CountyWorker
Forum Supporter
I found this old thread while searching the internet for something else, and I’m happy to hear that many of you don’t use the advanced settings. It leaves more good stuff for me. 
Here’s a real world example of how important it can be to do exactly what maxx suggested in his first post. I have no idea how it could have been misinterpreted.
I hunted a new spot recently. An older homestead that was settled in the later 1800s. That’s old for my area, as the first white people weren’t in the area until 1878. I, like maxx, took a few coins along, because I hadn’t been there before and didn’t know what the soil was going to be like. I buried a merc, an Indian and standing liberty at ~7”. Because of the tremendous amount of iron and moisture in the soil, not a single factory setting would hit any of them. Two different 800s, with the 11” coil, and neither could even hit the quarter. I reburied them a 5 1/2” and still nothing in all the factory settings. After a some advanced setting adjustments, I finally got the 800 to hit them all in, as I recall, Field 2, FE 0, Recovery 4 and Sensitivity 24. It was a one shot deal at the property, because it was being sold, so there was no point in committing the settings to memory. The primary point is that NO factory settings would hit the silver.
The most surprising thing was that just switching from FE 0 to F2 0, with all the other settings being the same, would nearly make the silver disappear, even at 5 1/2”.
Soil content and the amount of moisture in the soil(we get a lot rain here on the Oregon coast this time of year) can have a tremendous effect, so good luck with using your factory settings everywhere. Minelab didn’t spend years advancing the technology for their advanced settings as simply a waste of time.
Here’s a real world example of how important it can be to do exactly what maxx suggested in his first post. I have no idea how it could have been misinterpreted.
I hunted a new spot recently. An older homestead that was settled in the later 1800s. That’s old for my area, as the first white people weren’t in the area until 1878. I, like maxx, took a few coins along, because I hadn’t been there before and didn’t know what the soil was going to be like. I buried a merc, an Indian and standing liberty at ~7”. Because of the tremendous amount of iron and moisture in the soil, not a single factory setting would hit any of them. Two different 800s, with the 11” coil, and neither could even hit the quarter. I reburied them a 5 1/2” and still nothing in all the factory settings. After a some advanced setting adjustments, I finally got the 800 to hit them all in, as I recall, Field 2, FE 0, Recovery 4 and Sensitivity 24. It was a one shot deal at the property, because it was being sold, so there was no point in committing the settings to memory. The primary point is that NO factory settings would hit the silver.
The most surprising thing was that just switching from FE 0 to F2 0, with all the other settings being the same, would nearly make the silver disappear, even at 5 1/2”.
Soil content and the amount of moisture in the soil(we get a lot rain here on the Oregon coast this time of year) can have a tremendous effect, so good luck with using your factory settings everywhere. Minelab didn’t spend years advancing the technology for their advanced settings as simply a waste of time.
