The send and threshold setting is what confuses me , especially when one affects the other. But my lack of free time to get out with it is not helping either
I'm still working this small park/playground near my house and here recently I've finally been finding better targets (silver coins, wheat pennies and even a few silver rings) but they don't seem to be deeper than 4 inches. I've been running my F70 at
Sens. 80
Thresh.-3
Tone 3
Disc. 23
I know with me starting to find good targets that there must be better things even deeper, but I'm confused as to what to set my machine at. Your help would definitely be appreciated.
I recently was watching a YouTube video on the F70 settings and the guy stated that he doesn't understand why anyone would run their machine with the thresh set below 0. I can't remember who posted the video, but I think it was Minnesota Digger (I could be wrong about who posted the vid)
hawgdawg, the thresh and sense do have a close relationship, almost like having two gain settings on one machine.
You can turn them both low, stay really quiet and still get decently deep because this thing is way overpowered out of the factory, you can overdrive both like I sometimes do and get to depth levels that might amaze you or do any combinations of both depending on the sites to pretty much find just about everything we look for at any levels.
There is a reason so many of us use completely different settings and all seem successful.
High sense and low thresh, low sense and high thresh, so many combinations can work and maybe duplicate each other but each hunter usually finds their own favorites eventually.
Some like to hunt silently, some can handle a bit more noise, some look for settings to do it both ways like me.
Whatever it takes for me to find extremely masked targets in my difficult soil I can learn and get used to if they help...that is why I experiment and tweak so much just looking for the very best way to do it.
I might not ever find the perfect settings but I have filed away many that have found me amazing things even if they are completely different...just more arrows in the quiver I can pull out and try whenever I feel like it.
bruinvikes, here is some stuff I wrote about how much I love using your coil, that elliptical concentric.
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,2296414,2296568#msg-2296568
The bulk of all my oldest coin targets, both here in the bad dirt and in Kansas in the good dirt usually were laying at the 4-6" depth level.
Most, but not all.
Usually when I hunt in disc I rarely go much higher than -2 on the thresh and I have gotten way deeper than 4" with that concentric coil in the past in both states.
One hunt I found a very masked injun at the 5-6" level and got a way thin V nickel every bit of 7" deep in my really difficult soil using the sniper coil.
I think it might have actually been closer to 8".
Settings were disc at 65, SL, notched in foil and nickel, sense at 80, thresh at -2, 3H tones.
It has been said that this platform loses very little if actually no depth on high disc and I believe it after seeing a few things I experienced out there.
In the same area in a spot of rare and better black dirt that is closer to your Ohio stuff using the concentric coil I once dug a silver Masonic token the size of a quarter also at about the 7-8" area and it hit hard still using negative thresh and if I remember DE speed, sense in the 80's and I forget the disc setting but it might have been 23 similar to yours.
When using disc I rarely go above 23, I found too many gold rings at 24 to permit me to go any higher.
Your detector with that coil in your soil can easily go further than 4", you just might not be hunting in areas with deeper targets but there are ways to find out.
One, the 5"sniper DD coil will easily reach the same depth as that elliptical and I believe even surpass it.
The big F75 DD coil definitely will get deeper, it just lives at a deeper level overall than the other coils and gets a bit stronger, louder signals on the deep ones.
All of the very deepest targets I dug in the good Midwest soil were found with the big coil at the 9-15" level.
Two, second way to get more depth...turn up the thresh and you will get deeper or at least hear and see more targets at deeper levels then at negative thresh numbers.
I don't turn up the thresh all the time, when quick sweeping parks and using multi tones from 3-4H I usually don't go much higher than -2 because anything above -1 skews the higher tones into a squeaky area I don't like to listen to...at all.
Try it, throw some coins down on a clean piece of ground and use multi tone and negative thresh and turn it up to positive thresh and you will hear the difference.
SL or DE speed does not matter...it is the thresh that changes that tonal quality.
I have found that using all metal, 1, 1F and 2F this effect is nominal and those are my more favorite tone settings to use nowadays and when I push that sense and thresh up high the only tone choices I use.
The thresh settings also affects volume, the higher you go the louder targets sound in both disc and the threshold tone in all metal.
Deeper targets can possibly be heard that you couldn't in lower thresh because you are gathering in more data like a hard of hearing person putting a hearing aid in their ear...everything gets magnified.
That vid you referenced...if it is the one where that user is hitting an 8" nickel in his test garden with thresh up high but sense at 1 then you can see what high thresh can do.
He didn't try to replicate those results with higher sense and lower thresh which might have also worked well but using the data he had I can see why he came to that conclusion/opinion.
High thresh might not be the optimum way to hunt for everyone because it might add more noise to the equation at certain sense levels but that is why I tweak and I think everyone should take a few minutes and do the same on hunts.
A little time doing that might get you way more in the future on other hunts if you hit upon some good ones.
In your soil I would try moving the thresh up into the positive...maybe 4-5 and adjust the sense as high as you can to your noise comfort level.
Forget SL for now and just use DE.
Even if you end up with the sense lower into the 20-50 range go out and see if you can come across targets deeper than 4"...I assume you might.
The deepest target I ever dug in Kansas was with DE, 2F, the thresh at 9 and the sense at 99 and it was solid, clear and with pretty accurate numbers on the screen at 15" which rarely happens even with the big DD coil I was using.
Using the concentric coil and these settings I might not have been able to hit that thing so deep but I believe coins and rings at the 8-10" level would not have been a problem...definitely I could get deeper than 4" for sure even with much lower thresh and sense levels.
Go out and experiment a little.
You have great soil and never take that for granted because I have been on both sides of that fence.
Everything should work well up there but there could be some settings that will be more optimum than others.
You started with factory settings and just used those for awhile and did pretty good.
Now you have pushed that sense a bit higher I see but it might be time to tweak a few other settings like that thresh.
The sky is the limit with this thing, spend a little more time outside your comfort level and you might be amazed at what can happen.
I am positive there are at least a few targets, great targets, deeper than 4" around there so now you just have to figure out how to find them.