Modifications to E-Tracs Factory-Preset "COINS" Discrimination Pattern

[Machinist]

Modifications to E-Trac's Factory-Preset "COINS" Discrimination Pattern

This is an interesting article on a guy's discoveries of faults within the default coin pattern and how he modified it accordingly. I myself and some other members were seeking information on coin patterns so I thought I would post a link to the page. At the bottom there also is some links to other articles of his on QM patterns. I found them very interesting and would love to get some feed back from Etrac users on them both

Modifications to E-Trac Discrimination Pattern

The link on the QM pattern.

Minelab E-Trac QuickMask

 

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[Jackalope]

I used the pattern below and found it worked well, especially after my ears grew tired of a more open pattern around iron. Allowed for coins/jewelry to respond unobstructed across a wide Fe band. DISC most areas prone to unwanted ferrous (nails, bottle caps, wrap-around iron, etc). You can tweak based on the target you are expecting to find.



The same pattern with a TTF overlayed to show where tones land in that mode. If you want to reduce the use of DISC and can handle machine gun low-tones in iron fields, then remove the DISC above 17Fe. Generally, the less DISC the better for improved sensitivity.


Another option is to use 4TF so there is a med-low tone for targets that get into the near-ferrous zone. It may be too many tones for some,
but it does add a bit more tonal information than TTF.


Jackalope

 

[JackalopeZL1]

I am mainly replying just so there is more than one jackalope in this thread But really I just got my Etrac and have been interested in different programs.. I might head for a little bit more of a open program..

 

[Machinist]

Thanks for sharing Jackalope!! On a side note I believe there are some large silver that registers in around FE 1-2 & CO 31-38 if memory serves me right. Have you heard anything about this "wrap-around effect" he is talking about?

Would anyone know if the iron falsing really happens at the FE 01 line??

 

[Jason in Enid]

I used the pattern below and found it worked well, especially after my ears grew tired of a more open pattern around iron. Allowed for coins/jewelry to respond unobstructed across a wide Fe band. DISC most areas prone to unwanted ferrous (nails, bottle caps, wrap-around iron, etc). You can tweak based on the target you are expecting to find.





Jackalope

OMG, you are missing SOOOO many coins with that pattern! That is way, way, way too restrictive. You aren't even going to find silver dollars with that.

 

[cudamark]

Or halves either......

 

[cudamark]

Thanks for sharing Jackalope!! On a side note I believe there are some large silver that registers in around FE 1-2 & CO 31-38 if memory serves me right. Have you heard anything about this "wrap-around effect" he is talking about?

Would anyone know if the iron falsing really happens at the FE 01 line??

I found lots of false signals in the 01 and 02 line....both ferrous and conductive.....so I eliminated most of them except for the 01-02fe with 35 and higher conductive. I normally like an open screen but those false signals got to be too much at the beach.

 

[Jackalope]

I'd agree that it would be good to open the 01Fe 41-48Co to get silver coins (below). With elongated iron or iron with sharp corners/angles it will chirp (false) at the high tone in the same area as the silver coins (01-02Fe). In dense iron fields I find it annoying and tiring after an hour of machine gun open screen, and so to keep it quiet I used to switch to the above pattern.

And, with some mineralized soils coins will drop to higher Fe values that would be disc'd in the above pattern. I've at times opened the Fe16 -26 area to include up-averaged coins in iron, when I thought the area needed it, but the trade-off is more iron interference. I'd rather run "open" in TTF or 4TF for as long as I can stand it, then switch to the pattern above. It is really a compromise to stop the chatter/chirp/grunting and give the brain a rest.

My recommendation is always to run with minimum discrimination - which is why the CTX combined mode has an edge over the E-Trac TTF/4TF.


