Confused about the 800 and unmasking targets in iron infested sites

[pulltabfelix]

I have owned the 800 since March of this year with the intention of starting to do more civil war relic and old home site hunting. I was under the impression before I purchased my 800 that it was really good at picking through junk targets that masked coins, 3 ringers etc. But maybe people were not talking back then about the iron falsing problem.

so is it good at unmasking everywhere but in iron infested sites? If that is so, then for relic hunting a simple older beep and dig detector would be just as good as the 800.

I was out hunting the other day at an old home site located in the back part of a pubic park where people rarely went. Found that in park2, sens 19, Iron bias 3-4, recover 6, auto ground balance, and noise canceled it was still pretty chatty reporting lots of signals. However, the two modern quarters and round cast silver plated broach gave very good repeatable signals in both directions with stable TID 24-25 on quarters and 30-32 on the broach.

I was surprised an the lack of junk I had to dig, just one pop top and one small piece of can slaw. Only the can slaw fooled me. I was pretty sure the pop top was a pop top at 14-15, but was just curious so dug it.

I was happy with the hunt because I did not have to dig a lot of iron. When I switched on the horseshoe to hear the iron, heard a lot of iron rumbling in my headphones, but the good signals came through clearly. I was using 5 tones and sometimes 50 tones.

so is this the norm with the 800? just have to listen to a lot junk signals under the coil? I guess I could set some tone breaks to quiet down the junk audio responses.

Does anyone with the 800 discriminate out junk targets or just set tone breaks to accomplish the same effect. I have heard discriminate can affect the depths. Not sure why if that is true.

I was happy with the hunt because I did not have to dig a lot of iron. When I switched on the horseshoe to hear the iron, heard a lot of iron rumbling in my headphones, but the good signals dominated. I was using 5 tones and sometimes 50 tones.

I am not sure if I am having buyers remorse and thinking I may should have bought the XP Deus.

 

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[pa-dirt_nc-sand]

In high iron old homesites, sensitivity 19 is way too high for me, too chatty. Lower to 15 and it will quite down, but the mid and high tones will sound good if you go slow. Then run through the most promising areas at 20-22 sensitivity and just look for deep repeatable high tones separating themselves from the background signals. Will sound chatty, but I have found some good really deep targets. (5:1 ratio of targets recovered in sensitivity 15 vs 20)

 

[HighVDI]

I really want to try reverse hunting in iron some day just to see how well it works. Some people swear by it. I just wonder if it changes iron falsing or gives off more clues.

 

[vferrari]

I have owned the 800 since March of this year with the intention of starting to do more civil war relic and old home site hunting. I was under the impression before I purchased my 800 that it was really good at picking through junk targets that masked coins, 3 ringers etc. But maybe people were not talking back then about the iron falsing problem.

so is it good at unmasking everywhere but in iron infested sites? If that is so, then for relic hunting a simple older beep and dig detector would be just as good as the 800.

I was out hunting the other day at an old home site located in the back part of a pubic park where people rarely went. Found that in park2, sens 19, Iron bias 3-4, recover 6, auto ground balance, and noise canceled it was still pretty chatty reporting lots of signals. However, the two modern quarters and round cast silver plated broach gave very good repeatable signals in both directions with stable TID 24-25 on quarters and 30-32 on the broach.

I was surprised an the lack of junk I had to dig, just one pop top and one small piece of can slaw. Only the can slaw fooled me. I was pretty sure the pop top was a pop top at 14-15, but was just curious so dug it.

I was happy with the hunt because I did not have to dig a lot of iron. When I switched on the horseshoe to hear the iron, heard a lot of iron rumbling in my headphones, but the good signals came through clearly. I was using 5 tones and sometimes 50 tones.

so is this the norm with the 800? just have to listen to a lot junk signals under the coil? I guess I could set some tone breaks to quiet down the junk audio responses.

Does anyone with the 800 discriminate out junk targets or just set tone breaks to accomplish the same effect. I have heard discriminate can affect the depths. Not sure why if that is true.

