Ricardo_NY1
Bronze Member
Small Recent Find & An Explanation Of My Variablity Setting To The Explorer Guys
I've been getting out quite a bit..........not posting as much, but I've been doing ok. I've done about three hunts in the past four days with one of the Bronx's elite detectorists "Phil O" and have come home with a decent count of silver, one of them being another SLQ with a readable date. And on one of those hunts I found the vintage NYC Subway fare token. I haven't looked it up, but I've been told it's one of the very early varities. I'm a big fan of anything to do with trains, and the subway is native to me, so this token was a special find in my book. It sounded like a nickel, which was what I was pursuing after having seen Phil dig up a nice Buffalo. Photo of the token is enclosed.
The second part of this post is regarding the Variablity setting that I use on my Explorer. I've been asked by several people why I use this setting or why I do not use it at 10, where silver sounds better. Below is my reasoning and explanation
..........
My primary logic is that restraining the Variablity setting to eight discourages bad habits in the cherry picking arena based on the following.....
a) Ever heard people say that if you set your Variablity to 10, that silver sounds better or that you can tell a clad dime from a silver dime?
No lives at stake, but that is a dangerous idea or confidence to adopt. If you've been out there hunting with the Explorer, you will sooner than later discover that certain coins, (In particular very worn out barber dimes) do not sound exactly like silver and can sometimes sound more like a penny. Same applies to coins that have a trash item in very close proximity. The silver sound may not pop out, and instead you may get a blended sound.
b) Even though the Explorer has superior (In my opinion) target identification, many of the Explorer users learn to eventually distrust target identification and instead rely heavily on sound. I try to take it a step further and many times also distrust the sound and rely on things learned through experience, some being a matter of logical thinking. And one simple logical though is that we cannot expect to get a good clear sounding signal or TID on a target that is on the threshold of detection. I dig warbly nickel sounding signals that sometimes turn out to be silver quarters at depth. If the signal is deep and somewhat repeatable, I dig it anyways. The tone of the sound at this point is irrelavent.
With that said, in the discipline that I dig, I'm not looking for the ability to tell silver apart from clad What I am doing is allowing myself to be forced to dig more. I know that if I had my machine set up where the difference between the sound of silver and a wheat were very different, I would be more selective of what I dig, and would be digging less. I would not have the restrain to stop myself from abusing that setup/variablity. And as it is known, the less you dig, the less you will find. This reasoning wlll have me digging lots of wheats and finding whatever silver is around. I might take home more wheats than what someone else might have been willing to dig, but I might also bring home that silver that someone would probably never have dug due to the confidence of the Variablity at 10 setting.
And even with my Variablity set at 8, I can actually tell when something will be silver an extremely good percentage of the time. It keeps me from filming 30 coins on every hunt. I only bring out the camera when I am certain it is silver. That ability makes it possible for me to make my videos.
The only thought left is how many good coins I have run over that I could pick up if I set the variablity even lower to the point where I'd have just a few tones like I did with my ACE 250? I have no plans to do that anytime soon, but my point is that it may not be such a bad idea to limit cherry picking by curbing the variablity setting.........at least to the point where wheats are more blended in with the sound of silver and in turn will make you investigate.
Best,
Ricardo
I've been getting out quite a bit..........not posting as much, but I've been doing ok. I've done about three hunts in the past four days with one of the Bronx's elite detectorists "Phil O" and have come home with a decent count of silver, one of them being another SLQ with a readable date. And on one of those hunts I found the vintage NYC Subway fare token. I haven't looked it up, but I've been told it's one of the very early varities. I'm a big fan of anything to do with trains, and the subway is native to me, so this token was a special find in my book. It sounded like a nickel, which was what I was pursuing after having seen Phil dig up a nice Buffalo. Photo of the token is enclosed.
The second part of this post is regarding the Variablity setting that I use on my Explorer. I've been asked by several people why I use this setting or why I do not use it at 10, where silver sounds better. Below is my reasoning and explanation
..........My primary logic is that restraining the Variablity setting to eight discourages bad habits in the cherry picking arena based on the following.....
a) Ever heard people say that if you set your Variablity to 10, that silver sounds better or that you can tell a clad dime from a silver dime?
No lives at stake, but that is a dangerous idea or confidence to adopt. If you've been out there hunting with the Explorer, you will sooner than later discover that certain coins, (In particular very worn out barber dimes) do not sound exactly like silver and can sometimes sound more like a penny. Same applies to coins that have a trash item in very close proximity. The silver sound may not pop out, and instead you may get a blended sound.
b) Even though the Explorer has superior (In my opinion) target identification, many of the Explorer users learn to eventually distrust target identification and instead rely heavily on sound. I try to take it a step further and many times also distrust the sound and rely on things learned through experience, some being a matter of logical thinking. And one simple logical though is that we cannot expect to get a good clear sounding signal or TID on a target that is on the threshold of detection. I dig warbly nickel sounding signals that sometimes turn out to be silver quarters at depth. If the signal is deep and somewhat repeatable, I dig it anyways. The tone of the sound at this point is irrelavent.
With that said, in the discipline that I dig, I'm not looking for the ability to tell silver apart from clad What I am doing is allowing myself to be forced to dig more. I know that if I had my machine set up where the difference between the sound of silver and a wheat were very different, I would be more selective of what I dig, and would be digging less. I would not have the restrain to stop myself from abusing that setup/variablity. And as it is known, the less you dig, the less you will find. This reasoning wlll have me digging lots of wheats and finding whatever silver is around. I might take home more wheats than what someone else might have been willing to dig, but I might also bring home that silver that someone would probably never have dug due to the confidence of the Variablity at 10 setting.
And even with my Variablity set at 8, I can actually tell when something will be silver an extremely good percentage of the time. It keeps me from filming 30 coins on every hunt. I only bring out the camera when I am certain it is silver. That ability makes it possible for me to make my videos.
The only thought left is how many good coins I have run over that I could pick up if I set the variablity even lower to the point where I'd have just a few tones like I did with my ACE 250? I have no plans to do that anytime soon, but my point is that it may not be such a bad idea to limit cherry picking by curbing the variablity setting.........at least to the point where wheats are more blended in with the sound of silver and in turn will make you investigate.
Best,
Ricardo
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Nice job on the NYC token! I have been using my SE for five-six months now. I have made some outstanding finds, none the less. But I believe it has to do with both concepts of hearing the sound and looking at the screen. I am no expert and do not consider myself to be one. I tend to put both subjects in perspective when recovering a target. Usually a coin will sound different when its deeper as you said. In that case, I usually look at the smartfind screen to determine wheather it is going to be a dime, quarter, or a penny. Sometimes though, you just never know, so in that case you have to dig anyway. A lot of the times when digging those iffy signals, its hard to tell what will come out of the ground. 
They probably get sick of answering them for me, but it just makes me get better with the SE.
