern or close to it because the more open you make it the more you let in iron high tones. With a good pair of headphones ($70 to 100 up)you can use less discrimination and tell the good highs tones from the bad. This is why many Explorer user that bought E-Trac's were not happy because on a Explorer you can switch to ferrous and use no discrimination and ALL iron will be low tone with all other metal higher tone, and ferrous mode on the E-trac has no high tones at all. So is the Explorer II or SE model better then tha E-trac, yes they are if you hunt in ferrous but as for me I always hunted in conduct with the Explorer I, Explorer II and I used alot of discrimination, so when I switch to the E-trac there was no problem for me and the E-trac is a tab faster in processing multi-targets under the coil.

#4 As for screw caps the Explorer I and II and SE had a ferrous # that was about 26 or 27 with a conduct # about the same, they were screw caps or indian head penny if the area was old. On the E-trac the ferrous number is mostly stuck on 12 (another thing the old Explorer users don't like) I myself have not found a way to eliminate screw caps other than dig conduct # 40 and up.

 

[Arturo de Zorro]

To get a better lock on in digital try a short sweep (no more then 2 inches) over the signal and if that don't do it try changing the sensitivity up or down. As for pinpointing you must push the pinpoint button as close as you can to where you hear the signal you want so that you don't lock on to something else, in heavy trash it takes about two to three tries to get it locked on. I have had no problems with pinpointing deep targets (8" or deeper) did have problems with the Explorer

 

[Crusty]

#3 Conduct tone was never meant to be used with little discrimination because conduct mode gives most iron a high tone like a coin sound but a coin sound will be slightly different like a whistle filled with water or a old timey bicycle handle bar bell (low highs and high highs). The iron high tone is more solid, uniform in length. So when using conduct multi tones you have to use the factory coin pattern or close to it because the more open you make it the more you let in iron high tones. With a good pair of headphones ($70 to 100 up)you can use less discrimination and tell the good highs tones from the bad. This is why many Explorer user that bought E-Trac's were not happy because on a Explorer you can switch to ferrous and use no discrimination and ALL iron will be low tone with all other metal higher tone, and ferrous mode on the E-trac has no high tones at all. So is the Explorer II or SE model better then tha E-trac, yes they are if you hunt in ferrous but as for me I always hunted in conduct with the Explorer I, Explorer II and I used alot of discrimination, so when I switch to the E-trac there was no problem for me and the E-trac is a tab faster in processing multi-targets under the coil.
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Just read your answer....the above was very well written and extremely helpful to me, thank you.

Dave