Questions For 50 Tone Users

[flakmagnet]

On 3/1/2019 at 10:17 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

I don't count on purity of tone - it's simply something I look for. If you do not want to miss targets get a GPZ and dig everything. Everything short of that is a judgment call but attempting to explain nuance is near impossible in writing. That's why it is kind of pointless to weigh in on these sorts of things. Everyone calls their own shots and everyone has a different idea of what makes a good target or a poor one. I am either digging everything, or I am making judgement calls and without exception anyone that does so is leaving good targets behind due to bad calls. Anyone thinking otherwise is kidding themselves.

This is a killer post. It says more in a paragraph than whole threads. Detecting is hugely comprised of judgement calls. Anyone who thinks it's a matter of empirically following tones and vdi's is missing a gigantic area of detecting knowledge; experience, judgement and many times intuition and sometimes flat out guessing.  

[GB_Amateur]

Had just an hour yesterday but given the bad weather coming our way (considerably worse other places, though) I decided to take advantage.  Went to my recent best producing site, a school yard.  11 inch stock coil, Park 1, ground balanced, recovery speed = 5, iron bias = 0, gain = 20, no discrimination (i.e. horseshoe toggled), 50 tones!  Dug a few moderns in the first 15-20 minutes.  Then I got a solid mid-20's signal.  Did the usual 90 degree angle of attack method.  One direction was steady around 25 or so.  The other direction was swinging from about 23 to 28.  I didn't notice any obvious nearby iron grunts but my brain is pretty good tuning those out.

Six inches later I saw the sweet white color (see photo below).  This one is well worn -- probably About Good condition.  No mintmark (Philadelphia) and weighed in at 2.22 grams.  Compare that to a freshly minted dime of 2.50 grams so 11% loss due to wear.  Best WAG is that this was dropped in the 1940's.  Nothing special in terms of scarcity, but silver always gives me a good feeling.

"Beginner's luck" (with 50 tones) is a serious candidate for the reason I got this nice result.  But I was surprised at how smooth this hunt went.  It's not my trashiest site by far but anthing with ~100 years of lost items that hasn't been searched to death is going to have trash.  I still have a lot to learn (actually that goes without saying, always) but for the first time ever I have a good feeling using multitones, and that includes previous attempts with other detectors.

Thanks, again, for all the responses.  I can't wait to get another decent weather day (next weekend?).

[Chase Goldman]

WTG GB!

[flakmagnet]

Good find!

 

[Gerry in Idaho]

Thanks for the detailed "Magic Settings" which I am sure many people are setting up as we read.?  You could have just as easily posted a pic of the Barber Dime and got some ?'s up, but the extra details is what helps so many others.  Even mentioning the smooth even wear of the Barber  and actual weight loss compared to a new one...and realizing it was probably a later drop coin, is golden.  Keep it up GB, I like your swing.

[mn90403]

On 3/1/2019 at 10:17 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

I don't count on purity of tone - it's simply something I look for. If you do not want to miss targets get a GPZ and dig everything. Everything short of that is a judgment call but attempting to explain nuance is near impossible in writing. That's why it is kind of pointless to weigh in on these sorts of things. Everyone calls their own shots and everyone has a different idea of what makes a good target or a poor one. I am either digging everything, or I am making judgement calls and without exception anyone that does so is leaving good targets behind due to bad calls. Anyone thinking otherwise is kidding themselves.

When I was reading the beginning of this thread the GPZ came to mind.  It has no TID screen.  How many tones does it have?  We consider it to be the best, most sensitive gold detector out there.  Could someone use it as their only detector?  Sure.  Would I be digging a lot of targets that would be a waste of time?  Sure.  As Steve says it is a judgment call and sometimes you only have a limited amount of time to hunt a site and you or it will be gone.  Sometimes you only have so many holes you want to dig for that session.  Minelab (and all manufacturers) has made many 'judgment calls' for us by the way they set up the machine from the factory and the controls they allow us to change.  Ground balancing is a 'judgment call' of sorts and 'Iron Bias' is another judgment setting, etc, etc.  All of that being said there are times (quickly walking a beach line) when going less than 50 tones to cover an area faster is a better option for me.  I believe on the beach I sometimes miss targets if the machine (and my brain) is trying to process everything too quickly.  I would compare this to the 'find patch' setting on the GPZ which lets it process differently.  The 50 tones are king after you find that patch.

Mitchel

[Cal_Cobra]

On 3/1/2019 at 8:53 PM, Gerry in Idaho said:

Tones and the more of them is what I call "Music to the ears".

While I agree this is true when it comes to Minelabs, I've seen other detector vendors try to add "99 tones/delta pitch/fill-in-the-blank)" tones to their detectors, but the audio they convey is harsh and digital sounding, whereas Minelab has proven itself to be able to give us smoother, analog like audio which is more pleasing to the ears.  My point being that just more tones, doesn't always equate to better audio intelligence, sometimes it equates to audio fatigue.  

[Chase Goldman]

12 hours ago, mn90403 said:

When I was reading the beginning of this thread the GPZ came to mind.  It has no TID screen.  How many tones does it have?  We consider it to be the best, most sensitive gold detector out there.  Could someone use it as their only detector?  Sure.  Would I be digging a lot of targets that would be a waste of time?  Sure.  As Steve says it is a judgment call and sometimes you only have a limited amount of time to hunt a site and you or it will be gone.  Sometimes you only have so many holes you want to dig for that session.  Minelab (and all manufacturers) has made many 'judgment calls' for us by the way they set up the machine from the factory and the controls they allow us to change.  Ground balancing is a 'judgment call' of sorts and 'Iron Bias' is another judgment setting, etc, etc.  All of that being said there are times (quickly walking a beach line) when going less than 50 tones to cover an area faster is a better option for me.  I believe on the beach I sometimes miss targets if the machine (and my brain) is trying to process everything too quickly.  I would compare this to the 'find patch' setting on the GPZ which lets it process differently.  The 50 tones are king after you find that patch.

Mitchel

100% agree that use of 50 tones is situational.  It is what I use most of the time, but I have no problem just switching Park 1 on and going with 5 tones and the other settings defaults for a casual coin shoot on a ball field or going with Field 1 on a dry beach and trying to cherry pick deep high conductors in 2-tones.  For the same reasons Mitchel points out above, the limitations of the site (manicured lawn - meaning more precise/selective digging) or time available at a site will determine your approach (e.g., grid it vs. cherry picking vs. canvassing it with more than one mode or detector).