Rudimentary ETrac Questions

[z118]

First, thanks all for the tips and offers of assistance in my post yesterday.

It is a bitter happenstance that on my first full day with the Etrac and no family obligations to keep me from detecting it is of course POURING RAIN. >:\ But, the ground was getting pretty dry and hard so I suppose in the long run the rain is a good thing.

I have a few perhaps overly basic questions with the Etrac.

I'm not quite able to get my head around the two dimensions of discrimination. All other detectors with which I am familiar (admittedly not too many) only discriminate along one scale. The higher discriminations is set the more items drop out, starting with iron, then foil, nickels, can slaw, tabs, zinc pennies, etc. Various types of metals fit into the scale inherently based on their conductivity, but that natural spot on the scale can shift up or down based on size and shape. Silver for instance will tend to ring up very high on the scale, but a very small piece will show up lower. At least this is my understanding.

So how are these two dimensions of discrimination working? On one range the Etrac is checking for levels of iron, and on the other conductivity. I guess I don't understand the benefit of eliminating items based on their conductivity if I have the ability to eliminate iron based on some other method.

Perhaps how I have hunted with the Sov is coloring my perspective here. I hunt in discrimination mode with discrimination as low as it will go. I never turn it up. I never use notch. I like iron knocked out and I like to hear the tones for every other target I pass over. I can tell with very good accuracy what is junk and what is not by the tones. But I mostly dig it all regardless. In general, I am not hunting sites heavily trash infested with trash to begin with. If I'm going to miss something I'd rather miss it because I heard the tone and decided not to dig rather than missing it because the machine discriminated it out.

Take, for example the ETrac's factory preset coins mode disc pattern. What is up with the disced out area towards the top of the pattern to the left of center? What kind of items fall in that area? Same question for the disced out bar in the top right of the pattern. Wouldn’t I want to dig a highly conductive target with low ferrous? Or are items in this range likely very big or something?

Quickmask seems a lot more sensible to me. Other than hearing more signals, what will I lose if I just hunt in quickmask with the upper end of the ferrous scale knocked out?

As for tones... what is going on with Multi tone mode? I get that it is giving more than one tone at once. Are there really only four tones total though? It seems like in tone ID I can set the machine to break the range of targets in 1, 2, or 4 tones or I can have it sound any and all of the four different tones on the same target as appropriate. Is this correct? Am I also correct in assuming the E-trac does not have variable tones in the same way as the Sov?

I see that I can tweak the thresh hold tone. Is the threshold tone NOT impacted by targets in the same way it was on the Sov? Meaning with the threshold return after a signal at the same tone regardless of the tone of the signal?

Do I hear the threshold tone continuously beneath the tone for a target? It seemed that way during my brief hunt yesterday.

My apologies for the long winded post, and thanks in advance again for everyone’s insight. I realize I’m likely coming at this with too much of the Sov GT in mind, but I think that this will work for me at least until I get a good handle on the Etrac, especially given the spots that I tend to hunt now. I won’t be breaking into any new territory until I have the Etrac well in hand (or at least somewhat well in hand).

Thanks!

[randy]

Same question for the disced out bar in the top right of the pattern. Wouldn’t I want to dig a highly conductive target with low ferrous? Or are items in this range likely very big or something?


My understanding is that this is to knock out ferrous wrap. I think I've noticed this on iron targets. I think this also knocks out big silver like silver dollars and big pendants, so I keep it open. Don't know that I'll ever find any, but the ferrous wrap doesn't bother me. (And I don't own a silver dollar to test it, either). I've attached my pattern, but sometimes it gets too overwhelming for me at a trashy site so I have another that I switch to just for silvers. I'm getting more and more comfortable with the more open pattern at all sites tho. I don't know what sort of targets live in the upper left either. Hopefully not $20 gold pieces :crazy:. I certainly don't think it is the optimal pattern, but I haven't experimented much with this yet.

The other questions I'd sound more clueless if I took a stab at them. I would also recommend Andy Sabishch's book -- I found it helpful.

[coinnut]

Here we go Z lol


I'm not quite able to get my head around the two dimensions of discrimination. All other detectors with which I am familiar (admittedly not too many) only discriminate along one scale. The higher discriminations is set the more items drop out, starting with iron, then foil, nickels, can slaw, tabs, zinc pennies, etc. Various types of metals fit into the scale inherently based on their conductivity, but that natural spot on the scale can shift up or down based on size and shape. Silver for instance will tend to ring up very high on the scale, but a very small piece will show up lower. At least this is my understanding.

So how are these two dimensions of discrimination working? On one range the Etrac is checking for levels of iron, and on the other conductivity. I guess I don't understand the benefit of eliminating items based on their conductivity if I have the ability to eliminate iron based on some other method.



I guess the easiest way to start is, that no detectors actually identifies the metal. There is no real target analyzation being done, just observation. The E Trac does this by taking a reading of the target that has been lit up so to speak, by the magnetic field we have generated. The target's small magnetic field gives up some information on it. Some of the info it gives up is the time it takes for the target to shed the small field that was generated on it (I believe they call it an Eddy current). This gives the detector something to look at. Different metals, different decay times. Most machines take these times and look into a library of known (researched) targets that are stored in memory. When they find a match they display a number. That is why canslaw can fool it. If it were analyzing the metal, it would always say aluminum, but it isn't. There are many ways for the machine to look at that target. I'm guessing Minelab takes two different approaches from the same signal it receives. One is labeled FE and the other is CO. I forgot who (maybe Andy Sabish) once said that they could have called one apples and the other oranges lol The Ferrous (FE) signals are just one way of analyzing that signal. The Conductive (CO) is another way and you can compare it to your single scale that most people are familiar with. The only difference is it goes from 1-50 instead of 1-95. It still goes in the same progression though foil, nickel, tabs, Indians, Dimes, Quarters, etc.. Notice I didn't include iron? That's because they use that other way of looking at the same signal and try and tell if it's iron and they plot that by the FE scale. Two ways of looking at the same item and using both ways to plot it better. This may not be perfectly explained but it's pretty correct I think. Whew, I need a break, I'll work on the rest in a new post. lol

