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Eurotek pro "made for iron trash"?
- Thread starter supertraq
- Start date
nick hunter
New member
Let me start pointing out that I own both the ETP and the GBP (G2).
NO, because it isn't as fast as a G2, but believe me, it's fast enough, and most certainly faster than a vast majority of detectors on the market when it comes to hunt in iron trash.
YES because, still comparing to the faster GBP/G2, due to it's frequency, it isn't as rusty iron/bottlecaps sensitive in very dense iron trash. 99,9% of all rusty bottlecaps, at least here in Europe, are silenced, clipped, or emit a very distinct signal while the "iron icon" is flashing.
I Have three coils for mine, the standard 8" concentric, and the GBP's 11"DD and 5"DD.
The low conductivity range has been enhanced in sensitivity, and, believe me, it can and will find plenty of jewelry.
Finally, a detector with all these features AND using a FIXED GB setting has another advantage : in most grounds, it's more sensitive to small gold jewelry too.
HH
Nick
NO, because it isn't as fast as a G2, but believe me, it's fast enough, and most certainly faster than a vast majority of detectors on the market when it comes to hunt in iron trash.
YES because, still comparing to the faster GBP/G2, due to it's frequency, it isn't as rusty iron/bottlecaps sensitive in very dense iron trash. 99,9% of all rusty bottlecaps, at least here in Europe, are silenced, clipped, or emit a very distinct signal while the "iron icon" is flashing.
I Have three coils for mine, the standard 8" concentric, and the GBP's 11"DD and 5"DD.
The low conductivity range has been enhanced in sensitivity, and, believe me, it can and will find plenty of jewelry.
Finally, a detector with all these features AND using a FIXED GB setting has another advantage : in most grounds, it's more sensitive to small gold jewelry too.
HH
Nick
a person needs to be sure they know what kind of "iron" they are going to deal with. Not all ferrous targets will be easily Discriminated, so there has to be dedication to recover some iron junk.
There is also a need to know your own level of patience and be willing to listen to more target info, such as running at very low Discrimination levels and hearing both iron and non-iron metals present at a site.
The detector operator needs to know the site, what 'good-targets' might be present that they are searching for, and remember that if there are a lot of targets present, both ferrous and non-ferrous, they should not expect to try and achieve very much detection depth due to target masking. This is especially more of a problem when hunting in iron trash.
Common considerations are also important, such as the ground mineral content; search coil selection; sweep speed; Sensitivity and Discrimination level settings; etc.
It is also important to learn and understand the detector design strengths and limitations in order to know how to get the best performance out of it, and that includes learning both what a detector can/can't do, and what an operator will expect from it when trying to deal with trash and other conditions.
• Use No Discrimination and recover all targets signals.
• Use No Discrimination and use a visual Target ID/VDI numeric read-out, then try to rely on the visual display information only to isolate good targets from iron trash.
• Use a very Low Discriminate level, such as just barely enough to reject typical iron nails, and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
• Use a very Low Discriminate level, such as just barely enough to reject typical iron nails, and visual TID/VDI numeric read-out and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
• Use a High Discriminate level, such as to reject all of the iron range, and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
• Use a High Discriminate level, such as to reject all of the iron range, and visual TID/VDI numeric read-out and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
To these above choices, based upon Disc. settings and use of a visual display or not, you can also factor in those who want to rely on some form of audio Tone ID response to help make recovery decisions. Some models are now offering additional adjustment features, too, such as Iron Volume adjustment which the Euro-Tek Pro has.
There are other detectors out there that feature an Iron range Volume adjustment, but let's remember that they might have other features that can be very helpful that are lacking on the Euro-Tek Pro. Things like a variable Tone Break, other Tone ID options, and most importantly a Ground Balance control. It might be Auto-Tracking, or Automated or Manual, but it might offer some improvement in performance over a factory Preset GB, in several ways.
I got both of mine with the 8" Concentric coil to be better when working moderate iron littered sites, and I already had my 5" DD coil on a spare lower rod. I also had a new 11" BiAxial coil on hand so I could check out the EuroTek Pro's performance with a small assortment of coils. I wasn't thrilled.
