Is Less More With The Zed?

[DigsAlot]

You have to run the Zed the way that lets you detect. High or low Sensitivity is only one of the factors. I personally don't like a hum in my ears. It makes me tone deaf by the end of the day.

I also like my target sounds to boom out. Comes down to, run it the Way that works for you. If your finding small gold then you are good.

[goldwright]

Basically I do anything that will allow me to run in normal.  Lower volume, sensitivity what ever it takes.  Difficult when patch hunting but if gridding always normal and nut out the ground noise.  So to answer your question yes less everything if it allows Normal.

[sturt]

On 8/1/2019 at 1:08 PM, 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. 

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. 

  

Hi Jin.

I just returned from a trip out WA Bush. I have been experimenting with lots of settings as well. The last two days I reduced the sensitivity fairly low in difficult, high yeild and ferrite balanced on Auto. Had two great days finding small nuggets at a location which has been hammered over many years. I will attach a photo. First day picked up 18 pieces and Second 22 pieces. Not high value but very rewarding. The total area would have been maybe 30m x 30m. Sorry the photo is not real good, but you can see where somebody had dug holes and left them open some time back.  I hate that. One hole on the right side of photo. I found nuggets around the sides of existing dig holes. What type of detector was used I have no idea. 

The ground was very clean of trash and had been scraped by a loader a long time back. Underneath the surface say 150mm down was hard Calcrete. Certainly made the pick bounce but most targets where above the hard stuff.

Now after looking at JP posts I`m having cold sweats thinking about reverting to Semi auto then do to manual balance when you want to check for deeper targets. I cant wait to get back. I dug a few holes into the calcrete trying to get clarification on some signals. Eventially I gave up in disgust thinking it was ground noise, a waste of time. Probably me upsetting the balance when digging. Hope nobody finds my patch, cheers sturt

[Goldy]

On 8/1/2019 at 3:08 PM, 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. 

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. 

  

yes of coarse there is an advantage using higher sensitivity on a machine lol,,,it all depends how noisy the ground is the less quieter the ground is the higher you can turn up your sensitivity giving you more grunt on targets,,hope that helps