HELP!!

[sunraysux]

lol...no 5 alarm fire or anything but wowwwww
this Etrac is extremely jumpy/erratic/noisy and chattery
with any sensitivity at all...it sounds like a drunken pachinko machine
and tricks to settle the darn thing down?...just general advice would be most welcome
i am a White's guy historically but have heard all these crazy glowing stories and seen tons of youtube vids that make the Etrac seem like the 2nd coming for goodness sakes.
first problem it seems to me is that the 11 inch coil that comes with it is entirely too big!
it always grabs like 3 targets at once and pinpointing is ridiculously cumbersome
and the earphones they ship it with...UGH, annoying as all get out
i guess i need to go wireless??...any thoughts there would be welcome also guys!
sorry for the gripe session; guess my expectations were too lofty
i am experienced but no expert, thats for sure

##also....any ideas on the best deal for a pinpointer??
something with some damn power?!?!
the Vulcan pinpointer that they shipped with the Etrac is a joke!!!
Helen Keller could SEE the targets before that thing finds them!!!
and sadly, thats the truth!!

 

[SilverSal]

First of all where did you turn it on at? I ask this because if I turn my E-trac on in my house it goes completely nuts due to all the interference. So assuming you are outside away from interference did you do a noise cancel? If that didn't work double check the connections and see if there is anything between the coil cover and the coil, that can cause some craziness. Also make sure sensitivity is set to auto to see if that quiets it down. If all else fails maybe do a factory reset.

As far as a pinpointer, I would suggest the orange Garrett Pro Pointer At. I don't use the supplied headphones either. I use the nugget busters by Detectorpro.

Hope any of this helps. I love my E-trac and once you figure it out you will too. HH

 

[Mcdetect]

I posted the reply below in response to another new etrac user who had similar questions...

I would strongly suggest starting out with auto sensitivity. I've had good results with it and it is the best setting for minimizing falsing which was confusing for me when I first started with the etrac. Start out in auto (or even auto -3, -2 or -1 if you have to) and then work your way through auto +1, +2 and +3. As you get more used to the sounds of the etrac and how to tell falsing from a good signal you can then move on to experimenting with manual sensitivity to increase depth. The stock coin program is fine for learning. In clean areas I use the Andy S pattern and in trashy areas Bill's Trashy Park pattern.

...also dig only repeatable signals that sound in the same exact spot each time. And turn 90 degrees and try repeating the signal. If it doesn't repeat at 90 degrees it is likely falsing or junk.

Once you get used to the etrac you will love it. I do and I came from a Whites Eagle ii. Also once you get used the the etrac you can move on to more advanced techniques like TTF or digging more questionable /deeper signals.

 

[TerryR]

Your stepping into a new world. Buy Andys book and read it , over and over. Forget everything you think you know about detecting and learn this machine and it's features and you won't be sorry. Also swing slow. Keep everything very basic when you start. It's a proven great machine but you just need to learn it and then you will be fine

 

[sunraysux]

thanks guys...appreciate you time and help

so Silver Sal & McD...i have hunted 3 times with the Etrac....never had a problem air testing in the house
did that the first night she was delivered and was all ready to kill it outside.....and then reality kicked me in the teeth
i did everything as described in the manual....noise balance//etc
had it in AUTO sensitivity and even used the Minelab programs....although i have programmed in Andy S and Trashy park
have used both of those to very tepid results....

the 3 hunts have been at a permission in a quiet rural area...low trash and easy enjoyable hunting
the other hunts were at pretty heavy trash urban area parks and OMG....that 11 coil is waaaaaay too big!!
like i said, no matter what alterations i made....manual sensitivity and sweep speed and program
forget it...far far too much noise/chatter for my taste....tons and tons of nulling out....and some falsing
no discernible signals...just extreme frustration after all this live silver digs posted on youtube that led me to believe this machine was special and different
and thus far i am extremely displeased and disillusioned...
seems to me ANY machine can successfully hunt easy quiet residential yards for goodness sake
have yet to dig anything over 5 inches deep as well....makes me think the depth claims on this thing have been greatly exaggerated...again, my apologies for venting but i am fairly upset at spending that sort of $$ and not seeing better early results

do the pinpointers you suggest have strong loud signals?
because it is such a pain in the butt to keep taking off the headphones to hear this faint peep from this crappy Vulcan POS they gave me for "free" with my purchase...i am astounded at just how lousy that thing is!!
i expected better out of KELLYCO!!!

