Charles (Upstate NY)
Well-known member
I took the E-Trac out for the first time today and here's the brain dump...
I started with the factory start up coin pattern, conductive tones, etc. but did make these changes.
Dropped the gain to 21
Maxed the tone variability
Neutral ground
Low trash or whatever they call it
Fast On
Deep On
Now before we get started, I just want to thank [size=large]Joe Demarco of Demarco Detector Sales in South New Jersey[/size] again for this machine. Yes it's a blatant plug for Joe, well deserved and a sponsor of this forum for many years. If the information below helps you at all thank Joe! And maybe also Beachcomber for sending pics of all those E-Trac gold rings and getting me all worked up to buy one! lol
After about 30 minutes I didn't think I was getting much depth in auto sens. The machine had set the sens to 16. I switched to manual sens 19, it was a little twitchy due to nearby electrical lines but quite manageable. Almost immediatly I got a hit on a clad dime about 6 inches down. It was not a great signal but repeatable and one I would dig. I switched to Auto sens and poof the target vanished. I know there is more to the auto sens on this E-Trac so don't take this as meaning manual sens is 'always' the way to go but clearly it was in this situation. So I went back to manual sens 19. After about another 30 minutes I was feeling more comfortable with the machine and cranked the sens to 26 manual and left it there the rest of the day quite happily.
Iron falsing...I was very happy with the E-Trac in terms of less falsing on iron. It did false some but a fraction of the amount of falsing I normally get on my Explorer SE or II at these same sites. Later in the day I took it to a site that is a nightmare of rusty nails falsing and the E-Trac was very well behaved, a welcome change. By the way this is where I found the silver dime, an in an area I had gridded with an Explorer before. I remember gridding this area because I found a big fat gold ring here a few years back and not surprisingly went into grid it clean mode.
When the E-Trac did false on iron which was not that often it was quite obvious that the target was iron by the way it was behaving as I swept over the target. On the very few iron falses that I did get where I was getting some high tones from more than one direction a quick glance at the screen confirmed them hitting in the 1:## range. About the only coin that hits up there is a silver dollar and this was no silver dollar. Coupled with the fact that it was bouncing from null to 1:## it was an easy call to make, iron. Still I jumped to AM to further check these and yep the cursor was exhibiting a iron false bounce pattern from bottom right up to the top and somewhat left. I would not declare victory yet, the soil was dry and dry soil shuts iron up so the jury is still out on the E-Trac in terms of dealing with iron it wet/damp conditions but even so I'd say what I'm seeing so far is encouraging. Also I love that there is headroom above the coins for iron to false into. It's like Minelab added 3/8 of an inch to the right edge of the Explorer screen and iron bounces over there, but the coins stay left of that, hope that makes sense. So if I'm seeing a target jump up to 1:## over in the coin zone, someone correct me if I'm wrong but if nothing but a silver dollar is going to hit up there and good gawd a silver dollar is going to scream silver versus a nail falsing I'm pretty comfortable ignoring those pesky iron falses that hit 1:##
Depth...Joel buried a chunky canadian cent (maybe a little larger than a nickle and thicker) about 5-6 inch deep. I'd call it 6 with the 2-3 inches of grass on top. I got a strong signal on that coin, no surprise there but then started raising my coil off the ground and damn I was still getting a strong signal 5-6 inches off the ground. Try that with an Explorer, impressive especially on a fresh buried target. I suspect there is a E-Trac dark arts tip lurking in this perhaps related to the neutral ground setting?
Factory Coin Pattern...this pattern needs to be tweaked. Zink cents were trying to null, some pull tabs also were trying to null as was some foil and some gold targets I sampled last night. So some of the low conductive areas need to be opened up if you are going for gold or just don't want to be bothered by these chopped up half null signals. I only read about half the manual so I'm not sure where all the trash hits yet but I'll be editing this pattern.
Descrimination versus All Metal - I ran the factory desc pattern all day with only occasional forays into all metal. Now as with the Explorer I did get a better signal in all metal on iffy signals that were partially nulling but that is to be expected. The question is, do I really need to run this machine in all metal mode for the reasons I ran Explorers in all metal mode? I think the answer is no. Remember that silver dime, holy cow the detecting footprint on this coil is like a knife edge. I was able to swing back and forth over that dime in a 1 inch wide sweep and the machine came off the target, reset, and then gave a distinct tone as I swept back over the target. On my Explorers with that short of a sweep I'd pretty much get a single continuous signal. This is telling me this E-Trac has the ability to do some serious target separation. Keep in mind that I did have Fast On. I'll have to do some more testing but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.