I was happy with the hunt because I did not have to dig a lot of iron. When I switched on the horseshoe to hear the iron, heard a lot of iron rumbling in my headphones, but the good signals dominated. I was using 5 tones and sometimes 50 tones.

I am not sure if I am having buyers remorse and thinking I may should have bought the XP Deus.

Not quite sure what the problem statement is here because you seemed to be happy with the results of your hunt but still disappointed about what I am not quite sure...that all metal mode gives off a lot of grunts. Yeah, that's what it does.

But regarding buyers remorse and the Deus, if you turn iron volume on on the deus, you will still experience the same iron rumbling effect.

When unmasking in thick iron using all metal with the Equinox or in the case of the Deus, using iron volume and discrimination (there is a reason why that is done on Deus versus using no discrimination, but a topic for the Deus forum), think of the rumbling iron tones as sort of a threshold, you are listening for squeakers between the grunts. Full on high tones are of course the obvious dig me signals, but it is those subtle squeaks between the iron tones where you have to decide if you are catching a false off the end of a nail or an actual masked high conductor. That is something that comes with experience and when you dig those signals and are successful, it is pretty rewarding, but you WILL dig iron between those successes.

Regarding discrimination - discrimination does not just "silence" iron like an audio notch which simply suppresses audio and TID associated with a specified target ID range, it is a more sophisticated signal processing filter. As such there are upsides and downsides because a filter does not just roll off like a vertical cliff. It slopes and as a result signals adjacent to the filter cutoff can be affected. This can result in signal distortion or target ID up and down averaging and all of these things can affect detectability at depth, hence why most experienced detectorists like to run with all filters off, hear it all an let their brains and shovels do the discriminating.

Also, not clear on how you are using the term "junk". It seems you are referring to both ferrous and non-ferrous. If you don't want to hear ferrous junk, use discrimination. Simple as that, but you may be subject to some of the filtering downsides I just mentioned. If you don't want to hear non-ferrous junk, notch it out. The drawback is that non-junk targets hide amongst what many consider junk target IDs' on the Equinox. Amongst the mid-teen pull tabs, can slaw, and low 20 bottle caps resides gold rings, old nickels, brass buttons, and minie balls. Since you can only filter out targets based on their target ID by silencing them completely, you run the risk of missing keeper targets. I would rather listen to what both the audio and target ID are telling me about a target to make a dig decision than just silence all "probable" pull tabs. The subtle clues are there in the audio signal quality (rise time, distortion, sustain, strength), the tone frequency just corresponds to the target ID (in 50 tone mode). Yes you can futz with tone breaks, tone frequencies, and volumes in 5-tone audio, but I really just primarily stick with 50 tones and listen to what the tones are telling me about the target.

There are other target clues and interrogation tools available on the Equinox which are great. The reason I like 50 tones is because it readily gives me an audio cue if the target ID is unstable, which is a typical attribute of a junk target (but unfortunately also a deep high conductor or a coin spill, lol). Other tools including switching AM on and off to listen for that iron grunt, use of the pinpointer to get a bead on target footprint and depth, use of single frequency on suspected falsing targets to get them to reveal themselves, use of a diverse/opposite mode (e.g., if searching in Park 1, shift to Field 2 or Gold mode) to see how the target responds help you to deal with the junk without just filtering it out an running the risk of missing something.

Let me know if I completely misinterpreted your issue and I can try addressing what was really bothering you. Still not quite sure...

HTH HH

 

[pulltabfelix]

I guess what I am saying, it seems that the early hype of the 800 was the ability to see through a lot of iron nails and other junk like pull tabs, foil, etc. It is good at hunting through the junk (not meaning iron). So maybe during the early days before I bought my 800 in March 2018 people were discussing iron falsing so much or I just missed that topic or didn't really understand it. So with fast recovery speed and adjustable iron bias I never thought iron would sound like a good signal.

is it due the the software that really looks for round objects like coins and rings and gets confused with bent nails?

