- #1
Thread Owner
I have wrote about doing this before, parts of it anyway using different settings on a couple of the features, but after a few good finds I think I nailed it down for this technique so let me lay it out for you.
Get a nice drink and sit back and relax because this turned out to be an extra long one.
This is about hunting quietly but still getting deep and utilizing the unmasking abilities of these units if needed.
Let's call this the three S method...Silver Shooting Settings.
I can hunt noisy, some think I am insane for some of the pumped up settings I use in some extremely trashy or iron infested sites.
Plus the signals, hunt with all metal or disc at 1 or 0 and the amount of tones and numbers you hear and see flying by can be....daunting.
Over the years I have trained my brain to pick out the better signals in this wall of sound and the fast jumping numbers on the screen, I know I can because I have found a lot doing it this way.
However for those that are new at using these tools, or those that just can't handle huge amounts of data hitting them all at once or really don't want to, quieter hunting methods are much more logical.
I don't care what you can find, if you are not having fun or are uncomfortable using certain methods just don't...Luckily there are a million ways to set these things up from extreme noise and chatter to deathly silent and still be successful.
I also hunt in some pretty bad dirt, mineralization, trash galore, much more than my share of iron from huge to tiny, so I always am on the lookout for good settings to combat this.
Decent depth is somewhat important but not the be all and end all for me because I have a ton of great things at about the 5-6" level and a bit further around here, it is the masking problem that is much more important to get a handle on for me.
The reason why I have that layer of good targets still existing in so many of my heavily hit, totally scoured public sites is precisely because of masking and the strange way my dirt screws up all signals when you get deeper here.
Nothing is really normal here anyway at about 4-5"+...add in the masking iron and targets have a pretty easy time of staying hidden.
My F70/Patriot plus also the T2 and the F75 are pretty great choices for hunting in my environment because of a programming feature they all have...they up average around iron.
It can be actual pieces of iron in the ground near my targets or just my iron oxide filled dirt that will cause this I have utilized this great feature to my advantage here, I assure you.
Over time there are a few other things I have found that help tremendously, DP tones seem to have some pretty decent unmasking ability also, then there is the pretty well known iron method from Tom Dankowski of disc 6 to knock out tiny nails and using monotone only, 1 tone, to unmask non ferrous targets with great success in iron infested sites.
I tweaked this and usually go down to 1or 0 on the disc because I think it increases the response time a bit and I like to hear and see everything.
For those that have never read about this using monotone is the main thing here, switching to any other tone choice switches the disc to level 15 automatically, or definitely on the multi tone options anyway but I believe it is all of them, as it does this it can cause you to miss things.
There are way more to these machines than what you see on the surface and it pays to delve deeper into the actual programming quirks if you care to do that...the more you know and all that.
This can get noisy but you can adjust the gain and thresh to make it bearable, I just got used to some higher ones so a bit of chatter and jumping is not a big deal for me.
My blast though settings work great for me too in trash and especially iron, all metal and everything else pumped up to max, SL and DE speed us your option but both seem to work well.
This is extremely noisy, it took hours of practice to get a handle on this and figure out non ferrous target behavior but well worth the time spent, I have found many great targets including a few bucket listers in some insane iron infested sites doing it this way.
I also found that very high thresh has some great unmasking abilities too, plus it seems to turn these things into sensitive and deep monsters but most of you know as you turn up the thresh it can get noisy.
Now given all that that I have discovered, experimented with, practiced and found as much as I have found using my noisier settings there is something to be said for hunting in very quiet environments.
For newbies and many others it is just easier to notice better signals with less data hitting you all at once...that quieter environment.
Even as good as I am at using these noisy jumpy pumped up settings I could still miss things.
I can process the tones and numbers flying by fast as anyone after years of practice but I am not perfect by a long shot.
So what to do if you want to hunt quietly and deep and unmask hidden treasure using tools that are ultra high gain out of the factory and have no DST to mitigate noise?
You experiment like crazy and find settings that can do this for you, that's what.
Luckily so many settings can work on these things to do most of that.
Gain set at respectable levels of the 70's to 80's or even lower and thresh in the negative, remember the gain is much higher on these things that you might think...even set on 1.
