Steve here's a Rutus Alter 71 Video I did yesterday......Here's a Demo Video of the settings on the RA-71 10/21/17

Maybe it will show how it runs in real world

[www.youtube.com]

Demo video

[www.youtube.com]

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2017 10:34PM by Keith Southern.

Ole' Keith Southern! Does it have Modulated Audio and if so Is it adjustable? It is a nice looking Detector for sure.

Like most European models the shaft is to short for tall folks. But I liked it! Nice video!

Hey Keith, which program were you running?
I was up in Wisc in July on the beach at Lake Michigan, using the basic program, and 11" dd coil.
I dug up an aluminum beer can at 17". I rechecked the hole, no more signal, so I stuck my $5 gold coin ,
which is the size of a nickel in the hole, covered it up, and the 71 hit it with a nice clean repeatable signal.
Its one deep machine. !

Keith --

THANKS for the video. It was real good to see it in action. REAL good. I enjoyed seeing how it responded to targets, and what you were saying ABOUT how it was responding.

Seemed rather "falsy," still, in the nails; more than I would hope, but maybe my expectations are too high there? I found myself, while watching you sweep through those nails, wondering which chirps to "chase" and which ones to ignore. Obviously, that comes from experience, especially experience with the machine you have in your hand, but still...that's the trouble I have in the square nails with ALL the machines I use...what's a false, and what is something to stop and interrogate further...

Still, a very intriguing machine. Is there anything about the machine that really catches your attention, in a good way? Or is it just kind of, in your mind, another in a long line of pretty good performers that have come on the market recently?

Steve

Harold yes it modulated by choosing the audio gain ..I keep it about mid ways for good descriptive depth..


George...a Whites lower rod works perfect..get a tallman one if you need more reach..Im 6.1" and the stock is about right for me but any taller and it could be a problem..


Possum I think in the video I was in big silver but had the freq on 16Khz..and customized my tones to like low as they would go for the 0-40 disc and 450Hz for like 41-90 and 990 hz for 91 to 120...nothing disc'd or notched...90 gain..

Yes the Rutus is very deep..that buckle in vid was a good ten inches and sounded loud and clear with perfect ID to boot..that's in 3 bar dirt..You could tell it had alot more in the tank...Just get tired of digging ten inch shotgun hulls LOL..

Might be one of the deeper units I've ran...its deeper than a F75..unmask better too..

Rutus does like to solid mid I.D. ((around 50-60)) medium size iron though with no tell tale signs to alert you unless you pinpoint then you know quick that a piece of non ferrous reading that big would be trash with that type mid ID reading and also the hodograph goes squirrley....but as always that is the price you pay for a deep unit...the audio is very reminiscent of an Xterra to me..Works great on depleted sites for sure..on smaller targets most of the targets that have iron tinge with a solid hit in middle in mixed co-located nails snapshot is usually a false..a solid small hit with no tinge is usually GOOD even co-located intermingled..pull target out then check hole and low iron tones are magically there...in other words if it sounds good on this machine even in a sea of iron without iron tinges of target it's a non ferrous piece...it doesn't rely on blending of tones it relies on averaging of tone..

Steve your welcome..and the big thing that will grab your attention is accurate ID and most of all its just plain out deep..even running mild..and can get deeper if you like,,the Hodograph can help alot on isolated targets or over bearing targets...it has a good bit of tools to help you..yes the spits of high tones form nails can be tamed with some upper ID notching like 118-120 or so..and lower gain...its just a powerful beast and that one of the problems I have with videos...what sounds like please dig me on a video in the real world is more forced and crackly...Its a unique machine and has alot of tweakability ...its to me like a deus on steroids..I like noisy target units myself just not noisy EMI units...luckily the RA-71 is very EMI Resilient..It has great potential if you work inside the power range..

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2017 12:34AM by Keith Southern.

No blending, but averaging? Not sure if I like that or not...but I don't have enough unmasking experience to say...

Wonder what would happen if you had it in Dual mode, with the all-metal in the background and disc./ID channel running too. Would that maybe be an interesting way to hunt the unit in an unmasking scenario?

Steve

in real dense trash I wouldn't want to run mixed mode Steve..overly busy..the mixed mode is great for depth though or off edge targets..like that last small shell casing I dug in vid..instead of having to be dead over it the all metal channel would of let me know if I barely missed it to center up and analyze it..PLUS a mixed mode can alert yo to targets out of range of the disc mode depth..if it sounds tight and round and faint in all melta channel but no beep on disc side you can pull some dirt out of hole till you decide if its iron on not..

