Found a Zippo with weird settings under very challenging conditions...

[digger27]

Very strange and yet wonderful experience yesterday.
Nox 800, sniper coil, a Birmingham Ala. park with mineralized dirt and loaded with extra iron.
Field 2, 5 tones, iron bias 0, and here is the strange part...I thought I had set the recovery high but instead it was set at 1 and the sense was on 12.
I had just updated the unit that morning and I was playing with it in the house and had turned it down to 12 because of all the chatter, I forgot to turn it back up when I went hunting.
The recovery should have been set high for hunting in iron but somewhere along the way I had turned it way down instead and didn't notice.

The site I was hunting I had scoured in the past with several detectors and coils for many hours as had others.
I live a block away from this park so I go there a lot and never found much in this area until one day I found a bucket list Barber quarter.
After that I practically lived in this area always looking for more.

This exact spot had a massive amount of iron, old houses used to be in the area of this park and you know how much junk and iron is left at sites like this when they knock them down.
I had the horseshoe turned on and iron numbers were everywhere.
I did see 25-26 numbers pop up here and there and from several directions so that piqued my interest so I opened a hole.

In his hole I found a couple pieces of rusted wire and I am pretty sure there was probably more but I gave up looking after I found that higher conductive target which was 3" down sticking out of the side of one wall.

The biggest thing about this is when I stuck my Carrot in the open hole that was about 5-6" deep it went off loud and fast no matter where I moved it.
There was something huge in the vicinity and I mean massive...like a car was buried just below the bottom of my hole.
I never did find out what that was but the 25 target I dug made me smile breached it was one of the most favorite things I love to dig, a lighter and it was a Zippo!
My third Zippo I have found so far.
Out if the hole it was still a 25-26...I was shocked it didn't up-average.

I know the Nox can deal with smaller pieces of wire, nails too even up to some bigger ones and its rumored unmasking abilities are why I got one...but to be able to notice this small target surrounded by an ocean of iron, specifically in the vicinity of that massive huge piece of iron just shocked me.
Especially with the recovery set so low.

I did not realize my sense was set at 12 at the time so I wonder if that had some effect on all of this.
With that sense turned back up to my normal 20's would those 25-26 numbers still had shown up...I have no idea.
I do know I will definitely be playing around with all levels of sensitivity in future hunts as I experiment in my very weird and challenging dirt and sites.

All I know us this was a big area, I was hunting it with a tiny coil, I had settings that nobody recommends when hunting in intense iron and it was a site that I can't count the hours I have spent hunting it and it was in an area with extremely challenging and severe masking conditions and yet I still noticed and found this great lighter.

Bodes well...hopefully more to come as I put in the hours.

 

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[pa-dirt_nc-sand]

Congrats on the Zippo, found my first a couple months ago. Your find scenario is making my brain hurt... I’m getting better with the Nox by sticking with 2 modes, now I have to think about everything I’m missing If i don’t wildly change the settings... JK

 

[Whyme]

Nice find! I got the sniper coil a couple days ago and haven't had time to try it out! Maybe today......

 

[trdking]

Send a photo of the hinge, bottom for id and the writing on the internal piece?

 

[vferrari]

Lowering sensitivity in high iron density is a great unmasking technique that is often referred to as "sifting". It tends to enable the high conductive targets to pop out of the typically overwhelming ferrous signals in thick iron. It is counterintuitive to most detectorists to turn down sensitivity because of its obvious effect on depth. However, what you are looking for in thick iron are the shallow targets that have been masked and passed on by detectorists over the years using machines with lower recovery speeds or that are simply overwhelmed by the iron. So sacrificing depth for unmasking ability is a great trade off under those circumstances.

 

[RustyGold]

Great post and find. Love the Zippos!

 

[digger27]

Congrats on the Zippo, found my first a couple months ago. Your find scenario is making my brain hurt... I’m getting better with the Nox by sticking with 2 modes, now I have to think about everything I’m missing If i don’t wildly change the settings... JK

I am kind of a mad scientist when it comes to settings.
On the Fisher forum check out some of the many strange out of the box settings I have experimented with in the last 4 years using an F70.
If they worked I posted about them and a surprising amount of weird combinations worked for me.
This one has even more settings I can play around with and experimenting is just about as fun for me as finding all that great treasure out there so I am set for awhile.
I have had experience hunting in all kinds of sites and in 2 completely different types of dirt...the real beautiful low mineralized black stuff in Kansas and Missouri and the insanely bad mineralized and iron infested SE devil dirt we have here in Alabama and the worst if it seems to be here in the city of Birmingham.
There is still a lot buried treasure around here and a lot of it is surprisingly shallow but still down there and missed over the years because most of it is extremely masked to the hilt.
Everything I try and do now is aimed for getting reasonably deep as possible,(because depth is severely limited here), and trying everything I can think of to combat the major iron infestation and masking issues.