It may not be ultra quiet but you can get there with the right gain and thresh combinations, plus also remember the lower 3 tone choices in disc are going to be quieter than the higher ones.
I use this kind of set up a lot and it works well.
For most this type of set up should work too in most soil types but I wanted more.
Awhile ago I hit on something that seemed to also work and quiet this thing down a good bit and on this hunt helped me find one if the deepest targets I have ever dug in the bad stuff here, it was a1880's V nickel worn thin as a dime and every bit of 8-9" deep...and it was found with the 5" DD sniper coil too.
A friend that hunts with an E Trac saw the coin, the deep hole it came out of and the small coil and could hardly believe it, heck, I could hardly believe it...but there it was.
Settings at the time were new for me and something I was trying...
Disc maxed at 65, thresh was about -1 or -2, sense probably about 85, I think I was in DE speed, 3 or 3H tones and I had notched in foil and nickels because I am still a gold hunter at my core.
Pretty quiet, not ultra quiet but quiet enough for me to notice an up averaged high tone that was solid and repeated from more than one way on this deep nickel in an area I had been over a thousand times before and so had countless of others over the years.
Now let me say this here, on these things nickels are fairly easy because these units really like them for some reason and so do many other brands.
Even in this bad dirt I have found many but silver dimes, those are a bit tougher especially when masked to the hilt.
There is a reason most use dimes for testing purposes in this hobby, it seems to be the standard target that is chosen more than most others.
If you can get your tool to hit deep dimes you have a shot at most everything else is the usual mindset.
After this deep nickel I used these settings a bit more but filed it away and went on to experimenting with others.
Such is my curse, I am very curious and there are so many different ways and settings to try and I enjoy that part of the hobby.
For me to settle down and use just one small list of settings is pretty much impossible but that's ok, I enjoy hunting no matter what I find or don't find no matter what way I am doing it.
Then I read a post from another hunter that uses an F75 and was talking about how really high thresh helped him in unmasking some great targets in some pretty rough soil, he went into great detail about it too and thanks for that.
So this past February I revisited these settings again and decided to explore them a bit deeper.
Again I pumped up the Disc to max 65, I used my common 1 monotone, DE speed, and turned up the sense to 99 and the thresh to +9 and used the big DD coil.
No notch at that point.
I was astounded to see how quiet this thing was...eerily quiet in areas it never was before.
I came to realize that not only can you control the noise and chatter with the sense and thresh, and choosing the lower tone choices too to some degree, but raising the disc up seems to have a great affect on it too.
I had a few little tics and falses here and there but not much at all, I kept checking to see if my machine was actually working when I had some short stretches of total silence because this was really weird to me.
I notched back in nickels again and it got a tiny bit noisier but not much so I left it.
I tried notching in foil too but the noise started coming in heavier, these were similar to the settings I had when I found that deep V nickel except then the sense and thresh were way lower, here they were maxed out.
I discovered if you want to notch anything in with these high sense and thresh settings just do one not multiples and it should still stay unusually quiet.
I don't think it matters what you notch in, foil, nickels, tabs or zinc, maybe even iron, if you do this don't notch in more than one if anything to keep them fairly quiet.
For about a week I used this setup and on three consecutive hunts I found three great silver targets in three different areas I assure you I have hunted to death.
The first was a silver rosie, not super deep at about 5" or so but in the hole with it was a rusted disc that I believe was a steel war cent and a pretty decent size piece of iron slag.
This was one of the entrance areas to a park just up the block from me that I practically live at.
I know I had been over this area a ton with different settings, coils and detectors and this thing never showed up before.
This time I got a for sure dig me signal and it shocked me when a silver dime came up.
This wasn't super stable, it had that iron in the hole, but I have learned indicators to target non ferrous objects in this mess and this time I saw them where I never did in the past.
The next day I was on my way to the same park and stopped at a permission home on my way I had hunted so many times in the last year I couldn't count and even though I got a large amount of great targets out of here I thought I was done.
There seemed to be nothing left except true iron signals, over time I even dug most of the iffier trash as long as it wasn't iron so this was a pretty clean site.
