Getting Frustrated with Quattro

[Daniel Tn]

Okay I have three coils for the Quattro now. I have the stock 10" for starters. I thought it was too big and therefore was the problem with masking due to the constant nulling of the machine. So I bought an 8" SunRay. It helped a tad bit but not much. I also just got a CoilTek Platypus coil. Same problem with it.

I took it to an older house today and went to try some coin shooting. I found a relatively clean spot to Noise Cancel and opted for a modified Coins program in which I just edited the Disc range to open up alot of the blocked out zones. I switched from Auto Sensitivty to a manual sensitivity of 17. Then back to the Auto Sensitivity to see if it helped.

What I am having trouble with is the detector CONSTANTLY nulls unless I lift the coil a few feet off the ground. That is the only time I can get it to keep a steady threshold. I could go open up everything in the disc range but when I do that, all it tells me is there is alot of iron in the ground. No way of getting around there here in Tennessee. The ground has natural iron in it. I hunted the entire front yard. Never got a signal worth digging. I put the Quattro up and got my Tejon out of the truck. Turned it on and GBed it. Hunted the same front yard and dug several repeatable signals. Most were junk but the thing is, it picked out targets I had just walked over.

The problem is...this isn't the first time this has happened. I got an ID machine with numeric ID to help me relic hunt yards. If this thing is going to null like that at every site I take it to regardless of coil size...its really not doing me a bit of good. Am I missing the boat here or what? Maybe something I'm not doing right?

When I Noise Cancel I try to find a clean spot on the ground. I will place the coil flat on the ground and push the button and wait til it does its little warm up thing to 100%. I don't move the coil at all. When it gets to 100% it gives a little sound and then you can hear the thresold after the 100% goes off the screen. That's when I start hunting. Everytime I make an adjustment I noise cancel it. Not really sure what else to do at this point. I don't beach hunt...maybe I made a mistake getting a machine that has only gotten good reviews from beach hunters?

 

[Sand Shagger (NMB)]

I wish I could help, but I only hunt the beach. I will say, that I am surprised that you can run the Quattro at 17 sensitivity in such an environment.

Perhaps Mike (Virginia Beach) is around and he'll read this post. I know that he has used the Quattro "inland". I am sure that there are many on here that could share advise, etc.

Sorry that I am not any help!

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

There are only two things that will keep that threshold from going away...slowing way down or opening up your discrimination. If you are in "rough" ground, I prefer to hunt in All Metal. You still get target ID and tones, it just accepts everything. If you're in iron-laden ground you pretty much need to do that. And then listen to it ALL and dig what sounds/reads good. I had a lot of success running that way at a couple of sites that were an iron mess. I hunt that way with my Explorer II now. Try it and see. It will help if you turn the volume down a little. Also, have you tried running the High Trash Density setting? I usually kept mine in Low, even when it was high...didn't want to lose depth and I MAKE myself hunt S-L-O-W, so didn't need it much.

 

[Daniel Tn]

Mike,

I have popped into the high trash density mode a few times. In my test garden it is the only way I can get it to hit a 7" minie ball in our red clay dirt. If it's in low trash it does not read it. The problem with running it in high trash in real world conditions is that for me atleast, it gets very erratic in that mode and falses alot. Even with auto sensitivity.

I'm not so sure I like the idea of running in all metal. To me that sort of defeats my purpose of having a target ID machine. I wanted to set it like I set my non metered machine but just have an idea of what I was looking at in yards.

For example...in yards I might encounter shallow trash like pull tabs and such. On my Tejon I can't tell them apart but by the VDI numbering they are pretty easy to tell. They read in the low to mid teens on the Quattro while bullets are all the way into the low 30s and most all my buttons read around 19 and 20. That was the idea of getting the Quattro but evidently its slow recovery makes it suck pretty bad in bad iron ground.

From your post now that you use the EX II...would it be any different or since they are based on the same technology would they be about the same?

