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Help With Too Many Signals And Other


damatman88

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I am curious to hear from other 800 users on this one. I have detected many different sites in three different towns. Most are old public places with a good bit of activity throughout the years. My issue is this: almost without  exception, when I am hunting, there is an overwhelming amount of target signals coming through on almost every swing and it is frustrating to try and discern a good solid repeatable target to dig. I have ground balanced and kept the sensitivity down enough to cut out any EMI as needed. I run in park 1 typically. Also, when I have the horseshoe on, I have a hard time finding a clean spot to ground balance due to iron signals. I can't believe I am really getting that many target signals, so it concerns me I may have an issue. As a side note, this does not happen at the beach (salt water) when I detect there-it runs smoothly. One more thing: I have noticed since I have had my 800 (since August) that when I pinpoint, I sometimes have to reset by getting out of pinpoint mode and back in for it to work. Sorry for rambling, but any suggestions are appreciated!

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Whenever I have more signals than I want to dig, I crank up the discrimination. Most of the trash is usually in the teens so I disc out everything below 20 or even 25. Once you've dug all the high conductors, open up the disc a bit down to 15 or 20 and dig those, and so on down to the single numbers until the site is devoid of non ferrous signals.

But it doesn't end there. After digging all the easy signals, you can then work on getting the deep stuff and masked targets. That's when you can try using different settings and various single frequencies to get all those older targets hiding deep within the iron.

It's normal for iron to give false high tones, especially from nails. Not much you can do about that. If there is a lot of thin flat iron or bottle caps giving high tones, raising the iron bias might help eliminate some of it. 

Setting the Recovery Speed at 7 or 8 in heavy trash or iron will make it easier to pick out the good repeatable signals. Lowering the Recovery to 4 or 5 will increase depth but might make it difficult to pick out targets in trashy situations.

Your pinpoint problem may be that you are trying to pinpoint with the coil over the target. Try lifting the coil off the ground a bit and off to the side before swinging over the target. If there is too much metal in the ground, it may be impossible to use pinpoint mode.

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When I started learning my 800 here in central ILLINOIS, I had to turn the sense down to about 15 due to the amount of trash in this area. Even in my grandmothers back yard it seems as though on every swing I will still get a signal from something. I will pause and go over the same spot several times to see what the ID number is before digging or passing on the object. When doing this I have found that I am digging a lot less trash, and I am learning the difference of the tones. The 800 is very sensitive to everything in my ground here and it will take many more hours to learn how to be better with it.

All I use are the factory presets and just lower the sense, and I have been able to find more really good items if I am patient.

When using the pinpoint mode, I will stop over the target and raise the detector higher, and then lower it to get the best location and ID number.

Good luck and happy hunting.

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Maybe also try to run without ground balancing, as there may not be a need to do so on the Nox if the ground/site doesn't warrant it, or if you cannot find clean ground to GB.  You might find his may settle the detector down more and run more stable without excessive falsing.  Worth a try.

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Sounds like you are just hunting in trashy areas.  Not much you can do beyond what the first two posters have suggested.  Good suggestions by the way.  If I'm coin shooting I turn all metal off and notch out 15 through 19.

Have you tried detecting in areas known to be “clean” just to be sure and check that the abundance of target sounds decreases?

The pinpoint issue you mentioned is a known problem that has persisted since day 1.  Try pausing a few seconds after locating a target and raise your coil before initiating the pinpoint function.  It almost seems like the detector needs to settle out before pin pointing.  I've had days where the need to reset the pinpointer is less than others days.  Also, the “need to exit pinpoint and restart pinpoint” seems less frequent in colder weather, as in the 30s and 40s here in VT.

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12 hours ago, damatman88 said:

I have ground balanced and kept the sensitivity down enough to cut out any EMI as needed. I run in park 1 typically. Also, when I have the horseshoe on, I have a hard time finding a clean spot to ground balance due to iron signals. I can't believe I am really getting that many target signals, so it concerns me I may have an issue.