Some important targets the pattern above can miss (you'll get them if the Fe value bounces a bit out of the Disc area - adjust as needed):

01 40-41 Silver dollar
01 40-41 US Silver dollar Morgan
01 40-41 US Silver Peace Dollar
01 41 Peace Dollar - 1922, Tone: Medium/High-Steady, Comp: 90% Au 10% CU
01 41-43 Silver Dollar
01 42 1878-CC Morgan Silver Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10% (coins on edge)) Angle: 0° (Flat)
01 42 1928 Peace Silver Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 0° (Flat)
01 42 Morgan Dollar - 1921, Tone: High-Sporadic, Comp: 90% Au 10% CU
01 42 Eisenhower Dollar - 1976, Tone: High-Sporadic, Comp Outer: CU/NI 75/25% Inner: CU 100%
01 44 1878-CC Morgan Silver Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10% (coins on edge)) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 44 1928 Peace Silver Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 44 1972-D Eisenhower Dollar (Outer: Cu 75% - Ni 25%, Inner: Cu 100%) Angle: 0° (Flat)
01 44 1776-1976 Eisenhower Dollar (Outer: Cu 75% - Ni 25%, Inner: Cu 100%) Angle: 0° (Flat)
01 44 Sterling Silver RING - 14K Cross RING Wt: 15.1g. Size: 10
01 45 Sterling Silver RING - Phrase RING Wt: 7.3g. Size: 9
01 45 925 Silver RING - Plain Band Wt: 7.7g. Size: 9
01 46 Sterling Silver RING - Jewish Wedding RING Wt: 7.7g. Size: 6
01 46 925 Silver RING - Tigers Eye RING Wt: 15g. Size: 10
01 46 925 Silver RING - Barbed Wire Pattern RING Wt: 9.4g. Size: 12
01 46 1972-D Eisenhower Dollar (Outer: Cu 75% - Ni 25%, Inner: Cu 100%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 46 1776-1976 Eisenhower Dollar (Outer: Cu 75% - Ni 25%, Inner: Cu 100%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 46 1964 Kennedy Silver Half Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 0° (Flat)
01 47 1962 Franklin Silver Half Dollar (Proof) (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 47 1964 Kennedy Silver Half Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 48 1902 Barber Silver Half Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 48 1918 Walking Liberty Silver Half Dollar (Ag 90% - Cu 10%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)
01 48 1776-1976-D Kennedy Half Dollar (Outer: Cu 75% - Ni 25%, Inner: Cu 100%) Angle: 90° (On-edge)

 

[Bart@Big Boys Hobbies]

Discrimination is the devil. Coins on edge or around other targets often give weird signals.

 

[duggr]

Discrimination is the devil. Coins on edge or around other targets often give weird signals.

I agree 100%! Good targets at near or maximum depths with other lower or different conductive targets
could be rejected or clipped off causing you to ignore the signal, especially with Larger than stock coils using fast recovery setting!

 

[ohmygato]

I agree with the folks on this thread who have opened up their discrimination settings in favor of dealing with a bit more noise. I personally prefer a thin vertical "ribbon" of discrimination at the far left side of the screen on my Explorer. This cuts out some of the tiny iron as well as some of the deepest coins which are bouncing from one screen to the other. In iron-ridden sites I sometimes operate in Ferrous tones which makes the small nails and other junk sound like low thuds while anything conductive sounds nice and high pitched. This may not be appropriate for parks where you want to pass the low conductors but in relic-y sites you basically want to dig anything conductive since it might be interesting.

 

[Machinist]

Great information members and thanks for posting !! Would anyone like to share a screen shot of their preferred coin pattern or their modified version of the default coin pattern. I have one I made for parks I will post later. I still need to get the software downloaded on my laptop. So far I just been making patterns on the detector. I would like to get members opinions on it.

 

[TheSleeper]

Wellp, you all are prob not gonna like what I have to say but here goes. There are a lot of super computers, fancy computers that can crunch numbers like crazy, but they are stupid compared to the computer between our ears. Very seldom will two identical coins (same year, denomination etc) match perfectly on a screen. One could be tilted 1degree more than the other resulting in a slight difference, or be 1/4 inch deeper or shallower, perhaps a nail is near it, or a flake of rust, etc to many variables to list.

