“Scratchy” silver signal on Equinox 800

[brianc053]

Hi everyone. I dug this Mercury Dime this morning, but I’m not writing to share the find itself. I’m posting to ask others about their experience detecting these small silver targets with the Eq.

I was detecting at a local park that has produced about 8 other silver coins over the last year. I was using Park 1, with 50 tones enabled. I noise cancelled about an hour before I found the dime, and was able to run sensitivity at 20 with no noise.

I have adjusted the iron bias to use the F2 setting and had it at 5 to knock out some of the iron I was finding. I had recovery speed at 5 also and I was swinging slowly.

Earlier in the day I dug an old bent nail that had both negative and high 20’s tones and VDI’s.
This dime had similar behavior: it had somewhat consistent 30’s (32,33,34,35) from multiple directions but also had negatives mixed in. This is what I call “scratchy”.
I dug it anyway but honestly expected it to be another bent nail. It was still in the hole after flipping the plug, and even though the 30’s signal was stronger with some dirt removed there were still a few negatives mixed in. My expectations were low and I was surprised to see the silver dime.
I rechecked the hole and there were zero signals on all-metal mode (there was not an extra iron nail or similar target with the silver coin).

So my question for the experts is: are there settings that can be changed to help to “clean up” scratchy signals like this one?
I now worry that I’ve skipped some possibly good targets.

 

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[nuggetdog]

I’m no expert, but the negatives mixed in tells me there was something ferrous in the hole with it, don’t think you need to worry about missed silver too much, dig all the 30’s, scratchy or not. Congrats on the merc

 

[eyemustdigtreasure]

If you are doing everything right, the target might be on edge, and with iron in same hole - that explains your "problem"...!
Congrats on that OLD silver....well, its FOUR YEARS "older" than ME...!

 

[67GTA]

How deep was it? Sometimes deep targets on the edge of detection depth or coins on edge can cause scratchy signals. Could just be a small area of mineralized soil giving feedback in the form of negative numbers.

 

[brianc053]

How deep was it? Sometimes deep targets on the edge of detection depth or coins on edge can cause scratchy signals. Could just be a small area of mineralized soil giving feedback in the form of negative numbers.

Thanks 67GTA. (cool car by the way)
It was pretty deep, 6-8 inches, so yes - it could have been on the edge of detection range or on its edge in the ground. I feel like that's the thing I'm worried about, and I'm wondering if adjusting recovery speed or iron bias would affect the quality of these sorts of signals.

- Brian

 

[67GTA]

Too much iron bias, or too fast a recovery speed will definitely cause you to miss targets depending on the ground you are hunting. Heavy iron situations will keep you from getting depth so a faster recovery speed is best. Clean ground lets you lower the recovery speed and gain depth. I think park 1 defaults to recovery 6. In cleaner ground dropping that to 5 or even 4 will gain you an inch or two. That dime may have been a clearer signal. It is best to try and run iron bias at 0 or as low as possible. Once you get above F2 @ 3 it can start to limit your depth, or try and call a good target iron.

 

[Bart@Big Boys Hobbies]

With a recovery speed at 5 would be my guess to why it was scratchy. If you're in a good area for silver coins and you even get a decent hit it's always best to dig. There's only one way to know for sure!

 

[Donut]

That would have been a good time to have switched to 4khz just for that signal/ hole.

 

[brianc053]

Thanks everybody for the input.
67GTA, I’ll try lowering the iron bias.
Bart, should increase the recovery speed? My understanding is that higher recovery speed helps with separating good from bad, at the cost of some depth.
Donut, I’ve been playing with changing frequencies but didn’t in this situation. I will experiment more.

I think there are probably a few more good targets at this location (I’ve found 8 silver coins already), so I’m going to take my GoPro on future hunts and try to catch video of a live dig of a signal like this.

 

[Tommybuckets]

Multifrequency and fast recovery speed can make them sound scratchy. If theres any good repeatable tone in there I dig. The more i dig the less I trust the numbers. I just go by ear with most machines and check the numbers when I am getting too many cents lol.

 

[MackDog]

when you get a good target turn a quarter of a circle and recheck the target. If it's good in different directions then it should be a good target.