Find's Treasure Forums

Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!

You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.

Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.

Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.

Click here to register!



Need Support Help?

Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you

For those considering the ETrac upgrade from a previous Explorer

digitrich

New member
re still there, where by ear, you can know for sure that you are digging a definite coin, both Indians hit at 8-39 and 8-40 and all though I didn't know that coins would com12 modern pennies, 3 clad quarters, 2 clad dimes, green matchbox car, 4 wheats, 2 Indians 1889, 1898 and the flipping coolest 1913 Barber Dime (real sharp) that has its face pushed outward a 1/4 on an inch in a jewelry type fashion (this I will photo and post because it is way cool looking), a dog tag and trash.

All of this was found at a park I had never hunted in before in about 3 1/2 hours. I also dug 6 nails, 4 screw caps, several bits of aluminum, some pull tabs and some tin trash lids and assorted pieces of tin. Pop cans that sounded off like medium depth coins but were only 1 inch deep (from tone, I could neither tell depth or size, I don't use pinpoint on clean hits, never have; my gain setting being at 24 might explain this) and also small bits of aluminum.

First off the ground at this site was 2 inch fissure wide crack dry, which may explain some of this to a degree.

After only hunting with the ETrac for 15 hours so far, an expert does not make, for sure: I have found absolutely no target whatsoever that I couldn't have found with my SE. In fact at some sites, I know I would have found more with my SE, because I could have picked through the trash way more effectively with all metal than this nulling discrim is doing. I have tried to hunt in all metal which is impossible because small iron and most US coins share the cond #'s and they have left us no option to hunt in ferrous as most coins come in with a 12 ferrous reading. The machine is faster but that speed is stymied by the historic problem of using to much discrimination and NO, the fancy bell and whistle programming (heavy trash, difficult or neutral soil and such) definitely is not not making up for that. The machine in dry soil utterly sucks in auto sensitivity, have never seen it climb above 20:(20 only once, by the way); all other times it hovers around 16. Air testing a quarter at 16 auto, I get 6 inches, at 30 manual: 10 inches. Which would you hunt in?? Before you answer that, when I put the machine in manual and start to push it, the screen hangs, it falses high on nails, the trash program starts to react to the falses masking out other targets, my only saving grace was running long or smooth audio. Most effective means I have found in trash so far is to put it in fast, high trash, difficult ground, manual sensitivity 26, open up the smart find to a flat 20 ferrous accepting all above, conduct tones, putting it in long or smooth, and all though with these settings I can pull some difficult targets out of trash, without the ability to use all metal, these targets are not deep and nothing I couldn't have done with the SE so far. The iron nail video's impressed me, so far I have not seen this machine duplicate that in the trash at any depth greater than 4 inches. Even with a smaller coil and higher manual sensitivity, again the soil is very dry and may be different with moisture. The "quality" tones for coins are there, several times I absolutely knew I was digging definite coins even if I did not recognize the numbers. Most trash sounded like trash, with time, it could be easily ignored by quality of tone alone. The way I have been hunting is to use some sort of pattern, and when I get what I think is a maybe, I hit the quick mask button (which screen I leave wide open), problem again is I am in conduct tones.

In a nut shell, if you have any Explorer, I would recommend saving your money until ML corrects this non ferrous tone machine into one that truly takes advantage of the faster processor allowing all metal hunting with the ability to hear a difference between iron and coins. For the guys who hunt win IM 27 conduct with their current machines, if you open the screen further than ferrous 20 (only 1/3 rd of the screen being accepted) it already is giving high tone nail readings, Can't imagine opening it up further:thumbdown:

If they had redid the SE, but put in a faster processor, it would easily out hunt this machine in the hands of an experienced user. When we get rain I may change my mind. As for the hot rocks and coal slag experiment I did earlier this week, yesterday morning, I tried to show my son the same experiment, only to find I could not repeat it, no matter how much I changed my settings:confused: It blanked out on the coins this time. I am going to play with it and figure that out. The largest benefit I see for me with this machine is that it handles the mineralization better, but so far, only in auto sens that hangs around 16 and gives little depth improvement, which an SE with a smaller coil could accomplish anyway. AGAIN this may be because it is so dry hear, but go ask Bryce that question who's yanking coins out with his SE.:thumbup: Sorry for the negativity, no where near impressed.:blink:
 
Do not push this unit...... best finds are in auto or close to it.......its has depth to spare..... coins and good stuff are not found in air......machine needs the ground signal....

on another note yes all explorers are good machines in the hands of expert user..... but is not that the way... its always been... do not fear the machine... fear the user behind it...

