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To Notch Or Not To Notch, That Is My Question


damatman88

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I have a couple of old parks/homesites that I hunt that I know have silver and old copper left in them. My problem is, there are innumerable little pieces of trash mixed in with the good stuff., mostly foil and modern trash. I am thinking of notching out the known nasties to help make the good signals pop. Specifically -9 through 11 keeping 12,13,14 (I want old and new nickels) notching out 15,16,17,18 and keeping 19 through 40. I know some aluminum will ring up in the nickel range but I am just trying to eliminate the overwhelming amount of signals. Thoughts?

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Notching 17 and 18 will eliminate Trimes and some Half Dimes.

If I was planning on returning many times in the future, I would start by notching out everything below 20. Then as I run out of targets, I would gradually open up the teens.

If I only had one day there, your plan seems like a good one.

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Absolutely nothing wrong with what you are doing when you are in heavy modern trash. I too would leave at least 18 accepted in case you get over an Indian Head. The Equinox is super easy to setup for picking out mostly high conductors with the Accept/Reject function and with all of the tone adjustments or just using full tones. I use a similar setup whenever I just can't take listening to another tone in the +1 to +7 and +14 to +17 range after hearing thousands.

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When in doubt dig it out.   I tend to run mostly wide open and take my chances on what might be under the coil.  

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5 hours ago, damatman88 said:

I have a couple of old parks/homesites that I hunt that I know have silver and old copper left in them. My problem is, there are innumerable little pieces of trash mixed in with the good stuff., mostly foil and modern trash. I am thinking of notching out the known nasties to help make the good signals pop. Specifically -9 through 11 keeping 12,13,14 (I want old and new nickels) notching out 15,16,17,18 and keeping 19 through 40. I know some aluminum will ring up in the nickel range but I am just trying to eliminate the overwhelming amount of signals. Thoughts?

One problem is that some notching is going to cut in on some of the better targets and they won't 'pop-out' at you because a bad target is too close to a desired target and the 'blended' conductivity response can degrade the good-targets and shuffle it into a 'bad-target' notch range.  Also, just this year, using a Vanquish 540 which shares the same VDI read-out as the Equinox series, I've had US 'War Nickel' with partial silver as well as older Buffalo Nickels respond solidly with a '15', and some that bounced between '10' & '11' . In both cases they were found in a more littered area with some smaller Iron Nails or larger-size ferrous junk near then to under them an inch or two.

Equally, in some other places, homesteads and old town sites, I have had early Wheat-Back Cents and Indian Head Cents produce very solid '17' or '18' VDI lock-on responses.  Coins are not the only targets I am after.  Not just the commonly-carried coins, but some of the older of different denominations, such as 'fatty' Flying Eagle or Indian Head Cents, Large Cents, Half-Cents, 3¢ Silver or Nickel-based coins, Half-Dimes, and all sorts of sizes, shapes and alloy-content Trade Tones. 

And if coins and tokens can be lost, so can gold or silver jewelry, and that's not limited to rings..  Besides, there are other nice finds out there just waiting to be discovered, and I prefer not to miss anything good if I can help it.

1 hour ago, Matt4gold said:

When in doubt dig it out.   I tend to run mostly wide open and take my chances on what might be under the coil.  

Exactly, and that's the better approach to take, in my opinions as well.  I keep my Discrimination as low as I can tolerate, and reduce Iron Audio Volume, if a detector has it, and work a site and recover all the favorable responses.  Some won't be good, but removing them can also help unmask a good desirable target that was otherwise masked.

Monte

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To completely misquote The Bard, "There are more things in the earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies..." 

