Etrac

[rayoh]

I have had most every detector made, except for the two new detectors(Deus 11 and Legend). Both appear to be solid detectors, but I was not financially ready to buy an unknown detector. Last winter I started looking for a low usage Etrac and luckily I found one. Winter just broke here in northeast Ohio and I got a chance to take my new to me Etrac out.

First day out I found three coins from a park where I have found over 700 silver coins. I hate to admit that in the last couple of years I sometimes go home skunked. These coins were two wheats and one silver quarter. I would rather find one silver coin than 50 clad coins so this hunt made my day. All three coins were 8-9 inches deep and after spending hundreds of hours with FBS detectors, I knew they were coins. With an Etrac, I dig very little trash as I have learned to trust this detector.

Second hunt at a different park I started finding clad coins by the handful. Fun, but not what I wanted. I went to the playground area of this turn of the century park and continued with my clad success. I went to the area where I have found some of the oldest coins this park has given up to me. I was creeping and listening for any deep squeak(coins are sometimes over 10 inches deep). I finally got one and it was one of the deepest wheat pennies I have ever dug. Many will think I am stretching the truth, but it was 11-12 inches deep. Most people would not have dug it as it was only a whisper, but repeatable from most angles. I ended up with two more wheats, one merc, and finally, the deepest Buffalo nickel I have ever dug. Some people believe the Nox is deeper on nickels than the Etrac and up until yesterday, I did too. Again , barely a whisper and only occasional 12-12, 12-11 type numbers. This nickel was over 10 inches deep and it turned out to be a beautiful Buff with a crisp 1935 date. Not only was it the deepest Buffalo I have ever dug, it was the nicest and I have found several cool whip containers full.

Sure the Etrac is heavy and slow, but once learned, it is the best coin detector I have ever used!

 

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[Dign-nbama]

I just cannot part with my E-trac for that reason, love the tones this thing gives, not to mention depth, I have a deus and love it for a different reason, I've worked maintenance for most my life like my tool belt , I just look at them as different tools for different jobs.

 

[malenkai]

I still love my E-Trac. Problem is that it is getting old (buttons are hard to push), and it is getting harder on my arm/shoulder as I get older. I bought a Deus II and was not impressed, and am sticking with the E-Trac for now.

My four main problems with the Deus II is that the TID is lousy, the coil battery lasts less than 7 hours on the deep silver program, the headphones are awful, especially in cold weather, and I did a firmware update yesterday and it erased my custom program.

The E-Trac doesn't have any of these problems, and I saw no advantage in the wild if the D II over the E-Trac. I have no attention span for air tests, staged hunts, or white boards. All that matters to me is performance in the wild and finds. The E-Trac has won for me so far this season, 8 silvers to 0 for the Deus II.

Good luck with your E-Trac, it is a nice machine.

I am hoping Minelab comes out with a new FBS machine with the better egronomics of the Deus II (except the battery and headphone problems). The egronomics of the latter is the only advantage of the latter that I can see.

 

[eman1000]

I'm quickly becoming a believer in the e-trac as well. I even had a Nox 600 and sold it because of the compressed VDI range and my ears struggled with the multi-tones on the Nox not so with the E-trac. My primary machine has been the XP ORX for the last 2 years. Its light and very fast - to echo Malenkai the XP machines tend to average up targets which isn't necessarily a bad thing for relic hunters (If that is the TID issue he is referring to). The Deus also is unmatched in Iron and is rarely fooled by a nail. I have already dug several rusty deep nails or bent nails with the etrac that were too close to a good target to pass up. In fairness with time I might learn the difference in audio response.

I few issues I'm still learning on the etrac are the threshold - trying to find the sweet spot between loosing the threshold entirely either due to sweep speed, sensitivity setting, and/or recovery speed on an older machine. Essentially what I am finding is I have to hunt slower. Do to this issue of losing the threshold I was at first concerned that I was missing targets but after several hunts I have found coins either right next to iron or with iron in the same hole even after the threshold has dropped of. I also sometimes experience a state of limbo between switching from quickmask, pinpoint mode, and back to hunting where the audio seems different or missing. Hard to explain but on more than a few occasions I've had to reboot the machine.


The VDI is nearly exceptional and with the quick mask you can eliminate a lot of junk but that's a double edge sword....

If your consistently running the trashy park program at parks looking for coins and you only have that tiny sliver of VDI discrim. open for Nickels. Then you will be missing gold rings - I've tested about a dozen gold rings and all but 1 come through on that program. I believe Andy Sabisch's etrac program is better suited for both Jewelry and Coin finds. On the flip side my Nickel count has gone way up though? Once I get more familiar with the machine I plan to run it with less discrimination to be able to dig those rings in the park. Any one recommend a good small coil I'm looking at the Nel or Sunray but the Nel hunter coil I have now is a real pain to install the cable through the shaft so not looking for that issue again.

