etrac users, please help me from wrapping mine around a tree!

cjon455

Gold Member
Jun 4, 2012
9,207
11,541
Northeast PA
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Detector(s) used
Minelab Etrac
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Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
patience, patience,patience-----put a penny, dime, quarter , nail and pulltab on the ground. spread them apart so theres a foot or so between each. go over each one and listen for diff tones---watch your sreen also-----see what you get----hh--- point is, it could be ground balance or your coil if your gettin the same reading on everything
 

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Thanks, I know I need to be patient, but nothing sounded clear like a coin, nada.

I did go over my yard a billion times w my atpro too, plus it's chalk full of nails everywhere so I don't think it's a good spot to try to learn, I need a target rich spot like a park
 

I wouldnt recommend learning to use the trac in an Iron Infested area! I would forget
the patterns to...I would set the Etrac to Auto sensitivity for stability, tones to Multi Conductive
and discriminate out 30 on down.Go slow and dig only the Two way signals and check the others
to see what they are and carry a pen and paper and right it all down. Dig and learn and swing
the coil over the target and Listen, listen then listen some more! Don't expect to Learn overnight.
I just started using the E lastMay and I'm still learning...and remember Slow down the coil
 

You are trying to run a marathon when you haven't even learned to walk yet!

Get away from the iron infested sites! Take it to a tot-lot. Learn the sounds and the pinpointing where it's easy to dig. Then move to a park and refine your skills. Learn your detector.
 

You are trying to run a marathon when you haven't even learned to walk yet!

Get away from the iron infested sites! Take it to a tot-lot. Learn the sounds and the pinpointing where it's easy to dig. Then move to a park and refine your skills. Learn your detector.

agree 100%, im so used to firing up my pro, setting my discrimination, and going to town, i know this machine is way better, i just need to be able to dig many targets before my ear tells me what is going on beneath my coil. Youtube videos help, but nothing takes the place of hearing a tone, digging a target, hearing a tone, digging a target, and so on. I was just fired up before and was expecting to hear that sweet whistle i hear from all the youtubers snagging the goods, thanks!
 

agree 100%, im so used to firing up my pro, setting my discrimination, and going to town, i know this machine is way better, i just need to be able to dig many targets before my ear tells me what is going on beneath my coil. Youtube videos help, but nothing takes the place of hearing a tone, digging a target, hearing a tone, digging a target, and so on. I was just fired up before and was expecting to hear that sweet whistle i hear from all the youtubers snagging the goods, thanks!

Glad you know what you need to do . Don't worry, I felt the same way when I got my E-Trac. I was coming from a Whites that I swung for a decade, to say I felt frustrated was an understatement.

I will give you the advice that helped me. Don't pick up your old detector for a long time! If you keep going back and forth, it will take 10xs longer to learn it. Stick with it, it won't take long to get the hang of it, maybe 10 hours of use. Give yourself 100 hours to REALLY understand all the tones, chirps, nulls, etc.
 

I feel your pain cjon, I too am leaving my beloved, all familure, AT Pro, for Etrac. Could not wait to go over an old home site, I have hunted hard. Not many targets, and lots of trash, and ..........................nails! Was not learning a thing the first 3 times out (about 10 hrs) and if I still had my ATP, I would be using it! Thank god I sold it. So I have been going to the beach, running Andy's coin pattern, lots of targets, easy recovery, all different targets, Glad I changed my approach, and did not have my old machine!! The Quick Mask screen is your best friend, makes Iron Audio, on the Pro seem like childs play, saved me digging a lot of nails I'm sure! I am no Rocket Scientist, you will get it......................... Patience Grasshopper, Good Luck!! I like it now!
 

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My problem is I'm trying manual discrimination right off the bat thinking I know what I'm doing, I need to do auto sensitivity +3 for a while, I'm just impatient because I've seen what this machine can do and I want to be there now darn it! Lol
 

I was going to add that you should go only with the stock setting until you learned the machine.

You're jumping forward too fast!

And, as the others said, get yourself to a "normal" park, or location where you're not overwhelmed with signals.

Baby steps, and that's how they learn to walk.
 

Always use "Auto" and if you here that high shriek, turn 90 degrees on it; swing and the sound disappears and you know it's a nail. Which presents another issue - Masking...........
 

Always use "Auto" and if you here that high shriek, turn 90 degrees on it; swing and the sound disappears and you know it's a nail. Which presents another issue - Masking...........

With that I've been flipping to a wide open screen and if the cursor was in the bottom right corner, I assumed iron, I used TTF for that
 

My problem is I'm trying manual discrimination right off the bat thinking I know what I'm doing, I need to do auto sensitivity +3 for a while, I'm just impatient because I've seen what this machine can do and I want to be there now darn it! Lol

Auto+3 works great 90% of the time.