I used an assortment of iron targets to determine where the iron nails would be rejected, as well as other sample targets, because in very dense nail environments I like to just barely reject iron nails. With the Teknetics T2 the Disc. required for nails is about '21' and the Omega 8000 nail rejection is about '16'/'17.' The EuroTek Pro operates on a similar frequency to the Omega, and shares the same search coils, but I had to use a very high VDI number to reject the nails ... ± '38' of all things!
That was almost rejecting the full-range of iron and didn't provide me the ability to fine-tune the nails rejection point within the iron range. The result was that if I just rejected an assortment of iron nails at that high setting, I had to deal with a lot of good-target masking when in close relationship to the iron. The only way I could get good performance out of the EuroTek Pro was by using the lowest Discrimination setting, then adjusting the Iron Audio Volume low, like a setting of '13' and working slow and methodically as I always do.
The other issue I had with the EuroTek Pro was with the internally set Ground Balance. Only part of the GB is controlled by the one internal trimmer. After owning two of them, and using a few that friends HAD, I determined there has to be too much controlled GB in the software for the motion Discriminate mode. I noted with each of the units I owned that the All Metal Pinpoint function had a VERY positive Ground Balance setting. That concerned me.
One of many test I do when I evaluate any detector, proto-type or production, is to check how they handle high conductive coins, specifically large US Silver Dollars and Half-Dollars, especially my 'small spill/cache' sample. I learned decades ago that some makes and models had difficulty responding to [size=small](aka finding)[/size] high-conductors, and some models by a few competitors in the '90s had some serious design problems such that a too positive Ground Balance in the Discriminate mode shifted halves and dollars, and at times even quarters, to the point of rejection. You ask how? Let's just keep it simple and say it was caused by 'wrap'.
Anyway, I tried my first EuroTek Pro with the stock 8", 5" and 11" coils on all my different test scenarios that are based on in-the-field experiences plus others to evaluate various target responses and potential depth-of-detection, if I hunt a minimum target site. The standard 8" coil worked fairly good and responded to all US coins sampled, but showed impaired depth on the silver half and silver dollar compared to a penny and dime and quarter. That was a hint to me, and not a good-feeling hint.
Mounting my 5" DD and 11" DD showed what I anticipated and that was no response to the dollar and so-so on the silver half. I then tried all coils using my ]'small spill/cache' sample. I had 5 to 7 silver halves stacked on top of a silver dollar, and no coil would produce any response or even any half-decent response. Today my test sample is a small plastic container with four silver Walking Liberty Half-Dollars stacked on top of a silver Peace Dollar, and you would be surprised at how many, many detectors do, kind-of do, kind-of don't and flat-out do NOT respond to that small five-coin silver sample.
It was worse with some coils that others, so I opened my unit and carefully tweaked the accessible GB trimmer. I used all search coils and some of the very mineralized rocks I keep in my seminar tote. The EuroTek was still way too positive on the worst rock specimen from Australia gold fields. I first had to adjust it to not be so very positive, then I used each search coil, the nastiest rocks, and 'Power Balanced' to find a point where all three coils would function in the Disc. mode w/o being negative and falsing.
Once it was at least workable, I used it for a while to search some urban tot-lots, where it worked fine in the woodchips, and I also took it to a few of my favorite sites which were ghost towns and homesteads. I compared it with other models I owned at the time or borrowed, then decided that I liked the Volume adjustment for Iron range targets .... but wasn't that thrilled overall, didn't like the limited ability to fine-tune the ferrous range, and missed having manual and/or automated Ground Balance. A fellow gave it a try and wanted it so I let it go.
A week or so later I got a brand new EuroTek Pro in a detector trade deal, also with the round 8" Concentric coil [size=small](my favorite with the Greek Series models as well as the 5" DD)[/size]. Once again I checked everything out. All coils were still positive in the Pinpoint function, but not as bad. The 8" and 5" did okay on most tests, except the 5" on the silver dollar. I left that unit alone, internally, and just did more side-by-side comparison with the models I owned at the time and some I was considering.
It worked. It was better than my first unit before I tweaked it. It let me get more hunting in doing comparisons and wondering when any mid-level models would come out with the Iron Volume feature. In the end, of maybe two weeks of hunting, I just didn't care for it and let it go.