It all takes time, however, and I am never in a hurry...I might find some new settings and keep them for weeks fully exploring the possibilities as much as I can, I don't worry much about missed targets because I still seem to find enough to keep me happy all along the way.
Take your time if you want to play with the settings, I suspect that like the F70 the bulk of the settings on the Equinoxes will be successful in the bulk of the sites we visit...it is the real challenging sites and conditions where learning to tweak different settings might make you more successful.
I just happen to live and hunt in a part of the country where there really isn't much "normal" dirt so constant tweaking is what I believe I need to do to stay on top of things.
Plus, as I mentioned, that is great fun for me.

Go at your own pace, change things a little at a time and see what happens.
Most settings should work fine and you should find great things all along your travels.

 

[digger27]

Nice find! I got the sniper coil a couple days ago and haven't had time to try it out! Maybe today......

I did a small review on mine after just a short time.
I really love snipers and this one is no different.
Deep, sensitive, quiet and productive in just the few hours I have on it so far.
Google. Nox 6" coil...the bomb!

Here, in my part of the country, this coil is going to be getting more use than any other.

 

[digger27]

Lowering sensitivity in high iron density is a great unmasking technique that is often referred to as "sifting". It tends to enable the high conductive targets to pop out of the typically overwhelming ferrous signals in thick iron. It is counterintuitive to most detectorists to turn down sensitivity because of its obvious effect on depth. However, what you are looking for in thick iron are the shallow targets that have been masked and passed on by detectorists over the years using machines with lower recovery speeds or that are simply overwhelmed by the iron. So sacrificing depth for unmasking ability is a great trade off under those circumstances.

Thanks man, I suspected this was true but good to have that idea backed up.
This is different than using my F70.
On that platform the higher the sense/gain the better the resolution around heavy iron which is opposite of the high beams in the fog will overpower higher conductors theory.
In extreme iron the most successful settings I ever had was using that thing with sense and thresh boosted to max and all metal.
That was in great soil but with heavy iron or here in bad mineralized soil which is the norm.
It took awhile to figure things out, I had to learn to notice the different signals high conductors give off around iron and a new language to decipher everything good enough to be able to target the better targets.
I call these my "Blast Through" settings and I became more successful using them then I ever thought possible.
Now I have to train my brain to think opposite, lower sense is better in heavy iron.
The key is exactly how low can I go to still identify good targets in iron while getting the deepest possible doing it.
Depth is a big problem here, always has been with most detectors that aren't a PI.
We either can't get signals at all on some deeper targets or even if we can they are so skewed and screwed up that they don't make much sense.
That was one of the keys to the new language I had to learn, how deep targets acted because the deeper you go, even to 4-5" and definitely past that, the stranger the signals got and that behavior was far from normal.

The reason I got the Nox was because I saw one do a few things in this difficult dirt that seemed pretty effortless compared to others I have tried.
It wasn't the hype at all but what up saw with my eyes that convinced me.
It got a bit deeper, it sniffed out a few heavily masked high conductors that seemed very easy for it on factory settings, it was light, decently stable and seemed to deal with this dirt very well.
I figured if it could do this on factory settings what could tweaking do for it and exactly what kind of tweaking would be needed to improve performance.
I have been very successful with my other detectors around here but this Nox seemed to have a few abilities that made everything easier and the signals it acquired and showed me seemed much more normal and logical.
I got it in June but I don't hunt much in the summer here because of the heat and super dry concrete like dirt conditions, but I did put in a few hours and it was enough to learn my decision to get this thing was a good one.
First hunt I found silver and saw how it could deal with my dirt.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/580728-new-nox.html

Second hunt I found a bucket list silver coin.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/580790-bucket-list-thursday.html

So, more to tweak, observe and learn.
The sense setting is definitely one I need to play with and pay attention to and seems to be a key one to hunting in this strange place.

 

[digger27]

Send a photo of the hinge, bottom for id and the writing on the internal piece?

It has an H so made from 1986 on, pretty scratched up on the other side but there might be a 4 so that would put it at 2004.
It has been down there awhile, not a recent drop but I figure it has been napping down there for at least a decade.
I can open it but the insert is stuck in there and I can't get it out but that's ok...the folks at Zippo can extract and repair it easily.
I should get it back with both the new insert and the old one after I send it in.

