Newbie needs a little help

[watchdr]

Hope I can get a little help.

I am brand new to metal detecting and this is my first detector.

I just got my 705 and took it out this weekend. I did not find any nuggets but found a lot of nails, tacks and trash (aluminum cans). Each day when I got back home I read all I could about the detector and it's settings and played with it in the yard with nails, pop tops and a small piece of gold jewelry. Now I understand the best get skunked sometimes so I expect to not know what I am doing for a while until I get a handle on this.

In everything I read there is supposed to be a noticeable tone difference for non-iron targets and iron targets. But I don't hear anything different. When I go over the gold jewelry with it laying on top of the ground it barely makes noise and the 'tone' is just the same as the threshold except it is barely louder. The nail, coin and pop top all make a very loud tone but they are the same tone as the threshold and then just seem to get real loud. But I don't hear any difference in tone. I was using the detector in prospecting mode so the display is of no value to help determine what is in the ground.

I have tried setting the tones to 2, 3, 4 and multiple but everything sounds the same. If I adjust the threshold down it changes tone noticeably but the targets still maintain the same tones as the new threshold tone just louder. I was expecting the tone for gold to be different than iron and both to be different than the threshold tone. Is this wrong?

What am I missing? Is it that I don't understand what a tone is? maybe I don't have the detector set up right even though I reset it all to factory settings? I'll be going out again this weekend and wanted to see if there was anything I could do between now and then to help me be able to get this right.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[7centsworth]

In prospect mode there is not multiple tones. Read the faq faq post and the ebook post at top of page . Oh welcome to the forum. I do not have much experienced with prospect mode but I am sure someone on here will chime in.

 

[nuggetripper]

welcome watchdr. You shouldn't use jewelry to try for the sound from raw gold it is different,way different Jewel has tin and other minerals that will sound different on the 705.Try setting your machine back to factory settings the discrimination to 5 if you have some lead shot from a shotgun shell take a few pellets put them in a Ziploc bag put it on the ground and swing over it listen.The sound should be crisp then go over the nail the sound should break.that is the difference the lead sounds very close to what raw gold sounds like.A test nugget will help to remember the sound.Hope this helps.GOOD HUNTING and keep swinging

 

[watchdr]

Thank you both. I hadn't thought about the jewelry being that much different.

Just to make sure I understand, setting the discrimination to 5 is the same as using the Iron Mask pattern? Or are you saying to use All Metal Mode and reject the first five notches? I just figured this out. All metal can't be changed so you mean use it in Iron Mask mode.

I'll use the lead shot as I don't have a test nugget yet!

One more question. Do the quality of the headphones make a big difference?

Thanks,
Ken

 

[leroy1937]

[size=large] [/size]
If you have a metal detector dealer near you he may have small nuggets 4 sale or like somebody said lead same sound 22 or shot gun. This a good way to lean

 

[Digger]

pages 34 - 37 of the eBook provides a pretty decent overview of jewelry hunting with the X-TERRA in C/T mode.

You ask about setting the Discrimination to 5? Not sure what you mean by setting it to 5? Coin/Treasure mode has discrimination capbilities. 28 notch segments that can be set to either accept or reject. Prospecting mode does not discriminate anything but ferrous from non-ferrous, which is a linear adjustment and referred to as Iron Mask. Coin/Treasure mode does not have iron mask functionality. (reference page 79 in the eBook).

Page 70 in the eBook gives a basic description of Prospecting mode, iron mask, changing threshold tones etc.

You are correct in that you can't add any rejection to the All Metal mode of C/T. You can, however, make any notch segment either reject or accept, in any of the Patterns of C/T. If you set one of the Patterns up with zero discrimination, it would be very similar to All Metal. Then, if you wanted to, you could reject all the ferrous notch segments. That would give you a Pattern with 4 rejected notches and 24 accepted notches. Check out pages 25 - 29 in the eBook.

Headphones make a huge difference in not only the audio signal you hear. But also the amount of "outside" noise that may interfere with that audio signal.

Let us know what mode you are using (Prospecting or C/T) as well as what it is you're hunting for, and we should be able to help you out more. HH Randy

 

[nuggetripper]

yeah the headphones helped me.I don't hear so well because of my job background noise messes with me a bit. I picked up some headphones that can be adjusted,it made a huge difference they also help to keep your focus.

 

[TURNMASTER]

What type of hunting are you doing? Sounds like you are a nugget hunter, yes? Also, how new are you to metal detecting?

When I started this a few years ago it took me 100 to 150 hours to really begin to understand what the machine is telling me. I do not have a lot of hours into the nugget hunting side of this machine.

