White's DFX

[Dave]

Share your knowledge. thumbsup01

I found a bit of advise (from someone with a thousand years experiance and from another forum) ) So I thought that I would share it here.

I think it is best to keep it simple. That does not mean you have to compromise performance. The preset programs are really well thought out, however, the main down side is that they are a bit wimpy, in order to be sure that they will work most anywhere.

It is really not necessary to get too complicated to do very well. As mentioned like real estate ...it is location location location. Research helps of course.

But getting down to some simple basic advice.

1/ Stay away from the coin program as you are walking away from most gold rings and jewelry. It is designed for beginners so that they will not get discouraged by digging up pull tabs...which come up in the same region as nickels and gold rings. Every time you put rejected numbers into the Disc Settings, you put holes in the response you will get from targets with adjacent VDI numbers. This creates a sort of swiss cheese response program. You will lose targets and break up the signal from others.

2/ I would suggest using either coin and jewelry if you want to have the designation of coins...penny nickel, dime etc. However, I prefer the Relic Program as I dig all targets except what I believe will be iron. Most serious detectorists dig anything that they feel isnt iron. You really never know what will come up next.

3/ Take OFF ratchet pinpoint it is not a good feature, as far as I am concerned. As you noticed you can ratchet out targets and you dont know the size or shape of a target, which can be valuable in deciding whether to dig or not.

4/ Always pinpoint BEFORE you decide whether the target is good or not. In order to get an accurate reading, you should make a clean pass over the center of the target, so pinpoint after hearing a repeatable signal while searching. Putting ON VCO Audio is very helpful for pinpointing

5/ Most of the guys do like TONE ID, but I guess I am one of those from the old school and it drives me nuts. It sounds like a caliope (not sure of spelling) I prefer the smooth signal and always use a threshold while hunting.....NOT SILENT SEARCH.

6/ Whichever program you use, I would advise ACCEPTING ALL VDI NUMBERS FROM ABOUT minus 20 or so up to +95. This opened up program will give the best response on good targets . Having some negative numbers helps in hearing very small good items which can be pulled into the negative range by mineralization. If you are bothered by hot rocks or coke then reject +95.

7/ Finally and most important.....use the AC Sensitivity control and the Preamp Gain to improve signal and depth of detection. Do NOT run either so high that you have erratic behaviour....falsing, chatter or flashing numbers. You want a smooth threshold maintained. The DFX is a slower sweep detector and you should not sweep so fast that you lose your threshold hum (gasps or gaps at the end of a sweep usually)

A good rule of thumb, if your ground and environmental interference allows, is to raise your preset preamp gain to 3 (preset is 2)and raise the AC Sensitivity to about 70 to 72 if you can (preset is 60). The Preamp gain is an AUDIO GAIN and basically just makes the signal louder. 3 is usually ample. This control is most useful in reducing external interference by lowering it till the interference goes away. The AC Sensitivity is the most important setting as it determines how deep your detector will hear the target. The higher it can be set, the tinier and deeper the target will be heard......but as I said , WITHOUT causing interference.

[OkieDigger]

When I had my DFX I opened up the ACCEPT from -20 through +93 and then REJECT +94 and +95. I actually liked hearing the iron and knowing what was under me feet. The other reason for opening up the high iron range was because small gold could dip into the -10 to 0 range.

One tip I have for those seeking gold is to run in 15 khz RAW mode. This broadens the gold/nickel/pulltab range making it easier to identify and REJECT pulltabs then searching for gold. You can then go back and REJECT everything other than those pulltab numbers and see what you might have missed. Instead of nickels coming in at 20, they will show up at 45.

[bmattioli]

I got a great deal from Steve, who had an immaculate one for sale this past Summer. I have only used the Coin/Jewery mode and have had great luck and success. No tweeks. It's hot on the Silver and Gold. The only thing I'm still wondering about is the depth which made me think more and more about the E-Trac. The DFX is a good machine and out of the box can find the good stuff. I went from the Eagle Spectrum to the DFX without a hitch or learning curve.

