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Adjustable Tone Break


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On 12/23/2014 at 9:33 AM, cobill said:

This is just the kind of discussion I was interested in and many of my questions have been answered. I really appreciate Steve's insight and knowledge of iron volume, V-break, "to dig or not to dig" thoughts, etc. Most of us just do what the detector tells us to do...it's just not that simple! So we just keep buying the latest and greatest detector as a magic bullet to calm down our gold fever. I'm going to "nominate" Steve as our detector tester/reviewer and make purchasing decisions based on his detailed analysis. Do I hear a second?

 

Bill

 

Hi Bill,

Well, I would use extreme caution in that! The bottom line is I love playing with detectors and I am more than happy to share what I know or pass on my thoughts in hopes that it will help others. It gets more mileage out of the effort. But I do make decisions for purely personal reasons that may not jive with others.

The machines are very, very competitive these days. It is like buying a PC - there are many that all do the job just as well. I therefore am looking at other things also.

Look and feel. I like the T2/F75 both in look and feel. I like the simplicity of the control set and yet the depth of the feature set. It had issues for urban use but the upgrades appear to be addressing that. It uses AA batteries and I am trying to stick with stuff that use AA batteries. So I am disinclined towards the Gold Bug Pro for no other reason than that it uses a 9V battery. The DEUS with three separate rechargeable items? No thanks!

I like detectors that have a 5" or smaller coil available and a 15" or larger coil available. Again, loss for DEUS, and $400 coils are a turn off anyway.

But should YOU avoid the Gold Bug Pro just because it uses a 9V? That would be silly. Or the DEUS because it is rechargeable and wireless? Most people think of that as being a huge plus. I am the odd guy out there.

No, just take me as a data point to be averaged out with the opinions of others who have been around awhile. 

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Well,Im mainly a relic hunter,but the same pricipals should work for gold in trash. Usually the culprit is square naills and smaller bits of iron. A detector like the gb pro and AT pro will usually disc these at around 27-28...and this is where I set the tone break. But audio matters more than anything else....bigger iron such as chisels,picks are easy to discern...but I dig them because I like them,lol. I like to use a small coil or eliptical,and just work the heck out of an area from different angles and overlap swings. Its almost like your trying to coerce a signal,if that makes sense. Any high tone that even squeeks and I can get to repeat,gets investigated. Often its just iron falsing ,but using a pick makes a quick assesment. Right now I have a gb pro,Deus,Tejon and my son uses an AT pro for this type of detecting. My main concern though is we do well on shallow stuff in high trash....but feel like I am missing alot of the deeper targets. This is where you Steve,have my attention on the Nokta. I really want a small coil to have some "punch". Well,enough of my rambling thoughts. Merry Christmas everyone...and thanks for hosting such a great site Steve...I learn alot here! Ray

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Lots of machines still doing the notch thing but it has fallen out of favor with a lot of the people that have been around for some time because it boils down to "what is safe to notch out". Really, almost nothing.

If you are a coin cherry picker you can just set up for coins and notch out the "trash" but except for recent drops that gets you next to nothing in most hard hit places these days. In a way people are just getting more and more determined to find the few old coins that are left and that means getting closer and closer to darn near just digging everything.

I know exactly what you mean Ray. I was running the F75 with 5" coil against the Nokta with same in the park. I could care less what I was finding, my goal was simply to find non-ferrous targets in a place I have hunted quite a bit before. What I see and I am sure you see are ferrous targets that a guy just swinging along would pass right over. But when I get that target, I work it, and it may read ferrous on five swings and non-ferrous on two. Or maybe just a squeak. There is a lot of small foil that wants to read ferrous but also items as large as pull tabs down only 3 - 4 inches that are trying to read ferrous. All I am doing is going home with a pocket of aluminum but I am honestly having a ball. I just love running detectors.

From a nugget hunting perspective those are all gold nuggets that are trying hard to disguise themselves as ferrous targets, so I enjoy making them reveal themselves. The Nokta in my very limited experience so far does seem to do it in this crazy no-brainer fashion. Just turn on, ground balance, go beep. The DI2 mode defaults as she boots up really work well. Frankly, that suits me lots more than menus and a zillion tuning choices. My SDC must be getting to me!

Today was going to be Nokta versus V3i at 22.5 kHz but got rained out.

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I probably will sell my Deus to get a Fors gold eventually...The deus is almost magical the way it can pull good targets out of trash..but its kinda overkill for me with all the configurations possible. Basically I relic hunt Ca gold rush areas and I prospect. I dont beach hunt, and urban detecting is down to hunting demos in Stockton....which is same as relic hunting in the hills but with bums,hookers and drug addicts instead of rattlers and poison oak,lol. Im waiting to see if Nokta will give us a forward screen,then I will do it.

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Sometimes I will read threads like this one multiple times and glean more info every time read. Steve spent some time crafting his replies and I thank him. One tidbit I took away from this thread was the knowledge of how different detectors work vis-a-vis factory preset tone breaks and how to set them up to hear the tones I want.
 
The most important thing I learned though was buried in all the other info. Both Steve and Ray mentioned it. That is when working with iffy signals don't hesitate to use my pick to develop them! I know I am guilty of repeated swings over targets trying to mentally evaluate them when the truth be told a couple quick swings of the pick is probably going to gain me way more usable info. Develop the target then dig it or move along. 
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One thing to keep in mind about the F19 and iron volume and V break.  The Iron volume is tied to the Ferrous TID range, not the V-break setting.   So all audio below TID of 40 will be affected by the iron volume selection.

For example,  with a volume setting of, say 11,  which is a very low iron volume setting......and a V-break setting of 20 where a low tone will generate for responses of 0-19, and a VCO audio will generate for responses of 20 and higher,  both the low tone response below 20 and the VCO responses of 20 to 39 will be affected by the iron volume setting. 

This isn't necessarily negative if you know about it and set up accordingly.  You just have to pay attention and train your ears.   A requirement, really as the ferrous/non-ferrous break point on the F19 is soft.  You'll seldom break it at 39/40.   More likely it will be 34/35 ish.  If you are going to break the audio down in the ferrous range below 40, set the FE audio based upon the VCO tone response below 40 instead fo the iron tone.  That way you'll know right away when you hear the soft VCO tone that you are detecting something above the break point but below the 40 cutoff.

HH
Mike

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