Ground Balance

[wolcottdigger]

I'm still new to Metal Detecting and was wondering if someone could explain ground balancing to me.
I have an ACE 250 and from what I can tell it's either done automatically or not at all with my detector.
What are the advantages if any of being able to manually balance a detector.

Joe

 

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[G.I.B.]

I don't know if your machine has the ability to manually ground balance or not.

My infinium however, needs to be ground balanced. By doing that, I'm fine tuning it to ignore the ambient soil conditions that would cause interference to my hunting enjoyment. It balances out the mineralization of the soil to quiet the machine down.

I have other machines that do that automatically.

The manual ones will fine tune better than the automatically adjusted machines, if I am correct in my logic.

 

[Monty]

Ground balance is preset at the factory for the ACE 250 and is not automatic nor is it capable of being altered. It is set for the "average" conditions you might encounter. I prefer being able to ground balance manually but Garrett seems to have figured it out pretty well with the ACE 250. The only time I have run into trouble with my ACE 250 is some black sand I ran into on the beach. Oh, yeah, and overhead wires really mess things up sometimes. You get a lot of falsing. Ground balance is the degree that the detector has of adjusting to the soil and other anomolies of the area you are hunting. (That's an over simplification but the best I can do). It can be crudely adjusted somewhat in the ACE 250 by lowering the sensitivity, but that doesn't always work. Just depends on the amount of interference in the ground and or other interference you encounter such as the over head electric wires. M nty

 

[Tank69]

I have a 250 an a Tesoro that you have to adjust the ground balance on to hunt ,the 250 is a factory set ground balance like Monty said an can not be adjusted ,the 250 is a good little machine to let the fact of the ground balance discourage you on it alot of folks find alot of stuff with that machine .happy hunting .

 

[Sandman]

As Monty said very well, the Ace has a factory preset GB. It is ok in a lot of areas generally speaking. Many times the automatic GB that the "higher" end detectors have still do not do as fine a job as the manual adjustments, but if in a bad changing ground you need to keep adjusting the balance. Depends on how much fun you wanna have.

 

[wolcottdigger]

Thanks Everyone!

 

[luvsdux]

The question of ground balance, especially preset versus manual versus automatic comes up fairly often. Many will imply that if your machine doesn't have either true auto ground balance or manually adjusted ground balance that is isn't worth hunting with. I use 5 machines with factory preset ground balance with excellent results in the soil in my area and have made many finds. That said, I do have one machine that has manually controlled ground balance and one that has true auto that I can fall back on if I encounter soil conditions that require adjustment. One should be aware that poorly adjusted manual and/or auto ground balance that is off may give worse performance than a factory preset. For most typical parks, fair grounds, tot lots etc. the preset machines will give good results without having to fiddle with multiple adjustments etc. My two bits.
HH
Bill

 

[Monty]

I am lucky in that there is hardly any areas around where I hunt most that have a very high or very low mineralization problem. So, factory ground balance works just fine most of the time. I hunt one lake shore that has a very high salt content and I do get a bit of static when I use my ACE 250 on the shoreline. It even has black sand much like the seashore. But as long as I stay on the dry sand it works excellent. Monty

 

[liftloop]

I pick'd up a 5900 di pro it has to be manually ground balanced, but my mxt it adjust it's self by pumping it up and down over the ground and your off one of the fastest to ground balance i thick.But my 5900 eats my mxt when it come to deep with a blue max 1500 it goes down 4'.My mxt alittle over 2' with a dd8by14 I have the piece of copper still in the ground to prove it.I love White's detectors.

 

[spartacus53]

The only way around this is to adjust the sensitivity as everyone mentioned. For the beach I usually turn it down between a 2, or 3. On regular ground go to a 4, or 5. I would play around with it for a while and see what works best for your needs.