Bruce

[CyberSage]

Thought I would contribute to the DFX thread. I initially wrote this information a year ago. I now use a V3 most of the time, but still own my DFX and enjoy using it. My wife swings it more now than I do so it still gets a work out.

This post comes as a result of six very intensive months of working with the new Super 12 coil from White’s Electronics. This coil was introduced in the Spring of 2007. It came with the promise of better coverage and more depth. I had purchased mine from my local dealer in August of the same year. Initially I loaded up a “Best Data” program that had been used somewhat successfully with my stock coil. I went to my local park that dates back to 1895 and went for a walk to test the coil. This park has been my learning ground, my DFX boot camp you might say. I had spent countless hours pounding the already well hunted park with the stock coil, an elliptical 6x10 DD and a Bigfoot coil. Every once in awhile the century old grass would give up an old coin. Usually a Wheat Penny or a War Nickel. I had even managed an 1892 V Nickel under a tree line by the lake. While I felt good about the occasional finds, I still had not found any Silver. My assumption was that silver coins were easy targets and had been found over the years by other detectorist. Now I have seen as many as three detectorists in one day! Don’t get me wrong, it was always enjoyable to chat and swap stories of old finds with them. We would admire each other’s equipment and part ways. Most of the hunts would end with a pocket full of clad and a promise to myself to find a better place, a place that held a few silver coins and a little less competition.
So I found myself here at the old park one more time. I started swing’in the new Super12 coil at the tree line by the lake. I always liked this area because I found my oldest coin here. That would be the afore mentioned 1892 V Nickel. It was also a beautiful part of the park. I had only been hunting about 45 minutes when the DFX told me to dig! There it was, A Silver Roosevelt dime! I found two more Wheat pennies within the hour. I was very excited, the coil worked! Over the next week I found several more wheats and another Rosie. Then exactly one week after getting the Super 12 I dug my first Mercury Dime. I was dumbfounded. I could not believe I was finding stuff like this. The next four months became a dream. I took every opportunity to make adjustments and tweak the program over deep finds. I was digging a lot of nails and had decided to switch to the Correlate mode with a lower VDI setting. This advice came from the pages of Jeff Foster’s book “Digging Deeper With The DFX”. I found more information posted on the forums. More adjustments where made to the program as I started finding even more Wheats and two more Mercury Dimes. A visit to another local park produced my first Barber Dime, Silver Quarter and a key date 1914d Wheat Penny as well. In late November I went back to the tree line by the lake. I had never used the Super 12 with Correlate program there before. What happened next was amazing. Within a week I would dig six Mercs and A Barber Dime from the tree line. Three of the Dimes came in one day within a 10-minute time frame. All total From August to December the Super 12 and tweaked Correlate program allowed me to recover over 150 old coins from the park, 20 of them Silver. Then the snow came, and I was done for the year. I would like to at this time share with you this program and techniques associated with the Super 12 coil that lead me on this metal detecting odyssey in the fall of 2007.



Thanks and Acknowledgments

Much of my knowledge comes from the forums on the Internet. Those experienced members have guided me and influenced my decision making process as I hunt. While there are many members on the forum that have been wonderful friends and great people to share finds with. There are a few that have been very inspirational and especially knowledgeable. Their forum posts have contributed greatly to the design of this program.

AngleLionel, Detector, OkieDigger, Hoser,
Schrecky, Bazooka, Cfmct-PI, DFX-Gregg and Rudy.

Thank You!

There are very good reference books on the DFX available. I have purchased and dog-eared “Digging Deep With The DFX” by Jeff Foster and, “Understanding White’s DFX” by Jimmy “Sierra” Normandi. These are wonderful and indispensable books on the DFX. Many of my adjustments are taken directly out of these books. If you have a DFX and don’t own these books, get them! They will be your best friends. With that being said, lets explore this program together. I consider it a work in progress. All input is welcome and appreciated. Some of you may allready seen this program as I have posted variations of it over the years.

