Is it me or the detector???

[benjamin68]

I literally just joined this forum although have lurked here off and on. I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. My wife bought me and my son our first metal detectors last Christmas. Mine is a Bounty Hunter Quicksilver and my son has a Bounty Hunter Junior. The QS seems to be great at large area scanning and the JR work good as a pinpointer. For those that are not fimilar with the QS, there are basically 4 buttons, on, off, depth select, and target reject. No knobs to turn, etc. In a "clean" area with only maybe one or two items, I feel I can resonally locate and dig up an item. In an area that has alot of "stuff", the detector is constantly going off indicating all of the 4 target categories. Sometimes the target will move as I am digging. To sum up my delima, is the quicksilver too basic or am I not using it correctly? The JR seems to do a better job of locating items.

 

[EasyMoney]

Depends a lot on where you live..

If the soil is high in magnetite or hematite (iron ores) you would need a good ground balance 10-turn adjustment pot to balance it correctly. If not, you will play heck all the time in that soil. Another thing is that there may be way too many tiny steel pieces in the ground, or slag, or small lead pieces in it.

Try turning the depth to half-way since you have no ground reject control on that detector. Another thing, do not "scrub" your coil on the ground, it adds to the imbalance of the ground balance problem, because it will overdrive your detector running it too close to the ground, thereby causing you even more unnecesary noise..

 

[Ricardo_NY1]

I've only used the Discovery line from BH, but I can tell you this, if it has an option for target reject, use it. The only way you are going to see or hear a signal for a certain category, is if that area is not being discriminated/rejected. All that jumping around actually means something, but until you've used the detector and gotten used to what definate target signals sound like, it's going to appear like nonsense. Later on, you can use those signals to tell if and what trash might be in the vicinity of your good target. As has been mentioned, try turning down your depth select to something more shallow. This feature might be the equivalent of sensitivity in other detectors, which you do want lowered in trashy areas.

 

[txkickergirl]

I ask that question about a hundred times everytime I go out and find crap, but the answer always seems to be that I am the cursed one.

All machines take time getting to know them, I know on mine if I dig and it seems to move (damn gophers) that it is just trash.

 

[JOE(USA)]

benjamin68,

I agree with what other people have said here to help you. Also are you experiencing this in one area? If so,move to a different spot and see what happens. Yes, you have two very basic detectors there,but if you use them in the right area and in the right way you can have some success. Stay away from high junk areas until you are more proficient and have a better model detector. Joe

 

[Born2Dtect]

Benjamin, You may get better results from a machine that can discriminate and separate targets. I suggest you read a few reviews and see which ones brag about target separation. That may be the one for you.

EasyMoney, How many detectors do you own ?

 

[benjamin68]

Thank you for the input. It sounds like I can learn to use the unit that I have but may need to upgrade. Several good points have been made and will be used.

I really don't know what the iron content of the soil is in this area (north central Mississippi). I suspect that it is on the high side due to the orange-red color.

I guess for the time being, I'll make the best use of the quicksilver until I can figure out for sure if this MDing is for me.

 

[Michigan Badger]

I ask that question about a hundred times everytime I go out and find crap, but the answer always seems to be that I am the cursed one.

All machines take time getting to know them, I know on mine if I dig and it seems to move (damn gophers) that it is just trash.

Hey txkickergirl I see you're using the GT now. You're right about the moving target thing. If it's worth digging the GT will zero right in on it.

Badger

 

[EasyMoney]

Born2, I think I have about 20 detectors..

The more I think about it Benjamine, the more I wonder if you may be in high iron soil + perhaps not keeping the searchcol at a steady height in searching, which is paramount in such bad soils. Automatic ground balance detectors run on a system of +/- parameters internally, but you can't hear it. This means that they never do completely settle on a specific point electronically more than 2-3 seconds or so. In fact, they could be running (silently) as much as 15% negatively to 15% positively, back and forth, up and down. Audibly, this means that they could be silent 15% of the time and loud and noisey 15% of the time but you will never know it because you don't hear it. Silent searching loses much of the detector's inherent depth capacity because it needs to slough off a bit of it's (+) voltage. This is usually done with a capacitive discharge system or sometimes a choke or stepdown transformer in conjuntion with a cap. system as an overload bleed-off, or several other different configurations could be incorporated too.

Try duck taping a (narrow) and lightweight piece of wood or plastic to the bottom of your detector placed left to right and use it as a sled. Something about 2" high by 1" wide by the width of your coil. If this helps, then problem is nearly solved. If not, then at least you tried, and it didn't hurt anything. Another thing to try is to attemt to fool the auto-tune/silent search. BH detectors can at times be quite sensitive so try taping a steel washer the size of a dime up to the size of a tin can lid to the top of your coil to make the detector work overtime trying to cancel iron. This can at times overdrive your auto GB and make the detector less sensitive to the iron or minerals in the soil. Give them both a try, but something too large taped to your detector may make it lose too much depth, so you'll have to experiment a bit.. I have one detector that I can actually make it lose so much depth this way that it goes clear down to 2" in an air test from 10" in an air test.

It won't hurt your detector to try these little tricks. And it's easy to take the duck tape off and tell me I'm a goofy old man..

Good luck and HH.

Larry

 

[benjamin68]

Thanks for the tips EasyMoney. I'll try them out the first chance I get and let you know how it turned out.

 

[Ricardo_NY1]

Larry, that tip about fooling the detector is something I have got to try! If it even slightly works, it should go down as one of the most ingenious tips of all time.