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Sovereig gt classroom

probably because its so simple of a machine to use, what would you need to have a classroom for?
 
The GT is like the Excal and it is easy to use. Easy to learn? That is another totally different thing. You can swing a GT all day thinking you know what you are doing. The tricks are not in setup but mostly the tones it makes. Add talent at reading the beach and researching old locations that are not hunted heavily make you better. The best BBS hunters can tell many common targets without digging. I can tell bottle caps 95% of the time. I don't dig that tone. Pennies also make a precise tone unless they are corroded, then their tones are different. Gold has a lower tone but it can vary too right up to the corroded penny range. You are only "learning" the machine when you can walk away from digging a target feeling you did right and adding new sound recognition for other common targets. Minelab has an interesting machine due to the complex tones it can make. I like it!
 
[size=medium] The GT is a very easy machine to use learning the sounds is a bit more tricky to help me i use a meter in my box it helps until i get the sounds down pat and besides i thought this forum was kind of like a classroom if need be :detecting:there is a few experts in here keep asking and learning Jim [/size]
 
A meter is a great help for many. Others say learn the complexity of the tones. Maybe both? Nice thing over the Excalibur 2 is the Sov has the ability to add a meter if you can find one. I learned the tones on the Excal so my Sov meter is helpful but not really necessary to me to determine when to dig. The tones tell the truth to me.
 
Out of curiosity, how long did it take any of you to learn the tones? I'm guessing musically oriented people can learn this faster than a half deaf person like me - but sometimes, I'm just to dumb to know when to give up, so I won't give up on it, or myself.

I just got an excal, thinking that if I get about an hour a day in for the next twelve or so weeks, that I should be reasonably prepped for spring and summer use. I'm getting a gt soon, and have a meter for it already - I know they are similar, don't know if the tones are identical or not though. I figure to give myself a year to learn the tones pretty well. From just a few days work with it, I can already tell screw-type bottle caps. Aluminum has a range of sounds, and I know aluminum and gold sound similar (but different too) from testing with gold rings and a chain with locket on it. Penny/dime I can't easily tell apart yet. I'm just giving myself the time on the tool for now, and part of that means getting out there, testing my self, then dig it to prove to myself that I was right or wrong with the tone. Then, sometimes, put something else on the ground next to what I just dug up, to see if I can tell the difference. Rusty bottle caps threw me today a couple times, but all the others, I was sure of (1 down, a whole lot more to learn). I don't know if I will ever be able to tell pull tabs from gold though.
 
You have the right idea on learning the Excalibur or the GT as it takes some time, so it takes longer and some not as long. I had mine for about a month and used it a bit too and wondered why i had bought it, then one day at a site the detector came alive and it was getting coin after coin as I finally was getting the grasp to this detector. I then found out i seem to learn a little more each time out with it and soon the Sovereign was picking out coins in places that had been considered worked out, then I was impressing other detectorist plus myself at what it could see other detectors couldn't see and so many coins coming out of the same holes as nails. I had a good Friend I started him with a Garrett GTAx1000 I had as it was a easy detector to use and he did well, then the next year i sell him my Sovereign XS and got me a XS2. The very same day he calls me and tells me in a couple of hours he find more coin than he did all the year before with the Garrett. Now the next week he goes to a old school where a guy with a XLT and a guy with a Cz7 says it is worked out as they are not finding anything. My Friend tries it with the Sovereign XS and gets his first seated dime, a shield nickle and some older wheat pennies and 7 IH pennies in about 2-3 hours. This was a rare case i feel as he learned it in 1 day enough to try some older and deeper sites and after a week he was doing great. Most I have tried to explain it to around here take 2 week to a month to get comfortable with it and I have a couple that sold their Sovereign before they had learned it as they wanted a detector that beep and decided what to dig and what not to while the Sovereign give you more info and let you decide what to dig and what not too.
I also feel a meter will help on the learning curve and make it easier to understand and myself i find the meter is very helpful for those deep target or those close to iron your ears may not be able to tell the difference.
I feel it wont take you a long time to understand it as you are going into with the right attitude and pay attention to those that post info that actually use a Sovereign for actual detecting and not those that read about something or only do air testing as experience with this detector is where you learn, not those that sit in front of a computer all day posting test all day long.


Good luck

Rick
 
Personally i like coming to a forum where you can ask a question about the machine and also see finds of the day. Ive noticed many of the questions on other forums have been moved there from the normal forum. Seems like a waste of space to me just because you dont get nearly the response to your question because not everyone reads them daily.