Since it was so clean I just consider it a personal laboratory and hit it when I use new settings just to see if they work.
I rarely found anything good but it doesn't hurt to try.
This time with these new settings I got another signal in an area right next to a walkway that I had been over a zillion times before and never saw...more dig me non ferrous indicators that I would have gone after for sure if I had seen them in the past.
I dug down about 5-6" and on the way pulled out a couple of healthy sized pieces of iron.
Finally at the depth my F70 said it was I pulled out something else...a large oval hair clip that came up suspiciously clean.
I knocked the dirt off and looked at the back and sure enough there was the word sterling stamped into it.
I was dumbfounded.
Day three back to this park again with these settings and headed for an area I have hit a million times and I am sure a ton of hunters had too over the decades.
Never found much here, some modern clad, some junk from old houses that were near this vicinity and were knocked down long ago, a bunch of trash like can slaw and a million tabs and pop tops.
I was moving along and got another great signal, short but sweet.
My rig said quarter and not deep at about 2" but still I was surprised I had never acquired and dug this one before.
I opened a small hole and dug down but missed it.
At least one piece of iron in that hole, a big ol rusty nail, and nothing else in the bottom but my Propointer says dummy, it is in the sidewall of the hole, pay better attention when you pinpoint.
I stuck the tip of my Lesche in high and gouged out a chunk of dirt and pulled it it and threw it on top of the pile of dirt I had already taken out if the hole.
In that dirt I saw something cool, it was covered up with dirt but one edge was poking out a little and I saw it was shiny, not dark like all my clad looks coming out of my dirt.
It had to be silver and I was happy, I picked it up and cleaned off the face expecting to see Washington's bust or that familiar eagle but instead I saw a liberty head and went into shock.
It was a Barber quarter and the Date was 1898!
This is the one in my avatar, at the very tip top of my bucket list was any Barber because I should have found one way before this but never did and a quarter to boot.
I believe this thing was standing straight up and vertical, hard to believe we all missed this shallow coin all these years but that bit of iron near it and the vertical position might have had something to do with it.
These settings seem to have a bit of unmasking superpowers to them, I can't explain finding these three silver targets plus a bunch of other more mundane coins I dug heavily hunted areas along the way.
Then I changed my settings again and started experimenting with some others like DP.
Don't know why, I should have stuck with what worked but after one or two hunts with nothing stellar showing up I got bored and went on to other adventures in learning.
Recently a few people have been receiving their new Patriots and asked about some settings and advice and I am loaded with way too much of all that so I put some out there so they could move up the learning curve a bit faster.
One mentioned using the thresh on higher numbers and replying to that jogged my memory about how well that worked for me in the past.
I hadn't used that high disc high thresh and sense stuff lately and I got a new Nel Sharpshooter coil recently which seems unusually quiet on my rig so that got me going...now I couldn't wait to get out there and try these again.
I put down a new Mojave I have been having fun with for the last week or so and picked up the F70 again and headed for some old curb strips I have hunted a ton in the past along with legions of other hunters for decades.
A prime hunting spot for many in the past because they sit in front of one of the oldest and most exclusive neighborhoods in the city.
Pretty much considered hunted out now and forgotten but not by me, there might not be much left at all but there us just too much trash and iron masking going on around here, too many signals screwed up by the mineralized dirt to ever consider any site completely drained so I keep coming back to try my luck.
I have found a few things here, some modern clad and things but the few older wheats were the real prizes here...if these are here there could be more.
I tried these settings on the F70 and nothing great popped up but I did dig a surprising amount of copper cents from the 60's to 70's.
I missed them all before so these settings are still working.
Then yesterday I went to another old park where good targets are scarce but once in awhile some good stuff still pops up.
Same deal, maxed out disc, sense and thresh but with nickels notched in.
I found dimes, some copper cents and nothing spectacular but not much trash or iron either and I was still happy to find what I did.
Then in an area near a very old building that had been here from probably the early 1900's I came across another really short quick but solid sounding nickel signal in the 3 tones I had just switched to for a change.
