Lodge Scent

How about a probe that would act like a coil and show the VDI on the controller screen and give the audio tone of the target. Hey I had one of those Sunray DX-1 probes on my old DFX back in the day that did exactly that except it wasn't wireless. 😉

F350, the thanks go to you for turning me on General and Full Tones. I hardly dig any trash mostly because these are older colonial sites out in the woods with almost zero modern trash. It's either iron or it's a keeper. Or sometimes it's both iron and a keeper. 😉 Like you say it is easy enough to ID the iron by just turning on it. The reason why I am digging mostly mid tone targets is because these sites have been pounded for years. Any easy high tone and even most of the challenging high tones have been sniffed out. There are still some left for sure but they are heavily masked. These sites I hunt have a lot of iron even away from the cellar hole. Iron that's 200 to 300 years old gets very crusty and is very prone to falsing, especially in Full Tones. But those mid conductor tones just stand out even when next to a falsing piece of old iron. This last hunt, I had the Reactivity set at 0.5. I was amazed at how deep it hit on some of the small buttons and bits of lead. It is a tombac killer. That silvery button is a tombac, just at the right angle to reflect the light. I had pounded these sites with the HF coil with the D1 (and every other coil). But the D2 is just that much better. GB Amateur, I find that pewter buttons can come in anywhere in the 40's and 50's with the Deus. It does make a difference what frequencies you are hunting with. The lower the frequency band the lower the VDI.

Been using F350's Relic Reaper with just a few tweaks to suit my specific site conditions. Last couple of hunts were similar to the previous hunts using the Reaper. I've been digging lots of buttons and pewter and lead bits. These are sites that have been heavily hunted. First pic from my previous hunt shows 24 buttons from 1 site. This site had given up over a hundred buttons to my D1 but I hadn't hit it with the D2. The second pic is from another worn out site that I had hit with both the D1 and D2 over the years. I was surprised I dug that many non ferrous targets from this site this morning. But the Relic Reaper is no joke. Lodge

Is it time to move beyond Whites? The answer might depend on they type of detecting you like to do. I used a DFX for many years and made a lot of great finds with it. It was one tough unit. I then got an XP Deus 1. For me, that was the end of the road for my DFX. I hunt iron-laden cellar hole sites in the middle of the woods. I can't think of any time where I regretted not having my old DFX instead of my Deus. It was just the superior tool for what I was doing. The guy I sold my DFX to, had a DFX and got rid of it. He tried several other detectors but went back to the DFX. He was a park hunter and in his opinion, the DFX target ID was the best.

That was good CPT. The pinpoint function is definitely useful for more than just centering the target for digging. Like a lot of folks, I use it in iron sometimes to see I am actually over a good nonferrous target or if I am just falsing off of the tip of a longish piece of iron.

Agreed, the pending D2 update won't be life-changing. It will likey just fix a few bugs, maybe make the interface a bit more freindly, and enhance performance to a limited degree. But if they only fix the annoying iron falsing, it will be dramatic enough for me. 😀

I could not agree more Colonel. It really is a superior pack. There was no skimping in the quality of materials or workmanship. Well thought out design too. My one concern was would I be able to stuff a winter coat in it with all my othe gear. Often it might be in the teens when I head out early morning but when it gets into the thirties, the heavy jacket is coming off. I am able to squish it into the main compartment with the shaft assembly etc.

Nice one F350! Glad the Reaper performed for you in those conditions. 8 miles of swinging a coil is a good hunt at 36, never mind at 63. I have a year on you but like you say, the Deus is light enough so it is really just all about keeping your legs in shape.

Nice hunt F350! And a beautiful day for it. Six miles of swinging the coil is no easy feat! Good thing you swing the Deus.

That was a fine hunt there CPT! I spend a good amount of time over targets cycling through programs like you did to see what combo of settings might sound better. Probably not the most efficient use of my time but I like doing it and I learn from it. F350's Reaper certainly has inspired me to take a new approach in setting up my programs.

Agreed, Iffy knows his stuff. With both the Manticore and the Deus, there were certainly other strategies that he could have used in this test. The settings he used were not optimal for unmasking in my opinion. But he never said they were and that wasn't the point of his video anyway. He did a good job showing that Reactivity and various filter settings can make a big difference.

F350, you get an award for finding two of the gnarliest but very cool coins that I have seen posted in some time. 😉

I agree 100% TJ. There are instances where filters will better alert you to targets than using no filters. Actually in a very real sense, EVERY single setting in a detector is a filter of some sort. If you hunt in 4kHz, you will filter out a lot of small low conducting buttons. If you run Reactivity at 5, you will filter out that Large Cent at 11 inches. I ran my D1 wide open most of the time, but seeing how Park with its high iron filters sniffed out some deep iron-masked goodies, that caught my attention. Sure other programs with less or no filtering could sometimes hit those masked targets AFTER I knew there was something there and I could work the coil around the target. But with a normal coil swing and not knowing there was something there, those other programs just didn't respond in a way to make me stop and investigate further. The brain is indeed the best filter, but it can be enhanced with thoughful applications of the detector's filters.