It depends on what you mean by 'standout' because that might be different for you than it is for me and others. For me and the sites I most often search, nails are the biggest 'iron' offender out there, and quite often they are so dense and closely spaced that it can drive you crazy. By using my Nail Board Performance Test which is from an actual encounter at a southern Utah ghost town in mid-'94,.I compare performance using two methods
1.. Just barely reject the four iron nails, then place a Zinc or Indian Head Cent on the center #1 spot. Sweep across the nails and coin, completely, from side-to-side in all 4 marked directions. With a left-to-right and right-to-left sweep that's a possible 2 target hits, and going all four sweep routes means there is a possible 8 hits on the coin. The minimum to 'Pass' my NBPT is 6-out-of-8, but I really expect to get 7 or 8-out-of-8.
2.. Use a 2-Tone or 3-Tone Discriminate mode, with the Discrimination set at or close to minimum, then search a site slowly and methodically listening for any decent High-Tone or a Mid-Tone or High-Tone, if using a 3-tone function and ignore the Low-Tone (Iron-Tone) audio responses. Again, use my NBPT to get at least 6, but preferably 7 or 8 worthwhile hits.
I also make sure I use a smaller-size search coil when hunting in any high iron density site, using slow, methodical sweeps. Coil choices I use are a 4.[size=small]7[/size]X5.[size=small]2[/size] 'OOR' [size=small](Out-Of-Round)[/size] DD, 5" DD, and 6" Concentric depending on which detector is employed. If some iron is present but not especially too closely-spaced, then I might opt for a medium-size search coil. These are 5.[size=small]5[/size]X10 in either Concentric or Double-D, again depending on which detector make/model is put to work.
The EuroTek Pro can work okay for some folks in some locations where they encounter an occasional nail or scattering of nails and/or other iron, but it certainly isn't a 'stand-out' in iron. If it was, I might still have one in my arsenal. I don't have a detector in my den, living room, or ready-to-go in my car or pick-up that isn't one of the best detectors on the market for handling dense iron trash. It all depends on how bad the iron level is, how determined you are to handle it, the detector and coil used, and the functional settings you pick to use, in order to achieve the best success in a truly heavy iron environment.
Monte
There is also a need to know your own level of patience and be willing to listen to more target info, such as running at very low Discrimination levels and hearing both iron and non-iron metals present at a site.
The detector operator needs to know the site, what 'good-targets' might be present that they are searching for, and remember that if there are a lot of targets present, both ferrous and non-ferrous, they should not expect to try and achieve very much detection depth due to target masking. This is especially more of a problem when hunting in iron trash.
Common considerations are also important, such as the ground mineral content; search coil selection; sweep speed; Sensitivity and Discrimination level settings; etc.
It is also important to learn and understand the detector design strengths and limitations in order to know how to get the best performance out of it, and that includes learning both what a detector can/can't do, and what an operator will expect from it when trying to deal with trash and other conditions.
Most hobby detectors have some form of adjustment for Discrimination, so what is most needed is an ability to hunt in a dense iron littered site and deal with most iron. There are a few ways people will choose to search a very dense iron trashed site, such as:supertraq said:It appears to have built for high iron trash ground, ....
• Use No Discrimination and recover all targets signals.
• Use No Discrimination and use a visual Target ID/VDI numeric read-out, then try to rely on the visual display information only to isolate good targets from iron trash.
• Use a very Low Discriminate level, such as just barely enough to reject typical iron nails, and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
• Use a very Low Discriminate level, such as just barely enough to reject typical iron nails, and visual TID/VDI numeric read-out and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
• Use a High Discriminate level, such as to reject all of the iron range, and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
• Use a High Discriminate level, such as to reject all of the iron range, and visual TID/VDI numeric read-out and recover all targets that produce a good or iffy response.
To these above choices, based upon Disc. settings and use of a visual display or not, you can also factor in those who want to rely on some form of audio Tone ID response to help make recovery decisions. Some models are now offering additional adjustment features, too, such as Iron Volume adjustment which the Euro-Tek Pro has.
About the only 'feature' the EuroTek Pro might have that most of the competition hasn't had is the Iron Audio Volume control. Is that adjustable function useful? Yes, it is, for those who work densely iron littered sites like I do with a very low Discriminate setting. Sometimes the intensity of nails and other small, similar iron can drive you nuts so having the option to reduce the Iron response Volume can be useful.supertraq said:... features that even more expensive machines don't have.