Ferrous versus Conductive - There seems to be lots of discussion about the disadvantages of the E-Trac's ferrous tone mode versus the Explorer so here's my take on this. First I think people are over rating the Explorer ferrous tone benefits.
The big advantage of the Explorer ferrous tone mode is that one could hunt in all metal and iron would sound low, non-ferrous targets high. Can't do that in conductive tones because the high iron tones would drive you batty right.
So (relic hunters excluded) why would anyone want to hunt in all metal mode in the first place? I think many people do because if you descriminate out the iron, the iron nulls mask nearby targets or partially mask them chopping the signal to peices, this is well documented. BUT...while this was true for Explorer XS machines e.g. iron nulls were sticky, once the Explorer XS got hold of an iron null it didn't want to let go of it, it was less true for the Explorer II, and even more less true of the Explorer SE. I say this because after digging thousands of targets in all metal with these machines, the number of iffy targets that turned out to be a good target (coin, etc) fell off significantly with the Explorer II and then again with the Explorer SE e.g. if the SE is saying it's iron it almost always was. Maybe an ugly wheat might be the outlyer here. I think the faster processor speeds (and perhaps software/circuit tweaking) let the machine come off the iron target, reset and latch onto the nearby target better with each subsequent version of the Explorer.
So fast forward to the E-Trac which from what I saw today is super fast in terms of target reset so I no longer see sticky iron nulls as being a problem if iron is descriminated out...subject to testing in wet soil conditions, again the jury is still out on that site condition. Therefore if I descriminate out iron on the E-Trac, I should feel confident that I'm not going to miss nearby good targets due to the iron null which is now quite short. Hence if I'm now descriminating out iron I no longer have a need for ferrous tones right?
Are there any benefits to using conductive tones?
Well first off understand that the old Explorer rule of all metal is better is not 100% true. There are (and I saw this many times) occasions where the Explorer will lock onto a coin hiding near iron (or other common trash targets like rusty crowncap, pull tab, etc) BUT only IF you have that nearby iron or trash target descriminated out! I know shock and disbelief right? I found this out because I do run descrimination at times but quite commonly switch to all metal to pinpoint and on those occasions when I switched to all metal the machine locked onto that nearby iron or trash target so hard there was not even a hint of the coin. And I mean the cursor would jump right to textbook iron, crowncap, tab, etc. and stay there. So just keep that in mind if you are having trouble letting go of your all metal ways, I guarantee if you always hunt in all metal you are missing some targets. It's like if the trash target or iron is descriminated out, the machine says okay well we are ignoring those targets what else do we have, hmmm there a bit of coin tone lets focus on that.
Using the E-Trac's conductive tones now gives me a high degree of tone ID variability which I did not have on the Explorer in ferrous mode due to so many targets being bunched together on the ferrous axis. The benefits of this higher degree of tone ID variability will now need to be exploited.
Here's one out of the gate, the conductivity of a target was highly accurate on the Explorer, the ferrous content of a target was highly inaccurate. That's why you see nickles bouncing wildly left and right along the ferrous axis on an Explorer, sometimes all the way over to the right edge where rusty bottle caps are located. Wheats, indian head cents, clad dimes, all were commonly irratic on the ferrous axis but quite stead along the conductivity axis. Therefore once your brain learns a tone for a given target I don't think that tone will vary much. There is a ton of information in the tone ID, now that it's accurate on the conductive axis I will be looking to leverage this.
Here's something else, its stands to reason that accuracy of the conductivity ID is do the machine gathering more accurate information. Would that translate into a stronger signal to your ears when using the conductive tones on deep silver? I recall many people who hunt with the Explorer using conductive tones reporting this very thing.
I see that people are reporting that most targets are ID'ing in the 12:## range and that held mostly true for the targets I sampled below. BUT this did not hold true in the field where I saw much more variability, from 2:## to 19:## so that's something that will have to be sorted out.
Be on the lookout - You will see below that I also sampled the gold targets on edge (this is true for coins also), note how this effected the conductivity reading. This is a little tricky black arts observation so stick with me for a moment. If you are swinging the coil <---> and the target on edge is oriented like this "-" you get a solid, single, but lower conductivity tone. But if the target on edge is oriented like this "|" parallel to the windings down the center of the coil holy cow it sounds like your machine goes nuts with blurpity blurpity beepity blurp. If you slow your sweep way down what you hear as you sweep over the target is a rise in tone pitch, beep Beep BeeP BEEP then back down again BEEP BeeP Beep, beep. Something kind of funky going on there but if you here this weirdness, then sweep from 90 degrees and get a solid single tone, I suggest you dig that mother up!
