Got my new E-trac yesterday

Normsel

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D'Iberville MS
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Detector(s) used
E-Trac
Equinox 800
Equinox 600
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
I got my new E-trc yesterday and although I don't have a clue what I am doing with it I tried it out just to hear the sounds it produces. I went to a place I have heavily hunted with my At Pro and and V3i. I only hunted the exact same path I knew I had hunted very well. After no more than 30 mins I found 2 dimes a quarter and 4 pennies. I did dig 4 soda cans and a few tabs too but I don't know the vdi numbers and went I by what I thought sounded good.

I will now watch as many U-tube videos as I can to see what I learn and I will read as much as I can before tomorrow when I go out again.
 

Did you download the Etrac emulator and U.S. coins file? Those help with learning tones, basic operation and the menu structure.

Also, everybody has different setting preferences so you will probably try many until you find the ones you like. Compared to the AT Pro, and depending on the settings, the Etrac target id can change slowly or not at all until you hit another target. That kind of threw me a little at first but there are some settings that help with that. Here is how I run mine and I hunt mostly in parks.

Bill's trashy park pattern
auto +3
fast on
deep off
trash high
ground difficult
tone id multi/conduct
tone variability 29 (higher pitch tone on good targets)
threshold (make sure you can hear it)
display timeout on (so the last target Id won't stay until you hit a new target)
volume gain a little higher than default. ( that makes deeper targets sound louder)
everything else pretty much default

Everybody will do it different but that's how I'm liking it so far. Good luck.
 

Did you get Andy's book, it will cut the learning curve a lot. It is more help full than the manual and a lot of the videos I just used Minelab coin pattern for about 2 months before I tried anything else. Patience is key.........it's not that hard to grasp, if you already have some detecting experence and common sense
 

So glad you got the etrac rather than the deus. Have fun and happy hunting.
 

Here's an FE/CO chart for help identifying your targets.....

ETrac Target Card Sheet.webp
 

Excellent choice in machines and you will not be disappointed.
Outstanding silver sniffer but the way I see it there is not a coin
out there that has a chance to get away. One thing I have found
is to do Noise Cancel with the COIL ON THE GROUND and not
12 inches in the air as the Manual says. This works really well for me.
Your call on that. ( RNB battery... Don't leave home without it!!!! )
 

I want to thank everyone for their comments. Believe me I have learned more from comments on Tnet than anywhere else. This is my 4th new detector in 4 yrs.

I took it out this morning after reading and watching some videos last night. I took it to a heavily hunt park that is also very trashy. I have hunted this park with my ATP and V3i. I wanted to see how well I would do in a park I know is heavily hunted. I used the stock coin program and did very well considering within the last week I hunted the same area with both of my other detector.

I found 10 dimes, a quarter and about 9 pennies and no trash today. Every coin except one was less than 2" deep and every one was in the most heavily hunted area of the park.

I did find it was noisy as heck and most of the dimes hit on 13-46 I am thinking it may be because of the sandy soil... I don't know how many 13-46 readings I passed up but I know quite a few.. I was concentrating on 12's

I am convinced this thing is a real coin hog. I am dam good with my ATP and use a pretty darn good coin setting on my V3i and always figured if I passed over it I found it. Today proved me wrong.

I need to figure out what do do with the noise but I have used it less than 2 hrs so I can't complain
 

Your doing way better than i did on my first few outings. Great job!
 

The FE/CO numbers do range a little. If they're in range and have a solid repeatable signal, it's a dig. Just make sure you're digging pull tabs and nickels, and you'll get the gold too.

You were going it pretty well on your hunt. You'll get used to it pretty quickly, and then you will understand the intelligence of it. You said it was noisy, and yes it is, it's talking about what's beneath the coil. We have all kinds of hot rocks down here, it's like wading through the noise. Go a tad slower with it than you do with other detectors.
 

Bill's trashy park pattern will make it much quieter. You may miss a lot of gold and other relics but you will miss very few coins, if that's what you are going for. I'm a coin hunter and don't really feel like digging all the trash to maybe rarely find a gold ring. So I don't need to hear every low to mid tone anyway. And if you have an iffy target, just hit quick mask and then you will be able to hear everything under the coil.

Also that pattern mostly only allows the better coin signals to come through and I have found that the deep, iffy targets are very often a good coin. With the AT Pro, I wasn't keen on digging iffy targets. With the Etrac, I love the deep iffy targets now.
 

I am not sure how to down load anything yet. I put the software on my pc but haven't tried it. I will try it in a day or two.

Tomorrow I am going to the beach and our beaches aren't big producers of anything so I suspect I will most likely wear myself out on less than $1 in clad. I talked to a guy that actually hunts in the water and even he only finds maybe a 1/2 dozen rings per year..
 

Dig all CO numbers 45,46,47,48,49... That's where the silver lives :)
 

Yeah there's so much trash in the parks I hunt, that if I dug all the mid tones, they would ban md'ing. That's why I like a tight pattern. It only hits on the higher conductors. MUCH less noise and digging.

The Xchange program is easy to use and pretty much self explanatory. But there are probably Youtube videos I'm sure.
 

Hope you are enjoying your E-Trac. I was wondering about Noise Canceling your machine.
What works best for you far as 12 inches above or setting on the ground. Just curious. HH
 

I am loving it and no problems with noise cancel I leave it in auto. I may try to manually set the channels soon but I want to finish the area I am working and go for deeper targets and channel selection later.

I set the sensitivity down a bit and doing well with it. I am mostly hunting with the e-trac standard coin mode and other than threshold and and sensitivity I haven't done much. I am starting to recognize all the chirps for the different coins. Nickels are still a little hard to detect by ear but pennies, dimes and quarters I know the second I hear them and what it is. I can even detect a penny if it rings at a 12-44 even though it should be a dime I can tell by sound it's a penny.

What I find the most amazing is the minimal amount of trash I dig.


I tried a comparison hunt against my V3i and although the results were close the E-Trac actually found clad the V3i didn't . I detected and area with my E-trac and didn't dig any targets I just marked them with a small zip tie so I knew where the target was. I then covered the exact same area with my V3i and it missed 3 targets even swinging directly over the target. The area was 100' x 50'. Altogether there were 13 targets, 9 pennies, 3 dimes and one quarter. The V3i even with the bottle cap reject at 4 still found 2 bottle caps and the E-Trac ignored them.

I have found $66 in clad since I purchased it plus 2 rings and an earring.

I am really loving it...I was just thinking this morning I will probably start trying some different stuff and try for deeper targets where I been hunting... So far the deep stuff has turned out to be soda cans at 12"
 

That's one of the first things I noticed about the Etrac too, not digging a lot of trash. Which gives me much confidence in what the Etrac is telling me and therefore I dig more iffy targets and am finding a LOT of good stuff.
 

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