Advice on MXT

C

Carl in CO

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I just got an MXT. Please give me advice. What are good settings? What does a deep target sound like? Should I set it with an edge of sound noise on or just below threshold? I had it in the park a couple of hours and dug everything. I found 1 quarter, 5 nickels, 1 dime, and 1 zinc and a bunch of alluminum. Everthing but the quarter had been there a long time and was 3 or 4 inches down. I have discrimination on the factory preset at the iron cut off level, but tab/nickel inclusive (3). The Iron targets seem to give me a faint/broken signal at that level although the real rusty ones come up pretty strong. I've tried both below and above threshold. I prefer silent threshold with the gain completely maxed out. I plan to do some gold prospecting and ghost sites in the future. My concern with the ghost sites is that the iron in the ground is going to drive me crazy.
 

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Carl, Go to the mxt forum. Go to Google Search and type in mxt forum. The first site that comes up on the search is the one I think. The web address is very long so I may get it wrong so the search will be best. Ask the same question and you will get plenty of answers. I have a mxt and love it. I havn't had it long so the other mxt users can probably give you better answers.? ;D HH, AF
 

Hey. I haven't had my MXT long but everything you're saying is right on as far as tones, depth, displays. I get all the same stuff. It's going to take awhile in the field with it to understand its nuances if you know what I mean. The longer you use it the better you understand it. Good Hunting.
 

I generally run my MXT at a notch below nickle,low but not silent threshold and the gain depends where i am at. ball fields,open areas i max it out.gravel parking lots at around preset,parks it depends on the trash.i would also reccomend after you start getting used to it to buy a smaller sniper coil and a large 1400 coil also. they both will be helpful in selected areas.

bigrig
 

Thanks for the advice everyone. Anyone else have any good ideas?
 

Hey Carl. Sorry to hear you're having a little buyer's remorse. I did too. Let's face it, for what they want for one of those things you should be able to send it out by itself. Don't despair, I've been running mine for just over a month know and have done a little over $50 in clad. At that rate I should be able to pay for the machine in about a year. I really started hitting the goodies when I set like this: Coin & Jewelry Mode...Gain @ 9....Disc @ 2.....Threshold @ barely audible. When I hit a solid repeatable target, I take note of the VDI #, then turn the coil 90 degrees and sweep it again. If the VDI remains fairly constant, I dig. With time the solid VDI #'s that denote trash will become apparent. Pull tabs come in a variety of sizes and show up in several places. On my machine, a solid 20 is a definite nickel. A solid 24 is a pull tab. A solid 43 is a pulltab. What I've started doing is switching, on questionable targets, to Prospecting mode and getting the Iron% readings as well. This is when I started hitting some gold. They were targets I may have walked past thinking they were pull tabs, but had a completely different readout in Prospect. Stay with it Carl. You'll get better and be pleased with the results quicker than you think. I can't imagine how hard it is to make a switch after you've been using a different MD for as long as you had been. Don't give up. Also, I agree with BigRig. A smaller coil really help if you're overwhelmed by all the signals. I just picked up a 5.3 Eclipse and it's amazing. I could read several coins in a really tight spot. One find was a spill that contained 2 quarters, 4 dimes, and 2 pennies. All at 3", in grass, in an 8" circumference. I could read all those coins individually. I couldn't believe it until I dug them. The only bad thing was getting used to slowing down with it. When I looked across that football field, I felt like I really had to move it to cover any ground. Kinda like digging a swimming pool with a teaspoon. But it really works nice when you realize what it can do. It's sending a very confined signal to the target. Several times that day I'd get a pulltab signal and then read a coin just beside and below it. Signals I'm sure I would have missed with the stock coil. Sorry I got so long winded here Carl. Anytime you want to go out and hunt together, I'd be happy to spend more time explaining what I tried to convey here. It helps if you can actually listen to some of the signals I've described here. Good hunting my friend....You bought a great machine! ;)~CO2
 

interesting CO2.on my MXT my "definite "nickles are when it fluctuates from 18-20.I had an interesting experience over the weekend, me and knorrski hit a new school for us and we found alot of coins with little junk so we started digging some signals that we normally wouldn't even attempt to dig and yes we found trash but also more jewelry and coins that I normally would of missed.makes you wonder about how much money and jewelry we all scan and pass on.

bigrig
 

First of all...don't get discouraged. It really takes 100 hours or so to get to know a new detector. I've been th'ing since the 60's and still have to practice a lot with a new detector to get to know the settings and how it responds. I'd start with the factory settings for a good while and then start tweaking things based on experience and personal preference. If you got the video instruction tape it should give you some good info on settings, etc. My DFX has a pretty significant learning curve also and I initially did not know how I would like it but after a year of experience love it. Good luck! Jim Cal
 

Thanks everyone. I feel better after reading your posts. The MXT is a powerful machine. It definatley has something under the hood. I sometimes think too much. Maybe a little too much when the soil is dirty. I've started to see the consistency in nickels and pulltabs and will watch for those VDI numbers and try the prospecting mode on questionables. It helps a bunch to get a reality check here and know people are seeing the same things I am and how to deal with it.
CO2, we're all going to have to get together again sometime soon. I'll bring the burgers this time.
 

almost unrelated but a nickle and pulltab on my garrett are about the same signal so i do not dig often....till i hit a particular school . NO PULL TABS...every signal is a nickle...can you believe it ?
 