Heavy amount of red clay here just under the grass, a bunch of rocks too and even though there has been extensive work done in this park in the last few years I don't think this particular area was touched.
This nickel or whatever it was wasn't deep, turns out it was just below the grass at about 1/2" deep but again standing straight up vertically...hence the unusually short tone.
I went for it and when I got it out of the roots of the grass it was entangled in I again was shocked...this wasn't a Jefferson as I expected or even a buff, it was a freaking V nickel with a date of 1903!
Only found 4 in my career and this is the best one yet.
So now I am still basking from this one and thinking about what I have learned about using these settings.
Two coins that a million people probably missed over the decades that could be because they were standing on edge.
Might just be luck but these settings easily noticed them so that could be important.
Dealing with my mineralized soil they work well, digging some better silver out of the same holes with iron tells me the unmasking ability seems not just good but great.
This is a huge deal to me at my sites.
Depth, well with these settings you are supercharged and the depth you can get on these units is pretty amazing anyway so even though I am thrilled to get to even 8-9" here in good soil who knows the limit?
In good dirt I once hit a target at 15" in disc with the thresh and sense maxed out like this so for those of you that are lucky enough not to live where I do I would go for it, in older sites especially.
The Quietness...turn it down a bit if you have to but I bet you won't have to do that much at all with such high disc.
I am still amazed mine is so quiet.
The only units I ever experienced true "silent search" is with my Tesoros but this comes pretty darn close.
Utilization...
You ain't gonna find everything with such high disc but for older, silver and other high conductive coin shooting I expect this would be ideal.
By notching in one other area you have a shot at other things too, maybe even gold if you notch in the right target area.
If I was looking for Indians and was not hunting in my dirt which makes them soar high I might try notching in zinc instead...bet that would work.
I will add again that my new Nel coil seems unusually quiet, supposed to have extra shielding in the promotional literature and I believe it does, but I did it all using Fisher factory coils too including the big DD that comes standard on the Patriot and it was still amazingly quiet and stable.
So there ya go, another way too long thread about my experiences but someday, somewhere they could just help another hunter find that next great thing if they try it someday.
They worked pretty darn well for me, I think I am going to keep using them a bit longer this time and see where they lead me.
Get a nice drink and sit back and relax because this turned out to be an extra long one.
This is about hunting quietly but still getting deep and utilizing the unmasking abilities of these units if needed.
Let's call this the three S method...Silver Shooting Settings.
I can hunt noisy, some think I am insane for some of the pumped up settings I use in some extremely trashy or iron infested sites.
Plus the signals, hunt with all metal or disc at 1 or 0 and the amount of tones and numbers you hear and see flying by can be....daunting.
Over the years I have trained my brain to pick out the better signals in this wall of sound and the fast jumping numbers on the screen, I know I can because I have found a lot doing it this way.
However for those that are new at using these tools, or those that just can't handle huge amounts of data hitting them all at once or really don't want to, quieter hunting methods are much more logical.
I don't care what you can find, if you are not having fun or are uncomfortable using certain methods just don't...Luckily there are a million ways to set these things up from extreme noise and chatter to deathly silent and still be successful.
I also hunt in some pretty bad dirt, mineralization, trash galore, much more than my share of iron from huge to tiny, so I always am on the lookout for good settings to combat this.
Decent depth is somewhat important but not the be all and end all for me because I have a ton of great things at about the 5-6" level and a bit further around here, it is the masking problem that is much more important to get a handle on for me.
The reason why I have that layer of good targets still existing in so many of my heavily hit, totally scoured public sites is precisely because of masking and the strange way my dirt screws up all signals when you get deeper here.
Nothing is really normal here anyway at about 4-5"+...add in the masking iron and targets have a pretty easy time of staying hidden.
My F70/Patriot plus also the T2 and the F75 are pretty great choices for hunting in my environment because of a programming feature they all have...they up average around iron.
It can be actual pieces of iron in the ground near my targets or just my iron oxide filled dirt that will cause this I have utilized this great feature to my advantage here, I assure you.