Notching is pure personal preference. If it works for you, it's great. As a relative noob on the Nox, I have been tempted many times to just notch and go find some coins. But among all the excellent wisdom and kindly shared information on this forum, someone much wiser than I said to "Get to know what the detector is telling you about a target by learning and listening to the sounds it makes." That has been the hardest thing to learn on this machine for me, but I have forced myself to resist the urge to notch, and some of it is beginning to sink in. About a week ago I was really about to notch out the annoying aluminum foil, ring pulls, square tabs, and even the over abundant Zincolns in a local park that I frequent because I just couldn't stand hearing them anymore, when all of a sudden a rock solid 11 popped up through the trash and it happened to be a 14K white gold ring and my first gold ring! That drove home the advice about learning the sounds the machine makes. I could actually hear the difference between the ring and the common 11 trash. In the same hunt I heard some odd tones in the 20-21 range, which in my park are usually corroding modern pennies, and pulled 2 silver rings.

Now I'm not in any hurray in my parks so I can just plod along at a snails pace and on that hunt I was in Park 2 with the 6" coil. This week I was at the same park in Park 2 with the 11" coil and pulled a solid sounding 21, which I assumed was going to be a penny, and it turned out to be a silver cross pendant. Now this is a super trashy park so Park 2 may not be the best idea, but it's really helping me learn some of the nuances of the sounds the Nox makes and I'm beginning to get a feel for what the machine is trying to tell me.

I totally understand the advantage of notching to run & gun on specific targets, but for me, I'm still learning what my machine is saying, so I choose not to notch.

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Notching 2 to 10 will eliminate any ladies thin rings, like wedding rings, most are in the 1-1.5 gram range and thin. Just sayin. Do your own tests with known gold items and trash items before building your notch system.

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2 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

To completely misquote The Bard, "There are more things in the earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies..." 

Notching is pure personal preference. If it works for you, it's great. As a relative noob on the Nox, I have been tempted many times to just notch and go find some coins. But among all the excellent wisdom and kindly shared information on this forum, someone much wiser than I said to "Get to know what the detector is telling you about a target by learning and listening to the sounds it makes." That has been the hardest thing to learn on this machine for me, but I have forced myself to resist the urge to notch, and some of it is beginning to sink in. About a week ago I was really about to notch out the annoying aluminum foil, ring pulls, square tabs, and even the over abundant Zincolns in a local park that I frequent because I just couldn't stand hearing them anymore, when all of a sudden a rock solid 11 popped up through the trash and it happened to be a 14K white gold ring and my first gold ring! That drove home the advice about learning the sounds the machine makes. I could actually hear the difference between the ring and the common 11 trash. In the same hunt I heard some odd tones in the 20-21 range, which in my park are usually corroding modern pennies, and pulled 2 silver rings.

Now I'm not in any hurray in my parks so I can just plod along at a snails pace and on that hunt I was in Park 2 with the 6" coil. This week I was at the same park in Park 2 with the 11" coil and pulled a solid sounding 21, which I assumed was going to be a penny, and it turned out to be a silver cross pendant. Now this is a super trashy park so Park 2 may not be the best idea, but it's really helping me learn some of the nuances of the sounds the Nox makes and I'm beginning to get a feel for what the machine is trying to tell me.

I totally understand the advantage of notching to run & gun on specific targets, but for me, I'm still learning what my machine is saying, so I choose not to notch.

I totally understand what you're saying. Since I have owned my Nox, and I am still very green, I have  been trying to understand the "language" it is trying to communicate to me. Just when I think I am becoming fluent, it seems to send me a curve ball. I feel an overwhelming sensory overload in some of the places I am detecting and am trying to somewhat tame the signals by notching. I'm sure as time goes by, I will take on the full spectrum of accepted targets. Just wanted some more seasoned professionals opinions about notching. This is becoming an adventure! Thanks for any input!

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I get what you're saying too. I consider myself very green as well compared to many folks here. I think curveballs are just part of the game no matter what level you're playing at. Do what makes you comfortable with the detector as long as you don't give up on it. It really is a fantastic machine and it gets easier the more you use it. When I get overwhelmed with audio fatigue, I switch to Park 1 and work in a less noisy area to give my ears a break. Try out some of the notching techniques and coin shooting programs and see how they work for you in your ground conditions, you might find something that does the job for you in those tough areas. If not, you might try Park 1 and lower the tone volumes of the normal trash ID ranges that way you'll still hear any good targets that are in those ranges but the trash signals won't be as loud on the ears. 

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