Well that's it, here's the targets I sampled last night.
I started with the factory start up coin pattern, conductive tones, etc. but did make these changes.
Dropped the gain to 21
Maxed the tone variability
Neutral ground
Low trash or whatever they call it
Fast On
Deep On
Now before we get started, I just want to thank [size=large]Joe Demarco of Demarco Detector Sales in South New Jersey[/size] again for this machine. Yes it's a blatant plug for Joe, well deserved and a sponsor of this forum for many years. If the information below helps you at all thank Joe! And maybe also Beachcomber for sending pics of all those E-Trac gold rings and getting me all worked up to buy one! lol
After about 30 minutes I didn't think I was getting much depth in auto sens. The machine had set the sens to 16. I switched to manual sens 19, it was a little twitchy due to nearby electrical lines but quite manageable. Almost immediatly I got a hit on a clad dime about 6 inches down. It was not a great signal but repeatable and one I would dig. I switched to Auto sens and poof the target vanished. I know there is more to the auto sens on this E-Trac so don't take this as meaning manual sens is 'always' the way to go but clearly it was in this situation. So I went back to manual sens 19. After about another 30 minutes I was feeling more comfortable with the machine and cranked the sens to 26 manual and left it there the rest of the day quite happily.
Iron falsing...I was very happy with the E-Trac in terms of less falsing on iron. It did false some but a fraction of the amount of falsing I normally get on my Explorer SE or II at these same sites. Later in the day I took it to a site that is a nightmare of rusty nails falsing and the E-Trac was very well behaved, a welcome change. By the way this is where I found the silver dime, an in an area I had gridded with an Explorer before. I remember gridding this area because I found a big fat gold ring here a few years back and not surprisingly went into grid it clean mode.
When the E-Trac did false on iron which was not that often it was quite obvious that the target was iron by the way it was behaving as I swept over the target. On the very few iron falses that I did get where I was getting some high tones from more than one direction a quick glance at the screen confirmed them hitting in the 1:## range. About the only coin that hits up there is a silver dollar and this was no silver dollar. Coupled with the fact that it was bouncing from null to 1:## it was an easy call to make, iron. Still I jumped to AM to further check these and yep the cursor was exhibiting a iron false bounce pattern from bottom right up to the top and somewhat left. I would not declare victory yet, the soil was dry and dry soil shuts iron up so the jury is still out on the E-Trac in terms of dealing with iron it wet/damp conditions but even so I'd say what I'm seeing so far is encouraging. Also I love that there is headroom above the coins for iron to false into. It's like Minelab added 3/8 of an inch to the right edge of the Explorer screen and iron bounces over there, but the coins stay left of that, hope that makes sense. So if I'm seeing a target jump up to 1:## over in the coin zone, someone correct me if I'm wrong but if nothing but a silver dollar is going to hit up there and good gawd a silver dollar is going to scream silver versus a nail falsing I'm pretty comfortable ignoring those pesky iron falses that hit 1:##
Depth...Joel buried a chunky canadian cent (maybe a little larger than a nickle and thicker) about 5-6 inch deep. I'd call it 6 with the 2-3 inches of grass on top. I got a strong signal on that coin, no surprise there but then started raising my coil off the ground and damn I was still getting a strong signal 5-6 inches off the ground. Try that with an Explorer, impressive especially on a fresh buried target. I suspect there is a E-Trac dark arts tip lurking in this perhaps related to the neutral ground setting?
Factory Coin Pattern...this pattern needs to be tweaked. Zink cents were trying to null, some pull tabs also were trying to null as was some foil and some gold targets I sampled last night. So some of the low conductive areas need to be opened up if you are going for gold or just don't want to be bothered by these chopped up half null signals. I only read about half the manual so I'm not sure where all the trash hits yet but I'll be editing this pattern.
Descrimination versus All Metal - I ran the factory desc pattern all day with only occasional forays into all metal. Now as with the Explorer I did get a better signal in all metal on iffy signals that were partially nulling but that is to be expected. The question is, do I really need to run this machine in all metal mode for the reasons I ran Explorers in all metal mode? I think the answer is no. Remember that silver dime, holy cow the detecting footprint on this coil is like a knife edge. I was able to swing back and forth over that dime in a 1 inch wide sweep and the machine came off the target, reset, and then gave a distinct tone as I swept back over the target. On my Explorers with that short of a sweep I'd pretty much get a single continuous signal. This is telling me this E-Trac has the ability to do some serious target separation. Keep in mind that I did have Fast On. I'll have to do some more testing but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.