Here is why we say to stick with the stock coin program and start in easy parks. The E-Trac is 90% an audio machine. You have to train your brain to the sounds that GOOD targets make. When you get to the point you know the targets by the sounds you are ready to progress. This is where you take out almost all of your reject pattern. Use your brain to be your discriminator.

There are a lot of little tricks to learn along the way, but baby steps.
 

Auto+3 works great 90% of the time.

Here is why we say to stick with the stock coin program and start in easy parks. The E-Trac is 90% an audio machine. You have to train your brain to the sounds that GOOD targets make. When you get to the point you know the targets by the sounds you are ready to progress. This is where you take out almost all of your reject pattern. Use your brain to be your discriminator.

There are a lot of little tricks to learn along the way, but baby steps.

Thanks alot, I fooled myself into thinking youtube vids were enough, I knew my atpro very well, I know this etrac is far different, she's just playing hard to get.......

Challenge accepted!8-)
 

I have tried nothing but Andy's coin mode, with Auto+3 and the stock coil. No spectacular finds in my first 10 hours, but I have dug clad, pull tabs, bottle caps and some iron, which all indications that that what it was, before the dig, on each target. I would not say I "got it" after a few limited hours, but it is coming along, dont make it harder than it has to be. HH
 

I haven't detected in a while but while using an Etrac, using the stock set up with either multi tone or 4 tone will find you coins. You need to swing the coil slow as in 3 seconds or so per swing. If the area is a trashy, you have to be patient.

The first time I used one, my buddy Greg let me borrow his while my other brand detector was in the shop. I picked it up turned it on. He told me to listen to high tones and dig anything above 12-36. We were both new to it and the machine was set up in factory mode. Nothing was changed. Within 10 minutes I had dug a few Wheaties and got a high tone 11-46 by a tree. I told him what I had and he said dig it. I dug down and my first silver with an etrac was a 1924 D SLQ in VG condition. That same week, I dug an additional 12 silver coins.

With the etrac, find a good spot to hunt, be patient, go slow and be prepared to dig. TMAN...
 

I haven't detected in a while but while using an Etrac, using the stock set up with either multi tone or 4 tone will find you coins. You need to swing the coil slow as in 3 seconds or so per swing. If the area is a trashy, you have to be patient.

The first time I used one, my buddy Greg let me borrow his while my other brand detector was in the shop. I picked it up turned it on. He told me to listen to high tones and dig anything above 12-36. We were both new to it and the machine was set up in factory mode. Nothing was changed. Within 10 minutes I had dug a few Wheaties and got a high tone 11-46 by a tree. I told him what I had and he said dig it. I dug down and my first silver with an etrac was a 1924 D SLQ in VG condition. That same week, I dug an additional 12 silver coins.

With the etrac, find a good spot to hunt, be patient, go slow and be prepared to dig. TMAN...

Thanks alot for your reply, I love this machine, had my eye on it since starting detecting 3 yrs ago, I know it's not a ctx, but I know it's great and capable of great finds, I've sadly only been out 1 time since getting it, dumb adulthood getting in the way. That was to an iron infested cornfield. Tomorrow I'm doing something I rarely do, I'm hitting a few local but older parks. I need target rich environments in order to better learn this badboy! I have alot of permission ideas but need to wait til I get better at this machine, thanks again
chris
 

My goodness this is a great forum post. I have a new Etrac that has been frustrating me so bad I would have to lay it down and walk away hoping it would get stolen. I too did the Andy Sabich program download thing I can do this. Modify the sounds to coincide my DFX's tones and go from there. Wrong !!! Haven't figured out to change the tones, took me 3 months just to learn how to get the thing to communicate with my computer and I still went out and found silver even with all the problems I was having. Now I am hooking it back up deleting Andy's program for the time being, resetting everything to factory defaults, and making 2 adjustments. The auto + 3 as soon as I figure out what button to push to save the changes. I want a dog gone enter key added to my screen !!!
 

I had rusty beer bottle caps almost totally figured out with my ATPro, rarely I got fooled. In the beginning though, I dug many of them and was super frustrated.

Now with the new Deus I am digging rusty bottle caps! I'm starting to get a feel for them, but I have more to learn. I guess with a new machine, the way to totally understand and learn what not to dig, you must first dig a bunch of those very items haha.

It's hard to go from being a pro with one machine to being a total noob with a new machine! Don't worry, after taking a step or two back, you will take many steps forward with the Etrac.
 

Thanks jcache, I agree 100%, I was pretty darn good with the ATP, now I'm a rookie all over again
 

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