Last, sounds like your trying to hard .......it all about having fun and the challenge of mastering new technology ......forget about why minelab EE's did this or that .....When i go zipping thru trash

pits I hear the right sound ......might glance at the meter it's got depth on this one.....Bang it is shovel time... Any Way every one has good days and bad days...AND every one needs

encouragement from time to time............But what if...... you are at a park 6 months from now and the guy everyone is talking about comes in and cleans every ones Clock with his E-trac....

will IT be YOU...... or some one ELSE.....but HE will be out there.....


Happy Trails
jimpugh
 
n/t
 
I know I am not parting with my SE, that's for sure!
 
Experience and mastery of one's machine (across the whole Explorer series) equates to more good finds in your pocket at the end of the day. I know guys with Explorer XS's that are out hunting SE owners every day of the week. Why? Because they know their machine better than the average Explorer hunter.

So far with the E-Trac, I have seen no report that this machine will actually find a deep coin that any Explorer couldn't find! There is no way right now I can part with my SE, after it has produced nearly 900 silver coins and over 4000 wheaties in the past 19 months. No way in hell!!

Good writeup, DigitRich!!

HH,
CAPTN SE
Dan
 
I am a newbie,,,,,i was thinking of trading my new SE Pro,,,for a E-trac,,,but after reading that,,,i am keeping the SE Pro,,,and hopefully,soon,,,showing some of my new finds
 
I am not saying you should or not until I see some better results...which may just require rain. Her is the nitty gritty, if you want a machine, an awesome machine, probably the best out there, that anybody would find easy to set up out of the box (turn on and go) and you can walk until you here a good signal, stop and dig, this would be perfect for you. If you are one of the guys that want to squeeze the last drop out of a very already worked site, I don't believe this will impress you and you might want to wait for the next version or an updated version of this one.
 
Hey Jim, take your machine into a inland,dryer, no salt site and put in auto sens, and let me know what you think then. I can take my SE on a beach right now and pull out 12 and 14 inch targets like they are near surface. The salt and the water combine to give it unbelievable depth. Blows me away on just about any beach, always has, so I would imagine that it is the same with the current Etrac. I could be wrong, but try it and let me know your results. Especially if you have a worked hard inland site that's real trash dense. I can only figure two things, either the timings are off on my machine or I actually worked my sites so hard, with so many different coils, in all metal, in long audio, in very wet times which gave better depth with the SE that just maybe a new user of the ETrac (me) is not going to pull many targets ran over previously by a better user of the previous SE (again me). So basically, I have beat myself, however, when I see a target deeper than 6 inches with this machine, I will have more hope and faith than I do in it right now....That's for certain.:detecting:
 
When you upgrade your CPU to your MB sometimes the MB can still accept that particular chip even though it is faster because their is a wide spectrum of flexibility there. For instance changing the multiplier, FBS etc but this is somewhat of a different ballgame with this. It might be possible to switch chips but they might be utilizing a different board with a different socket so a new chip will not fit into old circuit board that they used in the SE. CPU's are not soldered into the MB on computers but this setup could be like that so it could get messy. Then again it might fit and work but you might be overheating the board because the speed is too much. In computers you can see this happening as it will not boot or start acting funny after a little time. Like video screen freezes or you see anomalies in the screen graphics or applications start then freeze up the whole computer.

It's your risk so proceed with caution! Do not forget that IF something did happen you'll disintegrate your warranty which will be null and void the moment you open the housing to check out the guts of the machine.

It might run great and then start acting funny so then I would advise you to switch it back as the circuit board can not handle the new speed. What the hey! Throw a Pentium Pro 200MHz in their with a good fan or water-cooling. Jack up the output so it can see 2' into the ground! :tongue: Anyone with a decent background in electronics could pull it off I'm sure.

I was actually thinking about what you said this morning. I am going to look into this a little because I am curious if you could jack up the output. I know it is regulated by FCC but no one would know if you could somehow jack up the output for greater depth.

Imagine if you could pull it off. An SE with the same speed as an E-TRAC AND it had twice the depth. :beers:

There are already mods of other MD. Just do a search and you will see. I know the guys over in modifications forum are very technical and I like reading their posts. Very interesting reads. Here is an interesting thread that talks about modifications, upgrades of MD and how people are just like lemmings going off a cliff in pursuit of things that really has not changed much in years as far as MD enhancements goes. Note that the thread was started almost 6 mos. ago but I am sure people have been sayin these things for at least a couple years now if not longer.
 
That's a thought. My SIL could probably do that to my SE. I would not attempt it. Something that might work is to open it up and see what sort of CPU will go in an SE. Then buy a fast one and underclock it so that it will run cool. If the new one is a much faster CPU but is underclocked it should increase the speed while still running cool Gamers usually overclock the CPU for more speed but this generates heat.. underclocking a faster chip will solve the heat issue while increasing the speed. I wouldn't know how to jack up the output though, that would be interesting.