Dew
 
Rick, reading and bench testing has as much of a place in learning a machine as hunting. Why anyone would want to keep blinders on and exclude information from these sources is beyond me. I'm one of those people who votes for "all of the above" when wanting to really learn a machine. The first thing you should do when you get a machine is read the manual. And as you use the machine the more you read, test, and experiment the better your knowledge will be. Field experience is of course very valuable, but that doesn't mean bench testing, reading, and sharing ideas isn't valuable too.,
 
Critter,

I agree that reading your owners manual is the first thing and understanding what the controls do and by doing air test yourself to understand what some coins sounds like, this is all normal. Now is when you go out and use the detector and learn what it can do by the easiest way possible to build a good understanding of the basic and go from there. Reading the post of those that are well experienced on this detector and using some of the info they have posted to learn even more if it will help you or not is also a good thing as they have experienced actual in the ground conditions they have learned by experience.
Now as you learn and someone else ask a question and you have experienced it your self in the field and not what you read somewhere else a person can answer it from actual experience.If you have used your Sovereign and know it then you should also know that many targets both good and bad will sound and act difference in the ground than they do in air test or test gardens is one of the reasons I push experience and learning something new each time out with it.
Now when a person sits and post so many air test and things they have read instead of actual in the field experience they to me are confusing all those that are new to the Sovereign and can make the learning curve so much longer. Experience is number 1 when it come to many of the higher end detectors like the Sovereign,Explorers and the E-Tracs and how well you understand the detector you use.Reading some tips of actual people that have used one of these detectors and do well with it can help you too.
As I said before"pay attention to those that are experienced with using the Sovereign, not those that spend more time posting and not out there getting experience with it"

Rick
 
This is a tight knit group in here. There are many pro's with the Sovereign series that can hep you out.

Take care
HH
Jason
 
Hi Gim,


I started using a sunray DTI II meter a day or two after owning the GT. In that first day or two, the tones were confusing without the meter ( for me anyways) Onced I installed the meter, then things became a little clearer for me. I read a lot here on the forum (beforehand) and this information certainly carried over into the field very nicely. RickND, Critterhunter, Ron from Michigan, Fcrawford, GunnarMN are a few that come to mind as they helped and answered many of my questions for me. One classroom tip for you is listening for one-way signals in trash. This tip alone netted me many silver and copper coins last year by hunting the same places I have hunted in the past. So when you are in this particular forum, you are in the sov classroom. Read some of the older posts and you will find those tricks / tips / suggestions / ideas for the sov. Best of luck and please ask questions - I will help you as much as I can. - Jim aka EPL
 
So, if you hear a signal from only one direction, it's something GOOD???
 
Tin Fin,
allow me to clarify... for example,if you come across a target and you swing back and forth over the target and you hear a nice high pitch tone, then you turn 90 degrees and it nulls out, there is a very good chance it is a coin next to a piece of iron. - Jim


Tin Fin said:
So, if you hear a signal from only one direction, it's something GOOD???
 
Rick(ND) said:
Critter,

I agree that reading your owners manual is the first thing and understanding what the controls do and by doing air test yourself to understand what some coins sounds like, this is all normal. Now is when you go out and use the detector and learn what it can do by the easiest way possible to build a good understanding of the basic and go from there. Reading the post of those that are well experienced on this detector and using some of the info they have posted to learn even more if it will help you or not is also a good thing as they have experienced actual in the ground conditions they have learned by experience.
Now as you learn and someone else ask a question and you have experienced it your self in the field and not what you read somewhere else a person can answer it from actual experience.If you have used your Sovereign and know it then you should also know that many targets both good and bad will sound and act difference in the ground than they do in air test or test gardens is one of the reasons I push experience and learning something new each time out with it.
Now when a person sits and post so many air test and things they have read instead of actual in the field experience they to me are confusing all those that are new to the Sovereign and can make the learning curve so much longer. Experience is number 1 when it come to many of the higher end detectors like the Sovereign,Explorers and the E-Tracs and how well you understand the detector you use.Reading some tips of actual people that have used one of these detectors and do well with it can help you too.
As I said before"pay attention to those that are experienced with using the Sovereign, not those that spend more time posting and not out there getting experience with it"

Rick

Your speaking from experience Rick and thats always the best advice. Anyone can read a book, bench test or pass on some info they have read somewhere else but the real learning is in the field. There really is no replacement for actual experience, in pretty much anything, not just detecting. Simple life principle.
 
Yes, iron can give one way coin hits but so can deep coins or coins mixed with iron. I prefer to dig these signals to be safe. Usualy it's not like they are all over the place anyway, so why not dig them? If you want to be picky about which one way signals to dig, I've found that most of the time if it is really a coin next to iron the coin signal you only get from one direction will be really good. There won't be any question that it's a perfect text book example of a coin signal from that one direction. Of course that's not always the case, but I'm talking about if you want to be picky about it.

