I use my E-trac to hunt beaches but I'm on the salt water so not sure if settings will be the same. I don't change a whole lot of my setting from any other dirt hunts. The only real difference is I use a wide open screen except for the bottom blacked out, basically from 25 down to discriminate the iron. If you wanted to you could put a line across the top, from 01-01 to 01-30 or so to take care of some of the iron wrap around. Here on the salt water wet sand beaches the numbers can have a wide range, sometimes dimes going from 02-45 down to 20-45. If it sounds good and doesn't give a null you gotta dig it. As far as gold goes, it seems to appear all over the screen. Anywhere from 12-03 area up to the 12-37 area. If I remember correctly the 10k class ring I found last year was high 12-30's. I think I've even heard of the higher karats coming in the 12-40's. My other setting I run like normal, multi-tone conductive, fast on, deep off. Good luck, it's a great machine in most situations that I've come across so far.