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Is Less More With The Zed?


Jin

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I often see others using a high sensitivity setting of 16 - 20 on the 7000. Is there really much of an advantage doing this? I used to think maxing out my 4500 gave me some kind of advantage over the poor suckers who ran factory presets or slightly higher, now im not so convinced. 

Today i tested out my new 10" and 20" X-coils and tried many different combinations of settings to see what would suite me best. I did most of my testing with the 20" coil on a 2 gram bit of gold. I dug a skinny trench 200mm (nearly 8 inches) in some reasonably hot ground and placed my 2 gram bit in the bottom. High yield/Difficult were the better settings. (Ferrite and ground balanced, Semi auto ground balance,  Ground/audio smoothing off,  volume 8 (using a booster),  threshold 27,  threshold pitch 63,  volume limit 7)

First i tried a high sensitivity and the target signal popped out nice and loud. Then I started detecting the surrounding area and felt there was so much other ground noises going on that the quieter signals may be masked. Eventually I found my sweet spot where the detector was quiet as a mouse and i had no problems hearing a slight change in the threshold no matter how small it was. This was at a sensitivity of only 3.

I then went back over the 2 gram bit and it still gave a great response using sensitivity of 3 (although slightly less than when the sensitivity was a lot higher).

When i started detecting and raising the sensitivity up around 6 -8 a lot more ground noise came in. Now im used to ground noise as i used to use my gpx in Normal timings most of the time. But after reading how the zed is a different beast and not to drive it to hard i decided to try less aggressive settings to see if less is infact more. Obviously im new to the zed and have much to learn so will continue trying different things until i get my head around things. 

  

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Evening Jin,

This is an interesting question and 20 people will answer it 20 different ways.  

I am really missing the Z as I felt very in-tune with it and had great confidence that I was not missing anything.  Blind and naive confidence of course ? but a lot of this game is having confidence in your gear.  

I found that anywhere up past a Sensitivity of 12 or 13 would get noisy with my unit but EMI was the factor more so than ground noise.  Even with the coil dead still it would be pinging and bopping and zinging - every now and then I would even get a weeeoooWW.   Somedays were better than others, stormy days were horrid, over head air traffic created short term issues.   

5 hours ago, Jin said:

volume 8 (using a booster)

I assume you have an SPO1 and I had a B&Z but brand is probably neither here nor there with this.   I used to run my Volume at 1 and then turn the booster right up to my desired volume.  JP once wrote that he felt turning the Volume up by 1 was akin to turning the Sensitivity up by 2 when it came to increasing the unwanted noise (JP please correct me if I have taken that out of context).  These settings allowed me to up the Sensitivity just a little more to try and brighten those faint signals - but not so much that there is too much noise to concentrate or hear through.  I didn't run a dead smooth Threshold but it certainly erred on the smoother side of things.  

My noisy detector analogy is a tumble dryer with a 50 cent piece in it.  

Just a 50 cent piece - you will hear easily even if you are 2 rooms away and have a low Sensitivity to that specific target. 

A 50 cent piece and ten 5 cent pieces.  A lot more noise to filter out, probably hear the 50 cent piece most of the time and not too fatiguing to listen too.  Probably make out the sound of the 50 cent piece 1 room away. 

A 50 cent piece and one hundred 5 cent pieces.  Bombarded with noise.  Very fatiguing. Stand right next to the dryer and you will probably hear the 50 cent sometimes but there is so much else going on you start second guessing whether you actually heard it or was it just the rest of the background clatter? And then you start going faster, turning down the volume because it is so draining and then you end up at the pub ?

The only time I ever used a high Sensitivity that was obnoxious was when I was sure I had a tiny target and I was having trouble locating it.  Going from 10 up 17 or whatever really livened up the signal to help pin point it.  Or where I had a really small area that was an old timers wash up area and it had tiny, tiny pieces that the high sensitive also helped with.  But it was not a sustainable way to detect (for me).   

My 2 cents worth. Maybe something in there will help.  And then how it all relates to the X coils I am not sure.   

I hope the X coils work out for you.  Pat's patch lead certainly looks the goods  ?

 

 

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 Sensitivity with the Z is not really sensitivity. It just increases amplification.   That is why you will notice that you will have a signal wether you are running at high or low.   It’s best to have everything smooth then you will be able to here the faint stuff stand out.

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9 hours ago, Jin said:

I often see others using a high sensitivity setting of 16 - 20 on the 7000. Is there really much of an advantage doing this? I used to think maxing out my 4500 gave me some kind of advantage over the poor suckers who ran factory presets or slightly higher, now im not so convinced.  