Over time there are a few other things I have found that help tremendously, DP tones seem to have some pretty decent unmasking ability also, then there is the pretty well known iron method from Tom Dankowski of disc 6 to knock out tiny nails and using monotone only, 1 tone, to unmask non ferrous targets with great success in iron infested sites.
I tweaked this and usually go down to 1or 0 on the disc because I think it increases the response time a bit and I like to hear and see everything.
For those that have never read about this using monotone is the main thing here, switching to any other tone choice switches the disc to level 15 automatically, or definitely on the multi tone options anyway but I believe it is all of them, as it does this it can cause you to miss things.
There are way more to these machines than what you see on the surface and it pays to delve deeper into the actual programming quirks if you care to do that...the more you know and all that.
This can get noisy but you can adjust the gain and thresh to make it bearable, I just got used to some higher ones so a bit of chatter and jumping is not a big deal for me.
My blast though settings work great for me too in trash and especially iron, all metal and everything else pumped up to max, SL and DE speed us your option but both seem to work well.
This is extremely noisy, it took hours of practice to get a handle on this and figure out non ferrous target behavior but well worth the time spent, I have found many great targets including a few bucket listers in some insane iron infested sites doing it this way.
I also found that very high thresh has some great unmasking abilities too, plus it seems to turn these things into sensitive and deep monsters but most of you know as you turn up the thresh it can get noisy.
Now given all that that I have discovered, experimented with, practiced and found as much as I have found using my noisier settings there is something to be said for hunting in very quiet environments.
For newbies and many others it is just easier to notice better signals with less data hitting you all at once...that quieter environment.
Even as good as I am at using these noisy jumpy pumped up settings I could still miss things.
I can process the tones and numbers flying by fast as anyone after years of practice but I am not perfect by a long shot.
So what to do if you want to hunt quietly and deep and unmask hidden treasure using tools that are ultra high gain out of the factory and have no DST to mitigate noise?
You experiment like crazy and find settings that can do this for you, that's what.
Luckily so many settings can work on these things to do most of that.
Gain set at respectable levels of the 70's to 80's or even lower and thresh in the negative, remember the gain is much higher on these things that you might think...even set on 1.
It may not be ultra quiet but you can get there with the right gain and thresh combinations, plus also remember the lower 3 tone choices in disc are going to be quieter than the higher ones.
I use this kind of set up a lot and it works well.
For most this type of set up should work too in most soil types but I wanted more.
Awhile ago I hit on something that seemed to also work and quiet this thing down a good bit and on this hunt helped me find one if the deepest targets I have ever dug in the bad stuff here, it was a1880's V nickel worn thin as a dime and every bit of 8-9" deep...and it was found with the 5" DD sniper coil too.
A friend that hunts with an E Trac saw the coin, the deep hole it came out of and the small coil and could hardly believe it, heck, I could hardly believe it...but there it was.
Settings at the time were new for me and something I was trying...
Disc maxed at 65, thresh was about -1 or -2, sense probably about 85, I think I was in DE speed, 3 or 3H tones and I had notched in foil and nickels because I am still a gold hunter at my core.
Pretty quiet, not ultra quiet but quiet enough for me to notice an up averaged high tone that was solid and repeated from more than one way on this deep nickel in an area I had been over a thousand times before and so had countless of others over the years.
Now let me say this here, on these things nickels are fairly easy because these units really like them for some reason and so do many other brands.
Even in this bad dirt I have found many but silver dimes, those are a bit tougher especially when masked to the hilt.
There is a reason most use dimes for testing purposes in this hobby, it seems to be the standard target that is chosen more than most others.
If you can get your tool to hit deep dimes you have a shot at most everything else is the usual mindset.
After this deep nickel I used these settings a bit more but filed it away and went on to experimenting with others.
Such is my curse, I am very curious and there are so many different ways and settings to try and I enjoy that part of the hobby.
For me to settle down and use just one small list of settings is pretty much impossible but that's ok, I enjoy hunting no matter what I find or don't find no matter what way I am doing it.
Then I read a post from another hunter that uses an F75 and was talking about how really high thresh helped him in unmasking some great targets in some pretty rough soil, he went into great detail about it too and thanks for that.
So this past February I revisited these settings again and decided to explore them a bit deeper.