 

[Rick(ND)]

Too high of sensitivity can give you a problem. If the ground is that bad I would be running a lower sensitivity than 17 and with this much iron and running a disc pattern I would have to go very slow with the sweep speed. If it is nulling too much there is too disc out causing this, or going too fast with the sweep speed as Mike says. I also would be runing the all metal mode and going more by the tones as this mode is ferrous so most all iron would be a low tone. Now if you want and dont want to listen to all those low tones you can disc out the worst one while in the all metal mode, but remember now that they will null so too many disc out will be too much nulling also.
The Quattro like the Explorer takes a while to understand it, but I will tell you that you will have to sweep the coil slower then other detectors or it will null too much and miss a lot of good target that are deep.
One other thing if it is really loaded with trash or target you will need better separation and where a 5 inch coil works great.

 

[beachguy777]

You know, this is a real strange one. I'm reading this over and over and it almost sounds like your saying it nulls out even the good targets, which, to me doesn't make sense with the Quatro, if you've opened up the discrimination for copper, silver, etc. If you have 34 thru 39 open and your not getting any reading on a penny or a dime, I'd say turn your sensitivity to auto, turn your threashold just so you can barely hear it, open up 34 to 39, find a place with no trash and noise cancel, then throw a penny or dime on the ground and see if the detector reads it. If it does, great, if it doesn't I don't know what to tell you. In other words, if your running on Auto sens, just a little threshold, speaker volume up all the way, and you noise cancel on clean ground, you should be able to hear the sound of a penny on the ground and read it at about 34. If that doesn't work, go out to the pavement somewhere and put a penny on the ground and try that. I hope some of this helps. Even though I hunt mainly the beach, the beach has some pretty ironized ground and the Quatro cancels it out very well. I would think it would do the same for your ironized ground in Tenessee. If all that fails, I'd call Minelab and get ahold of one of the tech guys, and see what's up. Good luck with it.

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

That's interesting about the High Trash and the minnie ball. I dug a lot of minnie balls depper than 7" with my Quattro but that was in the woods and fields and not in trash or iron. I hunted some bad red clay dirt in Danville Virginia with it a while back and tried it some then and it seemed to help.

Going to All Metal only defeats the target ID idea if you dig it all. You are still in TID and you only dig what you want. But in All Metal there's no nulling, so in tough ground this can be a way to beat that.

As for your question on the Explorer II, it DOES have a quicker recovery speed than the Quattro. It still needs a slow sweep to shine, but it is better insofar as recovery speed. But being a deep silver and bullet hunter with a CZ and a Sovereign Elite, I'm comfortable with a slow sweep speed so I was able to work with the Quattro pretty well, even at bad sites. I got the Explorer for the challenge and it has been, somewhat, but I don't find it too intimidating. But I do hunt with it wide open as well. I just listen to it all and dig what I like. The less discrimination you throw at a machine, the less work it has to do. If you are nulling on discriminated items, you won't be able to hear good ones. Other machines have this problem too but unless you're running a threshold you just don't know it. Like my CZ-70. I'm sure many a good target has been masked by iron. But because it has no threshold, if it just cruises along silently, I assume that there's nothing there. Not always the case. And with the CZ, it can get hi-coin falses in the presence of rusty nails and if you have Iron notched out, you might dig it. but with Iron notched in, you would hear the Coin signal mixed with an iron blip. Then you know it's not a good target. So there are benefits with that machine to running wide open as well. It's not always pleasant to hunt that way, but it's more effective. In my opinion.

 

[Daniel Tn]

Yesterday was the only time I've ever actually tried hunting with it in manual sensitivity. The rest of the time it has been in Auto Sensitivity so where ever it sets itself at, I have not a clue. I thought I'd try the 17 manual just because it wasn't seeming too awful erratic there.

So that brings me to the question of slow sweep speeds. I don't hunt fast to begin with. You gotta remember, I'm hunting yards in a small subdivision and most of them are maybe 1/2 to 3/4 an acre. So they are sort of small yards when compared to the 600+ acre farms I'm usually hunting in the winter months. I hunt them slow...or atleast what I think is slow anyway. If I'm finding relics I will even hunt the same areas from multiple directions.

