Myers Depot Metal Detectors

E-trac Fe-Co #s for Coins

Beefcake

Beefcake

Elite Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2007
Messages
4,371
Location
New Philadelphia, Ohio
Ok, had my first outing with the E-trac. Mind you I have absolutely NO EXPERIENCE with this machine or any Minelab machines. I had plenty of signals, but had no idea what they were and what type of target I might have under my coil. I knew from watching videos that the sweet spot was in the 12 -40's etc, but I was getting alot of signals that I didn't know to dig or not. I know I should be digging everything at this point, but it was a dreary day and I wanted to make the most of my time. I got home and decided to do some homework to familiarize myself with the Fe - Co numbers. I realize that different conditions may make for different results. Either way, as a total novice, I hope this will be helpful to more than just me. I went through every type of keeper coin I could find in my collection and compiled this list. Feel free to offer up suggestions and perhaps we can have a master list for the people of this forum to use. Her goes...

Coin Type Date Fe-Co # Tone

Large Cent 1850 03 - 45 high

Flying Eagle cent 1857 11 - 24 low
Indian Head (Fatty) 1860 11 - 25 low
Indian Head 1900 11 - 35 high
Wheat penny (early) 1919 12 - 35 low
Wheat penny (later) 1942 12 - 44 high

Seated Half Dime (silver) 1862 11 - 36 high
Shield Nickel 1867 12 - 12 low
V Nickel 1905 12 - 12 low
War Nickel 1942 12 - 13 low
Modern Nickel Pres 12 - 13 low

Barber Dime 1898 12 - 42 high (steady)
Mercury Dime 1941 12 - 45 high (flutey)
Rosey (silver) 1948 12 - 45 high (flutey)
Modern Dime (clad) Pres 12 - 44 high (steady)

Barber Quarter 1899 12 - 46(~47) high (flutey)
Standing Liberty Quarter 1920 11 - 47 high (steady)
Washington (silver) 1945 11 - 47 high (steady)

Barber Half 1900 (~03) 04 - 47 high (steady)
Walking Liberty Half 1936 06 - 47 high (steady)
Franklin Silver half 1953 03 - 43 high (sporatic)***
Kennedy Silver half 1964 03 - 44 high (sporatic)***

Morgan Dollar 1921 01 - 42 high (sporatic)***
Peace Dollar 1922 01 - 41 medium/high (steady)
Eisenhower Dollar 1976 01 - 42 high (sporatic)***
Susan B. Anthony 1980 11 - 45 high (steady)
Sacagawea 2000 11 - 46 high (steady

*** - These larger coins do not register well at all on factory coin setting!!!!

Hope these help the FeCo challenged like myself...
 
Last edited:
I have no idea why when I typed it, it was all spaced out properly. Now it is stuck all together... If you want to print them out.. cut and paste onto a word document and it should be fine.... Sorry..
 
It looks fine to me beef! I have no problem understanding it at all.

BTW, what did you find today?
 
I got four wheat pennies with the oldest being 1919. I turned down alot of (what I know now) good signals. I literally hunted it out of the box, without reading the manual yet, on the startup turn on and go coin program. So, I was happy to find the wheat pennies today! I got a lot to learn yet. This machine is almost completely oposite from hunting with the DFX.
 
Thank you for the #'s...
I have not even had a chance to use my e-trac yet, (got the flu) but i have read the instructions and the etrac book and cant wait to get out tomorrow.


I forgot to add a link to a list of #'s..
It is from another forum, (so sorry if i am not allowed to post it here) but it is very helpful
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?63,820520
 
It's interesting to see how different some of the numbers are. I think it is a good idea to do this to your own detector...if you have the coins at hand to do so. It's probably best to know how your individual machine will read certain coins and even though they are the same machine and they will be close...they also may be different. I just thought it would be nice to have a starting point for us E-trac beginners to go by. I suppose they might be in the Andy Sabich's book, but I know it's not in the manual??? Kinda odd to leave that out. I guess it's because they sell internationally and the coins wouldn't match up. Either way, I felt it was needed on this forum and hopefully it will help.
 
I don't know about the E-trac, but on the SE the numbers change slightly with the different noise channels.
 
I'm a newbie with the E-trac, so this is a great thread for me. I've done some air tests, looked at the tables in Andy Sabisch's book and had a little over a week (meaning actually only a few hours) of field work. One thing I've found is what works in the air doesn't translate exactly to what's in the ground. Obviously there are probably a lot of reasons for this -- object orientation, nearby junk, etc... so every discovery is still a lesson in learning for me.

Today, I found three Memorials in the same hole, two zincs and a copper. Nearby was was a concrete foundation with rebar. The numbers jumped all over the place from FE in the 20 to 30s down to 9 and 10. The CO jumped from the mid 30s to the mid 40s. Once I retrieved the targets, it made more sense. I found an IH at 12-40 last weekend, a higher CO than it should be... Anyway, I'm really enjoying the E-trac, but I think it's going to be a while before I always hear what it's telling me, if you know what I mean!