Again I pumped up the Disc to max 65, I used my common 1 monotone, DE speed, and turned up the sense to 99 and the thresh to +9 and used the big DD coil.
No notch at that point.
I was astounded to see how quiet this thing was...eerily quiet in areas it never was before.
I came to realize that not only can you control the noise and chatter with the sense and thresh, and choosing the lower tone choices too to some degree, but raising the disc up seems to have a great affect on it too.
I had a few little tics and falses here and there but not much at all, I kept checking to see if my machine was actually working when I had some short stretches of total silence because this was really weird to me.
I notched back in nickels again and it got a tiny bit noisier but not much so I left it.
I tried notching in foil too but the noise started coming in heavier, these were similar to the settings I had when I found that deep V nickel except then the sense and thresh were way lower, here they were maxed out.
I discovered if you want to notch anything in with these high sense and thresh settings just do one not multiples and it should still stay unusually quiet.
I don't think it matters what you notch in, foil, nickels, tabs or zinc, maybe even iron, if you do this don't notch in more than one if anything to keep them fairly quiet.
For about a week I used this setup and on three consecutive hunts I found three great silver targets in three different areas I assure you I have hunted to death.
The first was a silver rosie, not super deep at about 5" or so but in the hole with it was a rusted disc that I believe was a steel war cent and a pretty decent size piece of iron slag.
This was one of the entrance areas to a park just up the block from me that I practically live at.
I know I had been over this area a ton with different settings, coils and detectors and this thing never showed up before.
This time I got a for sure dig me signal and it shocked me when a silver dime came up.
This wasn't super stable, it had that iron in the hole, but I have learned indicators to target non ferrous objects in this mess and this time I saw them where I never did in the past.
The next day I was on my way to the same park and stopped at a permission home on my way I had hunted so many times in the last year I couldn't count and even though I got a large amount of great targets out of here I thought I was done.
There seemed to be nothing left except true iron signals, over time I even dug most of the iffier trash as long as it wasn't iron so this was a pretty clean site.
Since it was so clean I just consider it a personal laboratory and hit it when I use new settings just to see if they work.
I rarely found anything good but it doesn't hurt to try.
This time with these new settings I got another signal in an area right next to a walkway that I had been over a zillion times before and never saw...more dig me non ferrous indicators that I would have gone after for sure if I had seen them in the past.
I dug down about 5-6" and on the way pulled out a couple of healthy sized pieces of iron.
Finally at the depth my F70 said it was I pulled out something else...a large oval hair clip that came up suspiciously clean.
I knocked the dirt off and looked at the back and sure enough there was the word sterling stamped into it.
I was dumbfounded.
Day three back to this park again with these settings and headed for an area I have hit a million times and I am sure a ton of hunters had too over the decades.
Never found much here, some modern clad, some junk from old houses that were near this vicinity and were knocked down long ago, a bunch of trash like can slaw and a million tabs and pop tops.
I was moving along and got another great signal, short but sweet.
My rig said quarter and not deep at about 2" but still I was surprised I had never acquired and dug this one before.
I opened a small hole and dug down but missed it.
At least one piece of iron in that hole, a big ol rusty nail, and nothing else in the bottom but my Propointer says dummy, it is in the sidewall of the hole, pay better attention when you pinpoint.
I stuck the tip of my Lesche in high and gouged out a chunk of dirt and pulled it it and threw it on top of the pile of dirt I had already taken out if the hole.
In that dirt I saw something cool, it was covered up with dirt but one edge was poking out a little and I saw it was shiny, not dark like all my clad looks coming out of my dirt.
It had to be silver and I was happy, I picked it up and cleaned off the face expecting to see Washington's bust or that familiar eagle but instead I saw a liberty head and went into shock.
It was a Barber quarter and the Date was 1898!
This is the one in my avatar, at the very tip top of my bucket list was any Barber because I should have found one way before this but never did and a quarter to boot.
I believe this thing was standing straight up and vertical, hard to believe we all missed this shallow coin all these years but that bit of iron near it and the vertical position might have had something to do with it.