Same deal with targets that move when you switch over to PP mode. Many say that's an indication of iron, but how do you know it's not a coin laying near iron? You are picking up the coin in discriminate but may be picking up the iron in PP mode. Again, it's usualy not like those signals are all over the place either...So I dig them as well. If PP mode moves the target I'll PP in discriminate so that I'm digging where the coin signal is. This is in particular true if the "coin" signal is text book good. Are you really going to pass up that signal just because PP moves off target? Not me. You have to start digging these signals at pounded out sites because they might be the only ones left to take a chance on.

Those one way signals are also a very good reason for hunting a site at a different angle even if you gridded it before. By using a different angle you may find masked coins that will only sound off from that angle. That's also why I like to hunt at odd angles to landmarks than people normaly would. For example, 99% of the guys who hunt a strip of grass next to the woods will parallel the woods as they hunt. Hunt it at 90 degrees to that. Another example would be tree lawns. Most people would hunt that parallel to the sidewalk and road. Then there is going at an object at an odd angle...not 90 degrees but say 45 degrees to the object.
 
Thanks everyone for your input about the sovereign it was very informative. and it show me that there should be a classroom.also I find it strange that now hardly answered the post which (why there is not a Minelab Sovereign classroom).:beers:
 
Hey Critter,

I agree with what you are saying and I found many coins (even recently) that were mixed in with iron that gave funky readings / tones. And what you stated about moving targets I dig as I am still learning and have realized some of these targets actually turned out to be coins and others were just that: iron.
On the subject of Angle hunting: I remember in a post (you had written) about changing the angle when sweeping a property. Here is the article I wrote a few months back. Angle hunting does "wake up" areas that have been constantly hit running parallel or perpendicular. Gim, add this tip to your sov hunting trips expecially to places that have been heavily hunted. Best of luck in your hunting adventures! - Jim

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?21,1590456,1590456#msg-1590456

Critterhunter said:
Yes, iron can give one way coin hits but so can deep coins or coins mixed with iron. I prefer to dig these signals to be safe. Usualy it's not like they are all over the place anyway, so why not dig them? If you want to be picky about which one way signals to dig, I've found that most of the time if it is really a coin next to iron the coin signal you only get from one direction will be really good. There won't be any question that it's a perfect text book example of a coin signal from that one direction. Of course that's not always the case, but I'm talking about if you want to be picky about it.

Same deal with targets that move when you switch over to PP mode. Many say that's an indication of iron, but how do you know it's not a coin laying near iron? You are picking up the coin in discriminate but may be picking up the iron in PP mode. Again, it's usualy not like those signals are all over the place either...So I dig them as well. If PP mode moves the target I'll PP in discriminate so that I'm digging where the coin signal is. This is in particular true if the "coin" signal is text book good. Are you really going to pass up that signal just because PP moves off target? Not me. You have to start digging these signals at pounded out sites because they might be the only ones left to take a chance on.

Those one way signals are also a very good reason for hunting a site at a different angle even if you gridded it before. By using a different angle you may find masked coins that will only sound off from that angle. That's also why I like to hunt at odd angles to landmarks than people normaly would. For example, 99% of the guys who hunt a strip of grass next to the woods will parallel the woods as they hunt. Hunt it at 90 degrees to that. Another example would be tree lawns. Most people would hunt that parallel to the sidewalk and road. Then there is going at an object at an odd angle...not 90 degrees but say 45 degrees to the object.
 
Most of what you say is stuff that you learn from experience with the Sovereign, or any detector. Once you have learn the Sovereign you can tell those that are iron beside a coin, by doing the wiggle on these signals and going around them with the target at the tip of the coil you can tell them. On the GT being it is more sensitive so some iron will read as a coin,, but too with the experience with it those too are easy to tell. Those good target close to iron and when going to pinpoint all metal will throw the signal off but you will be able to tell they just sound too good to be a false off of iron, then there are those you just have to dig to be sure, but over all with experience you will see there is a few trick you use to tell the good from the bad without digging all the iron. I have even had to dig the iron out first in order to get the coin as the iron was just too big to really pinpoint the coin as I know I can get a good signal and can get it to repeat by going around the target with the tip of the coil at least 2 different directions, in the same place by experience using the Sovereign. This is hard to explain to those that don't know their Sovereign well and nice to be able to show them. I feel most that have used the Sovereign for a while and know them well are seeing this too as it come from actual experience using the Sovereign.

Good Luck and I hope to see more posting finds they are finding and how they were able to find them.

Rick
 
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