There are other detectors out there that feature an Iron range Volume adjustment, but let's remember that they might have other features that can be very helpful that are lacking on the Euro-Tek Pro. Things like a variable Tone Break, other Tone ID options, and most importantly a Ground Balance control. It might be Auto-Tracking, or Automated or Manual, but it might offer some improvement in performance over a factory Preset GB, in several ways.
I owned two EuroTek Pro's after they came out. Naturally I liked the light weight and comfort using my preferred search coils [size=small](the round 8" Concentric and 5" DD)[/size], and I definitely liked the variable Iron Volume adjustment. In moderate iron littered sites the performance was pretty good. In very densely littered nails environments, the EuroTek was only so-so, depending upon the Discriminate settings I chose. I preferred Teknetics Omega 8000 to the EuroTek Pro out of the Teknetics line.supertraq said:What do people think that have used/owned this machine for this task.
I got both of mine with the 8" Concentric coil to be better when working moderate iron littered sites, and I already had my 5" DD coil on a spare lower rod. I also had a new 11" BiAxial coil on hand so I could check out the EuroTek Pro's performance with a small assortment of coils. I wasn't thrilled.
I used an assortment of iron targets to determine where the iron nails would be rejected, as well as other sample targets, because in very dense nail environments I like to just barely reject iron nails. With the Teknetics T2 the Disc. required for nails is about '21' and the Omega 8000 nail rejection is about '16'/'17.' The EuroTek Pro operates on a similar frequency to the Omega, and shares the same search coils, but I had to use a very high VDI number to reject the nails ... ± '38' of all things!
That was almost rejecting the full-range of iron and didn't provide me the ability to fine-tune the nails rejection point within the iron range. The result was that if I just rejected an assortment of iron nails at that high setting, I had to deal with a lot of good-target masking when in close relationship to the iron. The only way I could get good performance out of the EuroTek Pro was by using the lowest Discrimination setting, then adjusting the Iron Audio Volume low, like a setting of '13' and working slow and methodically as I always do.
The other issue I had with the EuroTek Pro was with the internally set Ground Balance. Only part of the GB is controlled by the one internal trimmer. After owning two of them, and using a few that friends HAD, I determined there has to be too much controlled GB in the software for the motion Discriminate mode. I noted with each of the units I owned that the All Metal Pinpoint function had a VERY positive Ground Balance setting. That concerned me.
One of many test I do when I evaluate any detector, proto-type or production, is to check how they handle high conductive coins, specifically large US Silver Dollars and Half-Dollars, especially my 'small spill/cache' sample. I learned decades ago that some makes and models had difficulty responding to [size=small](aka finding)[/size] high-conductors, and some models by a few competitors in the '90s had some serious design problems such that a too positive Ground Balance in the Discriminate mode shifted halves and dollars, and at times even quarters, to the point of rejection. You ask how? Let's just keep it simple and say it was caused by 'wrap'.
Anyway, I tried my first EuroTek Pro with the stock 8", 5" and 11" coils on all my different test scenarios that are based on in-the-field experiences plus others to evaluate various target responses and potential depth-of-detection, if I hunt a minimum target site. The standard 8" coil worked fairly good and responded to all US coins sampled, but showed impaired depth on the silver half and silver dollar compared to a penny and dime and quarter. That was a hint to me, and not a good-feeling hint.
Mounting my 5" DD and 11" DD showed what I anticipated and that was no response to the dollar and so-so on the silver half. I then tried all coils using my ]'small spill/cache' sample. I had 5 to 7 silver halves stacked on top of a silver dollar, and no coil would produce any response or even any half-decent response. Today my test sample is a small plastic container with four silver Walking Liberty Half-Dollars stacked on top of a silver Peace Dollar, and you would be surprised at how many, many detectors do, kind-of do, kind-of don't and flat-out do NOT respond to that small five-coin silver sample.
It was worse with some coils that others, so I opened my unit and carefully tweaked the accessible GB trimmer. I used all search coils and some of the very mineralized rocks I keep in my seminar tote. The EuroTek was still way too positive on the worst rock specimen from Australia gold fields. I first had to adjust it to not be so very positive, then I used each search coil, the nastiest rocks, and 'Power Balanced' to find a point where all three coils would function in the Disc. mode w/o being negative and falsing.
