bigscoop
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2010
- Messages
- 13,541
- Reaction score
- 9,086
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Wherever there be treasure!
- Detector(s) used
- Older blue Excal with full mods, Equinox 800.
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I'll be the first to admit that applying silent mode to the Excal is a bit like loosing that jet engine hum at ten thousand feet. On the other hand, I can also testify as to the overall effectiveness of silent mode. I don't use it all of the time, for sure, but there are those conditions when silent mode can be the difference between bringing home the gold or coming home empty handed. The question most people ask is, why? (I apply silent mode in mode)
Small gold, or even deep gold and/or masked gold, it is quite common for these very weak and/or broken returns to become lost within all of the threshold shifting and chatter, these tiny chirps and barks just becoming part of the constantly changing noise inside the headphones. This happens more then most Excal users realize and over the years I have recovered hundreds of small gold items while hunting in silent mode to prove this, even including a few small gold chains.
Have you ever noticed how your Excal threshold shifts, the length of that pause between shifts frequently determined by the size of the target and the strength of the signal? Have you ever noticed how your threshold will sometimes suddenly shift with no recognizable pause at all? These are common occurrences that we routinely hear taking place in our headphones with no recognizable actual target return. So why the threshold shift? Why this sudden small pocket of ground that creates that same type of similar EMI effect, move away a short distance and that interference is gone, come back to that same spot and it may or may not return, but frequently will. And when it does return then there must be something in that small pocket of ground causing it.
In all of the above cases simply turn your threshold down to just below audible and see what happens then? A lot of the time you will get a very weak tic each time you pass the coil over the spot, and I say "spot" because that's what you have to look for, a very small spot. Chains will often produce a scratchy type group of returns with no actual single identifiable spot, but rather a very small area of what sounds like weak and broken interference. Other small gold items and even coins can cause this same type of ground effect but with just one or two scopes from the center of this activity will often reveal just a single repeatable tic or stronger target return. Not a chance that you could recognize this during all of the routine threshold shifting and all of that related audible chaos.
There are mainly two situations where I will always employ silent mode, the first being those trash lines so I can reduce all of the chatter in my headphones, and the other being those deep soft sands where targets are scarce. Unlike heavier gold items these smaller gold items will often move with, and suspended in, the shifting sands just like other lighter items do. My best day ever was 10 gold after spending that day hunting both of these situations in silent mode, the vast majority of these recoveries producing only those super weak/faint tics. And nearly all of them being under 3 grams in weight. But I did find gold when I otherwise wouldn?t have and the light weight of those items did add up to a pretty good day.
And whenever I mention deep sands most detectorist assume that I'm using a large coil for increased depth but this would be a false narrative given the small size of the targets. The truth is that I use the stock 8" coil to further reduce the amount of ground balancing in the search field so that these very faint and very weak returns don't get filtered out as is often the case with the larger coils, even in relatively clean freshwater situations. The idea is to produce the most stable and sensitive search field possible and the smaller coil allows us to do that.
But silent mode isn't just limited to small gold items, it's also a very good method for picking up those really faint returns/tics from the larger and deeper targets that the guys with the larger coils never even know exist because of their machine's more aggressive ground balance requirements due to that larger coil and larger search field. This is the price that we pay whenever we introduce a larger search field. A larger search field requires more filtering and quite frequently even a reduction in sensitivity in order to maintain smooth operation.
The silent mode concept is really pretty simple, drop a needle on the floor of a busy mall and you're probably not going to hear it. Drop that same needle on the floor of a soundproof room and you're probably going to, ?easily hear it.? And when it's all said and done this is what this silent mode setup provides you, the ability to hear those weak/faint tics that you will likely otherwise miss hearing and also the ability to detect those deeper and weaker returns that a larger search field is likely to filter out.
Don't doubt it until you've tried it for a while. Just might prove to be the difference between getting skunked or coming home with the gold. Good luck out there!
Small gold, or even deep gold and/or masked gold, it is quite common for these very weak and/or broken returns to become lost within all of the threshold shifting and chatter, these tiny chirps and barks just becoming part of the constantly changing noise inside the headphones. This happens more then most Excal users realize and over the years I have recovered hundreds of small gold items while hunting in silent mode to prove this, even including a few small gold chains.
Have you ever noticed how your Excal threshold shifts, the length of that pause between shifts frequently determined by the size of the target and the strength of the signal? Have you ever noticed how your threshold will sometimes suddenly shift with no recognizable pause at all? These are common occurrences that we routinely hear taking place in our headphones with no recognizable actual target return. So why the threshold shift? Why this sudden small pocket of ground that creates that same type of similar EMI effect, move away a short distance and that interference is gone, come back to that same spot and it may or may not return, but frequently will. And when it does return then there must be something in that small pocket of ground causing it.
In all of the above cases simply turn your threshold down to just below audible and see what happens then? A lot of the time you will get a very weak tic each time you pass the coil over the spot, and I say "spot" because that's what you have to look for, a very small spot. Chains will often produce a scratchy type group of returns with no actual single identifiable spot, but rather a very small area of what sounds like weak and broken interference. Other small gold items and even coins can cause this same type of ground effect but with just one or two scopes from the center of this activity will often reveal just a single repeatable tic or stronger target return. Not a chance that you could recognize this during all of the routine threshold shifting and all of that related audible chaos.
There are mainly two situations where I will always employ silent mode, the first being those trash lines so I can reduce all of the chatter in my headphones, and the other being those deep soft sands where targets are scarce. Unlike heavier gold items these smaller gold items will often move with, and suspended in, the shifting sands just like other lighter items do. My best day ever was 10 gold after spending that day hunting both of these situations in silent mode, the vast majority of these recoveries producing only those super weak/faint tics. And nearly all of them being under 3 grams in weight. But I did find gold when I otherwise wouldn?t have and the light weight of those items did add up to a pretty good day.
And whenever I mention deep sands most detectorist assume that I'm using a large coil for increased depth but this would be a false narrative given the small size of the targets. The truth is that I use the stock 8" coil to further reduce the amount of ground balancing in the search field so that these very faint and very weak returns don't get filtered out as is often the case with the larger coils, even in relatively clean freshwater situations. The idea is to produce the most stable and sensitive search field possible and the smaller coil allows us to do that.
But silent mode isn't just limited to small gold items, it's also a very good method for picking up those really faint returns/tics from the larger and deeper targets that the guys with the larger coils never even know exist because of their machine's more aggressive ground balance requirements due to that larger coil and larger search field. This is the price that we pay whenever we introduce a larger search field. A larger search field requires more filtering and quite frequently even a reduction in sensitivity in order to maintain smooth operation.
The silent mode concept is really pretty simple, drop a needle on the floor of a busy mall and you're probably not going to hear it. Drop that same needle on the floor of a soundproof room and you're probably going to, ?easily hear it.? And when it's all said and done this is what this silent mode setup provides you, the ability to hear those weak/faint tics that you will likely otherwise miss hearing and also the ability to detect those deeper and weaker returns that a larger search field is likely to filter out.
Don't doubt it until you've tried it for a while. Just might prove to be the difference between getting skunked or coming home with the gold. Good luck out there!
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it sucks now because they charge $20.00 to park on beach, it was free when we hunted together.
