Is E-TRAC deeper than previous Explorers?

[johnnyboy25]

From a lot of posts i've read people are saying it is

 

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[johnnyboy25]

God, i hope not . i'll have to sell my xs

 

[Iron Patch]

Yes and they said the II was deeper than the XS, and the SE deeper than the II.

I'd bet if (huge if) it was deeper the disc. wouldn't be as good and that is a trade off I would not be willing to make. 10 years later and I still can't believe how well this thing rejects iron but finds everything else. I have zero interest in buying an E-trac, but would like to play with one for a few days just to judge for myself and make sure my gut feeling is right on how it would compare.

 

[Deepdiger60]

Yes and they said the II was deeper than the XS, and the SE deeper than the II.

I'd bet if (huge if) it was deeper the disc. wouldn't be as good and that is a trade off I would not be willing to make. 10 years later and I still can't believe how well this thing rejects iron but finds everything else. I have zero interest in buying an E-trac, but would like to play with one for a few days just to judge for myself and make sure my gut feeling is right on how it would compare.

A couple of friends were detecting some old grounds and Dan who has the E-Trac got a good signal a 44 8 inches deep his buddy who has a Explorer SE ran over the target and got nothing no signal i ran my DFX over it and got a mixed signal at 7 inches ,Dan dug the target it was a 1902 Barber dime and it was 8 inches deep Judge by that ? Jim

 

[Iron Patch]

Yes and they said the II was deeper than the XS, and the SE deeper than the II.

I'd bet if (huge if) it was deeper the disc. wouldn't be as good and that is a trade off I would not be willing to make. 10 years later and I still can't believe how well this thing rejects iron but finds everything else. I have zero interest in buying an E-trac, but would like to play with one for a few days just to judge for myself and make sure my gut feeling is right on how it would compare.

A couple of friends were detecting some old grounds and Dan who has the E-Trac got a good signal a 44 8 inches deep his buddy who has a Explorer SE ran over the target and got nothing no signal i ran my DFX over it and got a mixed signal at 7 inches ,Dan dug the target it was a 1902 Barber dime and it was 8 inches deep Judge by that ? Jim

Judge by that? Absolutely not. Just some of the reasons why.... user experience, settings, and on two occasions I hunted with people who didn't even know they were using totally messed up explorers. Also, when i was new I had a guest here who was very good with his detector and he was showing me masked targets that were mostly buttons, but to me it just sounded like noise. Now years later I have done the same thing to other explorer users, showing them very masked targets that they couldn't hear. There's way too many variables to look at one deep target as telling the story.

 

[Deepdiger60]

Yes and they said the II was deeper than the XS, and the SE deeper than the II.

I'd bet if (huge if) it was deeper the disc. wouldn't be as good and that is a trade off I would not be willing to make. 10 years later and I still can't believe how well this thing rejects iron but finds everything else. I have zero interest in buying an E-trac, but would like to play with one for a few days just to judge for myself and make sure my gut feeling is right on how it would compare.

A couple of friends were detecting some old grounds and Dan who has the E-Trac got a good signal a 44 8 inches deep his buddy who has a Explorer SE ran over the target and got nothing no signal i ran my DFX over it and got a mixed signal at 7 inches ,Dan dug the target it was a 1902 Barber dime and it was 8 inches deep Judge by that ? Jim

Judge by that? Absolutely not. Just some of the reasons why.... user experience, settings, and on two occasions I hunted with people who didn't even know they were using totally messed up explorers. Also, when i was new I had a guest here who was very good with his detector and he was showing me masked targets that were mostly buttons, but to me it just sounded like noise. Now years later I have done the same thing to other explorer users, showing them very masked targets that they couldn't hear. There's way too many variables to look at one deep target as telling the story.

Joe who has the SE is pretty good with that machine hes had for years its a good machine just didn't pick up that signal that day hes found 3 ringers in fields where i just passed over them lol grrrrr Jim

 

[Captn SE]

When comparing depth, the E-Trac is absolutely no deeper than any of the other Explorers. It's got a faster processor, thus it has a faster recovery, but it's not any deeper....same FBS technology, and same Pro Coil. Even though it has a faster recovery, you still have to swing the machine fairly slowly in order to find the deepies hiding in the trash. It's no different in that regard to all the other Explorers.

