Hey guys, I see this thread slid into a discussion of the tooty-fluty orchestra of minelab explorer series (ET, etc...) versus simpler machines .
I want to add in my own experience of that, for what it's worth:
A guy in my area was amongst the first to get the very first original XS's (the first explorer) back when it first came out (~15 yrs. ago). He'd read on internet forums that this was the next-best-greatest-deepest, etc... and had to go out and try it. He let me borrow it for a day. I took it out to a particular 1920s elementary school turf, and flagged some deeper 7 to 8" type wheatie signals to cross-compare over against my then-Whites Eagle SL90 II. I HATED this stoopid Explorer. Made absolutely no sense, despite that I could sit there a fiddle with controls over known targets. Everything sounded the same, like an ice-cream truck gone awry. I returned it to the fellow who loaned it to me, and that was that.
About a year later (the II was out by this time), a fellow in CA was posting on our local forum about silver he was digging from parks in his area. When he'd casually mention the names of the parks, I recognized them as being parks that all the easy 4-star silver turf was long-since harvested from. I knew you had to be one-tough skilled hunter to pull more silver from these parks, as they got hit very hard in the late 1970s and through the '80s. I learned that this guy was using the Exp. II. I talked him into meeting with me in SF, CA, where I had a particular park that was giving up silver too, but .... at depths that were very hard to reach (even at 8"+ you were still only reaching the '40s stuff).
We met up there, and he immediately started digging silver and wheaties "at will". By the end of that hunt, I think he had 7 or 8 silver, to my paltry 1 or 2
He would repeatedly show me flagged signals, and it was all my Whites Eagle could do to bring them in. While his exp. II seemed to have "room to spare".
So I ran out and got my own Exp. II. Woohoo. BUT AGAIN hated it. AGAIN made no sense. And believe me I was trying. So again I asked this cross-state hunter to meet me in the same SF park for round-two, this time with me swinging an explorer as well. And again he flagged signals for cross-comparison. Conversely I too would flag signals and ask his analysis. He might say "shallow zinc, I'd pass" or "nail false", or clad dime at 6", and so forth. After about 7 or 9 such comparisons, the LIGHTS WENT ON. All of the sudden it made perfect sense, and I was off and running
Thus it's one of those machines that's SO "sound specific", that no amount of reading printed instructions can ever convey the proper way to do it. Because "sounds", afterall, can not be learned from printed text. They have to be heard. And by "heard", I mean side-by-side "here's what you want" and "here's what you pass" type analysis.
Sure you can do that by hard knocks digging 1000 targets. Or you can speed it up by hooking up with proficient turf hunters who routinely bring in the silver. Or another way is to start with everything blacked out but copper pennies and up. Go to a spot prolific with easy clad. Then the next day lower than mask down to where you accept zinc, and repeat. The next day lower that down to where you accept corroded zincs. The next day down to square tabs. Then to round tabs, etc.... Each day going to a spot prolific with easy clad and signals.
Eventually you'll have you screen all the way down to "smart screen" or whatever (with only iron blacked out, or ferrous with iron accepted). This way your brain will learn the various coords one at a time to start to make sense. Beats the heck out of trying to learn the machine with all those sounds accepted at the first day.