Once it was at least workable, I used it for a while to search some urban tot-lots, where it worked fine in the woodchips, and I also took it to a few of my favorite sites which were ghost towns and homesteads. I compared it with other models I owned at the time or borrowed, then decided that I liked the Volume adjustment for Iron range targets .... but wasn't that thrilled overall, didn't like the limited ability to fine-tune the ferrous range, and missed having manual and/or automated Ground Balance. A fellow gave it a try and wanted it so I let it go.
A week or so later I got a brand new EuroTek Pro in a detector trade deal, also with the round 8" Concentric coil [size=small](my favorite with the Greek Series models as well as the 5" DD)[/size]. Once again I checked everything out. All coils were still positive in the Pinpoint function, but not as bad. The 8" and 5" did okay on most tests, except the 5" on the silver dollar. I left that unit alone, internally, and just did more side-by-side comparison with the models I owned at the time and some I was considering.
It worked. It was better than my first unit before I tweaked it. It let me get more hunting in doing comparisons and wondering when any mid-level models would come out with the Iron Volume feature. In the end, of maybe two weeks of hunting, I just didn't care for it and let it go.
No, not for me.supertraq said:Is it a standout in iron?
It depends on what you mean by 'standout' because that might be different for you than it is for me and others. For me and the sites I most often search, nails are the biggest 'iron' offender out there, and quite often they are so dense and closely spaced that it can drive you crazy. By using my Nail Board Performance Test which is from an actual encounter at a southern Utah ghost town in mid-'94,.I compare performance using two methods
1.. Just barely reject the four iron nails, then place a Zinc or Indian Head Cent on the center #1 spot. Sweep across the nails and coin, completely, from side-to-side in all 4 marked directions. With a left-to-right and right-to-left sweep that's a possible 2 target hits, and going all four sweep routes means there is a possible 8 hits on the coin. The minimum to 'Pass' my NBPT is 6-out-of-8, but I really expect to get 7 or 8-out-of-8.
2.. Use a 2-Tone or 3-Tone Discriminate mode, with the Discrimination set at or close to minimum, then search a site slowly and methodically listening for any decent High-Tone or a Mid-Tone or High-Tone, if using a 3-tone function and ignore the Low-Tone (Iron-Tone) audio responses. Again, use my NBPT to get at least 6, but preferably 7 or 8 worthwhile hits.
I also make sure I use a smaller-size search coil when hunting in any high iron density site, using slow, methodical sweeps. Coil choices I use are a 4.[size=small]7[/size]X5.[size=small]2[/size] 'OOR' [size=small](Out-Of-Round)[/size] DD, 5" DD, and 6" Concentric depending on which detector is employed. If some iron is present but not especially too closely-spaced, then I might opt for a medium-size search coil. These are 5.[size=small]5[/size]X10 in either Concentric or Double-D, again depending on which detector make/model is put to work.
The EuroTek Pro can work okay for some folks in some locations where they encounter an occasional nail or scattering of nails and/or other iron, but it certainly isn't a 'stand-out' in iron. If it was, I might still have one in my arsenal. I don't have a detector in my den, living room, or ready-to-go in my car or pick-up that isn't one of the best detectors on the market for handling dense iron trash. It all depends on how bad the iron level is, how determined you are to handle it, the detector and coil used, and the functional settings you pick to use, in order to achieve the best success in a truly heavy iron environment.
Monte
Thanks Nick hunter and Monte.
I have one on the way now,if my gamma had the iron audio I would not be making this purchase but I'm hunting a old nrrow gauge railroad site that is a bed of iron,its taking removal of visible large iron and racking with magnet mounted on the rake to remove as much iron as possible,one things for sure I will be the only one to have ever hunted this site.
I never would have considered this site in the past but the easy stuff has dried up with just a few over looked rare spots yet to be found.
It will hold good stuff but it will take hard work and time.hh&good health monte
I have one on the way now,if my gamma had the iron audio I would not be making this purchase but I'm hunting a old nrrow gauge railroad site that is a bed of iron,its taking removal of visible large iron and racking with magnet mounted on the rake to remove as much iron as possible,one things for sure I will be the only one to have ever hunted this site.
I never would have considered this site in the past but the easy stuff has dried up with just a few over looked rare spots yet to be found.
It will hold good stuff but it will take hard work and time.hh&good health monte