Wouldn't it be nice if ML offered a stripped down All Metal only version of the Explorer. Lightweight and powerful. No bells and no whistles, no discrimination options, optimized for AM only with ferrous tones... optimized for hearing everything. Speed and power in a lightweight package. No depth meter... no frills. Just an open smartscreen with the digital numbers at the top. Maybe the option to switch to the digital screen for those with bad eyesight.

Sort of a "drag racer" of detectors.

Julien
 
It would have to do with RF or radio frequency and increasing that. This would also most likely entail modifying other components to compensate for said increase and bringing about their proper balance for a proper and stable detecting experience. Here is a good paper from ML on this. Titled "Metal Detector Basics and Theory. I briefly skimmed this once before but I am going to give it a more detailed read later on.

That is a good idea about UC a CPU BUT how would you do that? The CPU's guts can only be massaged through the BIOS. No BIOS in a MD. I would just stick with using maybe the E-TRAC CPU and seeing if that fit. If it fits I do not see why it should not work in theory. You could also look at the SE CPU socket and figure out what is the fastest chip that can go in there. You can get your hands on any gizmo nowadays and searching for a CPU on a circuit board would be a breeze with the Internet and all. Their are not utilizing new technology on the E-TRAC model. Same FBS. People say it is not the Explorer? It's basically the same model. It is just an enchanced SE model with faster processor and better coil and costs $200 more.
 
That is a good idea about UC a CPU BUT how would you do that?

I reckon that is what my SIL would have asked me if I asked him about it... laff.

Time will tell about the E Trac being another Explorer. They say the software is different and it was built from the ground up... we'll see. Remember when the new Fishers came out everyone said that they were just Bounty Hunters. I hope that the E Trac is truly a new beast with many of the Explorers dna. I think many of our concerns are going to be laid to rest once we begin to learn the E Trac. So far it seems that the only real gripe is that while the conductive scale is linear and true, the ferrous scale is neither true nor linear. I'm not quite sure why they did this but I am going to give it a chance as a new thing and see what I can do with it. It'll probably take me a year to figure it out.... but i'll do it.

J
 
n/t
 
"Time will tell about the E Trac being another Explorer. They say the software is different and it was built from the ground up... we'll see."

I like how advertisering uses words. For instance is that term,"ground up" supposed to give it more power or something. Or maybe something we have never seen before. In plain english it's just a different GUI (Graphical User Interface). Of course it's from the "ground up" because they had to start from scratch and build a new GUI and hook in some of the new features of this model. You should see the programmers I know who program chess computer software. Doesn't take much to develop a GUI but try to make a program play chess and play so good that even the strongest players in the world are getting their rear ends handed to them in a hand basket. That's from the ground up.
 
Wouldn't it be nice if ML offered a stripped down All Metal only version of the Explorer. Lightweight and powerful. No bells and no whistles, no discrimination options, optimized for AM only with ferrous tones... optimized for hearing everything. Speed and power in a lightweight package. No depth meter... no frills. Just an open smartscreen with the digital numbers at the top. Maybe the option to switch to the digital screen for those with bad eyesight.

Sort of a "drag racer" of detectors.


I think they go by the name of Nautilus, Whitestar or something or other and I am sure others on here can mention many more. Minelab puts out an excellent product and it is on the top of its field from which others gauge their standard BUT ( I like using this interjection :.) ) there are other MD out there that can search just as deep if not deeper. They just do not have all the visual bells and whistles that we ML users are accommodated to.

Julien[/quote]
 
"I was actually thinking about what you said this morning. I am going to look into this a little because I am curious if you could jack up the output. I know it is regulated by FCC but no one would know if you could somehow jack up the output for greater depth"

It's my leg tumor, who are they to tell me I can't grow one, anything for a faster SE:thumbup: I believe that whole mod thing is the reason the USB port on the ETrac isn't set up to update the programming....couldn't have they just locked it with some code???:shrug:
 
Output is allways the same on all detectors, full punch.

What you adjust is actually only the sens towards the receiving end.
 
digitrich said:
"I was actually thinking about what you said this morning. I am going to look into this a little because I am curious if you could jack up the output. I know it is regulated by FCC but no one would know if you could somehow jack up the output for greater depth"

It's my leg tumor, who are they to tell me I can't grow one, anything for a faster SE:thumbup: I believe that whole mod thing is the reason the USB port on the ETrac isn't set up to update the programming....couldn't have they just locked it with some code???:shrug:

It would be more than just USB code probably. It depends on what they are using to store the code of the GUI. Is it flashable and what programming language are they using to write the stuff with, JAVA, linux type OS (Operating System)? I am going to hit a beach tonight but this does have my curiousity piqued. I will go over the modifications forum and throw this around a bit. The simplest way would be to just replace the old SE chip and get a slightly faster one if the circuit board can handle it.
 
Top