What IS silence in Disc mode? Track Fix Pin question?

[Beachnut]

I have been having fun washing around in the wet sand and small surf at low tide lately, (hunting). I have come across a few spots that "sing" in the all metal mode, but when I switch to Disc. mode to see what it is the machine goes dead silent over the known target. What target will do that?

Some more info: These silent targets are not too deep as in all metal mode it is a fairly loud, strong to medium good sounding target. So it is not that it is too deep to ID. I have my threshold set so there is a constant sound, when I go into Disc. to ID I back away from the target until I hear the low tone, then sweep to the target area, and do the shake over it, or slow sweep over it. ALL sound stops over the target area! (Dead quiet like you turned it off). Sometimes I will get a slight up swing in tone pitch just before it nulls out, (goes silent). Am I missing something good by not digging in the dead zones? My settings are 3rd notch, Disc all the way counter clockwise, threshold on, (not silent) and Disc in on mode, (only during trying to ID target), G.B in PINpoint., sensitivity out of auto but fully counter clock wise.

My second dumb question is what is the "Track, Fix, Pin" switch for? I read in the Man. that I should hunt in the Track mode as this will continually adj. the ground balance. I understand that FIX Locks in the G.B., and PIN is suposto be for Pinpointing. Yet in the "Quick operating instructions" on page 12 of the Man. it tells you to hunt in the Pinpoint mode, which seems to work best for me when I am hunting at the beach. So which G.B position do most of youall hunt in, Track, or Pinpoint?

Sorry for all the Newbie questions.

Beachnut

 

[Rick(ND)]

What you are hearing in the all metal mode and not the disc mode is iron or some mineralization and not a good target, In disc if it nulls it is a target you have disc out, iron or some mineralization and being you have turned the disc as low as it will go it would have to be iron or mineralization. Myself i would never hunt in all metal as I find I have better depth in the disc and much easier to use.
The Track/ lock/ pinpoint is only active when you are in the all metal mode and not disc mode so I keep mine in pinpoint all the time and so when I switch from disc to all metal I am ready to pinpoint my target.
I feel the track and fixed mode while in all metal are for those that want to use it for prospecting or for searching for iron relics, but not for coin and jewelry hunting.

 

[babulin2002]

just my 5 cents
you say you have sensitivity out of auto by full counterclockwise. to me that sounds like much too much ! usually if you set it at 11-12 o'clock already results in a lot of falsing from iron. this is the rise in pitch before it nulls over iron, which you describe. falsing can be recognized quite easily with a bit of experience, but still in my experience 12 o'clock is already pretty high, and if you have ground conditions that allow you to set it to 11 or so it is exceptional. i find that more than that (more counterclockwise) results in huge amount of falsing which makes it much harder to work with the sov. don't worry about loosing the depth, i see the sens in the sov as a control that can be set ridiculously high (counterclockwise) so that you do not feel the gear is limiting you in some way, but under normal conditions 12 is already high.

the nulling in disc mode that you describe is , just as rick wrote, a sign of iron or mineralisation (with the disc and notch set to minimal, fully counterclockwise) . you say you have notch at some non-zero setting. in that case a target with a conductivity in the range selected by notch will also relult in a nulling, but the threshold that comes back after the null will correspond to the conductivity of the target, so will be higher than to low after-iron threshold sound. in my opinion first go in both disc and notch at zero, after some time you will get the idea, and then on sites that have a lot of some specific kind of trash, like pulltabs, you can use the notch to cut them out, and in general experiment with it to cut out the ranges that are not of any interest to you.

track/fix/pin : it only makes a difference in all metal mode. unless you do gold prospecting, or for other reasons deal with very mineralised ground (natural gold is usually found in very mineralised ground), track is mainly used to ground balance the detector in all metal. in disc you do not have to ground balance, it has to do with the detector using the many frequencies to compare the target with the sourroundings etc (a simplified explanation, i know, don't throw tomatoes ). track can aslo be usefull on the beach, where the mineralisation and wet/dry sand locations vary. so if going in all metal under regular (more or less constant ) ground conditions, ground balance in track and then switch to fix, which has a slightly better depth as i understand. pinpoint has no ground balance, some people swear by it and use it to actually detect and not only pinpoint, you can experiment for yourself once you get the hang of it.

as for depth in all metal versus disc, it really depends on ground conditions, checked it myself a few times and sometimes one was deeper, and on different soil the other was deeper


good luck, hh!

