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Threshold Adjustment


TripleT

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You can get the same affect if you have an 800, by running in AM...... reducing your iron volume to 2.  It will give you a mild threshold of sorts allowing you to hear iron...... but not to the point it might overwhelm a weak target.    Chase is this what you are doing?   If so its possible the headphones arent quit responsive enough to like you said......... a weak sounding target be it deep or tiny.  But that threshold to me is just more noise i can do without.

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5 hours ago, dewcon4414 said:

You can get the same affect if you have an 800, by running in AM...... reducing your iron volume to 2.  It will give you a mild threshold of sorts allowing you to hear iron...... but not to the point it might overwhelm a weak target.    Chase is this what you are doing?   If so its possible the headphones arent quit responsive enough to like you said......... a weak sounding target be it deep or tiny.  But that threshold to me is just more noise i can do without.

No, I run iron volume at default.  I have just noticed the odd blanking of threshold in AM mode but have not investigated it in detail to determine what is going on.  Didn't really impact what I was doing so I moved on, it was just something that made me wonder because it was not something I expected to hear (or not hear, lol) based on the ML description of reference threshold as outlined in Steve's post above.  It seems that Equinox may suppress the threshold a split second before a valid target signal sounds off, so it could be a very weak signal attempting to break the threshold, but again I have not attempted to characterize it in testing.  It is just a trivial curiosity for me at this point.

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  • 6 months later...
On 2/28/2019 at 11:19 AM, Chase Goldman said:

I have just noticed the odd blanking of threshold in AM mode but have not investigated it in detail to determine what is going on.

 

On 9/21/2019 at 4:42 PM, FloridaSon said:

I noticed then even when in AM with no discrimination. Threshold will occasionally blank or null.

Add my name to the list.  I've heard nulls to threshold in AM and have been clueless as to the cause.  Note that Tom Dankowski has said that threshold on the Equinox modes other than Gold mode is worthless (my words, but also my interpretation of his sentiment).  So maybe we're making much ado about nothing.

Edit:  I realize I was being lazy and would do everyone better if I found the exact quote from Tom D.  Here it is from http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,166825,page=4

I never use Threshold. It does absolutely nothing in Park Mode 1 & 2, Field Mode 1 & 2 and Beach Mode 1 & 2. It has nothing to do with target-signal....or carrier.
Threshold is a critical performer in Prospecting Mode 1 & 2. . . . . . yet; needs to be specifically tailored to each individuals hearing abilities (inabilities)….. and specific headphones.

 

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Hi,

the threshold tone in all four modes is very important to me and is definitely not "worthless".

The naturally occurring tiny iron particles in the soil in my area from decomposing iron rich rocks from the ancestral Rocky Mountains are easily detectable by both the Nox 600 and 800 in every mode. If I hunt with the horseshoe button engaged (I just can't bring myself to call it All Metal and I wish Minelab called it something else in the Equinox manual and had labeled it differently on the X-Terras since calling it All Metal conjures up all sorts of confusion like it will give the user more depth by pressing the button, etc.....no it won't) or with nearly the entire target ID range accepted other than maybe -9, -8 and -7 in Park, Field or Beach modes I will hear hundreds of iron targets quickly during my detecting session and go nuts. So, I definitely use a threshold tone in EVERY mode in my area so I can hear the iron particles or man-made iron targets nulling the threshold when I am coin and jewelry hunting and I use the horseshoe button for actual target ID checking.

With the horseshoe button engaged in any mode in the urban and suburban areas I detect in, there are breaks in the threshold even with my coil pointing at the sky, the horizon or of course near the ground, but motionless. I can only assume it is very low frequency EMI or something similar which is not registering as a numerical target ID due to signal strength or some other factor but it does disrupt the reference threshold tone in Park Field and Beach and also disrupts the slightly more traditional threshold tone in the Gold modes even more.

Jeff

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Look at it this way. Let’s say you reject nothing and hear all targets, with low tones indicating ferrous targets. This is great for alerting you to target density and the need to slow down. I know in the U.K. in particular I wanted to know about an increase in ferrous target density as it possibly means an old habitation site.

But maybe you hate getting machine gun ferrous tones. Using a threshold and blocking/notching out the ferrous now has a silencing/nulling of the threshold when you run across ferrous. You are replacing a ferrous tone with a nulling of the threshold. This may be more pleasant for some people.

That is what a reference threshold is for - alerting you to the presence of a rejected target instead of not knowing about it at all.

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In hunting our Florida beaches, I prefer 0 Threshold and all metal...particularly in the dry sand.  In the wet sand, I sometimes use disc but still run 0 threshold.

Works for me...

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On 9/24/2019 at 1:54 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

Look at it this way. Let’s say you reject nothing and hear all targets, with low tones indicating ferrous targets. This is great for alerting you to target density and the need to slow down. I know in the U.K. in particular I wanted to know about an increase in ferrous target density as it possibly means an old habitation site.

But maybe you hate getting machine gun ferrous tones. Using a threshold and blocking/notching out the ferrous now has a silencing/nulling of the threshold when you run across ferrous. You are replacing a ferrous tone with a nulling of the threshold. This may be more pleasant for some people.

That is what a reference threshold is for - alerting you to the presence of a rejected target instead of not knowing about it at all.

Since sensitivity sets the level of signal strength put thru to the headphones  blanking of the reference threshold can be useful as a gauge to reduce sensitivity and quiet things down in a busy iron site where you are in an almost constant null.

It works especially well for me on the X-Terra but it's not the unmasker the Eqx is.

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  • 1 year later...
On 2/26/2019 at 6:23 AM, Chase Goldman said:

I have heard threshold blanking even in AM, so not sure if that is just a really weak target or noise attempting to break the threshold.  The way I read it this should not happen if nothing is rejected because if not in gold mode this is not a "true" threshold. I just ignore it as an anomaly.  Would probably not do that in gold mode, though.

Same experience here too. I just attributed it to scattered ground mineralzation, or the tiniest of metal (such as the iron fuzz you get on a scoop magnet at the beach) It doesn't seem to effect the operation of the detector, so, I never investigated it any further. I've tried silent search in all the detectors I've owned that had that option, but, never got used to it. I always use a threshold now. I just think it gives me more information. I don't mind knowing that there is a "bad" target in the ground. It can sometimes alert me to a good target close by. In the past, with some machines, running no threshold would sometimes not respond to a deep, barely perceptible target. It just wouldn't break the threshold to make a sound, whereas, if you have a threshold, you could hear the slight variation in the threshold tone. Since a threshold tone doesn't bother me, I'll continue to use, since it doesn't appear to hurt anything doing so.

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On 9/29/2020 at 10:49 AM, cudamark said:

I don't mind knowing that there is a "bad" target in the ground. It can sometimes alert me to a good target close by.

This is also one of my clues.  I'll dig a bad target to see its size and shape and layer it is in on my beaches.  It slows me down and helps me stay in a patch or find one.  I enhance those 'bad' signals by increasing that iron volume.  It is a target to me with meaning and I can decide to dig it or not.  Sometimes I get blanking on them without a threshold.  A tent spike gives my 800 a fit because of its shape I think. (It screams on my 3030.) It wants to blank and ignore them so I get a partial signal when I interrogate. 

I can't use it that way in all situations, especially the desert looking for gold.  The hot rocks need to be ignored as much as possible so that iron volume is low.

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