OK Here's proof the E-trac performs better

[jeff & Maria]

This large cent was found in a small area I thoroughly checked with my Explorer II using all my coils right down to the 5 inch to sneak in between the iron. This time I hit the spot with the E Trac and stock 11 pro coil which by rights was way too big for the amount of iron/junk. Using the coin program and auto sens. I got a good number 12- 46 amongst the nulling. It was not a super clean sound, more of a iffy signal. I dug down about 6 inches and found it. I checked the hole and there was a BIG piece of iron somewhere under the coin still buried, I don't know how big or how much deeper. The Etrac was able to isolate the coin from the iron. Charles in NY made a good point a few weeks ago regarding hunting in all metal, which is how I always hunted. The detector may choose to lock onto the iron over the more conductive target thus I only would have heard the iron. I highly recommend that guys like myself who always hunted in all metal start using the coin, or other disc patterns. If it's a good target don't worry, the E-trac will find it! The front of the coin is too far gone to get a date off of, but this was in the same area I found a 1787 NJ Copper last year.

 

[mikewaz]

That's very impressive!
I've been trying to decide on which new detector to buy after using my 1266 for the last ten years.
Now it's settled. E-trac for me in the Spring.
Mike

 

[jeff & Maria]

over the Explorer. I feel it is much better than the Explorer II overall, more little improvements and way more stable. Can't say about the SE since I hadn't used one.

 

[GraveDiggerMax-VaBch-Va]

n/t

 

[Jim upstate NY]

If its that irony, and you are not, then I must be doing something wrong.. also I have dug quite a few targets that read 23 fe that turned out to be coins in iron.. I switched to coin mode and get nothing but a few chirps on those same targets.. Also Am I the only one digging iffy signals that turn to nothing? I get lots of signals that sound like iffy coins did on the explorer but they turn into nails or even nothing but rust.. So far the coins have been pretty solid hits no matter what FE reading they give, so maybe I dont go for iffy ones anymore? I am getting rusty iron nuts that read 12-32 pretty solid, and some square nails that read 12-42 even from two directions

Where is digitrich? I need to know if they found something wrong with his machine.. I am finding not much of anything in my beat up parks.. I need one of you guys that are doing so well to make a trip here and go for some oldies in my parks!. Anyone close enough? I have lots of old beat up spots you can go for the gold at I need someone to show me the way

 

[Ray-Mo.]

I used a 1265-X and 1266-X for years and they were great machines but not even in the same ballpark with the E-Trac in my experience,Ray.

 

[jbow]

I have not dug any iffy signals that turned out to be good with the ET. I figured it was just me. Everything i've dug has had a pretty good signal. At least two ways. One way signals have all been junk.
I probably should be digging more 46 conductive signals that are 30+ on the ferrous side but they have all been iron so far and my knees will onlu taks so much.

J

 

[Jim upstate NY]

Had one reading 27 and a couple at 23, I do notice in testing that in order ot get a good hit with rusty nails around the coin that I need to be open to 30 though, unfortunately running that wide open will get you loads of iron hits

 

[jeff & Maria]

n/t

 

[MattR]

Jim, I think you are still operating with an Explorer mind-set.

Would I be wrong if I thought you are using conductivity audio?

Hope its not Multi tones either.

What exactly is your total set-up?

I feel frustrated for you, because you try so hard.

Wish I lived just down the street from you and could share some quality time...MattR.UK.

 

[Rigit]

You need to start with auto sens and only when you have mastered the machine should you start to use in manual or you will just get frustrated with the machine giving you incorrect information, its not an Explorer so don't try running it at full sens it just won't work with the ET.

Forget the depth and concentrate on leaning your machines response.

Jim, could it be just that you have really bad ground, take your machine to another area and see what results you get.

 

[Jim upstate NY]

in the places I hunted hard with explorers... a few things, but I get a few things when I go with the explorer too, and nothing I appear to have left deep.. so its hard to not dig the one direction signals, and the soft broken flutey high tones that seemed to be the deep targets on the explorer when there are no solid hits to dig other than recent trash and clad.. I learned quick zinc pennies read 36-37 though

.. Sure if I had a new spot I could play around in auto and different things, but I am trying to do what everyone else seems to be saying there doing and finding the mother lode in my hunted out spots What I guess am saying is if you use an explorer long enough and hunt the site hard enough it seems that you dont leave much behind for the etrac... And I still feel the ID is much better on the explorer.. The etrac seems to have taken away that round sound the explorer had, and also the sound of silver is gone, at least to my ears.. and I hate having to rely on the meter on every signal I get.. I would over look that, if it was finding lots of things in my old sites.. Forced to use digital because the subtle difference on the smart screen are not enough to tell a 29 from a 30 etc

