Big Boys Hobbies

I have a problem - eTrac and AT Pro - Performance!

S

Shayne

Junior Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2010
Messages
58
Location
Williamsburg, VA
This is going to seem strange. I have an eTrac and just today, I received my new AT Pro. I bought the AT Pro mostly for beach and shallow water hunting. To test the Pro, I hit a small lot ( one acre) near my house that I have hunted for nearly 40 hours with the eTrac. In that 40 hours, I have found 75 wheat pennies, several buffalo nickles, two V nickles, four mercury dimes and one Roosevelt dime with the eTrac. I was always wondering why I had not found more silver. Anyway, in three hours with the AT Pro at the same lot, I found one Indian (first one - 11 Inches), seven wheat pennies, two buffalo, four mercury's and two Washington silvers (same hole) - 17 coins. The AT Pro was nailing the silvers at over 10 inches deep (settings were Pro and Zero Discrimination).

Here is the question, how is it possible that the AT Pro is deeper and the eTrac missed all of those silver coins? I know I have walked over them in the past. I have a slow swing speed. On my eTrac, I hunt with the stock Pro Coil, the SEF 6X8 DD and the SEF 4.5 X 6 DD. I run a baseline discrimination pattern that starts at 18FE to 35FE, Fast On, Deep Off, Normal, Multi, 15 Threshold, 30 response, Manual 21-23 and everything else is pretty much standard. I did dig more iron with the AT Pro (not much), but I attribute that to my learning curve. What are your thoughts? Is there a way to test the eTrac to determine if it is working to its full potential? The machine is relatively new - 3 months old. Please advise...:(
 
its not

you really need to go slow with the etrac to make sure its hitting that ilver. also if you go into the etrac preferences u prob need to turn deep coin mode on. no way is the AT deeper than a etrac. like alot of ppl have said u need to put all your other machines in a closet and focus just on the e trac to learn it.

just this weekend i dug a dime at 10in with the etrac and a indian cent at 8in. nothings deeper the etrac imo
 
Don't feel bad I just received my new AtPro today from New England Detectors & tested it against my Explorer II & the AtPro was hitting 4" inches deeper then the Explorer that I've used for 4 years..:?: I'm in the same boat as you..All I can say is its a deep machine..
 
I've walked over targets with my E-Trac and found them later with my E-Trac and know POSITIVELY that I've hit that spot.

But I know it still bothers you. Your best thing to do is to compare your detectors as you hunt. Get a good deep signal with the AT, then hit it with the E-Trac with the Pro-coil on and see wht happens and vice versa.

I'm bettin' its just the way things were going for that day. That's what I would do anyway.

Congratulations on the new machine and the finds by the way.

NebTrac
 
I got two wheat pennies once at nine inches with the MXT and the eclipse 5.3 coil.:D I believe finds and depths are only as good as the persons ability with the machine. No doubt that some detectors will go deeper then others but experience with your machine will get you the deepest it will go.
 
I hit a piece of metal in my yard yesterday that had to be 12-14 inches down with my AT PRO. It might be true that the AT PRO doesn't go any deeper than other machines, it just might be easier to use (right out of the box) thusly allowing folks to find coins faster.

In the VERY SHORT time I have had my AT PRO (4 hrs total swing time), I have already learned how to read pull tabs and other forms of trash. My favorite game is to call what the item is before I dig it up. So far, am batting 1,000. I should note that I watched a lot of video of people hunting with their AT PRO's so I learned from them.
 
I'd say the AtPro is just a deep seeking machine without all the extra bells & whistles that the higher priced units have, But I like all the bells & whistles on my explorer..:grin:
 
the pro is pro

i have had me at pro for about a week or somewhere in there and i have been detecting for almost 2 years now, but given that i dont have alot of experince with minelab machines my opinion might not matter as much as other, but i love this machine. in tot lot i have hunted many times that i have logged about 30hrs in in the past year i was finding things missed buy other machines i have used especialy my ace 250. i found a french pendent at a good 10'' deep that was a little smaller then a dime. i dug a peice of foil at 8'' that was half the size of a pop tab. this machine is growing quickly to be my most favorite i have ever used.
 