One thing I do want to add is how much I like my Sun Ray X1 probe. Being able to probe with ID is fantastic.
 
Beefcake,

Put in over 20 hrs. on my E-Trac the last 5 days. I haven't taken a lot of time digging iffy signals yet as its been pretty cold. Thur. and Fri. were solid 5+ hr. days.

As they say go by the signal. Running Andy's old coin program and digging good sounding TWO way signals. I netted 4 Mercs, 8 wheats, 1 IH, 3 - 40's nickels and a number of clad.

It's been fun. When it warms up and the HONEYMOON stage is over I'll start to fine tune it and dig some of those iffy signals.

One thing I have learned, which is true on most if not all detectors, smashed Aluminum cans give a real good sound, but raise the coil up and you'll be getting a signal 14-18" off the ground. Sometimes I did dig to confirm but that's been my experience.

NebTrac
 
NebTrac said:
Beefcake,

Put in over 20 hrs. on my E-Trac the last 5 days. I haven't taken a lot of time digging iffy signals yet as its been pretty cold. Thur. and Fri. were solid 5+ hr. days.

As they say go by the signal. Running Andy's old coin program and digging good sounding TWO way signals. I netted 4 Mercs, 8 wheats, 1 IH, 3 - 40's nickels and a number of clad.

It's been fun. When it warms up and the HONEYMOON stage is over I'll start to fine tune it and dig some of those iffy signals.

One thing I have learned, which is true on most if not all detectors, smashed Aluminum cans give a real good sound, but raise the coil up and you'll be getting a signal 14-18" off the ground. Sometimes I did dig to confirm but that's been my experience.

NebTrac
Click to expand...

Also, smashed cans will cause the threshold to null way before it normally would on a small coin sized target.
 
Main suggestion I have is to not put a lot of faith in the FE numbers but watch the CO numbers. Anything below 3-4" and you'll find the FE numbers can be anywhere. The CO number, on the other hand, are very accurate even one the very deep stuff. If you hear that high pitched peep and the CO numbers are good then dig. If when you pinpoint the target is slightly off to the edge/side from where your peep was in motion mode, chances are it will be iron.
 
Speaking of pinpointers... I kept on using my White's bullseye II with the E-trac.... NADA! Talk about interference! The pinpointer goes haywire even if you point the ET coil 7 feet away from you... I have to turn off my detector every time I want to probe a target... NICE! My next purchase will be the Sunray...
 
Thanks for that info. I searched the web last night, and finally found a similar listing. From what i read, the pre-loaded programs, factory, might miss a few coins. Is it easy to download and install a different program? It sounded like even Andy's program, the guy that wrote the book, misses some coins. Also, some programs are designed for European coins, not US coins. Is there a spot on this forum where you can download new programs, or is this detector still too new? I found a "version 4" of Andy's coin program, but never saw version 2 and 3. ;)

I am guessing a better coin program would just have a small few "tweeks" so large coins and such, and old coins, are not discriminated out. It looked like the users would ajust the accepted FE numbers?? This is all new to me, and have not used the E-trac, so just trying to figure it out. ;)

Any other comments about using pin pointers with the E-trac??

-Jim
 
stangthang said:
Thanks for that info. I searched the web last night, and finally found a similar listing. From what i read, the pre-loaded programs, factory, might miss a few coins. Is it easy to download and install a different program? It sounded like even Andy's program, the guy that wrote the book, misses some coins. Also, some programs are designed for European coins, not US coins. Is there a spot on this forum where you can download new programs, or is this detector still too new? I found a "version 4" of Andy's coin program, but never saw version 2 and 3. ;)

I am guessing a better coin program would just have a small few "tweeks" so large coins and such, and old coins, are not discriminated out. It looked like the users would ajust the accepted FE numbers?? This is all new to me, and have not used the E-trac, so just trying to figure it out. ;)

Any other comments about using pin pointers with the E-trac??

-Jim
Click to expand...

The preset minelab coin program will disc out some silver dollars so you need to open up the top right hand corner of the coin program and it will pick them up....
In the preset coin program there is just a tinny black line in the top right corner, just make it white and you are good to go....
 
Ed in KC said:
I don't know about the E-trac, but on the SE the numbers change slightly with the different noise channels.
Click to expand...

Our Soils and Emi out here can vary a lot in Just a short quarter of a mile.
What I have noticed is,
Say I go to a new site to detect. I Just turn on the E-trac and go detect, the FE numbers are off some what from where I know they should be .I think it is because I did not do the noise cancle button on start up. It still works ok, but the detector is way more on the expected FE numbers when I use the noise cancelation buttom .
 
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