phantom signals

V

Viltaire

Jr. Member
Feb 26, 2005
38
1
I have a White's prizm II detector and sometimes I get alot of phantom signals. It will say something, usually a penny or better, is in the ground and I'll dig and dig and dig yet I find nothing. Sometimes it will still read as something there and other times will completely dissappear. I live in Oklahoma and usually keep the sensitivity at factory setting. Has anyone else ran into this? is there a way to correct it or am I doing something wrong? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank You,
Viltaire
 

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I had a prizm 11 and had the same problem. Seems that whenever that happened there was a beer can about 6"-1' away. As a novist in detecting, a friend told me " run your detector over this signal, I'm sure it is a button" I did and got no responce. Then he tried my detector and also got no responce. The next morning he called me and told me to come to his store. He traded me a Classic ID for my machine. I have had no phantom signal since then and have found my first two buttons. One civil war, and one revolutionary period. Hope this helps.
 

I live in OK also and although I am a novice myself I am beginning to be able to distinguish what is and what isn't a legitamite signal. I have tried a couple different detectors and they both give out signals that aren't necessarily a "hit". The best thing I have done to help me distinguish the difference is to plant some coins and objects at various depths in my back yard where I go every once and a while and just practice, paying particular attention to what tone or "beep" each one of them puts out. That keeps my memory fresh when I go afield. I had the same problem you are having at first and it was because I did not know what my machine was telling me. Now that I have been at it for a while we are beginning to speak the same language!
 

Thanks for the input. I may try burying a few coins. although I don't have seperate tones I should be able to use it to distinguish when a tone is good. I just started detecting last weekend and have been enjoying it. I've found lots of clad and pull tabs so far, but I'm still hoping to hit silver one day. I'll keep swinging away.

Viltaire
 

I get those on occasion! A few times I would pass handfulls of dirt over my coil and find nothing. Run the coil over the hole and the target is now gone? Come to find out the coin fell out of my hand on the way to the coil and was now sitting on the grass, nearly impossible to see! Other times I'll get a large piece of galvanized steel very deep that comes up as a "nickel" digging the hole at the depth that a nickel would be nothing!(but in that case the target doesn't vanish!) minerals in the soil can give phantom readings too as can wet soil or sand! salt water wetted sand is a classic offender! 8)
 

I had that same problem last week with my new Garrett ACE250 on wet beach sand below the tide line. It was still fairly easy to tell the difference between a good solid hit and a scattered false hit because A) The belltone for a good hit was solid and consistant, and was scattered high and low tones over the bad hits, and B) For a good hit, the target ID was right on, and on bad hits, it would jump around, trying to tell me the target was iron, nickels and dollars all at the same time. One other good way to tell was the pinpointer feature. For a good target, it was right on, whereas over the bad targets, it would cut out altogether, like the pinpointer was telling me there was NO target, or it would be very flukey at best. I learned quickly to ignore these false targets and keep going. I know it's not the same machine, but I hope maybe this helps.
 

Here again the halo effect can show it's effect. Sometimes I find that a small piece of foil is the offending party and as it's dug, the signal disappears and I'll find it in the dirt outside the hole yet will not give off a signal and the signal is not in the hole either.
 

Both detectors I have used has three or four distinct tones for various objects except in the all metal mode which has only one tone that varies in volume. I am not familiar with your detector but are you saying it only has one tone that just indicates some type of metal? I'm confused ??? On my machine for intance, when coin searching a quarter will emit a tone of a completely different pitch than say......a dime, or a penny,nickel, etc. When the coil is centered over the object and passed back and forth over it, the tone will be two quick beeps of the same pitch. Anytime I hear the two repeating tones I know for sure there is something there. If the tone will only make one beep I have found that the object is too deep for my detector to identify or there is something above the object masking it. That's basically how my BH Land Ranger works.
 

Jim, mine just has one tone and just to let you know something I discovered is sometimes when I get a signal in just one direction, I have found that it can be a coin that isn't perfectly flat in the ground and also have found that it throws the pinpoint off a coulpe inches from where it really lies. Hope that helps. HH
 

I agree with stoney, a coin on edge is a more difficult target. The phantom signals I get usually turn out to be nickles on edge. Be patient, if you can find nickles, you can find anything. Whites xlt(2), and fisher 1280x are my 3 detectors. Flattened soda cans are my biggest headache. If it says the signal is down one inch, I probe first. Usually I feel the can at about 4-6 Inches and move on. If I have the time I remove it.
 

My detector only has one tone. Since my ID jumps quite a bit and by the time I give up I'm at a 10" hole, it seems to me the very deep cans may be the target. I'm going to do some field testing with some buried coins my next day off so I can be a better judge of how my detector reads things. On the positive side I have found 2 nickels and judging from the replies thats a good thing. I'm hoping to upgrade detectors about this time next year, but on the whole I do like the Prizm II. The phantoms signals has been the only frustration for me. Thanks for all the input. Its extremely helpful to this newbie :)

Viltaire
 

look at the soil for color differences.i've gotton a decent signal and then when i dug it up it gets broken or goes away. i suspect it was an old nail because of the copper color of the soil.
 

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