This is one of the better discussions I've found about the basic character of the MXT!? Ok I gotta throw my chips in on it.?
In about 1975 I got a radio shack kit that would almost find a coin right on top of the ground so I didnt use it much.? Next detector was a Compass Yukon 77b that I found in a trash dumpster. It just needed a couple of the battery wires soldered back on and a potentiometer was bad.? It was a lot better than the radio shack thing but you had to keep one hand on the ground balance knob at all times and it would find a penny only about 2 inches deep.
I got to thinking about detecting again a couple years ago and did a lot of homework before deciding that I wanted the MXT. After vulturing around on Ebay for about 6 months I finally gave up and bought one new from a local dealer.?

Alright, run home and assemble the thing and hit the front yard.? With the stock 950 I set everything to the presets, ground balance, GND runs around 50, and take off.? Bing di boing? zip zip zip farrrt bing BING Bonk.? ?What in the hell is going on here? LOL? I piddled with the settings and tried different modes to see if I could find some way to make it run a little cleaner.

First trip through the front yard took about 1 hour and netted 4 pennies.? I felt like some more of those seemingly million targets may have been coins because at times the vdi would indicate 76(zinc) or 77(solid penny) A bit dissapointed I went back in the house and went through the manual a third time.

Next day? I hit the front yard again, a little less anxious this time.? Trying to not be too rude to all the neighbors questions and comments I proceeded to study what this thing is trying to tell me.? In one swing I am getting 4-5 different sounds and the vdi is bouncing all over the place.? Someone mentioned that sometimes it is too hot, I can agree with that one.? ?So I decided to mess with the pinpoint trigger to see if there are multiple targets that are giving me fits.? The answer was? apparently so.?

How about if I find a clean place and work on a single target from there till I get it out of the way?? Aha? now were getting somewhere? nails, bits of foil, the usual nuiscance stuff. Amazing that a bit of aluminum siding that is about 1/2 mm square cut in half on a diagonal detected at 4 inches deep! And I read a lot of posts that say this thing cant see small targets very well?
Once I tried clearing every target and running reduced gain I started to really be impressed with how deep this thing can detect what it thought was a solid penny but was actually a thick aluminum rivet head!? Hmmm? how about if I back the sensitivity down from 9.5 to 7?? Ok that allowed me to narrow down how many targets I am picking up at the same time.? The result was the second pass over the yard picked up 20 pennies mostly solid and one dime in about 3 hours.? I dug all kinds of trash as well but I had decided to dig everything to see what indications each kind of target gives.

I could tell the rest of the story in vivid detail but this is getting too long so I will cut to it.? I have about 10 hours experience and have $.54 and a bag full of trash.? What I have learned is that I need a smaller coil to hunt in areas like my front yard so that I can kick the gain up without getting chatter and 2-3 targets at the same time.? In my area, East side of Oklahoma City, the maximum gain I can run with the 950 is about 10 or else I get a lot of chatter. I plan on heading to Arizona to hunt some nuggets so I will probably go with the DD coil to handle the mineralization better but havent made up my mind which size. Better isolation of multiple targets with the smaller DD coil or more depth with the larger DD. Maybe someone with a bit more experience will advise on that question.

I prefer to run in relic mode with the discrimination just barely off of minimum so that iron will give a fart and anything else gives a chirp.? Dig all the darned aluminum trash so I wont miss any gold. When I find a target that is iffy, chirfart, then I sweep the target from a different direction for more clues, switch modes to prospect and see what it has to say and dig it anyway.?
Theres no plants in the garden spot right now so I have been doing a lot of practicing there burying different targets, or combinations of targets at different angles and depths to see what difference the conditions make to how the detector will respond.
I would recommend to any new MXT user to make a test bed and practice there, in known conditions with known targets, before ever setting out to explore the unknown.
I think it would be a good idea to give a few more details about your particular setup when telling of your experiences. GND#,? coil and mode would be very helpful to know when hearing how someone else is using their MXT. Thanks for all your comments.? Orin
 

I have seen and read alot of posts on the MXT and alot of them say that besides the stock 950, you should have a DD1400 and a 5.3 as extra coils and that with these three coils you can do just about anything. They can take care of high trash areas, high mineralization areas and salty sandy beach areas. Now if they would tell us which areas to hunt that would be great!
 

I'm with Jim on this one. You have to spend alot of time learning your machine. I have personal experience with the mxt. My younger brother has one and we hunt hard. Mxt is a very good detector. It's really sensitive on small stuff and gold. It goes deep to. Has great depth. Nothing happens over night. It will take you a good year of hunting to start to know what that sucker is saying. Until you dig a consistent amount of finds you won't know. My younger brother never out hunts me. You know why. Not that his machine isn't capable. He just doesn't have the hrs I do in the Field. I could give him my dfx all juiced up right. And probably still out hunt him with his mxt. And the dfx is a little better than the mxt is. Keep at it. It will suddenly all come together and you'll see that your investment was well worth it. For 700.00 bucks it's alot of machine. You'll get sore arms with that one.

Good Luck Jer
 

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