Dont get me wrong I like a few things about it, And I am sure its as capable as the explorer in finding things, but I still think they messed up by changing too much from the explorer.. widen the range and keep it all on one plane, still make no sense to me...
as does taking away ferrous tones... at least we could hear the differences in lower toned iron hits, other than running in conductive and having them all sound exactly the same tone as high end coins.. My opinion, but I think they screwed up doing this... Make a high end, expensive machine for beginners is what it seems like to me... let me have my choices of how it runs and audio.. if others want to run in coin mode than thats there too.. I cant even figure why they have a mode other than coin mode if everything good falls in there supposedly.. Again my opinion, I have hunted quite a few hoiurs with it now.. I know when I switched to the explorer my sites came alive with targets.. not so with teh etrac... but the sites have seen 8 years of hard explorer pounding...I was just hoping is was a great jump over the explorer.. I dont think anyone will convince me of that no matter what they post...

I do believe it can pick stuff out of the trash and iron easier than the explorer, but I also think if hunted correctly and long enough the explorer would find them too.. So not knocking the etracs capabilities.. I am just looking for that magic wand I would expect in a 1500 dollar machine

 

[EZrider]

Sounds to me like the compostion of the soil in your spots. Some places the finds only sink down to where the soil changes and then stops. I went from an F75 to an E-Trac, not looking for a magic wand just wanted something diffrent as i have never owend a Minlab unit. Like you i am more compfortable with the 75 over the E-Track as you with the Explorer. Time will tell for me, so far so good.

 

[mattockman]

I was reading in the archives way back in 2005 ....Don in SJ was doing a survey on NJ coppers found in each State...and was asking anyone to e-mail him and tell him which State it was found in. I wonder if he is still doing that?....Not sure.


Here is his post:


New Jersey Colonial Coin Distribution Study
Posted by: Don in SJ [ Send a Message ]
Date: May 20, 2005 10:31AM Registered: 3 years ago
Posts: 255

In January 2004 I started a survey to determine how widespread the distribution of New Jersey Colonial coins was during the time they circulated.
Attached is a letter explaining what information I am looking for in this distribution study.
My report will be submitted to the Colonial Coin Collectors Club for publication in their quarterly newsletter and hopefully the data can be useful to someone in the future if needed.
So far, I have received responses from many states and even one from Canada. Hopefully I will receive more input from finds of NJ coins from states that have not reported any being found and the ones where only one has been reported found. When the survey is completed I will e-mail a final copy to all who have participated in this survey.
I hope to receive enough data within the next few months to finalize the report by this fall. However, to those who have already sent me data, if you have found more, please send the information to me for update and I plan on continuing to add to the survey even once it is complete, since I realize we all will continue to find new coins in the future.
As of today 19 May 2005, I have 178 New Jersey Colonials in the survey. The vast majority are from New Jersey but that is only logical. Please help in this study and it does not matter if they were found with a detector or found while digging a privy, the main point is to determine the distribution of the ones that circulated, regardless of how they were recovered..
Here is the current breakdown by state, but my final report will be mapped by county and state.
Remember, this is also a chance to find out the variety you found if the pictures are good enough for me to attribute the variety, definitely need photos of BOTH sides to determine the variety.

NJ 135
PA 13
CT 12
NY 6
VA 2
KY 2
ONTARIO 1
TN 1
SC 1
ME 1
RI 1
MA 1
DE 1
NH 1
MD 0
NC 0
GA 0
AL 0
OH 0
TOTAL 178

Please ask any of your friends also whom might not follow the forums and if you belong to a club, please ask fellow members, I know there are a lot more found NJ coins out there and really would appreciate the data for this survey.
Thanks,

Don Hartman
slospokes2@comcast.net

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[jeff & Maria]

n/t

 

[Big Fang Coin Biter]

I still have a bitter taste in my mouth from buying the SE. My SE falsed much worse on deep iron than my II (contrary to the the advertised "Handles Iron Better" claim which sold me on the SE). I had it back to repair for new "guts", but never trusted it again really. New $1000 machine hanging as backup for an older model - it is pathetic. I will not mention the resale value.

Anyway, to my point - thank you for giving your honest opinion on the E-track it means a lot to me. I know you have been around since the BBS forum and I respect your views. Everyone is looking for the machine that will make the sites come alive again - or do something better than the Explorer. Whenever I get the urge to buy the E-track I look for honest posts by folks I know. I think you (and others) have saved me from being disappointed again. From what I am reading the E-track does a little better in trash but that is about it. Hardly worth offing my SE for $600 plus $1000 and probably being sorry.

Jim, did they fix the stuck cursor problem? You know, where you are hunting in a null and get a good hit but the threshold will not return because of the null, so the cursor never moves to the "good hit" indication.

Good luck and keep us informed on your progress with the new squeeze.