 

[vferrari]

Thanks man, I suspected this was true but good to have that idea backed up.
This is different than using my F70.
On that platform the higher the sense/gain the better the resolution around heavy iron which is opposite of the high beams in the fog will overpower higher conductors theory.
In extreme iron the most successful settings I ever had was using that thing with sense and thresh boosted to max and all metal.
That was in great soil but with heavy iron or here in bad mineralized soil which is the norm.
It took awhile to figure things out, I had to learn to notice the different signals high conductors give off around iron and a new language to decipher everything good enough to be able to target the better targets.
I call these my "Blast Through" settings and I became more successful using them then I ever thought possible.
Now I have to train my brain to think opposite, lower sense is better in heavy iron.
The key is exactly how low can I go to still identify good targets in iron while getting the deepest possible doing it.
Depth is a big problem here, always has been with most detectors that aren't a PI.
We either can't get signals at all on some deeper targets or even if we can they are so skewed and screwed up that they don't make much sense.
That was one of the keys to the new language I had to learn, how deep targets acted because the deeper you go, even to 4-5" and definitely past that, the stranger the signals got and that behavior was far from normal.

The reason I got the Nox was because I saw one do a few things in this difficult dirt that seemed pretty effortless compared to others I have tried.
It wasn't the hype at all but what up saw with my eyes that convinced me.
It got a bit deeper, it sniffed out a few heavily masked high conductors that seemed very easy for it on factory settings, it was light, decently stable and seemed to deal with this dirt very well.
I figured if it could do this on factory settings what could tweaking do for it and exactly what kind of tweaking would be needed to improve performance.
I have been very successful with my other detectors around here but this Nox seemed to have a few abilities that made everything easier and the signals it acquired and showed me seemed much more normal and logical.
I got it in June but I don't hunt much in the summer here because of the heat and super dry concrete like dirt conditions, but I did put in a few hours and it was enough to learn my decision to get this thing was a good one.
First hunt I found silver and saw how it could deal with my dirt.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/580728-new-nox.html

Second hunt I found a bucket list silver coin.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/580790-bucket-list-thursday.html

So, more to tweak, observe and learn.
The sense setting is definitely one I need to play with and pay attention to and seems to be a key one to hunting in this strange place.

Experimenting, with some knowledge of how your non-traditional settings may affect performance and having the patience to recognize that some of your experiments will occasionally be failures resulting in an empty pouch or a pouch full of trash is a great way to learn the capabilities and language of your machine.

One thing I forgot to mention regarding hunting in thick iron with reduced gain/sensitivity is that folks might be tempted to back off on reactivity in an effort to regain some of the depth lost with the lower sensitivity. Perhaps reducing the setting by a click off the default might help a tad, but I would resist the urge to go too far with it for two reasons. First, you will lose separation due to the reduced recovery speed which is opposite of what you want in thick iron. Second, the reduced sweep speed needed to be effective with slower recovery will result in more ground noise (negative numbers on sweep, similar to what you were experiencing) which just raises the noise floor and obscures the non-ferrous keepers.

I also tend to minimize filtering to maximize unmasking which means running with no discrimination (horseshoe button) [though running with some disc can be useful if you are seeking primarily mid conductive relic targets that can get down averaged by the iron] and NO iron bias which effectively slows recovery when swinging over ferrous targets. Also, 50 tones is my preference.

Some testing has also shown that running single frequency (5 or 10khz) may prove beneficial when swinging in thick non-ferrous trash situations (bottlecaps, pulltabs, foil, and can slaw) when going after high conductive targets.

Finally, in hot dirt, do some experimenting with gold mode. A very different but potentially rewarding experience as the audio is VCO pitch based.

Plan to do a lot of experimenting with the EQX down in Culpeper, VA in November.