It rolls tones more than it blends tones Steve..but don't worry it unmask on a world class level...its just that when there's something intermingled say coin sized in with nails you will know it and its clean and smooth..Lot's of processing going on with the RA-71 to UNMASK.and it's pleasing on the ears when you hear that HIT...the Visual does not average its more like the tone averages first say 6 inches may pull down slightly after that it can trse slightly as it gets deeper and co located...if there's a coin in a hole with nails you may hear wrong tone SLIGHTLY below your tone brake setting but the ID will be above your setting if you have it to accept coins and usually very accurate they seem to work indepenetant on co locate scenarios probably to drive the hodograph ....what's really unique on the RA-71 is you can assign any ID any tone..so you could have 120 separate tones...I promise you the RA-71 is top notch in unmasking and especially on isolated targets the Hodograph can be very telling and UNIQUE..

theres alot going on on the RA-71 and the hot rock setting seems to be target manipulator too ..

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

I actually like the Rutus.

Good bang for the buck.
No nonsense detector.

Menu system logically layed out.
Hotter on low conductors than Deus is.

Dug more nonferrous wire smaller and mediums sized in hard hunted sites than any other detector to date before getting HF coils for Deus.
Folks at Rutus deserve kudos for the Ruger alter71 detector.

The display is very beneficial too.
There is some tell tell signs the little stick man on the hodograph gives for nonferrous lurking.

Only thing I dial ole with Rutus 71 is using external speaker, could be better sounding.
Put some good headphones on and you can really rock and roll with it.

Glad to see someone else posting about it.

I loaned my unit out to a gent and he found 3 gold rings with it in the month he had it.
2 in his own yard!!

Like how the covers fit the unit too.

I think it is a very industrially designed unit ready for work.

Not flashy looking, but ready for detecting.

Keith --

Thanks much on the additional info. Sounds very interesting to me. Interesting that you talked about a sense that the audio and visual clues may be functioning separately.

Wonder if the "hot rock offset" would help with some of the "spits" of high tone in the nails, also?

Sod-buster --

Appreciate the additional info.

You guys are keeping my interest piqued...

I will keep my eyes on the used forums, maybe I'll get lucky and see one listed.

Steve

Now that I think about it Bill Ladd was using one in His video awhile back. He was pulling some good finds with it. I will have to go back and check it out. Not sure what Model it was,But it was mentioned in comments it was a Rutus.

Harold I think Bill has used one

Steve

you can calm it down alot if you like..add some higher masking settings sort of like a Deus silencer adjustment...the RA-71 goes from like zero to 8..the higher you go the quieter the BREAK THROUGH becomes..

Also theres reaction setting and again like Deus reactivity..super fast or super slow and all points in between..you can dial the machine in for a site by tweaking the reaction and masking...But unlike the Deus the RA-71 can become almost un-huntable in iron if set to low and can become one of the smoothest trash hunters you will find at a cost of say overly masking if set to high..

Here's another nIce thing though you can set the freq low and not even adjust from where I'm at in video and also get some excellent Iron ID with minimal fasling.

Very tweakable unit for any site you encounter..and glad to see a Concentric in the mix..


Here's a video of the settings..sort of a demo and away to Tweak it............I REALLY LIKE THIS MACHINE..

[www.youtube.com]

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2017 11:02PM by Keith Southern.

Keith,

With zero Deus experience, and not enough unmasking experience by a long shot, I'm trying to understand what you are saying in this sentence...

"But unlike the Deus the RA-71 can become almost unhittable in iron if set to low and can become pone of the smoothest trash hunters you will find at a cost of say overly masking if set to high."

I assume the word "unhittable" was supposed to be "unhuntable," and as such, what I think you are saying is -- if you set reactivity high and masking low, it will be a noisy/falsy almost unmanageable unit in the iron, but on the other had, if you run the reactivity lower and masking higher, you can get it to run as stable as you want it to run in the iron. BUT -- if you set it to run TOO stable, the tradeoff is that you will lose SOME of the unmasking ability (as it will, for lack of a better word, "filter out" some of the more masked/co-located non-ferrous targets -- along with the iron falses -- if you set it to run too stable).

Is this what you are saying there?

Steve

LOL.Steve...

Yes I type on my phone mostly and auto correct is mean to me at times..Ill change the sentence around..and yes you can make it un huntable in iron if your not careful from noise issues...

