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pull tabs & screw caps
- Thread starter Agseeker
- Start date
DukeOBass
Active member
Aluminum screw caps sound like a GREAT targets and pulltabs sound like a nickel. The E-trac is a great machine! I came from one and my forearm / wrist are killing me after swinging the CTX all summer. I spent an extra $100 and got the harness to help out with that. The CTX is faster and has better coin/trash separation. I only wish they had put it in an Etrac frame. That would be the bomb! I don't like the "build" of the CTX.
I rehunted places I had taken my E-trac and had left some behind, but very little. The E-trac cleaned those places up nicely.
I rehunted places I had taken my E-trac and had left some behind, but very little. The E-trac cleaned those places up nicely.
So it sounds like the CTX and E-Trak react fairly similarly to pull tabs and aluminum twist caps. Does the target trace help to distinguish between those items and coins by the size/shape of the trace?
DukeOBass thanks for your honest opinion. Is it primarily the weight/balance distribution that you don't like about the CTX?
I understand from Bart at Big Boys Hobbies that the CTX gives a more positive audio response ("hits harder" as Bart put it) to what would be an iffy target on the E-Trak. Bart also said the CTX gives a better reading on coins that are on edge. What have others found from their personal experience?
Thanks,
Ag
DukeOBass thanks for your honest opinion. Is it primarily the weight/balance distribution that you don't like about the CTX?
I understand from Bart at Big Boys Hobbies that the CTX gives a more positive audio response ("hits harder" as Bart put it) to what would be an iffy target on the E-Trak. Bart also said the CTX gives a better reading on coins that are on edge. What have others found from their personal experience?
Thanks,
Ag
DukeOBass
Active member
Target trace can fool you on deeper targets. It's good for more shallow items.
Yes, it's primarily the weight distribution / lack of balance that bothers me. If the arm cuff was designed like the one on the Etrac it would help. As it is, it's flimsy soft plastic which doesn't provide any side to side support placing a lot of strain on the wrist. If you wear the strap tightly, it helps but it's a nuisance if you're digging frequent targets. Very poorly design as far as I'm concerned. If I hadn't gotten such a great trade or if I had to pay full price I would be very upset.
Audio response, it hits very hard on copper, not as good as my Etrac did on silver. I don't you'll notice much difference between the Etrac and the CTX on deeper targets. They're about the same. The difference comes in the recovery speed and separation in trash.
The Etrac is a great machine. There are a lot of bells and whistles on the CTX that increase the price disproportionally to the amount of time you might use them. The GPS is not very accurate nor fast in refresh speed. When I tested it, i could not find my way back to a find point I had marked it was that slow
With the Etrac I knew for certain what my target was. With the CTX, it difficult to tell if you're digging silver or copper. It's always a surprise and the target ids are not consistent across the 4 different modes. Depending on what mode you're in, the target id numbers will change.
If you're like it and are having great luck with the Etrac, think long and hard before trading out. Especially if you have a good number of coils and accessories for your Etrac. Someone who know the Etrac well can more than keep up with a CTX user.
Yes, it's primarily the weight distribution / lack of balance that bothers me. If the arm cuff was designed like the one on the Etrac it would help. As it is, it's flimsy soft plastic which doesn't provide any side to side support placing a lot of strain on the wrist. If you wear the strap tightly, it helps but it's a nuisance if you're digging frequent targets. Very poorly design as far as I'm concerned. If I hadn't gotten such a great trade or if I had to pay full price I would be very upset.
Audio response, it hits very hard on copper, not as good as my Etrac did on silver. I don't you'll notice much difference between the Etrac and the CTX on deeper targets. They're about the same. The difference comes in the recovery speed and separation in trash.
The Etrac is a great machine. There are a lot of bells and whistles on the CTX that increase the price disproportionally to the amount of time you might use them. The GPS is not very accurate nor fast in refresh speed. When I tested it, i could not find my way back to a find point I had marked it was that slow
With the Etrac I knew for certain what my target was. With the CTX, it difficult to tell if you're digging silver or copper. It's always a surprise and the target ids are not consistent across the 4 different modes. Depending on what mode you're in, the target id numbers will change.
If you're like it and are having great luck with the Etrac, think long and hard before trading out. Especially if you have a good number of coils and accessories for your Etrac. Someone who know the Etrac well can more than keep up with a CTX user.
If you keep your E-Trac it will be easy enough to compare. Iffy signals on the CTX are trash. The CTX will lock on deep targets with a more solid ID. The E-Trac is a very very good machine that is why I kept mine but there is no comparison between the two. If you hunt relics you will love the CTX. This TN. red clay is difficult for a lot of machines but the CTX finds more deep targets ( 10+ inchs ) than my other machines. Soils are different, hunting styles are different so take that into consideration before you move to another machine. By the way if you suspect a bottle cap hold your coil a couple of inchs above the suspected cap and swing over it if you get a bouncy signal it is NOT a coin or bullet or button. Just miss my Sun-Ray probe. HH 
Traded the Etrac for the CTX during the initial CTX feeding frenzy. Do I regret it? Not at all.
