Eagle Spectrum questions

[CowboyKolo]

Ok, here's the deal. I own a second hand white's eagle spectrum, and have had some success with it over the years. A few silver coins, a few clad coins, one shield nickle. Thing is, what I have found in keepers over the last few years are what I typically see people finding in a week or less. So, I finally bit the bullet and asked my landlord permission to plant a test garden. I didn't plant much, a modern nickel and a bottle cap so far. I put them both about [size=10pt]6 inches down and a foot apart.
Now, here's the crux;
The bottle cap (one from a sobe bottle) reads as a penny/dime to quarter and remains solid and steady with every swipe. The nickel however, reads as penny/dime, bottle cap or pull tab and is fairly broken.
I have used both the coin/jewelry mode and the relic mode with similar
results. Needless to say, I dig a lot of trash and might be passing over
a lot of good targets. So, here's my question;
Is this normal for a spectrum, or is there something defective about this
particular unit? Are there specific settings I could perhaps tweak a bit
to get the solid signal = good broken signal equals trash I keep reading
and hearing about? Or should I just start doing the exact opposite of
this theory?
Thanks in advance[/size]

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

When you say "bottle caps", are you referring to the aluminum screw cap type? Or the crow-top type? By "crown type", I'm referring so the kind that is opened with a bottle opener, and not the type that screw off. The crown top type have iron in them, and the screwcap type are entirely aluminum.

If you meant the crown top type, yes, the spectrum (and xlt, etc...) do have a weak-spot for them, IF you don't do it right. Here's how to immediately flush them out: If you suspect you're getting a crown top (because it tries to read penny/dime, yet sounds suspiciously broken at the same time): You simply momemtarily speed up the speed of the swing over the target. If it's a coin, the signal will improve. If it's a crown top, it will become rattier. Practice from multiple angles and speeds (to make sure you have the target centered and isolated). You will notice that as you slow down over crown tops to slower motion speeds, the crown tops improve and will indeed fool you. The soil type and amount of corrosion on the cap will make this vary from site to site, but it remains true, that a momentary swing speedup will give them a tell-tale ID.

Use this instead of the "bottle cap reject" that Whites has in the menu. I never trusted that mode, as I believe it would just muffle suspected signals, thus changing other signals too. Better to use the swing speed method to flush them out. JMHO

 

[CowboyKolo]

I appreciaet the advice, and to answer your question Tom, nope. It's a screw cap. Slightly crushed and a bit bigger in size than a quarter. Probably about
halfway between a quarter and half dollar