OK, even though you say you have ground balance, I am almost certain what is going on here is that you are being fooled by ground noise, especially since it is happening at multiple sites.  The thing that is cluing me in is that you are saying in no disc (horseshoe) mode you are having a tough time trying to find a place to ground balance.  Ground noise sounds like iron when you have the horseshoe button on (no discrimination) and you don't have a sat GB so you fool yourself into thinking you have a ferrous target under the coil.  What you need to do is just ignore the signal if what it is a -9 to -7 TID, or GB in disc, or use pinpoint mode to verify you actually don't have a target under the coil, and then definitely just do an auto ground balance wherever you are standing.  If you are regularly hunting with horseshoe no disc mode without a proper ground balance it will sound like the whole site is littered with iron, that's ground noise.  Frankly, no site is typically so littered with stuff that it is impossible to find a clean spot to GB (though some small patches of ground may have that problem), so the fact this is happening at multiple sites is typically a clue, you just have to do the GB again.  Frankly, unless you are doing a GB right above a strong ferrous target like a horseshoe you are not really going to get a false GB setting, most GB noise will be eliminated and other than ground noise in no disc mode, having a less than perfect ground balance should really not impact non-ferrous target detection (other than those really deep non-ferrous targets that may have been down-averaged into ferrous TIDs.  So just do a quick scan with the pinpointer, listen for silence and GB there.  Remember that Ground Balance and noise cancel are not universal settings so you have to do a GB and Noise Cancel for each mode you use at a site before you use that mode.  HTH.

12 hours ago, damatman88 said:

One more thing: I have noticed since I have had my 800 (since August) that when I pinpoint, I sometimes have to reset by getting out of pinpoint mode and back in for it to work. Sorry for rambling, but any suggestions are appreciated!

Known quirk with Equinox that ML has not been able to completely fix even with several updates.  Folks just live with it, reset the GB and have another go.  Minor annoyance.  Make sure you have the latest 3.0 firmware update installed though as they do appear to incrementally improve it with subsequent software updates and frankly, I have personally seen no downside to having the latest firmware installed.

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One beginner tip for dealing with Iron falsing is to walk around the target while swinging the coil. If the high tone disappears at certain angles(usually 90 degrees), the target is very likely iron. This is true 95% of the time. For now, just dig targets that give 360 degree tones.

Like Chase said, any pinpointing quirks will be nothing more than a minor annoyance once you get used to using it. I'm perfectly happy using pinpoint myself. It just requires a little technique.

You should definitely do your updates if you haven't already. There is no downside. The updates are improvements.

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On 12/21/2020 at 5:53 PM, damatman88 said:

I am curious to hear from other 800 users on this one.

I forgot to mention, turn off your cell phone and leave it in your car.

Stay away from power lines as they also now contain WIFI.

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Chase Goldman.    “Remember that Ground Balance and noise cancel are not universal settings so you have to do a GB and Noise Cancel for each mode you use at a site before you use that mode. 
 

Does that apply if your just changing frequencies also?

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That applies to changing frequencies also. As a new user, I would leave it on multi unless EMI is so bad that multi is unusable. 

Contrary (just a little) to what Chase said, there are places on this planet where sweeping the coil over the ground with nothing rejected (-9 to +40 accepted) even with a proper ground balance, will result in a ton of extraneous ground noise. I get to detect often in some of these places and add thousands of aluminum shards and trash to that mix and like you said, it can be overwhelming and hard to find a place to ground balance. I have ground balanced over sidewalks, tree stumps, tree roots, rocks, a patch of ground surrounded by targets, you name it and I have tried it. I have always found enough silent ground however somehow. On hot ground, whether it is from iron mineralization, coal cinders, fertilizer, organic matter (cow or other manure) or salt conditions, a good ground balance is essential. So find a way to do it if you need too.

Pinpointing in noisy ground conditions can be an adventure whether the noise is caused by mineralization or thousands of targets. Like others have said, if you are having problems getting a proper pinpoint tone, raise the coil off the ground and to the side of the target you want to pinpoint and press the pinpoint button, release it and sweep the coil over your target. If you don't have a good ground balance or you have pressed the pinpoint button over an adjacent target, all hell can break loose in pinpoint mode. On top of that you do have the quirk already mentioned with either too soft volume or too loud volume. Just try pinpointing again which usually takes care of it. When I am hunting using the pinpoint function I will usually have to reset it 5 to 10 times out of 100 targets especially in a really target rich environment.

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