These settings seem to have a bit of unmasking superpowers to them, I can't explain finding these three silver targets plus a bunch of other more mundane coins I dug heavily hunted areas along the way.
Then I changed my settings again and started experimenting with some others like DP.
Don't know why, I should have stuck with what worked but after one or two hunts with nothing stellar showing up I got bored and went on to other adventures in learning.
Recently a few people have been receiving their new Patriots and asked about some settings and advice and I am loaded with way too much of all that so I put some out there so they could move up the learning curve a bit faster.
One mentioned using the thresh on higher numbers and replying to that jogged my memory about how well that worked for me in the past.
I hadn't used that high disc high thresh and sense stuff lately and I got a new Nel Sharpshooter coil recently which seems unusually quiet on my rig so that got me going...now I couldn't wait to get out there and try these again.
I put down a new Mojave I have been having fun with for the last week or so and picked up the F70 again and headed for some old curb strips I have hunted a ton in the past along with legions of other hunters for decades.
A prime hunting spot for many in the past because they sit in front of one of the oldest and most exclusive neighborhoods in the city.
Pretty much considered hunted out now and forgotten but not by me, there might not be much left at all but there us just too much trash and iron masking going on around here, too many signals screwed up by the mineralized dirt to ever consider any site completely drained so I keep coming back to try my luck.
I have found a few things here, some modern clad and things but the few older wheats were the real prizes here...if these are here there could be more.
I tried these settings on the F70 and nothing great popped up but I did dig a surprising amount of copper cents from the 60's to 70's.
I missed them all before so these settings are still working.
Then yesterday I went to another old park where good targets are scarce but once in awhile some good stuff still pops up.
Same deal, maxed out disc, sense and thresh but with nickels notched in.
I found dimes, some copper cents and nothing spectacular but not much trash or iron either and I was still happy to find what I did.
Then in an area near a very old building that had been here from probably the early 1900's I came across another really short quick but solid sounding nickel signal in the 3 tones I had just switched to for a change.
Heavy amount of red clay here just under the grass, a bunch of rocks too and even though there has been extensive work done in this park in the last few years I don't think this particular area was touched.
This nickel or whatever it was wasn't deep, turns out it was just below the grass at about 1/2" deep but again standing straight up vertically...hence the unusually short tone.
I went for it and when I got it out of the roots of the grass it was entangled in I again was shocked...this wasn't a Jefferson as I expected or even a buff, it was a freaking V nickel with a date of 1903!
Only found 4 in my career and this is the best one yet.
So now I am still basking from this one and thinking about what I have learned about using these settings.
Two coins that a million people probably missed over the decades that could be because they were standing on edge.
Might just be luck but these settings easily noticed them so that could be important.
Dealing with my mineralized soil they work well, digging some better silver out of the same holes with iron tells me the unmasking ability seems not just good but great.
This is a huge deal to me at my sites.
Depth, well with these settings you are supercharged and the depth you can get on these units is pretty amazing anyway so even though I am thrilled to get to even 8-9" here in good soil who knows the limit?
In good dirt I once hit a target at 15" in disc with the thresh and sense maxed out like this so for those of you that are lucky enough not to live where I do I would go for it, in older sites especially.
The Quietness...turn it down a bit if you have to but I bet you won't have to do that much at all with such high disc.
I am still amazed mine is so quiet.
The only units I ever experienced true "silent search" is with my Tesoros but this comes pretty darn close.
Utilization...
You ain't gonna find everything with such high disc but for older, silver and other high conductive coin shooting I expect this would be ideal.
By notching in one other area you have a shot at other things too, maybe even gold if you notch in the right target area.
If I was looking for Indians and was not hunting in my dirt which makes them soar high I might try notching in zinc instead...bet that would work.
I will add again that my new Nel coil seems unusually quiet, supposed to have extra shielding in the promotional literature and I believe it does, but I did it all using Fisher factory coils too including the big DD that comes standard on the Patriot and it was still amazingly quiet and stable.
So there ya go, another way too long thread about my experiences but someday, somewhere they could just help another hunter find that next great thing if they try it someday.
They worked pretty darn well for me, I think I am going to keep using them a bit longer this time and see where they lead me.
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