If you are hunting in an urban or a pioneer environment I would use the Coin and Treasure mode. If you are hunting nuggets then the prospecting mode is probably what you want. Prospecting mode is the deeper of the two.

Multiple tones are only in the C/T mode and Prospecting mode has only 1 tone with subtleties pointed out by nuggetripper. The Iron Mask is valid in Prospecting mode and is linear as pointed out by Randy. More IM will knock out the smallest nuggets (or so I am told), but you will find that a piece of lead will hit like Gold.

We all dig nails. In the urban setting bent and rusty nails often signal like a Dime or Quarter and roofing nails often hit like Pennies. The nail problem is related to the plating and size of the head with roofing nails and the rusty, the rusty bent nail causes the eddy currents to emulate a Quarter. There is another factor that Randy calls Iron wrap, which causes Iron to drop out of the bottom end of the scale and come back in at the top where Silver should be. All Metal will may give you more info than one of the patterns to help you decide weather or not to dig. I am not sure that would be a problem (Iron wrap) in the Prospecting mode though. You will find that larger iron will hit when you have low Iron Mask numbers, makes sense right (?), but more IM will knock out smaller nuggets, bummer.

Nature of the game.

Good Luck
Jeff

 

[watchdr]

Thanks guys,

Last weekend was my first time ever metal detecting and I went to the mountains for the weekend nugget hunting. But I also plan on using it in the city and around the lakes here so when I do that I will be using it in the CT mode. I probably should have started in the parks and beaches first to get to know more of what I read in the ebook. I think the biggest thing that threw me was the ML manual having both the prospecting settings and CT settings intermixed. I did not pay attention to the little icons for each mode. I am separating them out for my own use so I can pull just the information I need in the field for the type of use I am doing.

Being brand new to this I don't expect to really find much of anything for a while. My confusion was from not paying attention.

I don't have a good set of headphones. But I am conflicted about getting ones that cut out all the outside noise. When I am in the mountains I am not comfortable not being able to to hear noises around me because of the bears (Blacks, Grizzlies and Browns) or mountain lions, moose, deer, elk and so on. It is easy to get into big trouble quickly. I may get a better pair and use them in town for CT but maybe just have them half over my ears in the mountains but I don't know if this will work. This year is pretty bad for food in the mountains so the animals are going to be hungry and amazing as it sounds I have walked up to within about 10 feet of a mother moose and her calf once when I was fishing. I wasn't being real quite either. The only thing that saved me was hearing them move a little in the brush. If the headphones block out almost all the outside noise that could be a bad thing.

Ant suggestions on the headphone issue?

 

[Digger]

I had a close call with a Grizzly once when I was panning for gold around Cooke City, Montana. I was sitting on the downstream side of a huge rock in the middle of a small creek. I was out there in my own little world, thinking about nothing but hitting the mother lode. All of a sudden I heard a loud series of "snorts" coming from the brush beside the creek. I didn't know if it was a moose or a bear. Frankly, it didn't matter as I knew I was intruding on his (or her) turf. I jumped up and made a beeline for the truck. I'm still not sure if my feet even hit the ground! When I got back to the lodge where we were staying, I told the proprietor about the experience and he said he'd take his four wheeler down the next morning to see what he could see. The next afternoon he asked me if I had been sitting below a huge rock, in the middle of the stream. I told him that I had been. He said there were bear tracks all around the area of the rock, as if it had been stalking something. So I know what you mean about wanting to hear your surroundings. I'd have been in big trouble that day, had I not heard the snorts. For those circumstances, you may decide to not use a pair of headphones and listen to the speaker. Of if you do use headphones, adjust them on your ears like you mentioned, so they don't block out the outside noises. Another suggestion would be to get a pair of cheap foam padded headphones like we use to use on portable radios (before the day of earbuds etc). They don't block out much noise. And another thought, DetectorPro actually makes a set with only one ear cup. I think they call them Ratlers. Whatever you decide, make sure you have your safety first and foremost. Best of luck on your hunts. HH Randy

 

[watchdr]

Thanks Randy,

I know what you mean about your feet not hitting the ground or water! That Moose encounter I had was just north of where you were. I was in Paradise valley just south of Livingston, MT. This year my family and I were in the mountains around St. Regis, MT and a black bear walked down on the road in front of us about 100 yards and we jumped in the truck like never before! After living in the Livingston/Bozeman area for more than a decade and the number of people that get seriously injured or killed each year by the bears and buffalo and ... we have learned they are not something you want to mess with.

I like your ideas and will try them each out to see what works best for me.