Ferrous versus Conductive - There seems to be lots of discussion about the disadvantages of the E-Trac's ferrous tone mode versus the Explorer so here's my take on this. First I think people are over rating the Explorer ferrous tone benefits.
The big advantage of the Explorer ferrous tone mode is that one could hunt in all metal and iron would sound low, non-ferrous targets high. Can't do that in conductive tones because the high iron tones would drive you batty right.
So (relic hunters excluded) why would anyone want to hunt in all metal mode in the first place? I think many people do because if you descriminate out the iron, the iron nulls mask nearby targets or partially mask them chopping the signal to peices, this is well documented. BUT...while this was true for Explorer XS machines e.g. iron nulls were sticky, once the Explorer XS got hold of an iron null it didn't want to let go of it, it was less true for the Explorer II, and even more less true of the Explorer SE. I say this because after digging thousands of targets in all metal with these machines, the number of iffy targets that turned out to be a good target (coin, etc) fell off significantly with the Explorer II and then again with the Explorer SE e.g. if the SE is saying it's iron it almost always was. Maybe an ugly wheat might be the outlyer here. I think the faster processor speeds (and perhaps software/circuit tweaking) let the machine come off the iron target, reset and latch onto the nearby target better with each subsequent version of the Explorer.
So fast forward to the E-Trac which from what I saw today is super fast in terms of target reset so I no longer see sticky iron nulls as being a problem if iron is descriminated out...subject to testing in wet soil conditions, again the jury is still out on that site condition. Therefore if I descriminate out iron on the E-Trac, I should feel confident that I'm not going to miss nearby good targets due to the iron null which is now quite short. Hence if I'm now descriminating out iron I no longer have a need for ferrous tones right?
Are there any benefits to using conductive tones?
Well first off understand that the old Explorer rule of all metal is better is not 100% true. There are (and I saw this many times) occasions where the Explorer will lock onto a coin hiding near iron (or other common trash targets like rusty crowncap, pull tab, etc) BUT only IF you have that nearby iron or trash target descriminated out! I know shock and disbelief right? I found this out because I do run descrimination at times but quite commonly switch to all metal to pinpoint and on those occasions when I switched to all metal the machine locked onto that nearby iron or trash target so hard there was not even a hint of the coin. And I mean the cursor would jump right to textbook iron, crowncap, tab, etc. and stay there. So just keep that in mind if you are having trouble letting go of your all metal ways, I guarantee if you always hunt in all metal you are missing some targets. It's like if the trash target or iron is descriminated out, the machine says okay well we are ignoring those targets what else do we have, hmmm there a bit of coin tone lets focus on that.
Using the E-Trac's conductive tones now gives me a high degree of tone ID variability which I did not have on the Explorer in ferrous mode due to so many targets being bunched together on the ferrous axis. The benefits of this higher degree of tone ID variability will now need to be exploited.
Here's one out of the gate, the conductivity of a target was highly accurate on the Explorer, the ferrous content of a target was highly inaccurate. That's why you see nickles bouncing wildly left and right along the ferrous axis on an Explorer, sometimes all the way over to the right edge where rusty bottle caps are located. Wheats, indian head cents, clad dimes, all were commonly irratic on the ferrous axis but quite stead along the conductivity axis. Therefore once your brain learns a tone for a given target I don't think that tone will vary much. There is a ton of information in the tone ID, now that it's accurate on the conductive axis I will be looking to leverage this.
Here's something else, its stands to reason that accuracy of the conductivity ID is do the machine gathering more accurate information. Would that translate into a stronger signal to your ears when using the conductive tones on deep silver? I recall many people who hunt with the Explorer using conductive tones reporting this very thing.
I see that people are reporting that most targets are ID'ing in the 12:## range and that held mostly true for the targets I sampled below. BUT this did not hold true in the field where I saw much more variability, from 2:## to 19:## so that's something that will have to be sorted out.
Be on the lookout - You will see below that I also sampled the gold targets on edge (this is true for coins also), note how this effected the conductivity reading. This is a little tricky black arts observation so stick with me for a moment. If you are swinging the coil <---> and the target on edge is oriented like this "-" you get a solid, single, but lower conductivity tone. But if the target on edge is oriented like this "|" parallel to the windings down the center of the coil holy cow it sounds like your machine goes nuts with blurpity blurpity beepity blurp. If you slow your sweep way down what you hear as you sweep over the target is a rise in tone pitch, beep Beep BeeP BEEP then back down again BEEP BeeP Beep, beep. Something kind of funky going on there but if you here this weirdness, then sweep from 90 degrees and get a solid single tone, I suggest you dig that mother up!
Well that's it, here's the targets I sampled last night.