Sure all the current machines allow its user to notch out, "Junk", but is it really junk, remember its just a machine, its just crutching numbers. SO to me, IMHO the best pattern, is wide open no notches, no disc and engage the strongest computer this world has known and will likely ever know, your brain.

Its not rocket science, he who digs the most, finds the most!

Its like the old story about the optimist versus the pessimist, two huge piles of horse manure, pessimist looks at it goes and sits down, optimist grabs a shovel and starts flinging manure everywhere. Later when the optimist was asked why, he replied; well sir, with all that manure there, I just figured there had to be a horse in it somewhere.....

Moral of this story, if you are getting overwhelmed with signals, switch out to a shooter coil, and diggggggggggggggg.

Anyway, this is just my most humble opinion.
I will say I love trashy areas with a shooter coil, the areas that most other hunters ignore. I have worked a small 5'x5' area for a full day, pulled out one heck of a lot of trash, but also 5 keydate pieces of silver. Notched or disc set, I would have missed them as the trash was too thick, food for thought.

I had to edit and add this, gentleman, we are not in the heyday of detecting anymore, forty years ago, heck even thirty years ago, detectors were rare, those who used them were even rarer. We had virgin territory everywhere we walked, every park was a silver mine, the beaches were gold mines. But in this day and age competition is fierce for those hunted sites, so we cannot lightly hit them with disc set high or notches set to phrase out the junk. If you want to find the good stuff, you got to set her hot and dig, ya got to get dirty, ya got to be sore at the end of the day, so that you can then sit back and admire all that you have found, all the good stuff that others disc'd out or thought were junk.

 

[Vino]

Wellp, you all are prob not gonna like what I have to say but here goes. There are a lot of super computers, fancy computers that can crunch numbers like crazy, but they are stupid compared to the computer between our ears. Very seldom will two identical coins (same year, denomination etc) match perfectly on a screen. One could be tilted 1degree more than the other resulting in a slight difference, or be 1/4 inch deeper or shallower, perhaps a nail is near it, or a flake of rust, etc to many variables to list.

Sure all the current machines allow its user to notch out, "Junk", but is it really junk, remember its just a machine, its just crutching numbers. SO to me, IMHO the best pattern, is wide open no notches, no disc and engage the strongest computer this world has known and will likely ever know, your brain.

Its not rocket science, he who digs the most, finds the most!

Its like the old story about the optimist versus the pessimist, two huge piles of horse manure, pessimist looks at it goes and sits down, optimist grabs a shovel and starts flinging manure everywhere. Later when the optimist was asked why, he replied; well sir, with all that manure there, I just figured there had to be a horse in it somewhere.....

Moral of this story, if you are getting overwhelmed with signals, switch out to a shooter coil, and diggggggggggggggg.

Anyway, this is just my most humble opinion.
I will say I love trashy areas with a shooter coil, the areas that most other hunters ignore. I have worked a small 5'x5' area for a full day, pulled out one heck of a lot of trash, but also 5 keydate pieces of silver. Notched or disc set, I would have missed them as the trash was too thick, food for thought.

I had to edit and add this, gentleman, we are not in the heyday of detecting anymore, forty years ago, heck even thirty years ago, detectors were rare, those who used them were even rarer. We had virgin territory everywhere we walked, every park was a silver mine, the beaches were gold mines. But in this day and age competition is fierce for those hunted sites, so we cannot lightly hit them with disc set high or notches set to phrase out the junk. If you want to find the good stuff, you got to set her hot and dig, ya got to get dirty, ya got to be sore at the end of the day, so that you can then sit back and admire all that you have found, all the good stuff that others disc'd out or thought were junk.

I would have to say, you are right on..
Well put.
George