Deep Thoughts

[Gone Detectin]

I dont dig deep. So in many ways I dont belong in this thread. But I took a change of heart (tired of digging clad) and decided to hit a old school (1930's) and see if I could hit silver. I noodled around with the machine in Basic 1 and managed to pull a couple pennies around 7-8". I knew this place was hunted so my first thought was "this place is hunted out, nobody with a decent VDI machine would have dug those pennies..", and after about 30 minutes of what I considered to be crap signals, I thought I would bury a dime right in the middle of what seemed to be fairly trashy ground (iron and modern trash). I buried it a 8".

My original settings that wouldn't hit the dime with any decent repeat ability.
Disc 10 - full tones
Sens 90 - TX 2
Frequency 11khz
Reactivity 2 - silencer 3
Iron Vol 3
Notch 0
Audio Response 4
Ground balanced - no ground notch as the dime was lost with even minimal ground notching.

Now if you know Basic 1 it starts you with a reactivity of 2 and silencer of 2 which I bumped to 3/4 cause you know, who wants to hear crappy signals. Silencer is meant to silence iffy signals. I should have that in quotes because thats what Gary from XP says silencer does. And for a certain, a 8" dime in a hole with tons of small bits of iron was not about to be hit cleanly but at maybe one angle, and very sporadically with the silencer set to 4,3,2,1,0 and -1 with the reactivity set to 2. It would hit it, and it almost seemed like the Deus was saying DIG as it it would pop a high tone with clipped edges, yet wasn't repeatable at all . This stunned me. I thought what have I been missing.. After working through every reactivity and silencer setting, and every other setting I started hearing good hits with these settings.

Disc 6.1 - full tones and believe pitch was even better and more descriptive.
Sens 90
Frequency 4khz
Reactivity 1/0 - silencer -1
Iron Vol 5
Notch 0
Audio Response 5
Ground balance at 90

I know some of these settings are obvious for digging deeper, but even at 4khz with a reactivity of 2 the dime started to be lost, and with the silencer set any higher than 2 with the reactivity at 1, the dime was nothing more than a random pop. It was only when I brought the reactivity down to 1 and the silencer down to 1 to -1 that I started hearing the dime mixed in with the iron bits. A crappy sounding high tone but an obvious dig me.

So I set out to see what my new found settings would produce. Two holes later, ground I had just detected before planting the dime and testing my settings. At an amazing 6"...



Not that I'm anyone you should listen to, but I'll be planting test gardens in all the places I hunt from now on, and I would recommend doing the same to anyone.

Also I found that in low mineralization (2/3 bars, phase moving from 70-85), a ground balance of 90 was hitting the dime more clearly than any other setting and made for a much quieter hunt in general. I'll be testing this at some sites with higher mineralization.

Happy hunting.

 

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[vferrari]

I dont dig deep. So in many ways I dont belong in this thread. But I took a change of heart (tired of digging clad) and decided to hit a old school (1930's) and see if I could hit silver. I noodled around with the machine in Basic 1 and managed to pull a couple pennies around 7-8". I knew this place was hunted so my first thought was "this place is hunted out, nobody with a decent VDI machine would have dug those pennies..", and after about 30 minutes of what I considered to be crap signals, I thought I would bury a dime right in the middle of what seemed to be fairly trashy ground (iron and modern trash). I buried it a 8".

My original settings that wouldn't hit the dime with any decent repeat ability.
Disc 10 - full tones
Sens 90 - TX 2
Frequency 11khz
Reactivity 2 - silencer 3
Iron Vol 3
Notch 0
Audio Response 4
Ground balanced - no ground notch as the dime was lost with even minimal ground notching.