 

[sunraysux]

Thanks Terry for the time and the reply....
yeah , i am not the most patient of people and this darn thing is really trying what little the world has left me!lol
i guess i will do that ....and heed your advise
but still, with the level of noise/confusing chirping and chatter this Etrac spits out....i am dubious about some book helping me be able to decipher the verbal bombardment

i do plan on getting a smaller loop//coil...this stock-11 is DEF too big!!!!!
any suggestions on a good quality durable model that is not ridiculously expensive??
already have enough $$ in this machine in my mind.....

 

[jd88047]

Coil Tech 6 inch coil. $168.00 bucks. Also I would tell you to slow your swing down to a 3 second count.Im new too and been playing with all the buttons so do a reset, not a master reset. Just push and hold the power button till it resets, again not a master reset. Also noise cancel before and during hunts. I use grey ghost deep woods headphones. Have to take one ear off to pinpoint. Good Luck.

 

[sunraysux]

well thank you JD...you're a good man
i have been working it fairly slowly...and consistently so i do not think thats the issue necessarily
BUT i am always losing my threshold and nulling out
have had her in manual but i am being told now to go auto...and no matter what, unless you are over a ton of iron, back the sensitivity off to the point where you do not lose the threshold!!
i really am going to get a small sniper loop like that....this big one is killing me
i'm 6 and 1/2 feet tall so my swing covers a fair chunk of real estate and lots of targets in these trashy areas
so the little tight guy sounds perfect for me!!
and you think coil tech is the best aftermarket coil choice JD??
and are your earphones wireless??....the wire is always getting in the way!

 

[Mcdetect]

You are way over thinking this and maybe panicking a little. Practice with the etrac in your yard with a simple test garden or at some of your easier/better spots until things click a little more for you and follow the advice I gave above. In time it will all start to make sense.

Also don't over focus on loss of threshold. The etrac nulls threshold when the coil is over a discriminated item. So it's possible there is a lot of (discriminated) trash where you are hunting. To confirm switch to quick mask (I have mine wide open, no discrim) and you will hear everything in the ground. I have dug silver coins that rang out nicely while the threshold was null.

You are way over thinking this. Take your time, don't panic and have fun. You will learn your new machine in time. It took me a couple of weeks maybe even a month to get the hang of it but once I did my good finds shot through the roof. All of us who were new to minelab went through the same learning curve you are now on. You will get there just relax a bit and try to have some fun.

 

[IDXMonster]

lol...no 5 alarm fire or anything but wowwwww
this Etrac is extremely jumpy/erratic/noisy and chattery
with any sensitivity at all...it sounds like a drunken pachinko machine
and tricks to settle the darn thing down?...just general advice would be most welcome
i am a White's guy historically but have heard all these crazy glowing stories and seen tons of youtube vids that make the Etrac seem like the 2nd coming for goodness sakes.
first problem it seems to me is that the 11 inch coil that comes with it is entirely too big!
it always grabs like 3 targets at once and pinpointing is ridiculously cumbersome
and the earphones they ship it with...UGH, annoying as all get out
i guess i need to go wireless??...any thoughts there would be welcome also guys!
sorry for the gripe session; guess my expectations were too lofty
i am experienced but no expert, thats for sure

##also....any ideas on the best deal for a pinpointer??
something with some damn power?!?!
the Vulcan pinpointer that they shipped with the Etrac is a joke!!!
Helen Keller could SEE the targets before that thing finds them!!!
and sadly, thats the truth!!

Pinpointer? That's easy,get a Sunray probe! Oh wait....