Not surprising at all. I think it really has more to do with just being different detectors. I could take a Garrett ACE 250 to our city park and I'm sure I'd find goodies missed by all the high-end detectors I've used before. Some of it comes from what I call new detector syndrome and part can be where one detector works well for a given condition.

As someone who has tried a lot of different detectors I can say they all have conditions where they excel and function poorly. If the site is really trashy you might find a cheap, but fast, detector might pull goodies missed by other high-end detectors that weren't best for those conditions. You really should rate a detector on the over-all performance and not just a few special occurrences. They can be very misleading.

New detector syndrome comes from using a detector you're unfamiliar with which will lead you to recover targets you normally wouldn't, and that CAN lead to pulling some goodies you may have passed over with the old faithful.

For me a new detector needs to really prove itself before I call it better. The odd and end good find happens quite often with any new detector, but when a detector continually and predictably produces from sites you have worked over with past detectors, then you've probably got a winner.
 
Shayne said:
This is going to seem strange. I have an eTrac and just today, I received my new AT Pro. I bought the AT Pro mostly for beach and shallow water hunting. To test the Pro, I hit a small lot ( one acre) near my house that I have hunted for nearly 40 hours with the eTrac. In that 40 hours, I have found 75 wheat pennies, several buffalo nickles, two V nickles, four mercury dimes and one Roosevelt dime with the eTrac. I was always wondering why I had not found more silver. Anyway, in three hours with the AT Pro at the same lot, I found one Indian (first one - 11 Inches), seven wheat pennies, two buffalo, four mercury's and two Washington silvers (same hole) - 17 coins. The AT Pro was nailing the silvers at over 10 inches deep (settings were Pro and Zero Discrimination).

Here is the question, how is it possible that the AT Pro is deeper and the eTrac missed all of those silver coins? I know I have walked over them in the past. I have a slow swing speed. On my eTrac, I hunt with the stock Pro Coil, the SEF 6X8 DD and the SEF 4.5 X 6 DD. I run a baseline discrimination pattern that starts at 18FE to 35FE, Fast On, Deep Off, Normal, Multi, 15 Threshold, 30 response, Manual 21-23 and everything else is pretty much standard. I did dig more iron with the AT Pro (not much), but I attribute that to my learning curve. What are your thoughts? Is there a way to test the eTrac to determine if it is working to its full potential? The machine is relatively new - 3 months old. Please advise...:(
Click to expand...

You know I dont think I can ever get everything. One day I am working a grid left to right the next right to left. Who knows why>

I was to meet someone at a park many years ago I was running late and by the time I got there he was there and gone. I could see that he was there, there was a kids swing with the wood chips dug up.

I went to the left off the wood chips into the grass and pulled a 14k mens band with 5 good size diamonds. The target was as clear as day and no way would anyone not dig it, solid tone, ring came up on the VDI. We had the same detectors, why he missed it I'll never know....
 
yor right, i should have rated it overall but like i said with my lack of experince with other brands its hard for me to put a rating on this machine considering garret has been my main brand since i started and i didnt want to sound bias on garret products alone. yes this machine is new for me but the examples i used were just some that have impressed me with this machine alone but thanks for correcting my mistakes im a very scientific analitical person on alot of thing and what you said makes perfect sense. :)
 
Its true different detectors do different things!! Even similar detectors set up differently can have different results.. I'll never forget the day me & my wife were at the state fair grounds & I had my Explorer II & she was using a bounty hunter I bought for 25 bucks, she was following right behind me & as I was passing over a zillion pulltab signals looking for a deep coin signal she stopped & dug up a ring that I just passed over.. How she picked a ring out of a million tab signals with that machine I'll never know..She just said it sounded different..:lol:.. I dug about 50 tabs after that then went back to looking for deep coins..
 
explorer 2

explorer 2 is about 6-10 year old technology but still is good equipment. i can hit a quarter in red clay at 7 in plus where the T2 se and F75 ltd couldn't hit good at 4 inches. even with iron signals all around still can hit that quarter. etrac may be slightly better but not much. Craig
 
Gee...you can't find what you don't swing over. While we all feel we're completely covering an area, we aren't. If we were, all our strong producing areas would be hunted out.
 
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