Now if you know Basic 1 it starts you with a reactivity of 2 and silencer of 2 which I bumped to 3/4 cause you know, who wants to hear crappy signals. Silencer is meant to silence iffy signals. I should have that in quotes because thats what Gary from XP says silencer does. And for a certain, a 8" dime in a hole with tons of small bits of iron was not about to be hit cleanly but at maybe one angle, and very sporadically with the silencer set to 4,3,2,1,0 and -1 with the reactivity set to 2. It would hit it, and it almost seemed like the Deus was saying DIG as it it would pop a high tone with clipped edges, yet wasn't repeatable at all . This stunned me. I thought what have I been missing.. After working through every reactivity and silencer setting, and every other setting I started hearing good hits with these settings.

Disc 6.1 - full tones and believe pitch was even better and more descriptive.
Sens 90
Frequency 4khz
Reactivity 1/0 - silencer -1
Iron Vol 5
Notch 0
Audio Response 5
Ground balance at 90

I know some of these settings are obvious for digging deeper, but even at 4khz with a reactivity of 2 the dime started to be lost, and with the silencer set any higher than 2 with the reactivity at 1, the dime was nothing more than a random pop. It was only when I brought the reactivity down to 1 and the silencer down to 1 to -1 that I started hearing the dime mixed in with the iron bits. A crappy sounding high tone but an obvious dig me.

So I set out to see what my new found settings would produce. Two holes later, ground I had just detected before planting the dime and testing my settings. At an amazing 6"...



Not that I'm anyone you should listen to, but I'll be planting test gardens in all the places I hunt from now on, and I would recommend doing the same to anyone.

Also I found that in low mineralization (2/3 bars, phase moving from 70-85), a ground balance of 90 was hitting the dime more clearly than any other setting and made for a much quieter hunt in general. I'll be testing this at some sites with higher mineralization.

Happy hunting.

I dont dig deep. So in many ways I dont belong in this thread. But I took a change of heart (tired of digging clad) and decided to hit a old school (1930's) and see if I could hit silver. I noodled around with the machine in Basic 1 and managed to pull a couple pennies around 7-8". I knew this place was hunted so my first thought was "this place is hunted out, nobody with a decent VDI machine would have dug those pennies..", and after about 30 minutes of what I considered to be crap signals, I thought I would bury a dime right in the middle of what seemed to be fairly trashy ground (iron and modern trash). I buried it a 8".

My original settings that wouldn't hit the dime with any decent repeat ability.
Disc 10 - full tones
Sens 90 - TX 2
Frequency 11khz
Reactivity 2 - silencer 3
Iron Vol 3
Notch 0
Audio Response 4
Ground balanced - no ground notch as the dime was lost with even minimal ground notching.

Now if you know Basic 1 it starts you with a reactivity of 2 and silencer of 2 which I bumped to 3/4 cause you know, who wants to hear crappy signals. Silencer is meant to silence iffy signals. I should have that in quotes because thats what Gary from XP says silencer does. And for a certain, a 8" dime in a hole with tons of small bits of iron was not about to be hit cleanly but at maybe one angle, and very sporadically with the silencer set to 4,3,2,1,0 and -1 with the reactivity set to 2. It would hit it, and it almost seemed like the Deus was saying DIG as it it would pop a high tone with clipped edges, yet wasn't repeatable at all . This stunned me. I thought what have I been missing.. After working through every reactivity and silencer setting, and every other setting I started hearing good hits with these settings.

Disc 6.1 - full tones and believe pitch was even better and more descriptive.
Sens 90
Frequency 4khz
Reactivity 1/0 - silencer -1
Iron Vol 5
Notch 0
Audio Response 5
Ground balance at 90

I know some of these settings are obvious for digging deeper, but even at 4khz with a reactivity of 2 the dime started to be lost, and with the silencer set any higher than 2 with the reactivity at 1, the dime was nothing more than a random pop. It was only when I brought the reactivity down to 1 and the silencer down to 1 to -1 that I started hearing the dime mixed in with the iron bits. A crappy sounding high tone but an obvious dig me.

So I set out to see what my new found settings would produce. Two holes later, ground I had just detected before planting the dime and testing my settings. At an amazing 6"...



Not that I'm anyone you should listen to, but I'll be planting test gardens in all the places I hunt from now on, and I would recommend doing the same to anyone.

