Question for Minelab owners

How many of you prefer Ferrous or Conductive settings and why?

I have alway been fond of Conductive...

It seems to be the most reactive mode of the 2..especially on low conductor's...

yet if running open screens no patterns.. the conducitve can be detrimental to the hunt...

this is because the conductive scale can read silver an iron as the same tone.....

the ferrous read iron low and the silver high....

now if you have a CTX you can run both at the same time ..which is what I prefer....

Guess we should Know which machine you are using...Explorer....Etrac....CTX...

Keith

All I know is don't switch back and forth....master one and never look back..

Got my initial break in with a Explorer series Guru and he used conductive and I followed in his footsteps...honestly never even tried ferrous as I felt why fix what ain't broke...Should be an interesting thread especially if we get input from both sides....

I like conductive. During my time with the E Trac I used Two Tone Ferrous when I would hit a patch saturated with nails. TTF is a creative program that lets the E Trac user get the most out of those iron patches. But in all honesty it really didn't do a good job in my opinion. I have gone over some of those areas with the CTX, Deus and even the AT Pro. All are better in that environment in my opinion. The combined mode of the CTX is revolutionary. In normal hunting this program is so good that looking at the meter is just not needed. I have been following some of Keith's posts about the CTX. The long or smooth tone with the six inch coil and using a wide open screen with conductive sounds really does work wonders. I have tried it twice now. On the E Trac all I used the ferrous numbers for was a cut off point. If it was a high number it needed to be consistant from multiple directions.

It's also important what number of tones.
2 tone ferrous can be useful if the modern trash is light or if you want another set of info from your e-trac as to determine the quality of the target. I occasionally switch over on iffy signals but it's usually just as easy to dig it and use the in hand identification method as it is to stand there doing the minelab wiggle.
Relic hunting can benefit from TTF but I prefer multi conductive at the majority of the sites I hit.

Hey goodmore glad you are liking the 50 Conductive open screen smooth...I hate to harp on it alot but it really does bring the low conductros out of iron like no other I have yet seen....just listen for that low blub in all the nail high tone ringing and low conductor's do surface on hunted out sites..

I dug a Spencer hull last week in a bed of nail's with dig holes on top of dig holes....My budy was with me and I said listen to hat blat right there .. it was barely flubbing through the high ring and only a partial low blub tone but I know Iorn wont go that low tone so I opened up the ground and low and behold at only 3 inches was the .58 caliber complete spencer.. we had swung it a 100 time or more I know...Could of easily been a High dollar Confederate Button or a Gold coin!

A week earlier on a construction site everyone is hitting hard right now that's saturated in iron I went in and dug half of a ornate sash buckle in between a mess of dig holes...one hole missed it by just 1 inch...so yes the 50 tone conducitve smooth wide open screen is shall I say EYE OPENING..

Glad your seeing result's...

I Know I am not crazy LOL!!

Keith

I've had very good success coin hunting in modern trash with the Etrac running it in TTF with a discrimination screen that is entirely black except for a narrow open band defined by 10-11' 10-13, 27-13, 27-11 and a big rectangle open from 2-30, 2-48, 27-48, 27-30. It eliminates aluminum and nails and with DEEP=OFF / FAST=OFF, the audio is clean and very revealing. Nail falsing at high sensitivity is significantly minimized too as the audio breaks up due to the discrimination setup.

Relic hunting is enhanced by widening the left discrimination to 10-2, 10-13, 27-13, 27-2.

There are many used CTXs hitting EBay now. It may be a good time to pick one up...

Hey Rebel...

If you can fit it into the arsenal.And enjoy the FBS platform...The CTX to me is the only logical move...

It can run however you want it to..

I see it as a TRUE multi machine replacer at this point...

Keith

With etrac which I no longer have I liked conductive better with a disc cutoff at 27 ferrous. Found some good deep finds in the nail pits. One has to work real slow though. With my CTX I like combine better for the higher conductors and conductive better for the low conductors.

With the E-Trac, tried to make conductive useful for me, but it was too much High Tone without differentiation and adding DISC to isolate a non-ferrous zone only made it less sensitive. So, moved on to ferrous. Used TTF but it was not able to give an audio difference between high and low conductors, all just High Tone. Switched to 4TF and removed most all DISC. Worked best of all the E-Trac modes for hearing the tonal variations and picking out that minor repeatable Med-High Tone amongst the iron falsing. Still, was looking for something more ... the E-Trac tricks have been exhausted. Great machine ... but Keith convinced me to try the CTX.

So, now I'm playing with the CTX in combined mode and hope to find the best setting to unmask non-ferrous amongst a sea of iron. I still feel far more capable with the E-Trac, at this point the CTX feels and acts foreign - it's a bit ostentatious. The trigger is odd and pressing it applies torque to the shaft making it ungainly to use. The screen is color but washed out in sunlight. Would like to adjust the contrast - but doesn't appear to be adjustable. You could easily swing the E-trac without using the arm cuff, but the CTX has too much inertia, a lot of unbalanced mass constantly reversing direction. So the cuff is mandatory to stabilize the upper-shaft and maintain control. Changing coils on the E-Trac was a bear - so had the lower and upper stem mounted and ready to go. If the E-Trac was a koala bear in terms of difficulty the CTX looks like a grizzly sized chore to replace the coil and route the cabling. The CTX is definitely heavier - the E-Trac feels light by comparison, which is ironic. Don't know if I can swing the CTX for 8-9 hrs like I usually did with the E-Trac - perhaps I'll adjust to it.