HH

 

[digger27]

All great points...thanks for any and all input because I learn much faster that way.
On this hunt I mentioned the reactivity was set on 1, a little too low but by accident.
I had some pretty long signals on this hunt but didn't realize what it was, I thought I was just swinging over some big metal pieces but I learned something.
I will turn it up some on the next one, over time I will get experience with the whole range.
I wonder what combination of the sense and reactivity will be the best for my area, only time and experimentation will tell.
I have the patience.
As far as the horseshoe I have many hundreds of hours hunting in all metal, I like it and I got pretty decent at it.
I have trained my brain and ears to process a whole lot of information hitting me at one time, a friend hunted with me once and I let him hear and see what my all in maxed out all metal settings were doing on my detector, he said he had no idea how I could make any sense at all out of that shear wall of noise and jumping numbers.
I said same way you get to Carnegie Hall...a lot of practice.
He knew it worked for me because he saw what I was able to find when we hunted together.
I think I will enjoy hunting that way with this one too, or learn to.
Iron bias on mine is usually set to 0, I have been trying all the tones and I am not sure which one I like the best.
Using my F70 I used them all, got good at them all but ultimately all metal with the threshold tone or 1, monotone,were the ones I used the most.
I was using 50 tones when I found a silver Barber dime, I can't say for sure but I think I heard that famous flutey silver sound when I swung over it.
50 tones is something I can probably get into.
I also have tried gold mode for a bit, a familiar experience after hunting in all metal for so long.

I still have tons to learn so keep any tips and insights you have coming because it is very appreciated.
I watch vids, scour many forums for settings and tips from the more experienced and try it all...then maybe even tweak them a bit for my needs.

Love this hobby and all the people in it!

 

[Happa54]

Your post and all the comments gives me some variations in settings to experiment with. I appreciate this.

Congrats on that Zippo too!!! I had a few when I was a smoker.

Currently, I am going in and out of a small area where homes were bulldozed in the 1950's and now it is a small park. It seems as though they buried everything under the soil. Aluminum, tin, steel, wire, screws, nails, iron, wood, etc. is all there. I know exactly what you are encountering. This is a place where I mode hop and I learn about my Nox.

 

[Hal2k]

Great find on the Zippo. I will try your settings with my Nox 800. I have old house that I have been hunting that has a lot of iron, have found some very interesting finds alone with a lot of nails and etc. Your settings maybe the key to finding even more.

 

[digger27]

Great find on the Zippo. I will try your settings with my Nox 800. I have old house that I have been hunting that has a lot of iron, have found some very interesting finds alone with a lot of nails and etc. Your settings maybe the key to finding even more.

Yea, you aren't far from me so your soil is probably pretty nasty like mine.
It took me a long time to learn to get deeper with understanding using my Fisher, every half inch I fought for hard with hours of experimentation, changing settings and observations.
I succeed in going past the 5" mark which around here was usually the barrier in the bad stuff, many times I could get up to 7-8...maybe even 9" on one or two.
But not all the time.
I was hunting with a friend at one of the oldest homes around here, pre civil war, and we were frustrated because of lack of targets.
It was true that this place had been hunted for years by idiots without permission but we still should have found something period even if it was only junk.
Neither of us remember digging anything past a few inches so we did an experiment.
We dug a small hole about 7-8" deep and dropped in a quarter which was laying flat.
Using his AT Pro he couldn't get a peep, my turn with my F70 and I used every deep setting I know including maxed out all metal.
Nothing, nada...not a tick, tone or number on the screen, that coin was invisible.
It looked like pretty nice decent black dirt without any red clay around but it wasn't, it was still heavily mineralized.
We were both very disillusioned.
I know freshly buried coins will not react like they will in long buried compacted soil but still, we expected some sort of minimal reaction at least.
I stuck with my F70 because I had still done very well but I had the opinion the only thing we could have used around here that might have hit that coin was a PI but there is way too much iron and trash around here for me to even consider using one of those.
My friend went out and bought an AT Max because he heard that one is deeper than the the Pro.
After he got one he said it was but not by leaps and bounds so then he got the Nox and using that one he succeeded in getting fairly deep a few times and picked out some severely masked targets none of his others came close to doing.
I went on one hunt with him using it and saw a couple of things that pushed me to get one.
After using it just a few hours without a huge amount of understanding I am seeing it do some pretty cool things like deal with masking and it seems to live at a deeper level than anything else I have used before around here.
Not massive depth, I have no dreams that anything except a PI can come close to the 10-12 and up to 15" or more I was able to reach in the almost perfect Kansas and Missouri soil but there is so much great treasure still hanging around the 4-6" depth level here although masked and in some rare cases they can be deeper so every inch deeper we can reach counts.
Because of the clay content even really old targets might not ever sink really deep in a lot of our dirt but there are some rare areas where things can sink deeper...it would be great to have confidence that we have a tool in our hand that can actually identify those rare deeper targets with accuracy and consistency.

I still believe the Manta PI unit that supposedly a has a working discrimination system First Texas is developing might be the ultimate tool for combating this devil dirt we are forced to deal with in our state but until someone gets one, brings it here and turns it on and swings I don't really know.