It seems like one feature like a bias toward round objects created a negative feature with iron falsing. But you did say iron falsing has been around and affects most detectors.

yes, I am happy with my 800, but for some reason got caught up in the early hype and thought it would be the ultimate metal detector. But of course I have thought that about most detectors I have purchased. I am slowly learning it really is mostly about the ears and many have been preaching that on these forums for many years. I was expecting the 800 to eliminate the need for the solid experience that you have to accumulate. So that being said, I think we are still a long way off from the magic detector.

 

[vferrari]

I guess what I am saying, it seems that the early hype of the 800 was the ability to see through a lot of iron nails and other junk like pull tabs, foil, etc. It is good at hunting through the junk (not meaning iron). So maybe during the early days before I bought my 800 in March 2018 people were discussing iron falsing so much or I just missed that topic or didn't really understand it. So with fast recovery speed and adjustable iron bias I never thought iron would sound like a good signal.

is it due the the software that really looks for round objects like coins and rings and gets confused with bent nails?

It seems like one feature like a bias toward round objects created a negative feature with iron falsing. But you did say iron falsing has been around and affects most detectors.

yes, I am happy with my 800, but for some reason got caught up in the early hype and thought it would be the ultimate metal detector. But of course I have thought that about most detectors I have purchased. I am slowly learning it really is mostly about the ears and many have been preaching that on these forums for many years. I was expecting the 800 to eliminate the need for the solid experience that you have to accumulate. So that being said, I think we are still a long way off from the magic detector.

Early Hype - yeah, a lot folks who are new the hobby got sucked into the ML Equinox hype machine. They quickly found out it was not Harry Potter's magic wand with finds hopping magically into their pouches.

In metal detecting, technology only pushes the needle of success slightly compared to No. 1 - Site Selection and No. 2 - Experience.

Experience can help you get the most out of a mediocre site regardless of what you are swinging. Technology can give the experienced detectorist an even greater edge. But technology alone in the hands of an inexperienced detectorist doesn't really do much. There is no technological shortcut to experience in metal detecting and there is no technological cure to a site that has no keepers.

To look at it another way: Say you have two experienced detectorists who are going to compete with one another at a loaded site. One who is detecting with a machine he knows like the back of his hand but it consists of 10 year old technology but he has been swinging it for the past ten years. And another equally experienced detectorist who has the same machine experience but he is handed a brand new Equinox. My money is on the the guy with the old detector, just about every time. Will they guy with the Equinox eventually lap the other dude. Yeah, perhaps, after 10's of hours on the Equinox so that he learns its quirks and shortcomings (also depends on what the other dude was actually swinging). His learning curve will likely be small versus the newbie detectorist but it certainly will not be zero.


Regarding bent nails sounding off like money targets - you bet! The signal processing in metal detector is simply looking for magnetic field induced in the target by the transmitted RF energy the coil puts into the ground. The shape and strength of the field is influenced by the conductivity of the target, its shape, its mass, and its proximity to the coil. The bent nail biases the field shape closer to that of a coin or ring and the signal processing of the detector takes that into account resulting in fooling the detector into thinking it is something it is not. Same thing happens with large flat iron due to the mass of the target.

Hang in there. Get to know your machine, relax, and have fun. Not worth getting remorseful about technology. Enjoy the day, enjoy your finds whatever they are, and don't forget to enjoy the scenery and serenity of the hunt.

 

[Wild Colonial Boy]

In high iron old homesites, sensitivity 19 is way too high for me, too chatty. Lower to 15 and it will quite down, but the mid and high tones will sound good if you go slow. Then run through the most promising areas at 20-22 sensitivity and just look for deep repeatable high tones separating themselves from the background signals. Will sound chatty, but I have found some good really deep targets. (5:1 ratio of targets recovered in sensitivity 15 vs 20)

great information, question will lower sensitivity effect finding items quarter size and below?

 

[pa-dirt_nc-sand]

It will make finding quarter size and smaller items easier to ID and separate to about 5 or 6”.

 

[smokeythecat]

Vferrari is correct. There is no technological shortcut. I believe the Deus discriminates better in iron and in heavily mineralized soils and its easier to handle.