Do I miss the Etr
The ability to assign tones is the most noticeable asset for me on the CTX. I have found missed targets let by the etrac, which at first blush seems to suggest the CTX is wildly superior. I think those targets were within the capability of the etrac and I'm the reason I missed them.
I miss the warmth of the etrac tones and other subtleties I was becoming accostommed to as I racked up hunting time.
Although the CTX locks on targets hard as stated here by others, its more of an on-off switch compared to the etrac. Perhaps I haven't got the number of hours on the CTX I'd need to discover its full potential. I felt the etrac to be a bit more nuanced in how you could coax out a marginal signal. Having said that, most times I try to coax a marginal signal with the CTX its invariably a marginal target anyway, (junk) which says a lot about the CTX.
Do I miss the Etr
The ability to assign tones is the most noticeable asset for me on the CTX. I have found missed targets let by the etrac, which at first blush seems to suggest the CTX is wildly superior. I think those targets were within the capability of the etrac and I'm the reason I missed them.
I miss the warmth of the etrac tones and other subtleties I was becoming accostommed to as I racked up hunting time.
Although the CTX locks on targets hard as stated here by others, its more of an on-off switch compared to the etrac. Perhaps I haven't got the number of hours on the CTX I'd need to discover its full potential. I felt the etrac to be a bit more nuanced in how you could coax out a marginal signal. Having said that, most times I try to coax a marginal signal with the CTX its invariably a marginal target anyway, (junk) which says a lot about the CTX.
vancemetaldetecting.com
Member
hershey1 said:If you keep your E-Trac it will be easy enough to compare. Iffy signals on the CTX are trash. The CTX will lock on deep targets with a more solid ID. The E-Trac is a very very good machine that is why I kept mine but there is no comparison between the two. If you hunt relics you will love the CTX. This TN. red clay is difficult for a lot of machines but the CTX finds more deep targets ( 10+ inchs ) than my other machines. Soils are different, hunting styles are different so take that into consideration before you move to another machine. By the way if you suspect a bottle cap hold your coil a couple of inchs above the suspected cap and swing over it if you get a bouncy signal it is NOT a coin or bullet or button. Just miss my Sun-Ray probe. HH
Iffy targets being trash is not TRUE, I have dug many many many iffy targets with the ctx and found many good finds that were iffy's you should always dig if its repeatable even one direction and the deeper it is the worse the I'd will be! This holds true especially if you have pulled good targets from the site already !!!
Thanks to everyone who responded. Bought the CTX yesterday, assembled it and charged the batteries. Just finished installing Exchange 2 this evening. Unfortunately, won't be able to try out the CTX until Saturday morning (that's driving me crazy!). For starters, think I"ll try the stock coin program at a site I worked pretty hard with my E-trac and see what I find. Plan on digging every good signal for a while just to see how the finds relate to the FE/CO numbers, audio output, and depth. After I get some experience I want to set up GoneHunting's program and try it. Good luck to you all.
Johnnyanglo
Active member
With the CTX you can adjust the audio bins to help improve the audio intelligence. The mode below has the pitch from left to right across the top of Low / Med-High / Med-Low /High and along the bottom bin Very Low. The effect is to give you audio separation between likely valuable targets. While at times you can run the mode with the full DISC pattern (shown), it is more useful to simply run a nearly open pattern with this audio. The DISC pattern quiets iron junk but it is problematic for maintaining sensitivity - meaning, you will lose good targets with increased DISC. Plus, with the DISC pattern operating iron will pop intermittently into the open area and sound like a silver target. Without DISC you can see the iron and the cursor trace - it is plainly evident. Also, the Very Low tone in the bottom iron area is easy to ignore - just listen for a Med-High or High tone. The ability to run the audio in Combined Mode (with the split audio along the bottom) really makes the CTX superior to the E-Trac. The CTX is also less prone to nulling and falsing.
In the end, you'll need to dig most targets along the 12Fe line if you want to find rings/jewelry. I find this pattern the most useful - I only glance occasionally at the screen (which is hard to see in the sunlight so that's a good thing).
In the end, you'll need to dig most targets along the 12Fe line if you want to find rings/jewelry. I find this pattern the most useful - I only glance occasionally at the screen (which is hard to see in the sunlight so that's a good thing).
Bav24502 said:hershey1 said:If you keep your E-Trac it will be easy enough to compare. Iffy signals on the CTX are trash. The CTX will lock on deep targets with a more solid ID. The E-Trac is a very very good machine that is why I kept mine but there is no comparison between the two. If you hunt relics you will love the CTX. This TN. red clay is difficult for a lot of machines but the CTX finds more deep targets ( 10+ inchs ) than my other machines. Soils are different, hunting styles are different so take that into consideration before you move to another machine. By the way if you suspect a bottle cap hold your coil a couple of inchs above the suspected cap and swing over it if you get a bouncy signal it is NOT a coin or bullet or button. Just miss my Sun-Ray probe. HH
Iffy targets being trash is not TRUE, I have dug many many many iffy targets with the ctx and found many good finds that were iffy's you should always dig if its repeatable even one direction and the deeper it is the worse the I'd will be! This holds true especially if you have pulled good targets from the site already !!!
Absolutely agree on this point