Also I found that in low mineralization (2/3 bars, phase moving from 70-85), a ground balance of 90 was hitting the dime more clearly than any other setting and made for a much quieter hunt in general. I'll be testing this at some sites with higher mineralization.

Happy hunting.

Way to experiment, nice find, and you certainly did set up your Deus for deep mode, just a couple comments.

If you are going to crank iron vol anyway and are in full tones, try dialing down discrimination as far as you can stand and see how you like that as a general search mode. You can always crank it up again if you want to cherry pick.

Reactivity perhaps has the greatest impact on the ability to hear deep targets, it doesn't really affect depth directly (like sensitivity most certainly does) but like disc and silencer (as you found out first hand), higher reactivity settings can clip the signal of the deep targets making them difficult to pick up. Word of warning to those changing reactivity, beware when you do change reactivity, silencer will automatically change to the default setting associated with that reactivity setting so if you want silencer minimized or off, you need to recheck it after each reactivity adjustment.

Regarding gb, your experience has me a little perplexed that you could hear the dime better with gb at positive bias. The machine will certainly have less noise, but depth should have been negatively impacted. My only guess is that at 4 khz TX power is locked at 3 so perhaps with the mineralization level you were getting the fogged headlights effect from the high TX power setting. Your only option would be to up frequency where you can adjust TX power lower.

Otherwise, there are no absolutes so stick with what works at your site. Also, be aware that impromptu test gardens at sites may not necessarily replicate how the actual old, deep silver responds after sitting there for decades. But not a bad way to tune up your machine if you can afford the time and the additional hole.

One additional comment I would like to make. I find it hard to believe you would not have previously heard that quarter with your old settings if you had actually placed your coil over it. I could be wrong, but sometimes it is not the machine settings but inefficient swing patterns that prevent folks from picking up targets from ground they "already detected". I wonder how folks ensure they are getting nearly full coverage when they search a site or a portion of a site. Would like to get some tips on that.

 

[Gone Detectin]

Way to experiment, nice find, and you certainly did set up your Deus for deep mode, just a couple comments.

If you are going to crank iron vol anyway and are in full tones, try dialing down discrimination as far as you can stand and see how you like that as a general search mode. You can always crank it up again if you want to cherry pick.

Reactivity perhaps has the greatest impact on the ability to hear deep targets, it doesn't really affect depth directly (like sensitivity most certainly does) but like disc and silencer (as you found out first hand), higher reactivity settings can clip the signal of the deep targets making them difficult to pick up. Word of warning to those changing reactivity, beware when you do change reactivity, silencer will automatically change to the default setting associated with that reactivity setting so if you want silencer minimized or off, you need to recheck it after each reactivity adjustment.

Regarding gb, your experience has me a little perplexed that you could hear the dime better with gb at positive bias. The machine will certainly have less noise, but depth should have been negatively impacted. My only guess is that at 4 khz TX power is locked at 3 so perhaps with the mineralization level you were getting the fogged headlights effect from the high TX power setting. Your only option would be to up frequency where you can adjust TX power lower.

Otherwise, there are no absolutes so stick with what works at your site. Also, be aware that impromptu test gardens at sites may not necessarily replicate how the actual old, deep silver responds after sitting there for decades. But not a bad way to tune up your machine if you can afford the time and the additional hole.

One additional comment I would like to make. I find it hard to believe you would not have previously heard that quarter with your old settings if you had actually placed your coil over it. I could be wrong, but sometimes it is not the machine settings but inefficient swing patterns that prevent folks from picking up targets from ground they "already detected". I wonder how folks ensure they are getting nearly full coverage when they search a site or a portion of a site. Would like to get some tips on that.

Thanks for the tips.

I more than likely did hit the quarter but I'm guessing it just sounded broken and bad. I passed several targets that sounded broken and I'm certain the high silencer setting along with iron in the hole reduced the signal quality.

