Iron Bias - What It Is

[Steve Herschbach]

I’ve been running Iron Bias at 0 since day 1 and posted pretty early on saying so. Usually the only time I don’t is if I revert to stock settings for some reason and forget to dial it back to zero.

If I was not digging any ferrous frankly I would think something is wrong. A machine that never digs ferrous is a machine missing some non-ferrous.

[LukeJMG1986]

I'm confused about iron bias. I hunt a trail head that use to be a junk yard. Needless to say it's packed to the gills with trash. Would I want to slightly increase iron bias? Or leave it at the factory preset (which is zero I believe) Also, will increasing the iron bias increase the odds of missing gold or silver?

[Chase Goldman]

Well things have changed since this was written because ML has come out with an update that includes two different iron bias filters  - The Original called FE and a new one called F2.  F2 seems to have a greater range of effect than FE so I use that as my iron bias filter instead of FE.  The default setting for F2 is 6 for all modes (EQ 800) or 2 for the EQ 600.  The primary purpose of the Iron Bias filter is to force probable iron to sound like iron (low tone) instead of falsing high which tends to happen with bent rusted nails and larger, flat pieces of iron.  It is not 100% effective.  If you push it to high levels, you are more likely to get the iron to false less, but as with any filter you may also suppress the ability of the detector to separate true non-ferrous targets from nearby ferrous junk.  I think running F2 between 4 and 6 (F2 = 4 is approximately equivalent to FE=0) is a good balance between getting less iron falsing while still providing some ability to separate non-ferrous from ferrous targets.  It is not an exact science and any time you use either discrimination alone or in combination with an iron bias filter you run the chance of missing a keeper.  I like to run with the horseshoe button engaged to remove all discrimination even though I use F2 = 4 to 6, so that I can hear the iron tones and decide based on what I am hearing whether I want to dig the target.  An F2 setting of less than 4 tends to get noisier, with F2 = 0 really not a pleasant experience in thick iron.  HTH.

There is more discussion of the effect of the latest Equinox update on the iron bias settings here, advice on how to adjust iron bias by trial and error here, and video showing the difference in iron bias settings FE and F2 in mineralized ground hunting relics here.  Avid beach hunter discusses how iron bias affects beach hunting here and here.  HTH

[Phillips_R]

Is this new filter parameter a required software upgrade that should be made?

 

[Sinclair]

5 hours ago, Phillips_R said:

Is this new filter parameter a required software upgrade that should be made?

 

After the update, you have the ability to switch between the old and the new mode - you loose nothing there.. instead you gain more options.