What settings do you recommend for relic hunting?

[Doug[Manila]]

I've been detecting since '96 but new to the F75.

Didn't do too bad with the F75 in my first two trips but am now taking my F75 on a trip to a really old house nearby an old spanish church. Hope to find copper coins, brass & maybe even silver items.

 

[Bill Ladd]

The all metal mode is deep & very soild......
If your site gets trashy it may be better to switch into disc mode & perhaps cancel small iron......
This may not seem like a very detailed answer, but really the F75 has so much power that you really can't go wrong with whatever settings you feel most comfortable with.....
I have found stuff in all modes....all levels of sensitivity, etc....
HH,
Bill

 

[Streak!]

While AM will get all the goodies.....there is the "headache" factor to consider................and inch for inch..............the 75 gets every bit as much depth in disc as it does in AM...with the exception of stat, or if you hunting in really bad FE soil. it performs VERY well in Atomic red soil too in Disc............but you have to pretty much decide to dig by audio and ignore the ID's.
A couple of us have used the 75 in bad soil in va in Disc and have done very well. You get much better resoultion in disc.....and the targets "pop", better. You may not get quite the raw depth in bad soil in Disc as you will in AM..............but I bet your good to bad target ration is Better!
In realtively good soil........I'd hunt in Disc hands down.............
Just keep a real good GB..........................keep your disc at 6............and use monotone,and you'll do great. If you use a disc below 5 it will be noisier (enhanced mode, like JE), but you will get better depth. You'll get GREAT depth and head more good targets at 6 though if you invoke monotone. I like to hunt in two tones....but thats like having your disc set at 16-17. If you really want to get serious about RELIC hunting, monotone is a must!
Soooooooooooooooo.
DE mode
Disc at 6
Monotone
Gb spot on with NO offset.
If you can run it hotter in your dirt..........and there is NO RF interference.............try 0 disc.......and dig everything above 12 or so. (I've dug really deep pewter buttons that came in really low....just above nails) Hope this helps!!!!! Streak!

 

[Daniel Tn]

I must say I have been having some pretty remarkable success with my F-75 and I'm only chiming in here to offer what I've found. Streak sounds like he has 'er nailed down but I must disagree with him on certain issues.

Maybe it's just my F-75 but I get a heckuva lot better target response in bad iron dirt and on deep targets in All Metal. In our soil here, even in the better of our dirt, it has a tendency to read DEEP stuff as iron and do this bounce thing. For example on minie balls, on say 3 out of 5 sweeps across a deep target in bad dirt (8+ inches), the machine will ID it as iron, and then two of the times it will bounce into either the tab or zinc range. Listening to the shape and size of the target in all metal will give you a good idea of it. However in Disc mode, you can very easily walk right over those and not even know they are there. Trust me, I was fortunate to catch this early on and have since relied nearly 100% on using the all metal as my relic hunting mode.

I'm not downing the guys I hunt with...they are great hunters. I'm not downing their machines either...just giving the 75 some praise it deserves. But in the last few trips I've had the opportunity to hunt side by side with nearly 16 different people and about 9 different detector makes and models. The last trip we made I dug 33 (yes...thirty three) minie balls while the closest person to me dug 8. Yep. Eight. I had some of them to the point of bashing their machines against the ground. SEVERAL times some of them would stop to watch me dig a few bullets and then tell me to call them over when I thought I had another bullet so they could check it with their machine and their machine not even make a peep on them. They'd stand there in amazement as I would pull another bullet from the 8-12 inch range. This is a scenario that keeps happening and I'm glad to have learned the 75 a little bit to know what it's telling me.

But I'll just let you know first hand, with the F-75 set in DISC mode to ANYTHING BUT 0 disc and 1 tone, you would walk right over them too and not know what you were missing. It's my finding that DISC mode on the machine really condenses the overall ability to tell the target by audio. Cause like I say, on my particular unit, 3 out of 5 sweeps over a target it will read a deep bullet or button as iron, and only twice will it go to where it should be hitting. On the shallower targets it is a no brainer...they'll ID in the TAB/ZINC range nearly every time on a bullet. My ground averages .3 on the FE meter...have ran into some places that went as high as .1

 

[Streak!]

