Excal question

[Jdett411]

Hey guys, I recently purchased an Excal ll with 10 coil. Not sure if its suppose to do this but here goes. Settings: discrim 7-9, sensitively auto and messed with it the setting fail too, mostly auto tho. And I put the threshold to an easy audible hum. While on dry sand and in the water, when I pass an object I have discrim out that hum goes silent, ( which I believe it should) but when i come off that object instead of that smooth humming noise, I get back a kinda of annoying buzz. To get that hum back I have to either turn the unit off then back on, turn it from discrim to pin point then back to discrim or put my coil by my alum scoop to get a real solid "good" signal then it returns to that hum. If I leave it with the buzz sound it still works fine and I find my good targets. Sometimes it happens so often that I'm trying to adjust to noise rather then enjoying my hunt. Is this normal? Thanks.

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

reply

Hey guys, I recently purchased an Excal ll with 10 coil. Not sure if its suppose to do this but here goes. Settings: discrim 7-9, sensitively auto and messed with it the setting fail too, mostly auto tho. And I put the threshold to an easy audible hum. While on dry sand and in the water, when I pass an object I have discrim out that hum goes silent, ( which I believe it should) but when i come off that object instead of that smooth humming noise, I get back a kinda of annoying buzz. To get that hum back I have to either turn the unit off then back on, turn it from discrim to pin point then back to discrim or put my coil by my alum scoop to get a real solid "good" signal then it returns to that hum. If I leave it with the buzz sound it still works fine and I find my good targets. Sometimes it happens so often that I'm trying to adjust to noise rather then enjoying my hunt. Is this normal? Thanks.

If I understand your question correctly, then yes, this is normal. What you're describing as the tone you hear, after you pass over an accepted target:

".... instead of that smooth humming noise [returning], I get back a kinda of annoying buzz.".

I believe that "buzzing noise" you're referring too, is simply the "pitch hold" of the last target you passed over. So instead of returning to the lowest pitch (which is the threshold tone you started with), it holds the last pitch, of the TID/conductivity, of the item you just went over (albeit in a lower volume strength). Some people actually like that, because it's a constant knowledge of the target you just passed over, (without having to continually re-pass over the target).

You can test this by doing the following air test: turn your disc. all the way down (so that you're only disc'ing our iron). Get your threshold hum in disc. mode. No pass various objects. Notice how the "new" threshold hum, each time, will be whatever the pitch was, of the target you just passed.

I found that VERY annoying, and didn't like it. Even though the new threshold hum DOESN'T stop the next target from sounding off in whatever-tone it's category is, yet it just was annoying, as I'd rather have a single threshold tone from which to acclimate my mind to (by which other tones are subconsciously guaged by, etc...).

The way I found to over come this (rather than the ways you allude to), was the following:

For starters, I NEVER ran "auto" sens. mode. That will just dumb-down the machine and loose depth, in my opinion. You're letting the machine make all the decision as to how much sensitivity to put forth, and it will just err on the side of safety. The only time I ever used auto, was perhaps in very black-sand areas. Otherwise, I'd use my own ears, to dial the manual sens. up and down, and look for the setting by-which falses ceased to occur. Aside from simply getting more depth, another benefit of doing this, was that whenever the audio does the annoying thing you're talking about, the way to get it to return to "normal", is simply to raise and lower the loop with a gentle tap to the sand (from 6" up, or whatever). That little tap or bump or whatever (where it momentarily accelerates to the wet-salt-sand), was always enough to cause the machine to return to the normal tone threshold (as it momentarily "reads" the wet salt, etc...). If you're in auto sens, I believe you'll be at too low of a sens. setting to get it to do that.

 

[Jdett411]

I understand what our saying and thank you for the reply. I will definitely try the air test and an actual field test as soon as Chicago get back above 35°-40°. Thanks!!!