HH - BF (Robin MI)

 

[Jim upstate NY]

Dont take all my negativity as meaning I dont thinks its a good machine, I just think they changed somethings they shouldnt have... They say the iron mask was changed and fe on non ferrous to be in a straight line helps, but what they dont realize or admit to is the low conductive stuff is not affected by iron as much as the higher conductive stuff, at least audiowise.. so a true Multi mode FE audion would still be better... I hate the fact I have to check the screen so much, and yes while the lock up seems to be fixed, now I think its bouncing even more from the fact it is so fast.. harder than ever for me to get a good reading on the signal I am trying to.. it hots so fast on the nearby iron it drops the reading.. and while I think it reads the target while over it, I simply can not read it most times while swinging, I have to turn around and get a good angle to read the screen.. I think it would be better without the rain cover, but I just dont want to scratch up the screen and get dust on my new machine, or an old one for that matter...

With your SE, if your not doing it already try FE audio multi mode.. run in iron mask, you will get very little fales from nails, you will get falses on big iron but its so easy to tell on the explorer from a real target its not any problem at all.. I swear if I ran with one notch of iron disc on the etrack it would dimply drive me batty.. so I run n conductive and try and sort the nail hits from real... not that I usually cant tell, but I spend so much time checking each hit, I might as well go back to swinging an explorer slowly.. I have dug more iron in the last 6 weeks that I have with the explorer in 10 years.. and while I have found a few things at my iron infested pounded cellar holes that I apparently missed or even the explorer could not see, but not one was a coin.. all the good stuff I have found so far has been at my neighbors 1790 house that I just started hunting a few times before I got it.. I have pounded it pretty good, except one spot loaded with aluminum trash where they once had a chicken coop, and I havent gotten anything good out of there yet with either machine... but plenty of aluminum bits.. To me the tones on the etrac dont tell the story like the explorer.. it was so much easier to tell the round from raggedy pieces of trash...

Anyway, like I said I do like the fact it is faster, its sensitivity to smaller targets, the patterns editing etc, just think if they could have kept the audio functions of the explorer and the same type FE values with the more expanded screen, that it would be worth jumping up and down about..

with the explorer in the parks I had nor problem digging low conductive sounds that sounded round, enabling me to get the good low conductive stuff and ignoring most of the.. with the etrac I find myself relying so much on the cond readings, I am just ignoring the lower stuff, except those that read ion nickel range.. however plenty of trash reads as nickels also, seems even more that did with the explorer, since they merged all the fe values..

I still have to rehunt the spot across the street with the explorer a few more times, then I can see if the etrac is missing stuff, if not than at l;east I can say the etrac will clean out a sight of the high conductive stuff faster, so cherry picking a site you dont have much time or can only hunt once at will be better.. but I guarantee in the high non ferrous trash I am leaving good low conductive targets I bet I can get some of with the explorer without digging every hit

 

[digitrich]

Unfortunately, since I got back my Etrac, I have only been able to go out once for about an hour. I've been too busy this week to even turn it on. Saturday night I am leaving for Manitoba for a fishing trip till Thursday. But when I get back, I plan on spending next weekend testing out the new Etrac. The hour I hunted with it, I was in a farm field. I ran in manual sensitivity at nearly max, which caused it to false horribly, however, I turned my gain down to 17 and all though it still falsed in the 1-31 area, the falses were fainter than the solid signals and I was able to ignore them. Kind of like my SE on the beach when I bumped the coil on the sand, as long as I had the gain down, I could ignore the occasional "faint" falsing. I am real curious to do that same air test and see what she does, if there is improvement on the new unit compared to my old, then I would advise you to send yours in Jim. Coinnut had lack of depth issues on his and then it crapped out all together. I will keep you posted. One thing I have noticed on my new machine is that the auto sensitivity seems to be able to run higher, which should translate too more depth.

 

[digitrich]

It doesn't help that they took away the round, flutey coin tones either. Now coins and trash give the same scratchy, broken signals. I am going to hazard a guess here Jim that you probably are not going to like as much as I don't.

IF a competent, experienced SE user has already gone over an area thoroughly with his SE, in all metal, slow and steady, chances are the Etrac is not going to pull much more at all. Which then poses the question.......what purpose does the ETrac serve to an experienced, effective SE user?????

I am not a big seller of my detectors, not a big fan of the whole EBay thing. My goal is to find a specific use for my ETrac. If that be coal slag infested sites that don't produce with the SE's, well then it has a purpose, but at this time (and that may change), When the farmers cut the corn and beans, I will probably be swinging my SE's with Pro coils and maybe afterward, go back to the dense iron and coal slag filled, difficult spots with the ETrac.

 

[jbow]

If that be coal slag infested sites that don't produce with the SE's

Good luck with that... i've had none.

J