Tarsacci Cookbook And Best Practices

[JCR]

@Chase Goldman,   I had the same struggle as you in knowing the best practice to set up on mineralized ground. I was second guessing myself too much so I telephoned Dimitar. After thinking over our conversation & putting his suggestions in order, I no longer have any reservations about getting set up effectively on any site regardless of conditions. It took me a while.

My routine is;

1)  Decide on frequency selection based on ground conditions & EMI  and type of desired targets. 12kHz is optimal for iron based red dirt but I use 6.4 a lot.

2) Ground Balance with mid level Sensitivity & Threshold levels. Ground balance in Mixed Mode with Salt OFF.  Ground balance again to confirm. Note GB number. Use the All metal channel of Mixed Mode to monitor your Ground balance. Tracking works okay but only tracks 50 points & the display does not show any change.

3) Turn Salt ON,  either at 0 or a mid Fail Safe number. ( I don't have these Fail Safe numbers memorized. I keep them written down on the side of the arm cuff)  Adjust Salt balance to suite conditions. If you get no real adjustment feedback just keep the Fail Safe number.  With Salt ON, if you re Ground Balance you will get a LOWER GB number than before.  Ground & Salt are interconnected. This is the point I have debated the most. GB with Salt on? or off?  I have not figured out if it makes any difference & never could get Dimitar to say. I just decided a routine & stick to it. What I do works for me. If I re ground balance with Salt On I don't worry about it as long as the ground is quiet.

4) Fine tune Sensitivity & Threshold in response to ground feedback & EMI. Run both as high as you can WITHOUT it being noisy. The unit is at it's best when it is practically quiet.  Lower Sensitivity for high minerals or heavy iron.  Lower Threshold for EMI or wet/conductive/rusty ground.  You rarely have to lower both.  The real depth comes from the Threshold more than high Sensitivity.

5) Special case sites;  In very mild soils inland, keep Ground balance no lower than the 600s.  If hunting mild inland soils with iron trash, raise Ground balance to 800 and Salt to high 40s to better unmask non Ferrous items. These are NASA Tom tricks.

6) Be aware the Ground Balance scale runs from high 400s to 999  THEN wraps back to the beginning of the scale. This is a quirky way to display 999 PLUS.  The scale runs up to an effective 1400 or so but is displayed challenged! 

 Hope this helps. The set up is not really difficult in practice, and that is the key. Getting out there with a stable machine and let it work for you. Mine surprises me almost every time I hunt with it.  Mine is a Relic machine. I don't think I could hunt modern trash like @Geezer,  that's what The Legend is for.

[Chase Goldman]

58 minutes ago, Geezer said:

Relic hunting does not appeal to me, but if it did I would get a Deus II.

I have a Deus 2 and use that 90% of the time, otherwise I'm using a PI in hot dirt.  MDT still goes deeper than the D2 in hot dirt and that is the only reason I hang on to it, but I'll go PI first.  Everywhere else (beach, park, mild dirt relic, machine gun iron, canslaw infested), the D2 kills it for me.  So it's a very niche application where its worth messing with, namely: high iron the PI can't handle in hot dirt where I am going for depth beyond what the D2 can deliver.

1 hour ago, Geezer said:

I set mine at 43 as per Keith Southern and have found it does what I want usually. The only time I run it further is in places that are heavily fertilized. Fertilizer use is what makes this necessary for me in the first place, as I am a park hunter. Some places really gob it on there and it makes a difference to the detector. If the salt balance is too high, the machine gets dull even at low sensitivity. I will lower it on very clean sand if the signal is not coming clean enough, otherwise i just leave it at 43.

Thanks.  I start with 43 too, it's hard for me to figure how to adjust it from there, though. Not sure how the fertilizer translates to my magnetite hot soils, but it's something.  You lost me though when you said with high salt balance the machine gets dull even on low sensitivities.  How do you determine that?  What is telling you that the machine is getting dull and I don't understand why you would lower sensitivity in response to dullness.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, JCR said:

I don't think I could hunt modern trash like @Geezer,  that's what The Legend is for.