bet ya didnt expect that!!
If you re-read my post..I said that all metal will get better depth in real bad soil, and it will....as per your post. BUT, meduim and shallow low conductors will stand out of the ground noise much better in disc, and thats why I said the good to bad target ratio will improve when using Disc mode. I'm amazed at how well the 75 works in disc as conpared to a lot of other VLF machines. Another factor that may make a difference in how we see things.....is the type of soil.....and I understand the dirt around your parts is kinda a bit unique, kinda like certain parts of Va and Ga. One thing I've learned is that different parts of the counrty and different soils require different settings and tactics, and never having hunted in you neck or the woods, I'll defer to you in that respect.
but having said that. I learnd from experience in the crappy dirt I'VE hunted....that when there is tons of small iron (whice is typical of where I generally hunt), the audio can get overwhelming, and the low conductors like cuffs and such just pop better in disc, and your brain can distinguish them better, and therefore youll put more in your pouch.
You are dead on about one thing......................monotone and 0 disc. that the absolute pinnacle of detecting performance!
Good post Daniel......................

 

[Daniel Tn]

I do live in a unique area. I know of one place I can go down the road and find placar gold out of a creek and CW relics at the same place. That just means we got a load of different soil spots here. GB number wise, they don't seem to vary much...well not bad anyway. I've been in some places where it would be good and GB in the 40s and lower 50s. And I've got one place where it was up around 80. I tend to pay more attention to the FE meter than I do the GB number..I know when she about pegs it to the top of what kind of dirt I'm dealing with and how to handle it accordingly.

In my years of relic hunting I've never been able to hunt in all metal until now. Like you say, it is a tad noisy but I like being able to hit open woods or open pasture and hear everything. Hearing the iron lets me know I'm getting near where something was. I have kind of tuned my ears to the identity of iron via the big audio foot print that it leaves...compared to the sharper audio of a non ferrous object. I guess that's just part of learning your machine though and picking up those little tips along the way.

Oh and one more note...I've found that if you get in an area with a lot of electrical interference, that for some reason the all metal mode operates smoother. I'm not sure as to why, but if I'm hunting an area with E.I. in Disc mode, I will get a lot of falsing signals from the ground...pops and clicks and such. You almost think the detector is around nails and small iron and is just discriminating the things out...but hop into all metal and that goes away until you get over something. I got into one spot in a new subdivision site that was all I could do to stand the noise. I played with frequency shifting and that didn't help much...backed the sens down and that didn't help much either. I guess that was my first experience when I tried AM and saw how quiet it was in that mode...and was able to pull several drop bullets and three buttons out of the area I had been trying to hunt.

 

[mosby(VA)]

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[Elton]

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[liquid1]

I agree thanks for the great information..I haven't used the AM as much as I should here in NC at times the soil conditions are BAD..Daniel I have experianced the same soil conditions
But thanks to all the F75 options it will prevail...You mentioned finding placer gold in the creeks..I have just gotten into nugget shooting the creeks my family owns ..NC is known for gold and hpefully I will find some..Its Fun..

 

[Doug[Manila]]

So all metal is the way to go. I was out since Saturday (that's Friday USA time) and was not able to read all your good inputs till now. So I was in Disc 6 in the DE mode, Sens 20-40 (50-60 was unstable), 3 tones.

Some of these really old sites is still in use today and is loaded with bottle caps and screw caps. I just hit an area today where I dug about 60 bottlecaps before I had to leave. Using BC mode quiet down the machine a bit but still dug many rusty bottle caps.

So if I had been in all metal, it does look like I am still in a must-dig-all situation here? I figure that unless I concentrate on a 2x2 meter square area and take out all the surface iron and bottle caps down to 3-4 inches, the deeper non-ferrous items will remain masked. I also don't read about anyone here having a high 84-91 GB and FE304 of .3 to 3 (yes it was a 3 at one site today!) ... how would you set your F75 differently if this was your ground readings?

Thanks again

 

[liquid1]

Doug, I have seen this situation several times around here.Do a manual GB in all metal and run as hi a sense as posibble to keep unit stable..
I still use Disc most of the time DE with as low disc 0-10 as possible and sense up as hi with stabillity..sometimes it takes testing to see what is best..lots of
options..

 

[Doug[Manila]]

I've been testing DE and BC modes last few trips. I like the F75 so far and this seems to be the best purchase so far since my Sov.

 

[Doug[Manila]]

I do remember you from when you used to swing a Tesor and a Shadow (?).

I do miss my B2mm as since the bottlecaps' tones crack up during quick sweeps. Nice technique for coin shooting but agree all metal is the relic mode as we do want to dig most everything.

 

[Doug[Manila]]

Like your videos

 

[Doug[Manila]]

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