Proven Explorer Settings.

[Bell]

Well I know there are a lot of people knew to the machine who get on here looking for direction, and I know there have been a lot of posts about different settings to maximize the abilities of the machine, so I just thought I would share what I use and what has worked well for me. First of all the standard advice is right, stick to factory presets with conductive tones until you really get comfortable with the machine, then you can start to dance around with it a little. A good indicator of when you are ready to move on to other settings is if you are really starting to enjoy the machine, you know you can find good stuff with it, and your anxiety about using it is gone. Once you reach that point the first thing I would try out is switching over to iron mask at preset levels. It is convenient that while you are getting comfortable with this you can toggle back and forth between iron mask and factory presets just by hitting the iron mask button. If pulling silver is your thing there is no doubt you can pull a ton of it in factory presets and I often still do, in fact if I am feeling particularly lazy and only interested in cherry picking silver I will even go beyond that and add more discrimination to tune out other unwanteds such as pull tabs. Trust me the machine still works great that way and I have a cigar box full of silver to prove it. Now, if you are really really comfortable with the machine, and wanting to get the most out of it (be one of those explorer vultures that goes around pounded parks behind other guys pulling those deep hidden signals) there is in my opinion only one way to go and that is to hunt with the screen opened wide up and sounds set to ferrous. The reason for opening the screen wide up is that will help the machine process and recover a little quicker and help you find those tough targets that remain hidden to other machines. The reason for the ferrous sounds is that with the screen opened wide up in conductive sounds nails and silver sound exactly the same and I for one want to make certain that the silver signals absolutely jump out at me so that there is no chance of my missing them because I wasnt paying attention or looking at my screen. With the machine set to ferrous sounds now your nails are a low tone, but silver keeps that same beautiful high warble pied piper flutey sound. While I respect the opinions and input of others, and I am more than willing to try anything new, I personally have not found the value in using the "2 tone" set up with the explorer as it only limits the input you receive from the machine and will not increase its performance. In fact that set up is really designed to correct what many see as a short fall in the E-Tracs and bring them on a level with the Explorers. I have found most of the other setting options inconsequential with negligible impact on performance if any at all with the exception or certain rare situations that require tailored tweaks. I think that set up is a must if you are relic hunting or in a non trashy area, or if you really wanna find those sneaky ones in the pounded out parks, but like I said before, its tough to use and its going to be an absolute information overload if you are not already extremely comfortable with the machine. On a side note my degree is in archeology and while I did not pursue it as my profession it is sort of a part time business of mine. As a result I often find myself in situations where I am running my explorer over gridded out areas of a historic sight that have already had every inch of ground covered by other guys with other machines. I can tell you based on the number of items I pull coming in right behind those guys that the Minelab is really a cut above the rest, and the archeological community knows it as well as they always want me to come in behind the other folks and see what I can pull out before they will call the dig done. The settings I have given are just my opinion on how to get the most from an already awesome machine. I hope they will work for you as well as they have worked for me. I hope this post is helpful for folks looking for ways to get the most out of their gear and I invite everyones feedback be it positive or negative. Feel free to post any other settings you folks have found to work as well along with your thoughts on them. Thanks for reading, and happy hunting, Bell

 

[jeffmrgan]

nice post

 

[outdoors]

very nice post Bell, interesting and to the point I will give it a try in the parks that I have been hunting and see what targets that I have missed in the past thanks for the information and good hunting to you also...

 

[Erik in NJ]

n/t

 

[Bell]

With that in mind I would advise newbies to start with factory presets, but go ahead and switch to ferrous sounds from the get go. That way it wont confuse you if you want to hunt wide open later.

 

[captn_se]

You have some good advise, Bell, and the newbies should appreciate your efforts to help them out.

