:super:Found out today why I haven't been having great results with my ETrac

[digitrich]

It needs to go to the shop. Buried some coins at 6-10 inches, then I ran my ETrac over them and most gave no signal regardless of what settings and I tried a SR5, excal6, excal4.5x7, pro11,sef 10x12,ex 10x14 and she couldn't pick up any of them . The closest I came was a 6 inch zinc that wouldn't repeat and ID'd at 1-32, 1-34 15-36 and bounced everywhere. I went through the entire gambit of the settings, changing each one at a time, and even ran the sensitivity manual through 30 and NC'd every time I changed a coil. Now I didn't sanitize the soil or give a flying leap whether I was next to iron or all that, I just buried them, and labeled them with plastic water bottle caps and perm marker. I then ran over the same coins with my SE and it picked up the shallow ones easily even with the smaller coils and Id'd them fine. The deeper ones still gave repeating recognizable tones, but the ID's jumped around a bit. So it's obvious something is a muck with my ETrac and I am calling tomorrow to send it for repair. One really interesting thing I learned is when you change coils on the SE, you should noise cancel again. Some of the coils would not pick up the coins until I noise canceled again after putting on the new size coil. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, on my SE, if I was on noise channel 8 with a SR8 coil and put on the pro11 and left the noise channel at 8, I couldn't pick up the coins, but when I NC'd again and it settled at channel 9, I could I guess you should NC every time you change a coil, don't know how many times I have changed a coil and not done that.

 

[jimpugh]

I usually NC (Noise Cancel) every 2-3 hours or after a break Interference will shut you down Quick!

Happy Trails
E-Tracker Jim

 

[Erik in NJ]

Better yet, get your money back and buy one from Lynn at Detector Depot and you'll get a pair of Gray Ghost NDT's (or any other pro phones he carries), Lesche digger, Minelab case, extended warranty, and free shipping - can't beat it! what kind of depth did you get on the air tests on this machine? Can you post the serial number of this machine so if they had a bad run we can check our numbers to see how close they are? I hope the new machine exceeds your expectations!

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

If yes I bet you don't have a defective unit.

Chris

 

[Hard Nosed Dave]

I to only just realized that the best way to utilize E-trac's full ability when you change the coil, was to do a separate NOISE CANCEL.

I didn't think it was necessary when I changed them and just simply restarted the E-trac. The difference when you do noise cancel is what is need or else it seems like a defective detector. It's NOT really , is it?

NOISE CANCEL is also an important utility on all the Explorer line of detectors.

In the E-trac instruction manual it does say though, that:

Quick Start
1. Turn on the detector
2. Press Noise Cancel
After 30 seconds electrical interference
3. Go Detecting!


I did not realize that it (thinking along the lines of the Explorer) ever required a NOISE CANCEL on startup. But IT DOES
So regardless of what you do whenever each time you start the E-trac and also other times during your search,you need to Noise Cancel.

To initiate an Automatic Noise Cancel:
1 Hold the detector 30cm (12

 

[Rigit]

I have run the E-Track with a genuine Minlabe 8" Explorer Coil for a couple of hours and it works realy well, you only lose a little depth but you do get excellent separation of targets.

 

[Jim upstate NY]

but it does fine in air tests,,, but you are getting that same tone changes in a null that I get.. wonder if thats normal.. you may not hear it if you dont have real good hearing though.. anyone else hearing that tone change on the background of a null?

 

[digitrich]

I have decided to sanitize some ground free of what ever I can find and redo my testing just to be sure before I send it in. It just really bothered me that my SE could lock on to these coins and the ETrac couldn't. I would have thought with the new trash settings and faster recovery it would be the other way around. Worse, on the targets that the Etrac couldn't ID, it falsed to 15-36 to 18-36, 1-36 to1-39 which is the exact same places it falses on nails. I hope something is wrong because I did not like my results at all.

 

[bfodnes]

You said you changed all settings and tried again but...

Can it have something to do wth either, deep-fast or both together with high density or something in that range.
And sens-treshold.

I remember i could allmost never run my XS with either fast or deep. Now you also have the densety settings.
And it think i found it out when i was using the minelab 8" coil.

 

[digitrich]

I would never do such a thing to my dealer or [sup]any[/sup] dealer for that matter. What's it got to do with him? As for the deal with Lynn, that is a great deal. I talked with him before I took delivery from my dealer and yes I could have got that deal from Lynn. But I had already told my dealer I was ordering it from him and that's that. A deal is a deal.

 

[Erik in NJ]

I guess I just don't have the same customer loyalty if I can get a much better deal somewhere else, but that's just me. I understand your position and I do hope you get a good unit ASAP. Best Regards, Erik

 

[digitrich]

Erik, I very much doubt it is a bad run kind of thing, more likely a faulty solder joint or dropped while shipping, maybe just needs some small thing. I don't think it's "if your serial number is near mine you could have a similar problem". I am not looking to start some panic. The only reason I posted that there may be something wrong with my machine is because I did not want people to read my previous posts and think bad of the ETrac from them, especially if mine needs servicing. I am sure if something is wrong with it, ML will fix it perfect and then I can also enjoy better results with it.