Trust me, I KNOW what you are going through. I switched from an older White's machine to an E-Trac 4 years ago. I wanted to scream, throw it in the lake, and go back to my White's for weeks. Now I wouldn't trade my E-Trac for anything, excpet maybe a CTX3030.
As was already said, take a deep breath and relax. It takes time to learn a new detector. the E-Trac is very talkative. It will tell you about everything in the ground, where most machines won't. You have to learn to get used to it. There have been MANY frustrated new owners over the years. Here is the advice I give to them all....
1. Put you machine in a stock mode (such as coins, if you are hunting parks, yards, etc). NOw leave it here. Don't go changing settings yet.
2. Start off in playgrounds and tot-lots. They are easy to dig in, so checking signals is fast and easy.
Spend you time here just learning the sounds and VDI of targets. Learn the pinpointing. It can be a change from people used to concentric coils.
3. After you have the hang of the sounds and pinpointing, move out into the parks. Listen for the repetative signal that doesn't jump all over.
4. Give yourself at least 100 hours of practice to get a solid feel for the machine. Once you learn how to listen to wht the machine is saying, it's a whole new world.
5. After you have your basics down, NOW go and experiment with settings. Don't make a bunch of changes at once. Change one aspect and see how that affects operations. Or you can put in one of the pro's settings and leave it like that for a while to see how it operates. Just don't go making constant, random changes or you will only confuse yourself again.
One more thing... Learn to S L O W D O W N. One of the E-Trac's biggests strengths is it's abilty to give solid hit's with very slow coil swing. Practice saying "one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three" as you go left to right. then do it again asyou back right to left. If you go out whipping the coil back and forth you are going to miss a lot. The E-Trac will signal on targets when you stop the coil above it and just hold it like that.
just kidding the best of advice i can give is discriminate out the pulltabs and iron and set it to find coins only then practice with it in your yard with coins you bury till you understand the sounds then add back everything you want hope that helps ...also i would try asking bart at bigboyshobbies or another dealer and see what kind of advice they can give good luck