I've tested and compared many signals with all Explorer models for about 3 years now (I hunt regularly with buddies who use Explorers(XS, II, SE) and E-Tracs. Some conditions that would allow one Minelab model to have trouble hearing a particular signal over the other models would be:

differences in the machine's sensitivity(too high, too low, or auto sens.)
coil size differences.
coil swing speed (wiggling too fast or too slow) and swing direction over your signal.
A non-stable noise channel if EMI is present.
having too much iron masking(discrimination), which could cause a good target co-located with a masked target(iron) to also be masked.

HH,
CAPTN SE
Dan

 

[DAVID@RT6DETECTORS]

Yes and they said the II was deeper than the XS, and the SE deeper than the II.

I'd bet if (huge if) it was deeper the disc. wouldn't be as good and that is a trade off I would not be willing to make. 10 years later and I still can't believe how well this thing rejects iron but finds everything else. I have zero interest in buying an E-trac, but would like to play with one for a few days just to judge for myself and make sure my gut feeling is right on how it would compare.

A couple of friends were detecting some old grounds and Dan who has the E-Trac got a good signal a 44 8 inches deep his buddy who has a Explorer SE ran over the target and got nothing no signal i ran my DFX over it and got a mixed signal at 7 inches ,Dan dug the target it was a 1902 Barber dime and it was 8 inches deep Judge by that ? Jim

He must not have the SE set up correct cause i can hit an 8 inch target with no problem.

 

[Detectorfreak74]

I have a friend in minelab his name is Kevin he lives in Prescott A.Z and travels all around the country teaching minelab owners how to use their machines he told me that if their are to many programs in the machine as in unused programs it will screw with the depth and the shut down time he said you fix it by {turn off the explorer or the etrac and press menu and power at the same time the machine will turn on and say factory- preset and keep holding down for three seconds}this will clear all the back filled space and let the detectors work proper I was getting only getting 5 inches and I cleared it like he said and now I getting wheats and silver dimes at 10 inches in semi trash

 

[Iron Patch]

I have a friend in minelab his name is Kevin he lives in Prescott A.Z and travels all around the country teaching minelab owners how to use their machines he told me that if their are to many programs in the machine as in unused programs it will screw with the depth and the shut down time he said you fix it by {turn off the explorer or the etrac and press menu and power at the same time the machine will turn on and say factory- preset and keep holding down for three seconds}this will clear all the back filled space and let the detectors work proper I was getting only getting 5 inches and I cleared it like he said and now I getting wheats and silver dimes at 10 inches in semi trash

It's just like a computer, when something seems a little off you restart. And people who are new should do it often because there are very slight problems that make the detector a little quirky that I wouldn't have realized if I had just started. Just make sure you know your settings before doing it, otherwise you'll have a different detector when done.

 

[Digger]

When comparing depth, the E-Trac is absolutely no deeper than any of the other Explorers.

Judge by that? Absolutely not.

Far too many variables to give an absolute answer for all conditions. That being said, my experience here in Kansas on mild ground straight out of the box, without a doubt the E-Trac is deeper than the Explorer SE.

Now let me define deeper.

The Explorer SE may be able to see a target as deep as the E-Trac, but my experience was the SE does not convey that information to the user as easily as the E-Trac. An experienced SE user may well be able to find coins just as deep. A less experienced will not.

 

[Old Town]

Much of this is soil dependent, but in my Key West soil the E-Trac I have is not as deep as my 1270X or my Tesoro Cibola. It's equal to my new Tejon by Tesoro and much more touchy.

In my test garden the E-Trac barely registers on a clad quarter at 12". This is very good but both the 1270X and Cibola are 1.5" deeper. Plus they are a ton easier to use.

My area is unique in that I do not have mineral problems and I have very fluffy cornmeal-like soil of coral and limestone. Detecting in the ground is almost like air testing. You get about 95% of the air test potential of any machine. Those other 2 detectors out air-test the E-Trac and out work it in my soil too.

For me the E-Trac has been a waste of money. Others in other more challenging areas would no doubt disagree.

Old Town

 

[Born2Dtect]

I now own an Etrac. It is different in many ways then the XS, EXP II, and SE. I like a lot of the new features once I learned them. It will take quite a bit of time to learn them all. I would love to see someone write a book describing all the program and set up features. Minelab shows you how to get to them, change them but little on why.