A lot of people feel that way. That is why I do it. It is a lot of deep knee bending for pull tabs, but there is gold there. It is my strategy for competing with an incredible amount of competition. No one likes hunting heavy trash, and most will not. This is an opportunity, but not for everyone.

The water hunters here hunt our little beaches and swim areas with all metal mode. An old man cannot compete with that. Young guys with backs that strong for some reason do not have the patience to dig endless pull tabs. There is less gold inland than there used to be when I was a young water hunter, but lots of things are not like they used to be for me anymore.

[Chase Goldman]

18 minutes ago, JCR said:

@Chase Goldman,   I had the same struggle as you in knowing the best practice to set up on mineralized ground. I was second guessing myself too much so I telephoned Dimitar. After thinking over our conversation & putting his suggestions in order, I no longer have any reservations about getting set up effectively on any site regardless of conditions. It took me a while.

My routine is;

1)  Decide on frequency selection based on ground conditions & EMI  and type of desired targets. 12kHz is optimal for iron based red dirt but I use 6.4 a lot.

2) Ground Balance with mid level Sensitivity & Threshold levels. Ground balance in Mixed Mode with Salt OFF.  Ground balance again to confirm. Note GB number. Use the All metal channel of Mixed Mode to monitor your Ground balance. Tracking works okay but only tracks 50 points & the display does not show any change.

3) Turn Salt ON,  either at 0 or a mid Fail Safe number. ( I don't have these Fail Safe numbers memorized. I keep them written down on the side of the arm cuff)  Adjust Salt balance to suite conditions. If you get no real adjustment feedback just keep the Fail Safe number.  With Salt ON, if you re Ground Balance you will get a LOWER GB number than before.  Ground & Salt are interconnected. This is the point I have debated the most. GB with Salt on? or off?  I have not figured out if it makes any difference & never could get Dimitar to say. I just decided a routine & stick to it. What I do works for me. If I re ground balance with Salt On I don't worry about it as long as the ground is quiet.

4) Fine tune Sensitivity & Threshold in response to ground feedback & EMI. Run both as high as you can WITHOUT it being noisy. The unit is at it's best when it is practically quiet.  Lower Sensitivity for high minerals or heavy iron.  Lower Threshold for EMI or wet/conductive/rusty ground.  You rarely have to lower both.  The real depth comes from the Threshold more than high Sensitivity.

5) Special case sites;  In very mild soils inland, keep Ground balance no lower than the 600s.  If hunting mild inland soils with iron trash, raise Ground balance to 800 and Salt to high 40s to better unmask non Ferrous items. These are NASA Tom tricks.

6) Be aware the Ground Balance scale runs from high 400s to 999  THEN wraps back to the beginning of the scale. This is a quirky way to display 999 PLUS.  The scale runs up to an effective 1400 or so but is displayed challenged! 

 Hope this helps. The set up is not really difficult in practice, and that is the key. Getting out there with a stable machine and let it work for you. Mine surprises me almost every time I hunt with it.  Mine is a Relic machine. I don't think I could hunt modern trash like @Geezer,  that's what The Legend is for.

Thanks for this.  Not familiar with the fail safe numbers on salt balance, though.  I aways start in the mid-40's.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Chase Goldman said:

Thanks.  I start with 43 too, it's hard for me to figure how to adjust it from there, though.

If it is not making a difference I leave it at 43. Some say there is a way to optimize it better, but that optimal only lasts for about 25 yards. This is a setting I do not sweat, sensitivity and ground balance make a lot more difference for what I do.

4 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

So it's a very niche application where its worth messing with, namely: high iron the PI can't handle in hot dirt where I am going for depth beyond what the D2 can deliver.