Here is how the nulling thing works. I can take it to the middle of no were here. Far away from everything in the middle of no where. I can noise cancel. Things are going good. Until I swing the coil over the ground. The threshold is gone til I lift it about 2' off the ground. In all metal mode, it reads our ground as solid -10. Just natural iron in the ground. In and around structures, it reads -10 to -7. In other words...if you are in any mode but all metal, it is nulling everywhere. So far I've only had it at once site where the dirt was a little different where it did not null like that. At the house site yesterday, I saw a top to a Vienna sausage can and ran the coil over it. It was null up to that point then it hit a high pitch beep but never correctly ID'ed it until I raised the coil and let the treshold come back and then ran the coil over the can top itself. Then it read it +30s.

 

[beachguy777]

Man that is weird!!!. I'm trying to figure out, myself what's going on there, but it's pretty off beat. What concerns me is that you had to raise the coil higher to get a good reading on the sausage can. I would think it would pick it up right at any height. I would still love to know if that same thing happens with a penny, nickel, dime or quarter lying on the same ground. It almost sounds like you've got so much iron in the ground it's overwhelming the detector or maybe there's actually something wrong with the Quatro. You certainly shouldn't have to raise the coil more than a couple of inches above the ground in order to detect and if you go over a really big metal object it should give you the over ride sound, I can't think of the exact name but it's in Andy's book about being too close to a huge metal object and it makes a certain kind of sound warning you of that, but yours doesn't sound like that is the case. I'd still try the penny on the ground stuff or find some completely inocuous ground like a wooden deck in somebodys back porch and see if it doesn't work with some targets you put on the deck. At least at that point, you'd know for sure it wasn't iron in the ground because your on a wooden deck high above the ground. I'd try all that before I called Minelab.

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

...the wooden deck has nails all in it. A sidewalk may have rebar in it. Driveways and anywhere around your house are likely to have trash, TV/electrical/phone cable anywhere and everywhere. Finding a "clean" spot is tough.

The red clay soil he is talking about is a major bear and causes problems for a lot of machines. I went to Danville, Virginia a while back and was hunting there with a friend. between the two of us we had a Fisher CZ-70, CZ-3D, Coinstrike, and a Quattro and they all had fits with that red clay soil. Which is red due to iron. The only way to deal with it is to "open up the disc" and listen to the iron. Maybe somebody else here can educate me, but that's all I found to be helpful with it.

Of course there COULD be something wrong with the machine. But I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't.

 

[Sand Shagger (NMB)]

n/t

 

[beachguy777]

Yep, Mike your right. I forgot about the nails in the deck. Man, it is tough to find a totally clean, non ironized spot to test this bad boy in. I always thought the Quatro would noise cancel out the iron, but I bet your right, the mineralized sand we have here at the beach is probably "light weight" compard to that red clay. How about maybe somebody's lawn if it wasn't put down on that red clay soil?? I'm just reaching for straws here, but darn, if that detector can't even recognize a penny or a dime at normal detecting height I'd sure be concerned. Well, seriously, good luck on it, ah, ha, I just thought of something. What if he does an air test out in the open away from the ground, his watch and anything else metal. Maybe at least he could see if it's still reading, normal targets like pop tops, pennys, etc. Just a thought.

 

[Daniel Tn]

I'm not having to raise the coil way above the ground to get signals on things laying on top. I had to raise the coil only to get the threshold to return to get a correct ID and consistent high pitch beep. Once it returns I can run it across the penny/dime/nickel or whatever else and it does like it's suppose to. I guess that sort of "resets" the machine when you do that.

The detector works great in the air but how many civil war relics do ya find 3-4 feet in the air. Hehe.