Jin - this is definitely a personal preference, but I will tell you two stories that line up with yours.

When I first got my GPZ I was hearing about the high sensitivity settings.  Fortunately, I had just found a new area where the gold had collected  in the washes.  The area was found with the GPX5K and I could only run it in Fine because of the ground noise.  So I ran the GPZ down my two best washes with high sensitivity to see what I missed.  I found nothing.  Then I lowered the sensitivity to 3 or 4 (to make it quiet).  This was done because I had heard from other detectorists (Bill Southern) and (Rob Allison) that you can hear more at low sensitivities.  Bill rarely ever ran even at 5.   I went back up those same two washes.  One of them had nothing.  The other had four more pieces (all over a gram).  One hole was a two-fer.  The hole with the two, was 14" deep.  They were nice clear but soft signals.  Mind you that when I already know there is gold in washes, I go very slow and overlap extra.   So this opened my eyes to the lower sensitivities.

I go out hunting with multiple people because I think it is good to share what you know and you learn many techniques of others as well.  So my one hunting buddy ran high settings in the range 15 to 19 on sensitivity.  We were at a hillside patch he had cleaned out most of the big ones and were having fun picking up dinks (.1 to .2g).  He asked my settings and told him my beliefs on sensitivity.  He ended up switching to my low sensitivity settings, permanently, when he found areas hit before were turning into new patches.

Personally, I believe that with really mineralized ground, high sensitivity will raise the ground noise so that you will miss deep 1 gram nuggets.  But, I have also found that raising the Volume and going high sensitivity, can raise the dink signals in quiet ground so they really pop (similar to Lunk's settings).

In the end, you just have to do what you are comfortable with.  Best thing to do when you find a good patch area is to play with your settings before you dig.  This is really the gold in patch finding,   It's not like you can really do this when you are digging trash after trash.   But it is SO HARD not to just dig all the gold up right away.  Experiment with those settings and you will find even more gold!

My .02

Andyy

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As has been stated ... different sensitivity for different folks.  I know some very good detectorists who use maximum sensitivity and I know some very good detectorists who use below 10 sensitivity and never change it.

I would go to your test garden or your test pieces and see what you would be missing with the lowest sensitivity.  I know it makes a difference with my 800 in some areas I need to tune for maximum sensitivity to hear the fringe targets.  I wish that I could say I was as 'in tune' with my Zed.

Mitchel

 

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In the Normal ground setting I dont go too high on sensitivity setting as it brings in a lot of ground and emi sound.  On the other hand, in Difficult ground setting I might max out sensitivity and the detector still runs pretty smooth even in high mineral ground.

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Ground noise WILL mask a target, I have seen it!  That's why I have changed my settings so that I listen to a threshold, an almost smooth threshold, which means I use settings that allow for this style of detecting.  When able to, I hunt in HY/Normal, turning down my sensitivity and volume so that I have an almost smooth threshold.  A friend of mine uses max settings and no threshold and is very successful. It comes down to personal preference.  If your detector is making you crazy, then are you in the right mind to find gold, probably not. 

Of all the tips, tricks and procedures, I believe the most important setting is to have confidence in yourself and your equipment.

Brian.

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 I must have a special GPX 7000. I found that I don't have to keep it in a special  setting that is automatically locked in place once you use  it. With a mere flick of the thumb I can quickly change settings to make the detector do what i want it to do, Including sing and dance.

 I may change settings and cover the same ground several times thus having a scorched earth policy so that Sourdough Scott won't find anything behind me with his new SD 2300.

 EMI is a big problem here That I haven't found a good work around yet and I don't have the patience to use the ferrite ring every time I ground balance after changing soil type settings. We are all still haunted by the dilemma of noise tolerance vs missing targets because of a noisy threshold. 

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30 minutes ago, klunker said:

.....I don't have the patience to use the ferrite ring every time I ground balance after changing soil type settings.

The GPZ remembers the Ferrite balance, so assuming the balance is correct relative to current temperature you can go too and fro between one Gold Mode or Ground Type Mode very easily.

JP 

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9 hours ago, Northeast said:

I used to run my Volume at 1 and then turn the booster right up to my desired volume.  JP once wrote that he felt turning the Volume up by 1 was akin to turning the Sensitivity up by 2 when it came to increasing the unwanted noise

Thanks Northeast, Ill test this out on Monday and see if I notice any difference. 

Thanks everyone else for your comments/suggestions, there all very welcome and helpful.

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