I know what my Tesoros and Fishers could do around here, I have hunted with friends or talked to hunters that have used other Tesoros, the AT Pros, Maxes, DEUS, an E Trac and several Whites models and I have tracked the average depth all of us seem to get using all those different tools in many different situations.
I think this Equinox is beating them all, it seems like that to me in my limited experience, anyway.
I have two friends that I hunt with around here that both have one, the first I mentioned and he was shocked at the depth he found a couple of wheaties he dug in his backyard that he had been over a hundred times or more and never noticed with either if his Garretts.
The other one had been using Whites machines since the 80's, he has been very successful at hunting in parks and other sites but he is an expert at asking for and getting permissions at private homes.
He has shoe boxes full of silver coins he has found in those lawns and in other sites over the years and he told me he doesn't remember any targets at all ever being much deeper than 5" or so.
He said he didn't believe there were many good targets deeper than that because he never got signals on them, I know better and I have the opinion that there are targets deeper but finding a tool that can see them is the challenge.
Now this guy bought a Nox this year for one reason only, he occasionally takes trips down south to the coast and he wanted something that would work better in the saltwater than what he already had.
When he got his naturally he tried it in his lawn and then at a park just trying to get used to it.
He said he bought this thing slightly used with only a few hours on it from a dealer but he was sure he got a bad one, he was getting a huge amount of jumping and signals that were not usual for him and tons of them were showing way deeper in depth than he ever dug before in his career.
He thought it was just falsing, his unit was broke or couldn't handle our hit dirt at all.
It wasn't until he took it out for the third time at a park that he attempted to dig some of those deeper signals.
He was shocked when he dug down and found targets at those deeper depths he had not visited before for decades of hunting.
A few were coins, most were trash but the Nox saw them and signaled over them despite the unusual depth.
The Nox was not broken or falsing but it was giving him indications on targets that were more masked and much deeper than he had ever experienced before using his Whites machines in this dirt.
Like I said he was shocked.
Since then he has put away all of his White units and he doesn't know when or if he will ever break any of them out again.

So Hal2k we didn't catch a break when we decided to do this hobby in a part of the country with some pretty challenging dirt and conditions but a few of us are now attempting to use a tool that might combat this stuff better than others available to us in the past.

Turn down the sense and see what happens...I would suggest turning the reactivity a little higher than 1, though.
Maybe not all the way down to 12 or who knows...12 or lower might be the key around here.
I will be curious on what your different settings are that you try and what results you get since you have similar dirt to mine so please post about that if you would.

 

[digger27]

Your post and all the comments gives me some variations in settings to experiment with. I appreciate this.

Congrats on that Zippo too!!! I had a few when I was a smoker.

Currently, I am going in and out of a small area where homes were bulldozed in the 1950's and now it is a small park. It seems as though they buried everything under the soil. Aluminum, tin, steel, wire, screws, nails, iron, wood, etc. is all there. I know exactly what you are encountering. This is a place where I mode hop and I learn about my Nox.

I am glad reading my stuff makes you think and consider trying them, hope they work and helps you find more treasure.
If you don't know me this is kinda what I do, helping others be successful is one of the things I find most rewarding in this hobby and as a member of these forums.
I started a small review thread on friendly after I got my first Fisher, the great F2, and that thread never stopped growing for years.
Over time it grew almost 14,000 posts from me about what I learned as I learned it and my better finds a ton of posts from others.
Also it has about 277,000 views.
I have been credited with selling a whole bunch of F2's from people that read that thing and went out and bought an F2 after...how many extra units were sold I have no idea but I was told by a dealer that Fisher knows who I am because of that thread although they have never contacted or mentioned it to me.
If you have ever heard the term, "The Church of the Compadre", it was me that coined that phrase in another very long thread that had hundreds of replies and tips about using that great tool.
On Finds in the Fisher forum which is a bit more technical I am REVIER, I learned a ton from others there that used the F70/F75/T2 platform when I got my F70, eventually I posted about a slew of setting combinations I had tried and everything I learned about this fantastic tool from day one.
I posted a lot if that stuff here too and also on friendly.
Things I learned from other hunters, NASA Tom and others and used or tweaked until they worked even better in my situations and other things I discovered myself.
Over the years many told me they tried some of the things I had laid down and they worked for them too which was awesome and makes me very happy.

As I learn this new detector I will do the same, if I come across any settings or observations that might help the next guy I will post them, if I learn something that I think is important from others that works I will give full credit.
It takes a village and he communities on these forums are great ones.