Which machine you use is a matter of preference. You still need to get out with it and have good sites to begin with. One thing I see people do is go out and buy the most recent toy, then are disappointed later. I have followed behind folks using about any machine you can think of and do well. You have to be able to dig the iffy targets. These are metal detectors, not demigods with coils and VDI's. They don't know it all.

 

[vferrari]

great information, question will lower sensitivity effect finding items quarter size and below?

Amergin - This approach (euphemistically called "sifting") has been discussed before in the context of falsing iron. When iron is overloading the coil due to the shear amount of iron or due to large iron targets, you can sometimes get relief from the overloading effect and increase separation and unmasking by lowering sensitivity. The result is that non-ferrous targets will tend to pop out of the much becuase you have lowered the iron feedback. Of course, the tradeoff is (again tradeoffs), as PA DIRT mentioned, that you will limit depth. That is usually OK in this situation because if folks haven't bothered to clean out the iron then relatively shallow but masked keepers are probably sitting there waiting to be recovered. Once the iron is out of the way, then you can turn up the gain and try to go for the deeper targets, but he deeper targets are not going to be magically detectable unless you do get the iron out of there, not matter how you tweak your machine.

 

[tnsharpshooter]

Well the Deus was mentioned here previously although this is Minelab EQX subforum.

I reported early on on actual head to heads using Deus (LF &hf coils) vs EQX 800.
The EQX indeed was seeing things (alerting) on nonferrous Deus was struggling with.
Notice the timing of the x35 coil release.
Why?
Reckon Xp when they got their hands on EQX saw exactly what I did?
I’ll bet they did.
Hence Equinox vs Deus and LF coil a more versatile hunter, coins, jewelry and relics.
But the X35 coil is hamstrung (purposefully) since Xp kept lowest and at 4khz. They could not run higher than 25khz band they sued on X35 coil without problems cropping up.
The why behind likely the Hf coils start out at 14khz, granted they go higher frequency wise than x35coil’s highest band.

Both Deus can see targets EQX can’t.
EQX can see things Deus can’t.
So buy both and hit the detecting trail.lol

 

[smokeythecat]

And TN, make sure you use both at the same time

V, you mean it's NOT Harry Potter's magic wand? Bummer.

I pulled some stuff out of a site hunted since the 1950's this weekend. Not a lot, but still, and was using the Deus and the HF coil. I probably won't buy the X35. Just don't need it. I was digging 1/4" and smaller brass percussion caps and tiny lead down a couple inches in the horrid red Virginia dirt. V and I did side by sides there in the spring.

 

[tnsharpshooter]

And TN, make sure you use both at the same time

V, you mean it's NOT Harry Potter's magic wand? Bummer.

I pulled some stuff out of a site hunted since the 1950's this weekend. Not a lot, but still, and was using the Deus and the HF coil. I probably won't buy the X35. Just don't need it. I was digging 1/4" and smaller brass percussion caps and tiny lead down a couple inches in the horrid red Virginia dirt. V and I did side by sides there in the spring.

Don’t forget to feed Smokey before you go detecting.

 

[smokeythecat]

Now Smokey is something else. I call that cat "hisself" because he is so full of himself. He gets into his place in MY bed by jumping off the dresser over my head. My head also makes a reasonable launch pad to get back to the dresser when he's too tired from his nap to get off the bed the correct way.

The only problem with this story is it is true.

I hope the ground doesn't freeze too soon...

 

[tnsharpshooter]

Now Smokey is something else. I call that cat "hisself" because he is so full of himself. He gets into his place in MY bed by jumping off the dresser over my head. My head also makes a reasonable launch pad to get back to the dresser when he's too tired from his nap to get off the bed the correct way.

The only problem with this story is it is true.

I hope the ground doesn't freeze too soon...

My cat’s name is Lucy.
She is beautiful cat.
She was butt ugly as a kitten.
I rescued her from wife’s dog as a kitten.
She has it seems permanent back problem as result of dog attack, she walks funny. But she can still climb and run very fast. Mouse killer!!

 

[smokeythecat]

I was left the rear end and kidneys of a mouse this morning! Christmas came early! Eatin's on! At least I didn't step in it, which I usually do.