Why I Don't Think We Need Ferrous Sounds Any More With the E-Trac

[Erik in NJ]

It seems that the older Explorer Ferrous (0-31) and Conductive (0-31) have been re-mapped to the new Conductive (1-50) & Ferrous (1-35). The majority of the good finds have been mapped to a 12-line on the Ferrous axis. The reason some like Ferrous sounds on the Explorer is because of iron hitting in the upper left corner of the screen that sounds like silver in Conductive sounds. The Ferrous mode would emit a low tone instead for the iron. I'm speculating that these same iron objects that used to false as silver hits no longer false in the same area where silver hits on the new E-Trac, thus you can use Conductive sounds with it's greater resolution without the worry that you had before of digging a lot of junk in AM. Someone with the ET set up needs to verify this by scanning iron junk that sounds like silver on the Explorer in Conductive sounds. Please tell me your opinion on this....

 

[Jim upstate NY]

well we dont need them, but some of us liked them... they have a ferrous sound mode... they have a number that represents ferousity... why have them at all if they are not true readings and no longer any use? they dont think we are smart enough to use the true readings why did they even have a mode that is useless? they should have just made it digital conductivity mode and have it only go off on good targets if they think they know what all of them come in at,,, every good target will come in and nothing else

 

[Erik in NJ]

I believe the mapping is arbitrary - why does gold have a lower conductive reading than silver and both have a ferrous component on the Explorer? There no Fe in gold or silver the Fe value should in reality be 0. I'm assuming that the new mapping is "better" such that ferrous sounds are no longer required as they were on the Explorer in AM. I could be wrong, but this is what I think is going on here. Maybe the labels Ferrous and Conductive should have been changed to make it all less confusing.

 

[Jim upstate NY]

Gold is actually less conductive to the eddy currents created by the transmit signals of any detector.. silver responds to them the best of any metal.. its the principle of how all machines work... the ferrousity reading is probably just another way the explorer reads a target.. since crown caps which are steel have a fairly high ferrous content yet read way over to the right like silver, they read so low on teh conductive scale they are easy to ignore, but you sure wouldn't want them up in that 12 ferrous range on the etrac would you? many detectors read them as coins... as they do many other things using conductivity alone.. whether the numbers represent a true reading or not is OK, as long as they are all different...
And since they can fake the coin to read the same ferrousity, why couldn't they fake the aluminum and shotgun shells to read something different than 12 also? then at least you know when you get a 12 its a coin and not a million other possibilities

 

[Erik in NJ]

Yes, good point - I don't claim to understand all of this yet. I went back to Rigit's nice graph and see that Rust Nails and Rusty Iron still read with a high Cond and high Fe value so you will get a high tone in Cond sounds. Maybe the saving grace is the fact that the signals are more stable and don't bounce around as much as on the Explorer so you can look at the screen to see that it's iron that sounds good. Maybe they should have mapped these types of finds to an area of the screen that would not produce a high tone.

 

[Jim upstate NY]

unless they have it so the iron doesnt ever bounce like it does in the explorer anyway.. I assume it will react the same.. hopefully the faster response will still allow you to hear the high tone on silver in amongst the iron with even more disced out.. I highly doubt you can run conductive in a wide open screen like you can run it wide open in ferrous now... that's why I been making a stink about it so much.. I think they are trying to make it more user friendly for novices, but novices seldom spend 1900 bucks on a detector... and its become less user friendly for those that want to eke out as much good stuff as they can from a site...new sites are getting harder and harder to come by.. we need something that can get whats left at the ones we have.. If the targets were still there like they used to be we could all be running around with radio shacks and coming home with good finds

 

[Erik in NJ]

From what I understand the bounce problem is supposed to have been tamed. I've been speculating all along that this machine is finally fast enough that some quick masking of the ferrous area - basically the bottom of the screen will give the same or better performance than AM/Ferrous on the Explorer - but that's just my assumption at this point. You're not that far away - c'mon down and try out my ET when the weather clears.

 

[Beachcomber]

and to make it easy for people to differentiate it from the Conductive axis. When the original Explorer came out Minelab's more technical explanation was is was more or less measuring the inductive reactance of the target allowing them to determine a second target ID value for each medal detected. With this Minelab had the ability to give a graph of 35 numbers vertically and 35 numbers horizontally which gave us 1225 possible ID locations. Had they continued that philosophy with the E-Trac we would now with the expanded range have around 1750 possible ID locations. But instead they chose to remap all the non-ferrous targets to the number 12 line on the Ferrous scale. Limiting your TID locations down to 50. That's a major loss of target resolution as well as the audio tones that went with them. Maybe they thought Explorer users were more like the Sov users. The Sov used to have a great 0-550 TID Meter that gave great TID separation but people complained the numbers bounced around too much and started making thier own meters or buying aftermarket meters that only read 0-180 greatly reducing the TID separation. So when Minelab came out with the Sov GT they made a new TID Meter that now only goes 0-180. Maybe they applied that same train of thought to the E-Trac. Personally I prefer the 0-550 meter because I like the additional TID info and that is the meter that is on my Sov GT. And I guess that is why I liked the Explorer so much. It gave you a tremendous amount of information about the target. I think that most Explorer users like to know as much as possible about a target before they dig it. That is why we own an Explorer in the first place. Now having all that information taken away and crammed into basically a single row or 2-3 lines of horizontal numbers ranging from 1-50 is taking a tremendous amount of TID info away from us. Right now the Sov with it's 0-180 meter gives you more TID info then the E-Tac with it's 150 possible locations.

