I agree 100%. Matter of fact you just reminded me I have a Garret Freedom 2 plus I ought a new coil for last fall for my grandson to use. I remember learning tones on that. Especially the dimes 😬.
I’ve been finding 98s are whole beer cans 18” down. Or chunks of lobster traps. I stopped digging them. I also have been passing on a ton of single digit numbers. I know I know. Now I can go back and start all over again. As much as I love my Surfmaster PI, this Elite is like (I’m assuming) having a mistress half my age. It’s just a thrill every time I turn it on. My wife is convinced I’m crazy leaving the house at 3 am and hunting in the dark til daybreak. Wait til I start leaving at midnight. But that’s usually when I’m getting to bed.
I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer me. And that’s exactly what I was hoping someone would say. Thank you thank you thank you.
My wife and daughter are at the other end of the beach I usually hunt right now and she’s texting me photos. It’s a mile of sand and there’s less people where she is. Probably because it’s $25 - $45 to park depending on volume. And free on the end where I go but you have to be early. Low tide is mid day and midnight right now. I can’t wait to get back out there. Again. Thank you so much. I’m remembering where those low numbers were. In the trashy dry sand. 👍
You are most welcome. IMHO, all-tones audio opens up another world of target ID that should complement the visual target ID numbers on the screen. But many times, all-tones audio will give you more information that the visual target ID might miss.
For instance, let's take the highly valuable and elusive pull tab, lol. A pull tab can masquerade as a variety of targets. If you're only using 1 tone, a pull tab could sound just like any other target, so it can easily be mistaken for a gold ring, or a nickel, etc., as they typically give off a pretty smooth tone thanks to the beaver tail portion of the tab. As I was learning all the tones on my Sovereign, pull tabs would trick me quite a bit in the beginning. But as I gained more experience learning the tones, which is why it's important to dig everything so that you can visually see what the tones are telling you, I started noticing very subtle nuances in the tones that I didn't notice when first learning.
If you think about a pull tab, you have a beaver tail connected to a circular ring for your finger so you can pull the tab off the can. The beaver tail is a smooth, solid piece of metal, whereas the ring isn't solid, as it's a ring of metal that's hollow in the center, so the conductivity of the ring will be slightly different than the conductivity of the beaver tail. With my Sovereign's multiple tones, I started noticing a very slight difference in the tones when scanning a pull tab in certain directions. The recovery speed of a Sovereign is pretty slow, as its processor is older technology, so I had to slow my swing speed way down when checking the target at different angles. But it should be much easier with the X-Terra Elite, as its recovery speed is lightning fast compared to my Sovereign.
When my coil was over the beaver tail portion, it was a smooth mid to mid-high pitch signal. When the coil reached the ring part of the pull tab, the conductivity changed slightly as there wasn't as much metal as the beaver tail since it was hollow, making it a bit more difficult to get a signal as smooth and as strong as the beaver tail. The recovery speed of the X-Terra Elite is miles ahead of my Sovereign, so it will be a lot faster and easier to hear subtle differences.
This is all happening very quickly, in an instant, so once you get the initial signal, it's important to stop and sweep the target from a variety of angles & different directions. Sweeping the coil in one direction may give me a pretty solid tone, but after I switched my swing 45 degrees, then 90 degrees, I sometimes would hear a faint and subtle double "blip" with 2 very slightly different tones as the coil went over the beaver tail portion, then over the ring portion. It's very subtle but once you learn the tones and start hearing it, it becomes a lot easier determining if the target is a pull tab.
Since this happens so fast, your visual ID meter may or may not show you a change in numbers, but by using all-tones, you'll get to the point where you can hear the difference in the 2 pieces of the pull tab when swinging the coil in the right direction. Again, this is very subtle, happens quickly, so that's why it's important to check the target by sweeping at different angles, along with practicing and digging everything to train your brain to recognize the different tones you'll get with different targets.
