Terry, a very good point. You are the very first person telling me that there is a difference in the signal between gold and hot rock. I know the difference for my VLF but never heard or read about this fact when it comes to PI detectors / SDC2300. First thing when I get home today is to try this out with a hot rock and my 1/2 gram training nugget.
The more you use it the more you'll hear.
Iron targets scream. and you will hear a slight "fuzz" in the target tone.
Non- ferrous targets are sharp and crisp and also scream as they increase in size.
small targets will be faint but audible and once close to the coil..LOUD and crisp.
Good targets are easily heard.
.22 shells are amazingly detectable...I have found a couple at like 8 inches. Just loud as heck right from the first coil pass.
Try this.. put an aluminum can on the ground. The sdc will pick it up like 5 ft away its awesome.
Noisy ground is a pain if it is just ground noise you can deal with it. Try turning the sdc down. I typically hunt on 4 But, I have turned down to three a few times just to see. More stable threshold and it didn't seem to lose depth. Since the higher setting was workable I just go with it.
Also after you turn on do a channel search. Holding the coil off the ground but oriented as it will be when your hunting.
If I get any weird beeps or falses. I channel search again.
If I top a ridge and head another direction I channel search again. I also ground balance often.
if you are in an are with emi you will know when you lay your machine sideways and get random tones. It's kind of like an antenna that has been turned (tuned)
to pick up a signal from a different direction.
As far as trash. you just have to wade in VLFs are nice if you want to discriminate out obvious trash. But, you are gonna leave good targets. If the ground has a lot of iron non iron targets can give false ID. especially small ones.
A rake and a strong magnet are key if you really want to clean a trashy spot. Or just slow detecting. If its mainly can slaw and wire it hangs out near the surface and can be raked pretty quickly. Allowing you to get your coil target to target, vs. it yelling at you just for getting it near the ground.
When I had a GB pro. if I turned it to the disc. mode. I wouldn't turn up the disc. I just used it to hunt by tone and vdi value. I like the GMT grunt feature. But, when I had one and a GM4B I was able to make them both mask and lose targets by using auto tune. It would beep then grunt like it was iron but end up being a small non ferrous target.
GM4 didn't have auto tune and it had the old meter which I liked. They both were really accurate most of the time. But, they still gave wrong ID's occasionally so not perfect.
With my Gold Bug 2 I'll switch on iron disc to see if the target notches out.. but, still end up digging it. I've gotten gold more than a few times out of a hole that had trash in it.
Jumpy target ID and changing tones tend to be multiple targets of mixed type or a bi metal object.
? The flakes are flat and can be up to 10mm in length - a glacier deposit.
