It sounds to me like you and your Ace 250 are both doing fine. It sounds like the targets are ringing up on your machine the same way they do on my Ace 250. The signals will jump around as noted if the coil is over two or more targets at once, and will also jump around if the one target under the coil is made of more than one type of metal. Lots of buttons, padlocks, etc. etc, are made of more than one type metal, so the detector sees that and will jump back and forth between the notch designation that it thinks it sees. Larger pieces of rusted iron will light up the high end 50 cent and $1 notches, because large chunks of rusty iron have similar metal conductivity as the larger silver coins. You are probably also getting the 'overload growl' when passing the coil over large pieces of iron that are near the surface right? The higher end Garret GTI 2500 does the same thing so you are not going to eliminate jumpy signals or some mis identifications just by spending more money on a detector. The Ace 250 can not tell the size of the target so you will find large aluminum cans and large iron when digging coin type signals. The only way I have found on the 250 to get an idea of the size of the target before digging it is to hold down the pinpoint button, and sweep the target, a small coin will give a squeal or beep in a small area of the sweep only, and the larger items will have a less define squeal or beep over a larger area. I doubt I am telling you anything new, it is just the nature of the beast and the hobby, and as others have said you just need to dig most of the targets to tell for sure what they are, and to get the trash out of the way so that the detector can better "see" the goodies. Good luck to you, I think you have as good an understanding of your machine as the rest of us do.
someday