I, along with about 50+ seasoned Explorer hunters here in California, don't think that hunting in Ferrous for deep silver at a park is the "ultimate" setting. Most of the parks I hunt have higher concentrations of aluminum (foil, pull tabs, ring tabs, beaver tails, can slaw, etc.) that have been chopped up my many years of powerful, commercial lawnmowers. Hunting in Ferrous at these park would really be a nuisance, as some of those aluminum pieces will give tones very similar to deep wheats and silvers. There's much less concentration of iron in our parks here than there is aluminum. And with the typical left to right bounce of deeper coins, hunting in conductive would be optimal because you would still here a constant high, fluty tone when the deep coin bounces right to left, while in Ferrous that typical right/left bounce would cause a series of high/low/high tones, which is easy to pass up unless you're looking at the screen's target ID. We all dig the occasional piece of good-sounding iron, and I've also dug silver that was very close to iron that would have sounded low in Ferrous, because it was pegging upper left (iron mask 22-26), but still had that high, fluty tone in Conductive. If one is not digging the occasional piece of iron, they are missing some older, masked or unmasked coinage/relics. It takes many hours of hunting time to get really comfortable/confident around deep iron, and hunting in Ferrous may be the optimal setting at sites that have higher concentrations of iron in the ground.

Most of us are not "dig everything that beeps" detectorists, unless we're in an area that we want to clean out to see what the trash is truly masking. I really think one needs to consider the area they are hunting and the prominent trash objects in the ground at their hunt site to determine the best sound setting (Conduct or Ferrous) in order to maximize their finds.

HH,
CAPTN SE
Dan

 

[Bell]

Great advise Captn. Folks the Captain deffinately knows what he is talking about and I would recomend his videos to anyone with an explorer as I am not aware of anyone who has been filmed pulling out more deep silver and the way he lets you hear how the targets hit is awesome. As I said above different unusual situations may call for a tweak of settings and I myself often hunt in conductive and even with discrimination when I am hunting a park or similiar place and am really only interested in cherry picking the silver without having to dig a ton of junk. The machine works great that way as far as minimal effort for maximum results go, and in any case if you are hunting somewhere where you feel like alluminum is really your arch nemesis then conductive sounds is deffinately something to think about as it does give you a better seeperation in tones between silver and alluminum. In my part of the world I deffinately feel like there is a lot more iron in the ground than alluminum though so that is my "nemesis" so to speak. I opt for hunting with the screen opened up for the sole purpose of minimizing null outs that will cause you to miss targets and maximizing target seperation which will mainly be communicated to you through sound as the cursor is a little slower to catch up. The only reason I would recomend ferrous sounds is because with the screen wide open every nail and small piece of iron will sound the same as silver in conductive and to me it is important to have those sounds differentiated so that the items on the high end still jump out and grab my attention. For me there is still enough seperation between most small alluminum and silver in ferrous sounds for me to tell the difference. True some can slaw etc can fool you and jump onto the high end, but those are often targets I want to dig anyway as they may be something good like a token or button etc. In short the Captn is right, you need to evaluate your location to determine what your main enemy for that piece of ground will be, decide what types of situations you most want to avoid, and set your machine accordingly. The settings I have recomended are really based on what I do the most which is relic hunting, and pulling hidden silver out of the pounded out old parks where the easy targets are long gone. Thanks for reading and Happy Hunting, Bell

 

[dbsmokey]

How does one get Captain's videos?

 

[onemore]

Yes, I agree - I want to match my settings to the location's conditions. Sounds, masking, sensitivity, threshold levels, FAST on/off, contrast, etc. - all should be evaluated against the conditions and the type of targets you desire.

This is true no matter what detector you are using.

 

[Hotcz70]

If your machine is set up right while in conductive sounds....and with the proper iron mask...it WILL signal loud and clear through a dead null.

I have made my best silver finds the last 3 years in heavy iron ...and at least 1/3 or those silver finds have come when the SE is nulling....and I mean 100% completely nulling for 10 to 15 seconds at a time. It isn't hitting the coin while resetting...it's in a dead null.

It's one of my keys to success when hunting with the explorers. You do not have to be in all metal and ferrous sounds to hunt in iron...and deal with a barrage of sounds...hoping to hear the high pitch silver tone blended in or come through.

if you know your machine...have it set up to do so... have the confidence that it will signal over deep silver when nulling....it will do so.

Me personally...I would much rather hear dead silence...then a faint silver warble squeaking through the nulls... which sticks out like a sore thumb and stops me dead in my tracks.,,,telling me to investigate

If you choose to hunt in ferrous/AM...and like to hear it all...then that way is a great setup to. because it's a proven method as well.

I personally don't want to hear a multitude of sounds and tones though because I want to better concentrate on the sounds I prefer...and that's deep silver and injuns'.

It's much easier and reliable for me that way.

