Nickels Vs Tabs

[GB_Amateur]

11 hours ago, Mountain Mike said:

Yes I admit it sometimes I go to a couple spots and cherry pick a few coins.

While we're going to confession....  I think most of us, even the dig-it-all types, cherrypick sometimes.  As you mention it can be site dependent, time dependent, weather dependent.  If you'll only ever be at a site one time then go for the low-hanging fruit.

Being an old-coin hunter, depending upon my expectations of the age of the site I may not dig below nickel TID or between nickels and Indian Heads.  Obviously I risk missing gold jewelry, for example, by doing this.

[Steve Herschbach]

I never cherry pick except when cherry picking!  I have to admit it was fun going on a nickel hunt with everything blocked but 12 - 13 - 14. Equinox does not seem to suffer as much from aggressive notching as I woul expect, so you can literally block every number but 13 and still get good performance on 13 type targets. That seems like a crazy thing to do to me but having tried something close to that I am sure it would work. With all the caveats etc etc.

After seeing how nickels rang up at 13 I did an experiment. I notched out every single number on the Equinox except 12 - 13 - 14 and dug every target that rang in that range. Here were the results. The nickels were all 13 as were most of the square tabs. One crown cap read 13. Everything else was 12 or 14 or 12/13 and 13/14 readings. If I did it again and just went for the 13, I figure the trash would be a third less, but same number of nickels.

[Rick K - First Member]

Nice thing about coins, they are round and uniform.  Looking at several videos, I formed the theory that nickel hunting - you could dig only solid 13’s and do well - your experience supports that.

[Mountain Mike]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

After seeing how nickels rang up at 13 I did an experiment. I notched out every single number on the Equinox except 12 - 13 - 14 and dug every target that rang in that range. Here were the results. The nickels were all 13 as were most of the square tabs. One crown cap read 13. Everything else was 12 or 14 or 12/13 and 13/14 readings. If I did it again and just went for the 13, I figure the trash would be a third less, but same number of nickels.

After seeing those results I feel pretty encouraged. It looks like you were around 50% and say you could have easily done better. I'm good with that.

[Steve Herschbach]

Well, as I tried to explain before in my long winded “dissertation” I do think it just depends on you local target mix. These results were from two city parks and an old school. Reno/Sparks in only around 350,000 people, young population, and my guess not generally people who trash places. The parks have trash of course but except right around picnic tables and such nothing unusual.  Very similar to what I saw in Anchorage. But yeah, if 12 - 13 - 14 gets me a 50% result I am not complaining. I think if I did it again I would go 11 - 12 - 13 as 14 appears outside the high end of the spread and I am sure some deep nickels might come up 11 in my ground. However, Equinox does hold solid better than single frequency at depth and that is why digging just 13 alone seems to get the vast bulk of nickels in my ground with minimal trash. I will give it another go someday and see what happens if I notch out all id numbers except 13. That still sounds crazy to me but apparently not so much with Equinox. But we have to remember that with 40 non-ferrous numbers you have the rough equivalent of about three target id numbers as displayed on a detector with about 100 target id numbers over the same range all falling under 13. Whether that is a benefit or not depends on how you look at it.

[DigsAlot]

On 3/3/2018 at 1:47 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

The only tell I can identify is that the deeper the signal appears to be, the more you had better be digging it. Yet to this day some shallow small items trick me into thinking they are deeper large items. I admit to a lack of patience with target analysis because in the time I can take to walk around and shift modes and think some more and then try that - I can just dig it.

People have lots of tricks and I hope my "dissertation" does not shut down further discussion. At the end of the day it's just my opinion on things and others will differ and that's great! I am all ears if anyone has some way to tell with any degree of certainty good from bad beyond the basic "it sounds round" which is real in my opinion. My ring cherry picking is based on "roundness" but it does get me all those round ring pull tabs also. Which is why I am kind of fond of ring pull tabs. 

How do you tell if it is round? Care to pass on your method?

[Chase Goldman]

Not sure about Steve, but round objects be they coins, rings (closed), even pull tab rings have a nice sweet ping tone to them with solid abrupt leading edges, whereas irregular targets sound softer or have a more distorted sounding tone.  Square pull tabs that are not bent are pretty close and very hard to tell from a coin or ring merely by the audio.

[Steve Herschbach]

Pure clean tones, strong single target id, what Chase said, etc. It’s not my method, it’s what coin and ring hunters have commented on for decades. ”Roundness” is a definable term in the industry.

Metal detectors induce eddy currents into the surface of detected objects. Those currents like to flow in little circles, and coins, rings, round pull tabs, washers, etc. all give the currents a good pathway. Sharp edges, protrusions, cracks, irregular shapes of any sort, tend to break up the signal, and that can be heard audiably and in how numbers react. The jumpiness in target id some people do not like about Equinox is a boon for people like me because it comes from the machine reporting micro differences in target id readings at hyper speed.

These micro differences reveal best with full tones. Using fewer tones forces the detector to stuff disparate signals into just a few tone “bins”. I find it interesting some people complain that Equinox does not have enough target id spread, but then hunt in something like 5 tones, which takes 50 possible responses and crams the results into 5 bins. That’s great for just digging all targets that fall in a particular range, but most of the audio target id information is lost.

Coil Basics & Eddy Currents

Metal detectors, Nickels & Tabs

[DigsAlot]

Thanks for the info guys. I will try this out next time. Steve I hear you on the target id bounce. I have learned to use it to tell dime from penny. 

[strick]

19 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The jumpiness in target id some people do not like about Equinox is a boon for people like me because it comes from the machine reporting micro differences in target id readings at hyper speed.These micro differences reveal best with full tones. Using fewer tones forces the detector to stuff disparate signals into just a few tone “bins”. I find it interesting some people complain that Equinox does not have enough target id spread, but then hunt in something like 5 tones, which takes 50 possible responses and crams the results into 5 bins. That’s great for just digging all targets that fall in a particular range, but most of the audio target id information is lost.

 

 

 

Great piece of info...Thanks Steve

strick