Newbie Question...Bounty Hunter Tracker IV

nctarbugs

New Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2007
Messages
5
Location
Greer, SC
I have a Bounty Hunter Tracker IV that I just got and have played with it for the last 2 days. I have been using the "tone" setting. I have read in the forum that you need not look at the meter until you know you have a good hit. My question is, what is this signal meter telling me? It jumps all over the place. Thanks
 
Welcome to the forum!

Your meter probably jumps all over the place because the target it's trying to identify is not a coin, and the meter is calibrated for id'ing coins, or there could be a lot of trash metal in the vicinity of the coin, throwing the meter off. If it jumps around when the target is a coin and there's no trash near the coin, it could be electrical interference, and you need to turn your sensitivity down. It could be a ground balancing issue too, I believe; I don't know what you'd do about that.
 
The Bounty Hunter IV is a good beginners machine. Tone mode is the best mode for coin shooting. The meter is useless though. In tone mode you listen for the tones. high tone is usually a good target, flat tone or broken is usually pull tab or foil. (Unfortunately this is also where gold and nickels chime in at but they are more of a steady flat tone where pull tabs tend be a broken tone,)The best settings in tone mode, sensitivity as high as you can without chatter, usually around 3:00 position. discrimination at about 11:00 to 12:00..
On beaches, (which the detector performs very well), or sand, woodchip tot lots where digging is easy, go all metal mode, again sensitivity as high as you can without chatter and discrimination at 0, this will give you maximum depth.
I never use the full discriminate mode so I can't tell you much on that. If you are a coinshooter and hit parks and schools, this machine will pay for itself very quickly. also batteries with head phone use will last about 40 hours +. All and all this is a great machine as an introduction to this hobby.

Again my opinion on that meter is that it is useless, If you watch it, you will see that it spikes real high on solid sounding tones and not so high on faint/quick tones. It is not a depth indicator even though the the numbers might seem like they represent inches, it just indicates the strenght of the signal which is useless unless you are deaf.

Enjoy your detector.
 
I bought the Tracker IV as my first detector and have been using it for about 9 months. I've made some great finds with it plus about $400 in clad so far. I think it's a great machine.

I always operate in Tone mode, with the sensitivity as high as it will go without chatter, and the discriminate knob around 11 or 12 o'clock. Sometimes on a tot lot with metal poles I will turn the sensitivity down a bit. High tones are usually coins or silver jewelry, broken tones are usually junk, and low tones are usually nickels, pull tabs, or gold (ha ha). You might want to dig everything for a while to get an idea of how it works.

I have never once used the meter. I honestly have no idea what it is there for. I don't think there's any advantage to using it. Part of me thinks it's just there for decoration.

With headphone I get about 30-40 hours with a set of batteries.
 
go all metal mode, again sensitivity as high as you can without chatter and discrimination at 0, this will give you maximum depth.

This is how I operate my 2 machines as well....I dig lots of trash, but get some goodies along the way.

Todd
 
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