 

[skateteacher]

I've had the etrac for 3 weeks now and came from an ATPro. There is a considerable amount of noise when compared to the AT but I kind of knew that going in. I got some great advice from IDXmonster and it's really helped. He had me open up just the right corner of my screen. I don't remember the #'s exactly but basically it's about a 1"x1" area in the upper right hand corner. With that pattern i've been able to focus more on the sounds I want to hear rather than the sounds I don't want to hear. The other good thing about doing this was I had to learn to make a pattern which prior to this i didn't know. I'm still frustrated periodically but I am finding coins in the ground. So far only one has been silver but there have been several wheats to go along with a bunch of clad. In order to find more silver I'm going to have to knock on more doors and detect better places. Give it time and i think you'll be glad you did.

Best of luck

Skate

 

[TerryR]

Find a used Sunray 8" or even a 5". Makes learning a lot easier. I've been detecting 40 years and the ETrac is an amazing machine. When I got mine I wanted to swing it fast and do all the things I had done before. I had a bunch of bad habits to break. It's not hard to learn but there are times. I kept my ETrac and still use it at times even though I also have a CTX. A smaller coil will help a lot in learning and the Sunrays seem to work great. Good luck

 

[Mark kus]

Make sure to ground balance to..

 

[SilverSal]

I have a 6x8 SEF coil and I like it a lot. It gets in there and separates the good from the bad really well. With the Garrett ProPointer AT I can hear it just fine without taking off my headphones plus it vibrates like crazy. I have a sunray X1 probe but don't even have it on my machine, I prefer the Garrett. I have ran into places as well that I lose my threshold completely no matter how slow I swing, the smaller coil helped me in these areas when I went back a second time. Just be patient and try to find you some good place with very little trash to learn the beast. Good luck.

 

[sunraysux]

LOL...yes/been there ...done that!!
hence my forum name!!

 

[sunraysux]

thank you Sir....appreciate the reply
you do not find the 6x8 too big?
and it really weeds and separates well??
hmmmm....may have to look into that as well

 

[EtracTom-AdirondacksNY]

I'll try to help you out too.

First just start out with the stock coin discrimination pattern you can open it up more later. Set it to HIGH TRASH makes a good target next to bad targets ring out and tends to ignore the bad discriminated target even while nulling.

Set it to GROUND DIFFICULT so it punches deeper and for some unexplained reason makes large silver ring in, don't ask me why but when this machine first came out people were missing large silver till it was discovered to set it to GROUND DIFFICULT. Use GROUND NORMAL for beach use or really low mineralization soil so if you have like 50 and lower mineralization readings on other machines try this out otherwise I LEAVE it at GROUND DIFFICULT.

There is NO ground balancing as the machine has three channels and a ground sampling channel if memory serves me right that it uses to read the ground and to sample and set the sensitivity at. It uses a LOW a MID and a HIGH reading that it averages to find the sweet spot to run at in that plain AUTO mode and that is where that number on the left comes from with the dash going round and round it, that's Auto mode. No moving dash and your in Manual mode. Use the left or right arrow to move in and out of those 2 modes on the fly. Up and down arrows use to raise or lower the sensitivity numbers.

I set mine to AUTO +3 as it bumps up the sensitivity 3 points higher that it was recommended at in plain AUTO and my ground here has real high mineralization and reads high 80's on other machines. My sensitivity varies between low of 15 to high of 19-20 and I hit stuff deep. Makes a tunk noise when the depth meter is buried like a tunk tunk noise sweeping back and forth and it was an Indian penny about 10-11" deep.

SWEEP SLOWLY slow way down let the coil read the ground and this machine LIKES THE COIL ON THE GROUND NO AIR IF AT ALL POSSIABLE UNDER IT while sweeping hence just drag it along side to side at 4-5 seconds each direction. Don't have to sweep fast to get a reading. That 11" coil has a very narrow laser like beam going down deep and can see good separation of items in a slow sweep and High Trash setting barely wiggle it and it will read through the trash targets good if close together.
You pinpoint by xing the target go side to side and find the center of the coil and loudest reading look at that spot turn 90 degrees and do the same again and the where those two spots intersect in an x is where the target should be. Just throw a coin on the ground and practice it's easy.

