Congrats on the Ace 250, I love mine. It is lightweight so you can swing a full day without getting tired, and easy to learn. It will pay for itself in no time too. As far as tips I have the following and I am sure others will chime in.
1- Get to know you machines sounds. Drop pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters, pull tabs and a ring or two to get to know the distinct sounds. Place them on the ground and run the machine over them until you can start hearing the different sounds. Don't forget a strong pull tab sound may be gold, or a pull tab.
2- Learn how to use the pinpointer in the same manner as above. Practice with your eyes closed and once you hear the strong pinpoint sound just lower the coil and see where it hits on your target.
The standard 9" x 6.5" coil is good, but you may want to later upgrade to a larger 12" x 9" Garrett, or the one I bought which is the Excelerator 14" x 10". The larger coil will enable to cover more ground in a shorter time and make quicker recoveries
3- Discrimination Settings
A) Soil I hunt on a 4-5
B) Beach lower it to a 3
4- Hunt settings. I normally leave mine on all metal and you can later adjust to block out foil, etc if that is not what you are hunting. This also has a coin mode, as well as a jewelry mode and I do use them from time to time. I perfer all metal because I don't want to miss a thing
You will also see at times people refer to Zincolns, they are those nasty pennies that ring up as dimes because of the zinc. For the most part what the 250 says it found and what it finds is very accurate.
Tip There are times you will be fooled by the size of the target. An example is you get a 10 cents silver tone for a target 2-3" down. After passing the 3" your target your target is still there, but deeper down. This may end up to be an old aluminum can, as I have found on a few occasions
Tip Mixed tones. At times you may hear several tones ranging from foil to silver. What I do is try to isolate the clean silver tone, pinpoint and dig. If you are still having trouble trying to separate the tones, just move and approach your target from a new side, this may help. If not, just dig the mixed target and see what you have. You will be surprised like the rest of us. Sometimes it's good, sometimes trash.
I hope this helps and if you have any other questions feel free to e-mail me
Happy hunting with your new toy