Other than the weight difference, and the screen resolution could be better. Its already a proven winner. Still eyeing that Deus II though for the peformance in iron. Not sure why no other machines except the Etrac/CTX are giving dual VDI on Ferrous/non-ferrous seems like a no brainer at this point on a high-end machine. You have the ferrous ID bar but for me personally its not the same.

What I really want is a park like Rayoh found!!! Wow - I'm lucky to pull a silver coin out of any of our parks all year.

 

[rayoh]

I'm quickly becoming a believer in the e-trac as well. I even had a Nox 600 and sold it because of the compressed VDI range and my ears struggled with the multi-tones on the Nox not so with the E-trac. My primary machine has been the XP ORX for the last 2 years. Its light and very fast - to echo Malenkai the XP machines tend to average up targets which isn't necessarily a bad thing for relic hunters (If that is the TID issue he is referring to). The Deus also is unmatched in Iron and is rarely fooled by a nail. I have already dug several rusty deep nails or bent nails with the etrac that were too close to a good target to pass up. In fairness with time I might learn the difference in audio response.

I few issues I'm still learning on the etrac are the threshold - trying to find the sweet spot between loosing the threshold entirely either due to sweep speed, sensitivity setting, and/or recovery speed on an older machine. Essentially what I am finding is I have to hunt slower. Do to this issue of losing the threshold I was at first concerned that I was missing targets but after several hunts I have found coins either right next to iron or with iron in the same hole even after the threshold has dropped of. I also sometimes experience a state of limbo between switching from quickmask, pinpoint mode, and back to hunting where the audio seems different or missing. Hard to explain but on more than a few occasions I've had to reboot the machine.


The VDI is nearly exceptional and with the quick mask you can eliminate a lot of junk but that's a double edge sword....

If your consistently running the trashy park program at parks looking for coins and you only have that tiny sliver of VDI discrim. open for Nickels. Then you will be missing gold rings - I've tested about a dozen gold rings and all but 1 come through on that program. I believe Andy Sabisch's etrac program is better suited for both Jewelry and Coin finds. On the flip side my Nickel count has gone way up though? Once I get more familiar with the machine I plan to run it with less discrimination to be able to dig those rings in the park. Any one recommend a good small coil I'm looking at the Nel or Sunray but the Nel hunter coil I have now is a real pain to install the cable through the shaft so not looking for that issue again.

Other than the weight difference, and the screen resolution could be better. Its already a proven winner. Still eyeing that Deus II though for the peformance in iron. Not sure why no other machines except the Etrac/CTX are giving dual VDI on Ferrous/non-ferrous seems like a no brainer at this point on a high-end machine. You have the ferrous ID bar but for me personally its not the same.

What I really want is a park like Rayoh found!!! Wow - I'm lucky to pull a silver coin out of any of our parks all year.

To be fair, the silver I have found in this park has been over the last twenty years. But, I found another this am. 43 merc and three wheats. I use the Etrac differently than most. I hunt in quick mask with a slight amount of disc and then I check in a modified coin program. I do dig my share of deep rusty iron but many times I pretty much know it is rusty iron. Hoping for a coin close to it. It does happen occasionally.

 

[malenkai]

IMHO you want to hunt with pretty much a white screen. I only notch out around the edges where there is annoying EMI and the high FE numbers.

The reason you want the low FE numbers white (I think mine are white to 24 or so) is that sometimes deep silvers will come in there, and you will miss them on the first pass when this happens. If you have it open and hit one of these, just rescan a few times, and if it bounces up to around 12 now and then, and the CO number stays the same more or less (usually 45 for deep silver dimes), then you want to dig. These can be iron, but they are deep silvers at least half the time in my experience. The key is being wide open so it hits it on the first pass. I call these "fight silvers", I want to see the target fighting to be dug. Pure iron (like a deep bolt) will generally not fight out of the 20+ FE range, even if it sounds like a deep silver.

Nails of course are nails, we all know the drill here; the best advice is to try to get them lengthwise using sizing pinpointing, but still you could be looking at a silver in the same hole. If your sound seems to be hitting at a different place than your pinpointing, it is probably a nail. Then again, a deep silver on its side will do basically the same thing on the E-Trac. Tough problem really, but you will get used to it as you learn the machine, and at least be able to assign a probability that a deep tone is a silver or iron.

I will grant that the Deus II is much better at identifying iron than the E-Trac; the problem is, I have yet to dig a deep silver with it for a true comparison. My deepest target (non-ferrous) with the machine is about 5-6 inches. It does find small conductors well, like tiny buttons and buckshot, but I am not really looking for these sorts of targets.

And yes, I was referring to whatever the Deus II does with target id. I mainly hunt fields that are plowed each season, that have old targets and modern trash. Target depth is no guide due to the plowing (last time out with the D II I dug a large copper at 1 inch, and a pull tab at 6 inches), and pull tabs ringing in above wheaties and indians is just annoying (this seems to be more of a problem on program 6). In a field, I want to dig indians and higher (I don't care about nickels, and gold is so rare in a field I just don't worry about it), and the D II, in my judgment, is not the type of machine for that style of hunting. E-Trac is perfect.