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How Can I Find Gold Rings Better With My Spectra V3


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How can I find gold rings better with my Spectra V3.. if I dug every Target that sounded like a ring or said it was a ring I would dig Millions I'm just confused and would like to narrow it down better does anybody have any pointers

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I'm sure someone with V3 experience will chime in, but the simple answer is aluminium and lead and lots of other targets respond in the same range as gold so you end up digging those. If you have a million pull tabs that all read the same you could skip those signals knowing you are skipping the 15% or whatever of rings that ring up at the same signal range. You can play percentage games like that, but there is no way to tell if the signal is gold or aluminum or etc without digging it up.

I wish there was, and I was the only one that had it. That would be fun!

Btw, this will probably get moved to the detecting jewelry forum. This one is for nugget hunting. Welcome to the forum!

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General advice is dig all pull tab signals! You don't want to risk leaving a gold ring in the ground.

With the V3i you can use the polar plot feature to help a little bit. In 3 frequency mode the pull tabs will be all over the place whereas the rings more often show a nice tight pattern. This is assuming the ring is flat, it's big enough, and good quality. You still risk leaving a ring behind, but it may help you out some.

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I only have the initial Spectra. V1 don't use it much now. My method was dig every thing except when the coil can not be swung without hitting targets. Your problem is gold ring vary in size,shape and gold content. This means there is a wide range of reading you will get. However pull tags and a lot of junk target were mass produced and have a uniform response get to know these and then decide if you dig or not. One bit of advice is to try to get a beep at the same volume by lifting the coil up a bit as I got more accurate signal doing this on my detector. 

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10 hours ago, geof_junk said:

However pull tags and a lot of junk target were mass produced and have a uniform response get to know these and then decide if you dig or not.

I wish it were even that simple.  In the US, the two most common pulltab types are the ring & beavertail and the so-called 'square' tab.  One problem is that even when narrowed down to these two most common types the TID's vary quite a bit.  To give an idea, on the Minelab Equinox the beavertail alone (broken off from the ring) can fall in the 11-13 region, right on top of nickel zone.  Most common TID for the square tabs is 14, but broken in half they read 12-13 and 16 is fairly common.  The full r&b when completely flat (not folded over) can go as high as 18 (bottom end of corroded zinc penny range).  There is a small version of the r&b which reads 13 when not folded over.  And you can find every orientation of r&b -- people back then (1965-75 was the time of the r&b) just loved to fiddle around with them, sometimes breaking them, folding them, chaining them together....

The bottom line is that it takes humans to lose rings, and those same humans like to drink their beer and soft drinks (and tossing pulltabs on the ground ?) in the same locations where they're losing their valuables.  Gotta take the bad with the good.

 

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I have had the V3i for a few years. Don’t trust the little icons that suggest what the target may be. That’s just marketing. I have found one gold ring with the V3i, one gold pendant and a gold necklace. If you want to find gold rings you need to dig all low vdi targets. You may consider using mixed mode audio or some of the programs like mixed mode. The polar plot can be very helpful. Run a few tests over a gold ring and it will give you a idea what it might show. 

 

The best recommendation I can give for finding gold, is dig almost everything, reduce all discrimination and search areas that may have gold. The ring I found was a lost item that was in a semi know location. It took me 45 minutes, and rang up as 13 vdi. It was a great find and even better to return to the owner. Good luck 

970E550D-41E7-49BA-96B5-04AA452FB7FF.jpeg

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If it were easy, there would be a hell of lot more people out there detecting.

The other key is knowing where to detect to improve your chances.  Read up here and elsewhere to get those clues and how to read the beach or parks or wherever you are trying to find them for the most likely locations.  Whole books have been written on that topic alone.

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Lots of great answers.

Unfortunately gold, lead, and aluminum overlap. In general, the smaller they are the lower the VDI number and the larger they are the higher the number. Women's rings tend to fall in the foil area below US nickel. Men's rings tend to read above US nickel up to zinc penny and possibly higher. I often block out zinc penny and higher and just dig everything under that. If really cherry picking I look for targets that hit hard on a single VDI number, no jumping around.

To get more insight on the VDI scale and gold see this article.

whites-v3i-metal-detector-2017-herschbac

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Pam, you didn't say where you were hunting, turf, beach or what.

Here is my advice.    Pick a program that you like the way the audio sounds.  Lower the disc to -30.  Nothing notched.  Put it in 3 frequency correlate mode.   Set the Correlate setting to somewhere between 5 and 10 points.    The default is 20 points and that is too big....10 is good, try for 8.  8 will give more trash rejection.   And then just dig whatever gives a good repeatable response.   You should be able to cover ground and get your coil over more likely ring targets and skip a lot of trash.

Remember that Correlate is comparing the two strongest reporting frequencies.   Due to the nature of the frequency selection, one of those frequencies will always be 7.5 kHz.    It is easy to correlate high conductors because 2.5 kHz is close to 7.5 kHz,  however....

For low conductors, there is a greater span between 22.5 kHz and 7.5 kHz.  This means its harder to correlate targets between these two frequencies.   So when you use fewer correlate points it removes a lot of low conductive trash.   Rings conduct a lot better than most low conductive trash so you  can keep most rings responding in a narrower correlated window.   

Bottom line is that you cover more ground and are only hearing and digging signals that have better chances of being a ring.   

Hope that that helps,

Good luck,

Mike

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

All great advice.... I can not add anything that would improve on what is already here....

 

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