Someone beating me to it.

Monty said:
Ivan, the ACE 250 doesn't have dial in discrimination like some detectors do. Rather it has notched discrimination, the nickel and pull tabs being a different notch. You can notch out pull tabs and still have the nickel icon sensitive. When I am hunting with any discrimination I usually notch out iron, leave nickel and the first pull tab to the right sensitive and notch out the zinc pennies. The other pennies will often show up as a dime so I will notch out everything between the nickel and the first pulltab notch and the last penny notch just before you get to a dime. Then leave the dime, quarter and half dollar sensitive. It's kinda hard to describe unless you have an ACE 250 LCD to look at while I am describing it. Using this setting I have found gold and silver and a ton of nickels. The ACE 250 is really a more sophisticated machine than most people think and will perform nearly as well as the high dollar machines That's why I don't advise the ACE necessarily for a newby machine. True, it don't like salt water or black sand because it doesn't have an adjustable ground balance. If it did I think it would perform right along side several more expensive machines. Then again I suppose if it had everything it wouldn't cost just a hair over $200.00! Monty

That's pretty much the setting I arrived at while bench testing several jewelry items. I also don't seem to have the same problems in wet sand as others often describe with my ace. Yes I more false tones but good targets come on as strong and clear as when in the dry stuff.

From all the info here I am beginning to think I am just missing jewelry items as opposed to someone else beating me to it. We shall see what happens with this mornings hunt.
 

As a long time water hunter, just trying to help. There is little trash on a beach that wouldn't read the same as a gold ring I.E. pull tabs. Dig everything, use no disc. and go SLOW, keeping the coil flat to the sand. Dig everything and the rings will come. Good luck.
 

Well a few hunts later and some experimention with different discrimination settings and its pretty much the same old same old. Did dig up one childs ring. I guess a rings a ring.

Unfourtnatly I am finding with further bench testing that the ace 250 can read pretty much anywhere when it comes to precisious metals and can jump around the entire scale. As was said this pretty much means digging everything.

I guess I cant complain at two to five dollars per hunt in loose chang the machine will make reasonably short work of paying for itself but if I were asked as to the abilitys of this detector I would put it in a coin shooter only catagorie and an excellent coin shooter at that.

I suspect down the road I will upgrade to a different machine and use the ace as a loaner to a friend that has expresed some interest in the hobby. Knowing my luck at that point it will start finding every peice of jewelry on the beach and it will take me five years of digging up loose change to pay for my upgrade ;)
 

Murph said:
Well a few hunts later and some experimention with different discrimination settings and its pretty much the same old same old. Did dig up one childs ring. I guess a rings a ring.

Unfourtnatly I am finding with further bench testing that the ace 250 can read pretty much anywhere when it comes to precisious metals and can jump around the entire scale. As was said this pretty much means digging everything.

I guess I cant complain at two to five dollars per hunt in loose chang the machine will make reasonably short work of paying for itself but if I were asked as to the abilitys of this detector I would put it in a coin shooter only catagorie and an excellent coin shooter at that.

I suspect down the road I will upgrade to a different machine and use the ace as a loaner to a friend that has expresed some interest in the hobby. Knowing my luck at that point it will start finding every peice of jewelry on the beach and it will take me five years of digging up loose change to pay for my upgrade ;)

Good idea to upgrade to a beach specific unit. The minelab excalibur is about the best there is when it comes to depth and discrimination of iron.

Are you hunting the dry or wet sand? Most of the jewelry will be found in the wet sand at low tide near the water line. If you are just hunting the dry sand then you will probably just find lots of clad.
 

I have found a couple of gold rings and they were in the nickel/pull tab range. I found 1 heavy 14K gold chain bracelet and it registered in the upper foil range (6). This morning I was bench testing useing gold rings and chains and found it to be pretty surprising. A regular sized gold ring most of the time registered in the nickel/pull tab range (14 to 18), depending on the ring, a white gold ring showed on the upper foil range (6 to 7), but when I put a "heavly" woven 14K chain across the coil, it registered in the negative numbers (-2). Since I discriminate any negative numbers I would have missed that one completely. Granted, bench testing gives different readings then being in the ground, it showed me the wide varience that gold can give. The cross I found a few days ago read a (16) on my Whites. It seems like chains read the lowest of all which would explain why fewer are found. They seem to be in the foil range. This is just my 2 cents worth meaning I have to lower my discrimnation level, which also means more bending over, digging more foil, and a really sore back.
 

thin chains ---Their "thin" profile tends to fool the detectors often causing odd readings--Ivan
 

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