Nice digs CPT. Though my knees ache a bit just looking at all the targets you recovered. 😉 Good work on sniffing out that tiny silver. Interesting observation that Sensitive FT didn't hit quite as cleanly as Fast FT. Were you running the same Disc or lack or Disc in both?

All those would be nice improvements. But what I really want are the 2 letter/number slots for naming custom programs that they took away!

I've worked with Park a good bit and was surprised, actually very surprised how it performed. Park features a Bottle Cap Reject of 5 and a Silencer of 3. That is some serious iron filtering. What surprised me was that I dug deep iron-masked targets at a few sites that I have worn out over the years. For an iron choked cellar hole site, it's worth going over it with Park to see what may still be hiding next to a deep crusty old square nail or bean pot fragment. Raise the Sensitivity if you can.

Any neuroscientists on the forum? You could be on to something Okie. I wonder if there might actually be an advantage to forcing your brain to focus on two completely different audio inputs at the same time. If we can get the left side of our brains to focus on a Pod Cast or music, that might allow our subconscious brain to focus on the detector audio. Your subconscious brain is very sensitive to picking up on subtle auditory changes. I can see it now. In 10 years from now we will all be swinging detectors with controllers that have electrodes that attach to our heads. Our brains will be the ultimate Discrimination circuit. You heard it here first. 😁

Thanks for all the feedback folks! I do appreciate it. CPT and all of you that hunt in sites with modern trash, hats off to you. I don't how you do it. I hate to whine about iron falsing when that is the only thing I have to deal with at my old colonial era homestead sites.

I tried the Sensitive Full Tone program last week. It surprised me by sniffing out a few buttons from a cellar hole site that hardly ever gives up a nonferrous target anymore. One major negative for me with this program was the iron falsing. It was very distracting particularly because it would show VDIs from low 70s to mid-80s. Increasing the Silencer or Bottle Cap Reject didn’t help. I ended up just ignoring all high tones then eventually just notched 70 to 99. Of course, that quieted down the machine, but a notch like that is only safe to use on your most pounded sites. But the program showed promise. I used it today at another worn out site and was even more impressed when it sniffed out 9 nonferrous targets (all mid conductors). I made a few changes that made it more usable. I had the Sensitivity at 95. I lowered it to 90 to see if it would help with the falsing but it made no difference, so I put it back to 95. Sensitivity at 95 gave a noticably stronger signal over a good target compared to 90. This program runs at a negative Disc of -6.7. I raised it to 7 but that really didn’t help quiet things down either, so I ran it with the negative Disc. When I got into the heavy iron and got sick of the all the falsing, I Notched out 70-77 and then also 97-99. Once again, this was a pounded site and the odds of a big silver or copper still lurking about was very slim. The notching really helped eliminate a lot of the falsing and made those mid conductor tones stand out in Full Tones. A couple of tombacs were really "fuzzy" becaus eof the iron but had enough of the midtone to make me dig. I used PWM but square tones might help even more. All targets had iron nearby or right in the hole with the good target. I used Reactivity of 2.5 and then 3 or even 4 in the very heavy iron. This could be a killer program if I can deal with the iron falsing. All this high-end notching is OK on my pounded sites, but I would not want to use it on a new site. The Full Tones did provide good audio clues. Most of iron that was falsing was easy enough to ID as iron with the Iron Volume at 4. Sometimes a quick swing around the target worked and a quick pinpoint showed that the good audio signal was off the tip target, giving it away as iron. Like I said, it was easy enough to ID the iron, but I would prefer NOT to have the falsing to begin with. I had used Full Tones all the time for the first couple years with my D1 but hadn’t used it at all for the past 5 years just because after using Multi Tones for a while, Full Tones just wasn't all that pleasant on the ears. I am definitely going to do some more work with this program. Any suggestions to tame that iron falsing would be most appreciated! Jeff

Well done. That is a pile of lead!

That is a great find Palzynski! Very cool. Always nice when your "Plan B" produces a good find.

WOW! What a beauty. The anaerobic muck on a beach or a bog is the only place you will find a 300 year old buckle in that remarkable condition. I can only dream of one ever coming out of my ground that nice. Great find.

I used Pitch in Square Tones on my last couple of hunts CPT and liked it. I can't make a judgement at this point on whether I think for me it offers more audio clues than PWM. Because Pitch in Square Tones is new to me, I am paying closer attention to the audio. It might be the fact I am paying closer attention because it is new, is the reason I put a few more iron masked targets in my finds bag. 😉 It's funny, I do think that is a real phenomenom. I'll try a new program or settings and I defintiely will pay more attention. Maybe that's the key to detecting. Mix it up and don't get complacent! 😁

I used Full Tones for the couple of years with my D1 and liked it. Then I started using Pitch and Multitones. Now 10 years later, Full Tones to me is like nails on a chalkboard. 😁 But if it will put more finds in my pouch, I'll learn to like it again.😉

Mental detecting funk? Frustrated?? Lost your confidence ??? Best cure is to hang your detector on the wall for a month. Clear your mind. Sip some good bourbon or rye. Or book a detecting trip to the UK. Either one should snap you out of it.