Set your VOLUME GAIN to 29 or 30 and the deepest of targets will be heard lower than 26 it's like modulation softer sounding if deep and proven that you can't hear some really really deep fringe targets without running it on 29 or 30.
My threshold is on 15 but I set the volume at 30 and spread the sounds setting to 30 also to give a more wider spacing of the sounds the targets make and Silver is quite a high sound and nickles a lower sound after a while you will have those sounds memorized and be able to hunt by the sounds.

I noise cancel before each hunt with coil on the ground too.

IF after all this yours is still chatty badly then it may be a bad coil or coil wire, wiggle it and see if the machine is quiet or not.

Hope this helps someone out with theirs..

 

[sunraysux]

well thanks Tom for that long and detailed advice
i pretty much do all that now; just sort of switched to this mode at the behest of another successful Etrac hunter trying to get me straightened out
went out for 3 hours today to an 1890s park in a major metropolitan area
braved the howling cold winds as long as i could bear it....
and it was the most aggravating/frustrating waste of time imaginable!!!!!
i seriously have about had it with this darn machine, seriously
....read the manual last night....and got out today and RESET it to factory initial settings(NOT the master reset though)
and then i noise cancelled it(did this several times during the hunt) in an effort to try to find a target
ALL i dug in the COINS mode was trash trash TRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
total crap....not a coin in a park that has been loaded with people for 125 years?!?!?
doesn't make ANY sense
the first problem is the stock coil is entirely TOO big!!! it is hyper sensitive and smears targets together all over the place
VERY VERY VERY VERY difficult to pinpoint when you have several targets in close proximity(which was most of the day)
i must be very honest Tom and forum guys...i really do not like this machine at all
watch youtube after youtube of guys killing it all over the country
well i do NOT see any killing on the east coast per se
i am beyound fed up with this damn thing and about to just flip it for $1250/$1300 to be rid of it
just paid $1575 at KellyCo like 7 days ago

thank you for your time and advice Tom//despite my obvious disdain and disgust with the Etrac....i do appreciate your time

 

[IDXMonster]

The biggest mistake I made with my Explorer2 at first was TRYING TOO HARD. The machine will tell you if there is a good target under the coil,most times it will do it with many targets under the coil at once. I didn't read Toms post entirely but I will go back and do that....I wound up making the upper right corner clear,nothing else. On the etrac(and I do this on the CTX,it has the same screen dimensions) everything from 40 CO up is clear,everything from 20 down is clear. This leaves you with a rectangle in the upper right corner of the screen. Dig solid repeatable,good at 90 degree targets. That's it. Auto plus 3 and high gain. If you don't dig coins tomorrow there's something wrong with the equipment,which is not likely,but possible. You will miss aindians,zinc pennies,ridiculously worn coins....don't sweat it. We gotta get you going, don't worry about the oddball stuff that "might be". Do that later.

 

[sunraysux]

lol
i feel like a basket case//THX coach
i don't think its the machine
it air tests fine...i think there is just soooo much crap in the ground, the poor thing has no idea what to do
so it pings and pops, sputters and spits...motorboats and squeels
like i have said before, it sounds like a drunken pachinko//pinball machine sometimes
and it keeps making this damn THUNK THUNK THUNK noise like Tom alluded to earlier...(he said TUNK)
and i used the pre-programmed COIN and HEAVY TRASH programs....with auto sensitivity in A...not plus 3
just in an effort to keep her settled and it was better but still very unsettled and frustrating
not ONE clear coin signal at all
i did dig A TON of 42s and 43s...only to find that they were some smashed screw top from a wino's booze bottle UGH
i surely expects some of that....but not EVERY target for goodness sakes
wish i had one of you Etrac vets with me to use my machine and rub my nose in it
i would GLADLY eat a full buffet of crow on this thing....but this is not my first rodeo
i apprciate you guys putting up with my venting and b*tching...i really wish i was regaling everyone with tales of silver