Here is a link to the program with comments in PDF format...

http://home.comcast.net/~whitesdfx/Super12.pdf

Keep Swing'in
Jack

[xzlr8n]

I posted this as a reply to a question on another forum and thought it might be of use to someone here. Please feel free to critique my ways, I am still learning and since I sold my DFX to get a V3 my memory might have faded a bit on the DFX lol.

Kevin,

I wouldn't worry about the GEB #'s, if you're using autotrac. This has to do with ground balancing stuff that the machine does automatically.

With regard to silver, you would think it would scream at you being a high conductive target. But, I found more than likely on my DFX that it was sometimes a broken up signal, put repeatable at the same time. Always dig those signals at older parks and houses, if it was > +79 VDI it usually was a silver dime. I do remember one silver rosie that came in in just like a penny at 74-75, so maybe just dig it all and be surprised once in a while would be the best advice ;).

Another factor is setting the sweep speed to 1 and when hunting use a slow overlapping coil sweep. This helps sort out those hard to find silver coins. Always double check a brief solid signal, lots of these beeps warrant extra review.

Another thing is to find a good patch of ground (no metal when pin point trigger is pulled) to get a good initial ground balance. This really quiets things down and also allows good targets to stand out a lot better. I'd leave the RX Gain at 3 and bump up the AC Sensitivity to 75 like Beefcake said. If it is noisy lower the AC Sens down a 2-3. Also, push the Disc Sensitivity up to 80-85 if the area isn't too trashy (this allows iffy signals picked up by the machine to ellicit a response). And another thing turn off Modulation, that only makes deeper targets sound less audible (suppose to clue you in its a deep target, but if you miss the signal :confused: )
Good luck, silver takes some time to figure out because there isn't much out there to learn from!!

[del]

all those are helpful tips gentlemen and are sure to shorten the learning curve to new DFX detectorists . here are a few i have found out through experience these several years on this great machine .

no.1
here's one tip i found about 4 years ago , it was a hot one here in New England we had been experiencing a serious drought . we were hitting a couple of sites and the ground was really dry and i wasn't finding anything beyond 4-5 maybe inches deep . now i run my dfx in preamp 3 all the time because its stable with no falsing . so experimenting i drop my recovery speed from 22 to 14 and my sweep speed from 4 to 1 and filters from 6 to 3 and the next thing you know i'm finding all kinds of small buttons at 8+ inches in an area i was just searching i couldn't believe what a difference those couple of changes made . this was with the 6x10 coil and since then i have further experimented and have been finding coins from 9 to 11 inches deep with the same coil . just thought i'd pass this along to the newbs .

no.2
iron targets (depending on size, depth and soil moisture) iron targets will sometimes sound , pretty good , good , or iffy especially if your sweeping the coil just off your target a little.
Make sure you pinpoint accurately over the center of the target and then re-sweep it in motion mode again , most of the time the iron target will sound more like a junk one or null out completely

no.3
sizing the target.
on the dfx the pinpoint trigger with the V.C.O. on will help find the center a target and tell how deep it is ,if you pull the trigger again (or double pinpoint) while over this target you will be shrinking the target size and 9 times out of 10 a coin size object or smaller will almost disappear completely or be can be pretty hard to locate (depending on the depth of this target and actual size).but the soda or beer cans size and bigger targets will still have a good size area in this second pinpoint mode and still be easy to find . but again you have to be accurately over the center of your target on the first pinpoint.

more to follow.

Dan

[CyberSage]

Great information Del! Thanks for this post. My last 2 trips have been with my DFX. I still love this machine even though I have the V3. I will never sell my DFX. There is magic in this detector.

Keep Swing'in
Jack

[toehead]

thumbsup01 Thanks all you guys for the helpful tips, am adding them to my notes now. I run into sites on occasion that the DFX is to unstable to hunt with, these tips may help. Keep em coming! I still have to pull my first deep silver from the ground with it. I know there out there.

[Merc]

Very Helpful thank you all for your information.