My thoughts on "DEEPER". It is hard to tell if one detector is deeper. The only way is get the two detectors in question, get experts to use them and do a side to side comparison in the field. Something like this: Have each detect, when they get a good deep signal call the other over to check the signal. This should settle the question. The only variable is the expertise of the user. I f any test are done at different time other factors come into play. A fellow detectorist and I regularly detected a spot. We seem to get fewer and fewer targets each time out , them BAM! twice the target, better depth. The conditioners do not appear to change but detecting gets seriously better.

Just My2!

Ed D.

 

[Woodland Detectors]

No offense to you Johhny,
But why is it always an issue of how deep it will go. The deeper you go, the more junk you detect.
For me it's separation abilities.
Etrac Has it!
I have 2 etracs and an Explorer. The etrac, IMO, has too many bells and whistles, BUT, I feel it is a little more stable than it's cousin Expl. Depth? They both get the same depth, one, IMO is a bit more stable.
Both machines provide plenty of depth. One is just a bit more selective on what it chats to me about.

 

[Iron Patch]

No offense to you Johhny,
But why is it always an issue of how deep it will go. The deeper you go, the more junk you detect.
For me it's separation abilities.
Etrac Has it!
I have 2 etracs and an Explorer. The etrac, IMO, has too many bells and whistles, BUT, I feel it is a little more stable than it's cousin Expl. Depth? They both get the same depth, one, IMO is a bit more stable.
Both machines provide plenty of depth. One is just a bit more selective on what it chats to me about.

I agree the depth is only part of it. With the higher end Minelabs I think we should have a new term... because it's not separation in the same sense as other detectors that are based on recovery speed. It's more like sound sorting.... hearing a blended jumbled mess and being able to make sense of it. The other thing that that makes a multi. freq. Minelab (Explorer in my case) what it is, is the very accurate discrimination at near max depth. (sound only) I was blown away how much my deep rusty find count went down when I changed from Garrett to Minelab. I'm talking over 90% and that was when I was still fairly new. I don't post how seldom I dig iron because people probably wouldn't believe me, or think I'd was missing a lot of targets guessing I was picking and choosing signals... cherry picking the good ones. The bottom line is there's no one thing that makes a detector great, it's many, and mine has them all for my type of hunting, and is why I'll probably never switch.

 

[Digger]

With the higher end Minelabs I think we should have a new term... because it's not separation in the same sense as other detectors that are based on recovery speed. It's more like sound sorting.... hearing a blended jumbled mess and being able to make sense of it.

Sounds like a difference in software/firmware. A faster processor would allow for more complex software. More complex software could be used to make more sense out of the signal.

 

[Iron Patch]

With the higher end Minelabs I think we should have a new term... because it's not separation in the same sense as other detectors that are based on recovery speed. It's more like sound sorting.... hearing a blended jumbled mess and being able to make sense of it.

Sounds like a difference in software/firmware. A faster processor would allow for more complex software. More complex software could be used to make more sense out of the signal.

I see it as easily being the opposite.

As in a faster process not letting the same? software analyze the singles well enough. Recovery speed is only part of it because I' have shown faster detectors targets in iron they could not hear well enough to want to dig. But once I cut the plug, and the signal got stronger, then they could.

 

[Digger]

I see it as easily being the opposite.

As in a faster process not letting the same? software analyze the singles well enough. Recovery speed is only part of it because I' have shown faster detectors targets in iron they could not hear well enough to want to dig. But once I cut the plug, and the signal got stronger, then they could.

I could see that on an analog signal, but not digital. A digital signal would simply be a set of numbers representing the signal and software would process it with the same accuracy no matter at what speed. The results would be the same only the amount of time needed to show the results would be different. Faster processor would display the results quicker.

 

[johnnyboy25]

no offense taken 4-H but deeper generally means older..... i want DEEEEEP!!!!

 

[Iron Patch]

no offense taken 4-H but deeper generally means older..... i want DEEEEEP!!!!

But deeper, and not better, means more times you're fooled and wastes your time, and usually finds you less. If you want deep and don't care about the rest, get a IIb with a 15".