Check out that last video I did maybe it will show you something..

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Nice little video there.

Rutus for Vlf, non fbs/fbs2 is pretty darn good in modern trash, especially in milder ground.

One of its best features IMO is you can run any freq you want, and user has ability to set their normalization to real ID based on freq, normalize to 12khz, or 6khz.

So hunting modern trash one can indeed run higher freqs and select normalization setting of 6khz, this will keep all the lower and mid conductor junk at bay (keep upper region more decompressed) in the Vdi food chain.
Nickels doing this come in at 52-54.
A nickel window tone wise works, but be advised when the tab is wrapped around the ring, will fool a person sometimes.

My comment above as far as milder ground goes, Rutus like Deus in hotter soil will start IDing higher than actual on deeper nonferrous.
But I think generally Rutus IDs better than Deus does overall.

With the concentric, if you dig a bottlecap, something likely went dreadfully wrong.
Like op didn't look at hodograph.

Will do, regarding the video. Thanks Keith.

To make sure I understand, I think you would say that there is a "happy medium" in there with a machine's behavior -- not TOO noisy in iron, so as to be unhuntable, but not So quiet/stable so as to "silence" some of the partially masked targets? Is that what you would say? Is that a correct way to think about it? And with the Rutus, you can ADJUST to either of those extremes (unhuntably unstable, or quietly stable, or anywhere in between)? And reactivity, and masking, are two of the settings you can adjust that allow you to find that "happy medium" on the Rutus?

Steve

Sod-buster,

Trying to understand this sentence, given that I've never used a machine with TID "normalization..."

"So hunting modern trash one can indeed run higher freqs and select normalization setting of 6khz, this will keep all the lower and mid conductor junk at bay (keep upper region more decompressed) in the Vdi food chain."

Not sure I understand why running high freq. but normalizing VDI to a lower, 6 kHz setting, would "keep lower and mid conductor junk at bay..." Not sure what you mean there, and not sure what "keep the upper region of VDI numbers more decompressed" means. Why would your higher VDI numbers be "compressed" if you didn't normalize? Because all high-conductors would tend to read up near the top of the VDI scale?

Steve

Steve Yes!!!

And you can tell on the RA-71 the ability to dial in freq is the pure DNA of the unit..you can have it extremely fast on 5-khz and it works well...were as ona Deus on 4 khz it does nto like to be set up fast...

It feels like ((and I don't say this lightly)) a true multi freq selectable unit that you can create it to be what you want..has the feel of accuracy of a X-terra coils swap but no need to buy different coils for different freqs...

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Steve,
This is one of the problems for example using say Deus and HF coils.

Foor example uaing 28.8khz pull tabs ring up in the 80s, nickels too.
Basically most sizable nonferrous rings up let's say at 75 plus.
So you have zincolns ringing in at 90, dimes at 95.

So all the junk, lower conductive and mid conductive all report higher and everything ID wise gets bunched up at the top of the scale.
Now select normalization level of 6khz, most high conductive coins read 90 plus by doing.
Pull tabs read lower than nickels.
A user has a lot of space to set up their tones/tone breaks and listen easier for the higher conductors-nickel window tone wise can be set also.

Deus using LF coils btw, normalizes to 18khz when selected,,when not selected it provides real ID base off of freq.
But the stinking 4khz is also tied to Tx power level of 3, too high for some sites for sure.

Being able to set this normalization on Rutus to 6khz, this makes it easier for a person to keep track of ID of certain targets like coin denominations.
So just change freq at will, hunt away.
Ideally a dime wil, ring up the same no matter which freq you have selected.

Now if we select 12khz normalization, this will not decompress the upper end as much.
A relic Hunter, this wouldn't matter much.

Steve,
This keeping lower and mid conductive targets at bay I'd wise, is exactly what the Etrac/CTX does, and why less junk on average is dug with them.
Different scale though.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2017 11:33PM by Sod-buster.

Very, very interesting, Keith.

Thank you. Very, very intriguing to me, this RA71 is...

Steve

Got it, Sod-buster. Thank you. That does make sense.

One statement you made, is one I was wondering about...you said "IDEALLY a dime will ring up the same no matter which frequency you select." I was curious whether that's actually the case, where the rubber meets the road. If I am running way low, or way high, on the RA71's frequency scale, is -- say -- a dime ID pretty darn close, if normalizing to 6 kHz in both the low and the high freq setting, in your experience? OBVIOUSLY, depth, orientation of target, etc. will matter, but in general, if I dime is say 105 normalized to 6 kHz, is that pretty consistent, whether I am running 4 kHz or 18 kHz on the RA71?