In super heavy iron I will sometimes hear nothing for 15 seconds at a time...so I slow down to an absolute crawl.

If I run over a silver coin while in this heavy iron...the SE will warble through the silence and let me know.

Just like hunting with a Fisher CZ...dead silence...then bang...a sweet high tone...OR iron in the case of my CZ on a few occasions

I might be "missing some targets" hunting this way...but I'm not missing any silver...because my SE lets me know it's there through the nulls.

If I miss it...I just plain missed it...but not because the SE was nulling.

I fully agree that if hunting for relics that a person would want to be 100% in ferrous sounds while hunting with an open screen.

Now all this being said...your post is a GREAT one...and we all have our own ways which produce well for each of us.

The best thing is that we have a choice on which method we will use to pop out the goodies.

At some super iron laiden sites I have piddled with an open screen and ferrous sounds and done okay.

Me personally though...I have never located a deep coin in iron while hunting in ferrous/AM that I couldn't hit when experimenting and switching over to my conductive settings.

Just want you to know my response is not confrontational in any way whatsoever...just 100% my opinion which I have derived form 1000's of hours experimenting over undug targets in the field.

Am I telling people they should hunt with their machine nulling....no way. I'm just saying I have found a way to make it a weapon for me...and it has worked quite well.

Good post my friend.

 

[DirtFlipper]

The beauty of all this is that you have CHOICES. That's what helps keep sites alive hunt after hunt - trying something different. Different coil, different angle, different settings, different weather. If you're able to visit a site repeatedly, and are able to work out the layers, you can migrate from smaller coil/disc/conductive, to larger coil/less disc/ferrous or whatever. I like conductive when there are lots of conductive targets, ferrous when lots of iron, but if the site is good, I'll try both eventually (after making a complete pass one way or the other). I just like the site to guide my settings, but to not fiddle too frequently.

 

[justanotherpulltab]

nice post, im going to have to try iron mask one of these days.

 

[dewcon4414]

I use both in difficult sites that has produced. I prefer conductive with IM 26 for me in parks wide open Ferr just shifts the tones from upper left to lower right. RUST will wrap around and gives me a noise i just cant stand in a park. Now in the field, i like Ferr especially for the old coppers thats there... but i still like to use a little IM just to drop off the minerals and small rust. Thats what works for me .....but what the heck do i know.

Dew

 

[outdoors]

captn se where can we go to watch your videos, Bell has mentioned that you have videos that is worth watching on this topic....

 

[Bell]

I found the links to his videos hidden way back in the minelab archives of another forum dirtjournal.com , but Im sure he can tell you an easier way to find them.

 

[captn_se]

Go to this site for a good number of my videos my buddy filmed.

http://forum.12345623931.com/index.php/topic,214216.0.html

you need to substitute the first string of numbers above (12345623931) with the following corresponding letters:

1-t, 2-r, 3-e, 4-a, 5-s, 6-u, 9-n, 0-e

The reason for this is that FindMall will scramble that word if I spelled it out.

Enjoy!

CAPTN SE
Dan

 

[Bell]

I completely agree with what Bryce is saying, and also with Captn_Se. There is no doubt that they are among the elite as far as use of this machine is concerned and are go to guys for advice if you want to do well. I tried to make it clear in my original post that my settings are by no means the end all be all for the explorer, and I completely agree with the other folks who have posted that the options to hunt in different ways and still be amazingly successful is what makes the Minelab a best in class machine (that and depth!). It should also be noted that my settings are primarily derived from deep woods relic hunting and working grids in archeological sites. Although I live in the 3rd largest city in the country and do a lot of urban hunting as a result, rural and relic settings are still my forte and what I design my strategies around. That being said I would like to thank everyone for their input and posts, and invite everyone to keep this thread going with their own input, settings, and thoughts on what has made them successful in their own scenarios and situations. Again, Happy Hunting, Bell

 

[Dan-Pa.]

Great advice a sort of crawl before you walk for newbies and for gosh sakes no secret settings just what works for you in your area so do experiment once you get comfortable with the unit.
Don't be an over tweaker and if we asked forum members to post their settings might be surprised at many differences but all experienced Explorer users sure get their share of goodies should cover it no matter what their particuliar settings may be...

 

[Bell]

Good advice. Im sure it happens that sometimes we spend too much time worrying about settings etc when that time might be better spent researching sites etc.