I've had a number of detectors over the past few years. The list keeps growing too. There have only been a few and I do mean VERY few that can handle the dirt in a mediocre fashion. The thing about the Minelabs was they were suppose to handle extreme soil due to the different frequencies and all that. I guess the iron dirt is too much. Although the little Minelab Advantage fared pretty good here but it was a non ID machine and VLF detector.

There were tricks with the CoinStrike you can do that helps. It is the best target ID machine I've ever used here. But you had to work with the iron disc or it would be doing like the Quattro is here. If you ran it at 99 iron disc, you would miss easy targets in the ground that is just passed over as iron. If you lowered it quite a bit you could still knock out nails and hit bullets and such down to around 10 inches.

The MXT gets good reviews from people but here it read everything as iron beyond about 4-5 inches. Throw in two CZs that did the same...CZ-70 and CZ-3D. The DFX I had...didn't have it for long because there wasn't any "help" out there for programming and such. But from what I hunted with it, it seemed to handle the soil pretty decent on 3khz.

 

[beachguy777]

Yes, your absolutly right. I was just thinking about all this and I realized I was probably barking up the wrong tree. The only thing the air test would tell you is if it's reading properly in the air, not on the ground where it needs to be. Boy, oh boy. Maybe you've got one of those soils that the Quatro just can't handle. I was worried whether your detector was even working at all, but you just said it works ok once you get the threshold back, but like you say having to lift it way off the ground isn't doing you too much good for real world detecting. Well, Daniel, you got me!!. I can't think of anything else except at this point I'd sure take a stab at calling Minelab tech guys. Sounds like a job for the "big guys", and like I said, maybe this is the one soil Quatro can't handle.

 

[beachguy777]

Post Script: Let us know if you find out any answers on this iron soil deal Daniel. The curiosity is killing me and I'm sure it would be great information for all of us. Who knows when any one of us might come across some tough ground like you have. Hope you get a good answer and please let us know.

 

[JoeR]

Daniel I understand exactly what you mean about the soils!There is an area in east central Alabama that is notorius for bad soil conditions like yours.I see that you had some luck with the Coinstrike,however,and would like to know what settings worked best.Thank you very much for any information.My MXT has a slow recovery also so I don`t use it much in heavy trash as it nulls out too.The advice to hunt very slowly and use small coils may be the best you can do with your Quattro or most detectors in that crud.

 

[beachguy777]

Mike that must be some "tough ass" soil. If you had trouble with it, even with the Quatro, it must be a major bummer. I just asked Dan to let us know if he finds out anything we don't know, but, "it don't look too good" do it? At least in that soil. (I used that bad grammar just to try and be cute.) What do ya think Mike, pretty lame attemt to get a laugh, hugh?

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

Well, they DO call it TOUGH SOIL for a reason. It's tough. And I had never seen anything like that garbage in Danville...I had a feeling I was "in for it" when I was driving past all of these fields with really orange/red dirt. I thought "Uh, oh...is THAT going to be giving me trouble???" Well it WAS and it DID. It was not nice. But in fairness to the Quattro, none of our machines did well in it and I did pull a 1907 Indian and a 1917 wheatie out of it where none of the other machines we had there would do squat. So take THAT for what it's worth.

 

[ScottR.]

Put the machine in all metal if you are getting so many iron hits that you cant get a threshold. Back off the sensitivity until you get a fairly stable threshold. Dont be suprised if its in the 9 or 10 range. then you should be
able to hunt in coins mode with less falseing. if you want to run the machine
with more sensitivity the go into relic mode accept -10 thru -5 regect -4
thru +12 . I also regect +16 thru +28 if I am hunting for silver coins.
I had the exact problems you stated until I started useing these settings
I now find the machine alot easyer to use. good luck with it its really
a great machine.

 

[beachguy777]

Well "by golly" Mike, at least you got something out of that "dirt from (you know where)". I was wondering if there was "no" hope for the old "Blue Beast" but at least if the other detectrors didn't do well either, it pretty much "saves face" on the Quatro. I was starting to wonder about all that.