 

[Beachnut]

Thank you for the replies.

I am not sure about my GT compared to others, as I did buy it used, but, I run it with the sens. fully counter clockwise, just out of auto and it seems to be just fine! I do not hunt in Disc as it always sounds too squeal-ie, or it is most always changing tones. Maybe it is because the sens. is full on. But hunting in all metal, and pinpoint, gets me the most hits. Then I switch to Disc to try and determine what I have and if it is worth digging. I will admit, if the target is at a shallow depth, like less that 3 to 4" deep, when I put the GT into Disc. to determine what the all metal beep is, it will be VERY LOUD and sometimes even overload the GT as I swing over the shallow target. The GT I have still is quiet as ever on the wet and dry sand, (in all metal). even fully "ON" or counter clockwise on Sens.. So I do not think it is overloading. Maybe I have stumbled onto the best way to hunt (for my beach), out of Disc. full on Sens. and in pinpoint?

Maybe when I get those silent nulls over the "iron" i should try lowering the Sens. and seeing if it changes it?

Yesterday I had my best Hunting day so far! I found 15 Quarters, 5 Dimes, 2 Nickels, 6 Penny's, 2 lead fishing sinkers, 1 very small silver heart off a charm bracelet, and 1 VERY BIG (wide), MANS SILVER RING, with a barbwire design around the middle of it. So it does not seem that I am missing too much. The lead sinkers, dimes, and very small silver heart, should have me able to find a gold ring too, I hope! Wish I could post a Pic! So how many posts dop you have to do around hear to get out of Newbie jail, so you can PM, and post a pic bigger than 4__K? I think it was 480K max size last time I tried.

Beachnut

 

[babulin2002]

congrats on your great finds !
honestly, i do not have much experience in how the sens setting affects the all metal mode, whether it can be set too high. when i change to all metal, i still go with sens about the same as in disc, so about 12 o'clock. sens tooo high in disc shoud not affect the tarrget id reading, hence if it's not iron it won't sound like one with high sens. what happens is that it nulls over even slightest changes of mineralization, tiniest amounts of iron etc, and falses a lot ( i mean A LOT), hence making it virtually impossible to hunt that way, just like you say, it's nulling plus all kinds of noises and squeaking all the time. turn the sens down and youwill see the difference.
it's very interesting that high sens in all metal works for you on the beach, have to try this, as i hunt mostly in disc and do not have so much experience with all metal mode (i do not hunt beaches since i live far away from them ). don't you get any false signals that way ?
cheers!

 

[plugger]

n/t

 

[nick hunter]

Hello.

I'm new to the Sovereign GT, fortunately not to metal detecting...

Here are a few GT newbie thoughts.

I think it isn't wise to use all metal as main searching mode. Coins 8"+ deep are barely audible, while they give loud signals in disc. The best part of the Sovie is its audio disc. Loudness of the signal can be adjusted (volume) and works fine.

Disc will indeed result in nulling. I do not use disc, so only iron will null. Being a beach hunter too, when I get a nulling, I hover above it and try to have the coil just above it. Then I circle round the nulling. This will unmask targets that would be masked by just sweeping. Works pretty good for me, but I doubt this would work on an iron infested site.

Sens. I set it mostly at 11 o'clock. Just out of auto can, of course, but as said before not very useful. The higher sens attracts deep larger than coins objects, and you lose lots of digging time to find just nothing (too deep in the wet sand). Those deep objects tend to give a broad-though unstable- disc signal (coil responds on a larger than usually surface),

The best way is hunting in disc and pinpointing with the AM mode. Works fine.

HH