In retrospect, I think the most important thing I learned was the audio response of a coin at depth in that environment (with full tones). For the rest of the day (1 hour..) I stopped to inspect every high tone pop no matter how faint and I did have to slow down dramatically to do so.. along with the change in sweep speed due to the lower reactivity. But, I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't place the coil over the quarter, I've been swinging with a reactivity of 4 - silencer of 4 for a while now with notching.. its easy to move fast and I could have missed it.. but Im almost certain I went over it.

Also, played yesterday with pitch and Iron Vol as a two tone setup as mentioned in another thread, and I think its amazing sounding. I took a nail and a dime and tried some tests and I'm thinking I could hear the dime breaking up the otherwise smooth iron tone. Food for thought.

 

[austin_luker]

There are many factors on why machines can see a target one day and not the next. I know I have swung over spots and come back a few days later and pulled silver. Machine settings, soil moisture, soil mineral levels are just a few things that can mask a target. Not to mention all the non-ferrous crap in the ground and even ferrous that's just junk.
The smaller coils can help with unmasking targets hidden by non-ferrous junk as can hitting a park after it has a good rain. A lot of people say that moisture in the soil hurts detecting depth, I have found the opposite [emoji12]

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[vferrari]

Gone Detectin - I didn't realize you were originally searching with Rx 4 , Silencer 4 (thought you said it was 2/3) I can now see why you missed it at 6 inch. Anyway, it is amazing how seemingly small tweaks can affect detector response to the same target.

 

[Mike G.]

I'm surprised the dime hit better with your G.B. setting. When it comes to depth with the Deus ground balance is as important as the reactivity and silencer settings more so than many other detectors. There are some videos that demonstrate how negative and positive settings affect depth with the Deus.

 

[Calabash Digger]

That is exactly what I was thinking as I read down thru the post , I started with the preset ground balance when I first start now I run down close to actual ground number. It will affect depth with it being on 90 and say ground read at 84 you probably lose a inch or 2. Ive tested the ground balance at depth in garden and it does matter for maximum depth. I9 haven't checked the video out yet. edit yep same thing ive saw happen thanks for posting the video

 

[Mike G.]

Calabash, your videos testing the ground balance settings on the 12 inch half dollar and quarter is a perfect example of the importance of setting the G.B. for depth. You should post your test.

 

[Gone Detectin]

Sorry if I implied that my post was suppose to be educational. It wasn't. It was just a noob trying different settings.

Gone Detectin - I didn't realize you were originally searching with Rx 4 , Silencer 4 (thought you said it was 2/3) I can now see why you missed it at 6 inch. Anyway, it is amazing how seemingly small tweaks can affect detector response to the same target.

No you had it right. I was in Reactivity 2 silencer 4 and I wouldn't be surprised if I did hit it and just considered the signal to be crap, or missed it entirley. Any mistake is possible with me at the helm lol.

Now as far as the ground balance is concerned, I shouldnt say the dime was being hit more clearly because I think that implies that the dime is being hit harder. It wasnt. What I mean by more clearly is, is that I wasn't hearing the sparkyness of the machine. Without the machine in tracking I was constantly hearing mineral falsing (or what I perceived to be mineral falsing) as the machine would be negative buy 5-10 ponts in some spots.. with tracking on it was lessened a good bit, but I may try running the GB up near or at 90 just for sanity sake and if I dont do much digging I'll kick it back into tracking.

Sorry if it seemed I was saying, that to not ground balance would make the machine run deeper. I didnt mean to imply that, I was only surprised to see it hit the dime without being ground balanced, and how quiet the machine was, in doing so.

 

[Calabash Digger]

I just thought that ground balance was the trouble. I see you found ground notch does knock out targets glad I got a witness on that one lol

 

[vferrari]

I just thought that ground balance was the trouble. I see you found ground notch does knock out targets glad I got a witness on that one lol

I still don't believe it! (Just kidding). But I do keep forgetting to back off on ground notching all the way when I go hunting (its built into my custom setup), which has been rare event the last month or so.