[coinnut]

Take, for example the ETrac's factory preset coins mode disc pattern. What is up with the disced out area towards the top of the pattern to the left of center? What kind of items fall in that area? Same question for the disced out bar in the top right of the pattern. Wouldn’t I want to dig a highly conductive target with low ferrous? Or are items in this range likely very big or something?



I'm back lol The top left is just where the irom wraps around to. Like the other detector wrap from, -95 to +95, E Trac wraps from FE 35 line to FE 01 line. But it also wraps around diagonally like those wierd circle paper planes you made as a kid lol So bottom right wraps to top left. This is also where big pieces of iron end up (in this falsing area) Coins do a sort of the same thing, but they are squashed into FE line 12, but when larger, go into line 10, 08 and 06 and even 01, for silver dollars But they are on the top right side away from the iron which is top left. So bigger items do have their own place. Minelab had made a little boo boo when it disced out that top right. There may be some falsing that they wanted to get rid of, but no one noticed this is where the American half dollars and silver dollars come in at. 8/ So you must open up that section or you will miss all those large, good conductive targets, like those mentioned. Break Time :cheesysmile:

[coinnut]

Quickmask seems a lot more sensible to me. Other than hearing more signals, what will I lose if I just hunt in quickmask with the upper end of the ferrous scale knocked out?



You lose nothing. That is why they have a relic pattern that has minimal discrimination on the bottom right side. But remember, you always get more than what you bargained for lol That minimal pattern will knock out most nails, but it does nothing for falsing or bigger iron. So if you do not knock out those other numbers, you will get false hits on them. So that is why some people just add the top left to the discriminated pattern they create. In other works, start with the relic pattern and edit it to include the top left and save it as a pattern. You can call it up anytime you want.

[coinnut]

As for tones... what is going on with Multi tone mode? I get that it is giving more than one tone at once. Are there really only four tones total though? It seems like in tone ID I can set the machine to break the range of targets in 1, 2, or 4 tones or I can have it sound any and all of the four different tones on the same target as appropriate. Is this correct? Am I also correct in assuming the E-trac does not have variable tones in the same way as the Sov?



You have an option of 2, 4 and multi (many) tones for each way you run your detector. If you are running CO (conductive sounds) then if you are in 2 tones it will split the screen (From left to right) in 2 large sections. Everything from CO 01 -25 will give you a low tone and CO 26-50 will give you a high tone. Any target you have set the disc to reject will null. 4 tones will separate the screen into 4 sections and 4 different tones based on smaller sections (1-10), (11-25), (26-38), (39-50) Multi will give you a lot of tones. There is a drawback in running CO sounds though. If you are running a wide open screen and have NO discrimination, then nails and silver both have a CO value of 46. Silver is a 12-46 and nails are a 35-46. But since we are looking only at CO values in this mode, both have a CO value of 46 so both will be given the same high tonal pitch. That is why it is mandatory to have iron rejected if you use CO as your Sounds selection with 2,4 or multi tones selected.

Ferrous Sounds is just the opposite. It splits the screen in the same manor as Conductive sounds, but from top to bottom instead of left to right. This has an advantage since the coin line is mostly on FE 12. So if we go 2 tone Ferrous, you get a high pitch from any of the items that fall in the Ferrous lines 01 - 17 (top to middle) and a low tone for any items that fall into FE 18 - 35 (bottom half) But it doesn't tell you anything about the coins. In other words all coins, buttons aluminum, etc sound the same. That is if they are accepted. Remember any target disced out will null. As a general rule (al least for me) I run Ferrous sounds Two tones if I am hunting a cellar hole. The iron will grunt (low) and all other argets will give me a high tone. It's not important what the target is, as I want all non iron hits. I can run it with no disc and hear everything or cut out some of the grunts (iron) by adding some discrimination.
In a park, the advantage goes to Conductive sounds, multi tones. But you have to disc out iron and the iron falsing. Then the iron nulls and I hear every other non-iron target based on that ever familiar chart we are all used to. Low tones go to aluminum foil, then the next tone for nickels, higher for tabs, even higher for Indians until you reach that ever famous high pitch tone for silver :smitten: That is why you do parks in Conductive.




I see that I can tweak the thresh hold tone. Is the threshold tone NOT impacted by targets in the same way it was on the Sov? Meaning with the threshold return after a signal at the same tone regardless of the tone of the signal?

Do I hear the threshold tone continuously beneath the tone for a target? It seemed that way during my brief hunt yesterday.



I'm not sure about what you are asking since I didn't have a Sov. But you select the threshold (volume (level) of hum) and it stays there and doesn't change with each target. Is that what you are asking? As far as it being heard with the detected target. I don't know. I always assumed it cuts out so you can hear the target signal. I don't think you hear both at the same time. There is a Threshold pitch selector that controls the pitch of the threshold. This is adjustable and once selected, it stay the same pitch. This is so you can select the best pitch for your ears. But I believe it cuts out when a target is located. I guess I never listened to see if both signals are heard. Hope all of this helps and you understand my rambling Z lol