Steve

steveg Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Got it, Sod-buster. Thank you. That does make se
> nse.
>
> One statement you made, is one I was wondering abo
> ut...you said "IDEALLY a dime will ring up the sam
> e no matter which frequency you select." I was cu
> rious whether that's actually the case, where the
> rubber meets the road. If I am running way low, o
> r way high, on the RA71's frequency scale, is -- s
> ay -- a dime ID pretty darn close, if normalizing
> to 6 kHz in both the low and the high freq setting
> , in your experience? OBVIOUSLY, depth, orientati
> on of target, etc. will matter, but in general, if
> I dime is say 105 normalized to 6 kHz, is that pre
> tty consistent, whether I am running 4 kHz or 18 k
> Hz on the RA71?
>
> Steve

I found Rutus to when changing freqs and having 6khz selected to be pretty much the same, maybe be off occassionally a point high or low, definitely useable and very helpful.

Sod-buster.

Thanks. That's pretty darn good, and interesting...

Steve

Good demo Keith. When I hunt in an area where there are steel bottlecaps, sometimes they register between the dime and quarter range. I can usually tell that they are caps by the hodograph pattern. They tend to smear or waver, where as a coin usually is a straight vertical stick.

Keith --

Just watched the new video, REALLY good.

Now I see that while you can use reactivity (reaction as Rutus calls it) and the masking setting to help with the iron falsing, you like to just adjust sensitivity frequency. ANd you keep stressing that there are just a tone of ways you can set it up. Makes a lot of sense...and you are also commenting on what a deep machine it is. That catches my attention. I appreciated you showing the hodograph on the different targets...I can see (as others have talked to me about) how the vertical vs. the horizontal lines matter, and how the dots being "together" versus "all over the place" give you information about the target as well.

Finally, I was glad you showed and talked about that mixed mode. Really interesting. I can certainly see your point about hearing a waver in the threshold to hint that something is down there, and then take off some dirt until the discriminator can hit it, to get an idea what it is that is down there.

Excellent stuff Keith. Thank you for taking the time to do that.

Two questions, for you, Keith, or anyone with the knowledge.

I understand the reactivity or reaction setting...recovery speed faster, better separation but you lose depth; slower speed, separation not as good but deeper.

HOWEVER, I don't quite fully understand the "masking" setting (or "silencer" as I guess it is called on the Deus). What is it trying to do, exactly?

And finally, Keith, you mentioned (and I saw it in the manual) a "SAT" setting. NO IDEA what that setting is, or is supposed to do. Anyone?

Steve



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2017 11:40PM by steveg.