For me it is the reverse. My PI just sits now. I like the look of that Axiom though. There are parks here built over old building sites that will have a lot of nails, but large amounts of big iron is rare where I hunt, but that is easy to size most of the time without bending for it.

 

7 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

You lost me though when you said with high salt balance the machine gets dull even on low sensitivities. 

I meant to say high sensitivity there. Old man moment. I have corrected it.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Thanks for this.  Not familiar with the fail safe numbers on salt balance, though.  I aways start in the mid-40's.

Those fail safe numbers were published somewhere, but I cannot remember for the life of me where. One was 20 something, one was 43. 

22 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Not sure how the fertilizer translates to my magnetite hot soils, but it's something.

Fertilizer in mineralized ground complicates the picture in exactly the same way salt does. Fertilizer actually is mineral salts.

Use what you would use on a black sand saltwater beach and you will not be far off. Places by a road here get road salt plowed up on it making it even worse here. That salt balance makes a difference dealing with aluminum too by taking the edge off foil. It is a lovely thing to have.

22 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

What is telling you that the machine is getting dull

This is harder to explain, but it takes the sharp edge off what should be good signals. I want clean crisp signals for good targets. Hard edge for hard edges. A good pull tab should ring like a bell, and a gold ring too. When you get a pull tab that is in good condition that does not ring that way, something is wrong in the settings or your battery is flat.

You know how you lose small gold signal in salt water? That is what I think it is happening in reverse. Maybe. 

[Chase Goldman]

10 minutes ago, Geezer said:

Those fail safe numbers were published somewhere, but I cannot remember for the life of me where. One was 20 something, one was 43. 

I think it's 28 per the manual, that's the salt beach salt balance starting point per the user manual.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Chase Goldman said:

I think it's 28 per the manual, that's the salt beach salt balance starting point per the user manual.

I knew I saw it somewhere. Imagine me reading the instruction manual. 

Running it at 43 kills most of that little foil and i have yet to find a gold ring it will not hit even turned up like that. Pull tabs are bad enough, all that little foil at ball fields would put me in traction if I was digging that.

[JCR]

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

I think it's 28 per the manual, that's the salt beach salt balance starting point per the user manual.

The so called Fail Safe Salt settings suggested by some experienced MDT users & Dimitar himself are;

For 18 kHz--- Salt  21-23

      12  kHz--- Salt 26-27

       9 kHz--- Salt 30-31

    6.4 kHz--- Salt 34-35

These settings can be safely used if the normal Salt Balancing procedure is inconclusive. I keep this list laminated to the side of my arm cuff.

The separate Salt Balance feature is the key to the MDT's exceptional performance in tough conditions. It is also closely tied to the accuracy of the TIDs. Salt ON, even at 1 allows the machine to really perform.  With Salt off the Tarsacci is unimpressive.

@Geezeralso mentioned the Black Sand function. I personally hardly ever run with Black Sand ON. It kills the sensitivity to a significant degree.  It is effective to knock out EMI and/or tiny target responses.   I run the Tarsacci for depth in bad soil so I try to use a different frequency or Threshold setting to get it to settle down. Black Sand is a pretty heavy filter. NASA Tom has alluded to it being useful in an "unsuspecting" way but has not elaborated. I have not discovered what that might be.

      

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, JCR said:

@Geezeralso mentioned the Black Sand function. I personally hardly ever run with Black Sand ON. It kills the sensitivity to a significant degree.  It is effective to knock out EMI and/or tiny target responses.   I run the Tarsacci for depth in bad soil so I try to use a different frequency or Threshold setting to get it to settle down. Black Sand is a pretty heavy filter. NASA Tom has alluded to it being useful in an "unsuspecting" way but has not elaborated. I have not discovered what that might be.

How right you are JCR. We use the Black Sand or not for our own purpose. You to go deep, me to take the edge off junk when hunting shallow. 

I do not know what Tom’s secret unsuspecting way is either, but I know it really helps with small rusty iron. Trading some depth for a little unmasking potential is worth it to me.