Now don't get me wrong while I am very annoyed at Minelab's decision to take all this information away from us basically dumbing down the detector I will still probably buy one for all of the other advancements that have been made to this detector. So while we have lost something that was very important to many of us we have gained a great deal in other areas that will hopefully offset the loss. Maybe we get very lucky and when the E-Trac 2 comes out we will have our Ferrous Mode restored to us. I have had the chance to hunt with an E-Trac and for the most part have really enjoyed what I have seen of it's capabilities but 2 hours of use is hardly enough time to really delve deeply into it's capabilities. JMHO

HH

Beachcomber

 

[Ray-Mo.]

I tried mine with a wide open screen today and could not handle all the signals.It was just to much at the park and I use to run the Ex that way a lot.Might be able to turn the sens. way down and make it work,Ray.

 

[Andy Sabisch]

Jim (and others),

Nothing is 100% perfect and before you say that bottle caps do not fall on the "12-Line", test a handful or simply bring up the SELECT menu and reject the CROWNCAP region . . . . . and see what is rejected. Might be surprised!

 

[Jim upstate NY]

n/t

 

[Crash620]

hopefully the faster response will still allow you to hear the high tone on silver in amongst the iron with even more disced out..

Therein lies the problem... Initial reports that I have seen/ heard show that good targets WILL be missed when this thing nulls..... Shame on Them.....

 

[Elevatorguy]

n/t

 

[digitrich]

And when you turn off all the fancy filters, the faster processor starts to show it's stuff, BUT what good is faster tones that all come in the same??????????????
Tried four tone ferrous, will work well in an area with iron and no trash, but for that matter, you could just use two tone. and we all have at least 80 sites like that, don't we.

 

[Crash620]

You have the right size targets, positioned perfectly, and everything works as it should, but this is not a perfect world. Toss in larger, random spaced iron targets around that coin, then show me what happens.... I will have mine this week... We shall see, but from some of the reports coming in, the E-trac nulls and misses targets.... If it works, I will be more than happy to eat my words... if I am wrong....(I hope I am).

 

[digitrich]

It's okay Jim, as nothing much else hits near there worthwhile, far as I can tell, so far.

 

[nutcase]

Its like Crash620 said. There is one more video on MLOTV that shows if you lust change the direction in which the iron target points, it nulls like any explorer and the treshold doesnt return really fast.

They didnt changed the recovery speed by very much and with the usb port you cant update the firmware either. :-/

Until now, i dont like it much.

 

[jbow]

Do the high tones from nails hit in one area of the screen so that you can disc them out without discing out good targets? If you can then wouldn't that fix the problem? I am also wondering, since the resolution is wider in conductive, if it won't be an easy thing to disc out pulltabs and other trash and still, with the faster processor, hit all the good targets?

That is still not a good answer for those who are used to hunting in AM/ferrous, but if the above works... then good.

The big question is, IMO, this: can the E Trac make finds in heavy iron and hot ground that the Explorer misses? That, for me is the real question. If it will do that and allow for a faster swing, it is a big time winner. I'll still hunt in AM/ferrous with my SE but probably with some disc and conductive on the ET. I'll be happy when I get it. I plan to take it to some heavily hunted places and see what happens.

J

 

[jbow]

I hope they will offer to update the first model ET. I hope that if they change the software to address these perceived problems, (and I don't think we will know if these things really are problems until we have used the ET for a good while and understand it much better)... they will not make us buy an ET II. For the price of this detector they should offer to update it if they change it within the first few years. I'm not aware of Minelab ever doing this like Fisher has with the F75, but I still like Minelab detectors, they are still the best in my book.

However, if after 10 months of development they rushed it out because it was time to get something to market... they should offer to update it with software upgrades, when they get it ironed out. That would only right I think. I imagine they would have made the USB port with the capability to update the software if it were not for the Chinese, who seem to pirate everything that come's out. I don't know... Line6 guitar amplifiers heve been updateable via USB for years and they are software driven.... and no one seem's to be copying their software. Maybe there would have been the capability to easily transfer the software from an ET to a Explorer if the port were capable of software updating... I really don't get it. The ability to update through the port would have been a KILLER addition, but would have also have made the introduction of the ET II awkward. Only time will tell.

J

 

[Arturo de Zorro]

in the dirt because of the leaking that iron gives off (halo) in the ground. Hope someone will test rusted crown caps with the Etrac and let me if they also come up 12 in ferrous,,,