steveg Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Keith --
>
> Just watched the new video, REALLY good.Thank you means alot.!
>
> Now I see that while you can use reactivity (react
> ion as Rutus calls it) and the masking setting to
> help with the iron falsing, you like to just adjus
> t sensitivity. ANd you keep stressing that there
> are just a tone of ways you can set it up. Makes
> a lot of sense...and you are also commenting on wh
> at a deep machine it is. That catches my attentio
> n. I appreciated you showing the hodograph on the
> different targets...I can see (as others have talk
> ed to me about) how the vertical vs. the horizonta
> l lines matter, and how the dots being "together"
> versus "all over the place" give you information a
> bout the target as well.I like to tweak the freq Steve and yes you can drop sens down to about 60 to get to know the unit..its a scale of 1-90..Yes its a powerhouse unit it seems has good depth but like any it can suffer as mineral climbs above 3 bar dirt...The Hodograph is nice on isolated targets on co locates it can get squirrley acting but I must say I find this particular hodograph reliable source of info at times...and you can tell its a well thought out feature..
>
> Finally, I was glad you showed and talked about th
> at mixed mode. Really interesting. I can certain
> ly see your point about hearing a waver in the thr
> eshold to hint that something is down there, and t
> hen take off some dirt until the discriminator can
> hit it, to get an idea what it is that is down the
> re.
>
> Excellent stuff Keith. Thank you for taking the t
> ime to do that.
>
> Two questions, for you, Keith, or anyone with the
> knowledge.
>
> I understand the reactivity or reaction setting...
> recovery speed faster, better separation but you l
> ose depth; slower speed, separation not as good bu
> t deeper.
>
> HOWEVER, I don't quite fully understand the "maski
> ng" setting (or "silencer" as I guess it is called
> on the Deus). What is it trying to do, exactly?The masking is a filter of disc strength more or less..when its high it will cancel out rejected or disced items more cleanly when its at its lowest it can become chattery and poppy and clippy with spits and crackles of disced items or even items in a different tone assignment ..also can be helpful to help to see into mineral a bit better...like a fringe depth target or small target where the soil is noisy and and a machine uses a filter to drown out the ground noise..set it low enough to hear some ground noise and you have a advantage of seeing into the ground a tad bit more...the key to that masking setting though is if your going low don't go so low that it removes audio intelligence...the RA-71 uses reaction and masking terms the Deus uses reactivity and Silencer respectively...Yet the RA-71 seems to allow more more upper limits and lower limits of range...
>
> And finally, Keith, you mentioned (and I saw it in
> the manual) a "SAT" setting. NO IDEA what that se
> tting is, or is supposed to do. Anyone?SAT is Self Adjusting Threshold that's the speed at which the Threshold will reset itself after encountering a target on all metal channel slow it down and it can get really slow to recover the threshold back to normal slight hum..speed it up and it will recover faster and faster the higher you go...in bad ground with rapid changing or even strong mineral slow settings wont work well as the threshold would always be dropping out and take few seconds to return or may never return while you're sweeping but in more benign soils a slower threshold recovery setting will hold and also give more depth.or ni a target rich area area and you want to hunt in mixed mode you can set it fast to recover between targets faster on all metal side....Another one of the things about the RA-71 I really enjoy it's akin to a nautilus in that I can tweak each channel..I can have the allmetal way deeper than the disc channel if i lie or just barley deeper since i have ability to set allmetal gain and disc gain independently in really good ground you can set sat gain high and sat speed slow and really go to the ultra depths on that channel


>
> Steve

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

From everything I've seen and read this machine seems like an answer to many things I want in a multi use machine. Love tweaking the freq to adjust to changes in soil, location and finding that sweet spot on ranging targets. Only thing that scares me is the machine is from Poland and if repairs are needed, a fortune can be possibly encountered. Sure is tempting and yet questionable. But to acquire one for what I have found is about $765.00 USD out of Italy by one seller and a little over $800.00 from the UK is not really a bad overall price. Haven't found a little sniper coil advertised for it though. Will watch, read and see how things go for it. Please keep the info and vids coming. Sure sounds better to me than the new ML EQ. At least for my hunting style and needs.

Michael seems there's a sniper and larger coil on the way..[www.dankowskidetectors.com]

I wouldn't think turnaround time would be too bad if you need a repair..

I can say it's a very rugged built unit...

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Keith --

Forgive me; in my post above where I said "while you can use reactivity and masking to help with iron falsing, now I see that you like to adjust sensitivity, I meant to say FREQUENCY. My mind was thinking frequency, but I typed sensitivity! In the video, it was clear that you were discussing using different FREQUENCIES to change the way the iron was behaving. I just noticed my mistake as I was reading your reply to me.

Sorry about that! My use of the word "Sensitivity" made it seem like I wasn't getting what you were showing in the video. But I was; it's just that the word my brain was thinking is not the one my fingers typed!!

I am going to go back and edit my post to include the correct word, so as to not confuse others who may read it in the future...

ALSO, Keith, thanks for the explanation on the masking setting, and the SAT setting. Now I understand them both much better.

So is it fair to say that "SAT" setting on the all-metal side is sort of analogous to "reactivity" or "reaction" settings on the disc. channel?

Also, that little nuance you mentioned, about how you could, for example, set the disc. up for maximum separation (but not as deep) with high reaction setting, but then on the all-metal side, set it up to go real deep by raising gain on that channel and lowering SAT. Kind of a way to maximize separation AND still hear really deep targets that you could then interrogate further...

VERY interesting.

Thank you Keith. Really, really appreciate it.

Steve



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2017 11:50PM by steveg.

I need to interject a correction for the definition/intent of SAT speed. It is not primarily designed to speed-up or slow-down the audio-length of detected 'targets'; rather......... to compensate for varying/changing mineralization differences. For instance: Beaches vary in mineralization....and on stronger mineralization areas....a faster retune speed can be beneficial in the enhancement of 'stabilizing' audio warble. Yes....... as a (somewhat unwanted) side effect....... SAT speed can also change the audio length of detected target(s).