We'll see where it leads after a couple months pass. I'm hoping it will become my new best friend. Right now I'm eying it with some suspicion.

Johnnyanglo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> With the E-Trac, tried to make conductive useful
> for me, but it was too much High Tone without
> differentiation and adding DISC to isolate a
> non-ferrous zone only made it less sensitive. So,
> moved on to ferrous. Used TTF but it was not able
> to give an audio difference between high and low
> conductors, all just High Tone. Switched to 4TF
> and removed most all DISC. Worked best of all the
> E-Trac modes for hearing the tonal variations and
> picking out that minor repeatable Med-High Tone
> amongst the iron falsing. Still, was looking for
> something more ... the E-Trac tricks have been
> exhausted. Great machine ... but Keith convinced
> me to try the CTX.
>
> So, now I'm playing with the CTX in combined mode
> and hope to find the best setting to unmask
> non-ferrous amongst a sea of iron. I still feel
> far more capable with the E-Trac, at this point
> the CTX feels and acts foreign - it's a bit
> ostentatious. The trigger is odd and pressing it
> applies torque to the shaft making it ungainly to
> use. The screen is color but washed out in
> sunlight. Would like to adjust the contrast - but
> doesn't appear to be adjustable. You could easily
> swing the E-trac without using the arm cuff, but
> the CTX has too much inertia, a lot of unbalanced
> mass constantly reversing direction. So the cuff
> is mandatory to stabilize the upper-shaft and
> maintain control. Changing coils on the E-Trac was
> a bear - so had the lower and upper stem mounted
> and ready to go. If the E-Trac was a koala bear in
> terms of difficulty the CTX looks like a grizzly
> sized chore to replace the coil and route the
> cabling. The CTX is definitely heavier - the
> E-Trac feels light by comparison, which is ironic.
> Don't know if I can swing the CTX for 8-9 hrs like
> I usually did with the E-Trac - perhaps I'll
> adjust to it.
>
> We'll see where it leads after a couple months
> pass. I'm hoping it will become my new best
> friend. Right now I'm eying it with some
> suspicion.


Wow, you Seriously find the ETRAC to be 'Easier to Swing' and less Exhausting and 'LIGHTER'? I think you're one of the first that I've ever heard say that. Don't think I would be swingin' EITHER of them for more than 4 or 5 hours at a time (probably blow out my elbow or shoulder.)
Why are you holding the pin-point trigger? Is that your preference or have you not updated the firmware as to enable the new feature?
I found the difference between routing the cable through the stems like NIGHT and DAY... Putting the coil on the CTX was a 'breeze' IMO and watching my friends struggle with the ETRAC and SEF Coils was kinda' funny.
Honestly, the only thing that I agree with you about is the screen! Just Awful and has waaaay too much glare. It can be fixed easily IF you have a 'flat screen', but many (like mine) are domed and thus, need a modified version or 2-piece Anti-Glare covering which tends to help quite a bit. There's only 1 or two that 'really' work well as far as I can tell and neither seem to work on the 'domed screens' which REALLY sucks... A screen protector and 6 or 7 brightness seems to work best in direct sunlight (at least for me..)
Cheers,

I found advantages for both..... and i used them both. Park hunting i prefer cond just because its more consistant.... switch over to the digital screen in Ferr and you will see what i mean. Also near targets tend to keep their tone better in cond than Ferr. That means deeper target tones also very more. In the field thou i like Ferr buttons and those targets falling at the bottom of the smart screen had a better tone to me. You tend also to hit more brass, copper, and iron out there. Hot Rocks..... well they can be a pain in both, but they have a very distinctive smartscreen position. You arent getting away from big rusted iron false on either.... but it tends to move to the lower right cornor in Ferr.

Dew

I believe you are correct Keith, but I need to first sell a 1955 double die penny this summer and then look for a clean used CTX when the snow begins to fall in the Northeast. I must say, however, that I'm getting fond of the probe attached to the shaft of my Etrac.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2013 12:32PM by go-rebels.

"the conducitve can be detrimental to the hunt...

this is because the conductive scale can read silver an iron as the same tone.....

the ferrous read iron low and the silver high....

now if you have a CTX you can run both at the same time ..which is what I prefer.... "


Keith, could you please explain how you set that up?

Unfortunately, I’ve never tried ferrous tones. Started out with the E-trac using multi-tone conductive while hunting parks to get used to all of the different tones and target responses.

After learning to find gold at beaches, ferrous tones would never be. Besides the obvious coin and silver ring targets, most gold jewelry comes in with a conductivity under 30, and small gold jewelry mostly comes in with a conductivity from 01 up to around 04.

The mass majority of iron targets come in with a conductivity above 40.
The few very low conductive iron targets that I find beach hunting include stainless steel, small batteries, corroded hair pins, small fishing hooks, and extremely salt water corroded iron (marble sized to golf ball sized rust balls). Most low conductive iron “double hits” in one or both directions with a strong signal, making it easy to distinguish. Only stainless steel objects and small batteries are consistently indistinguishable.

With conductive tones, you can discriminate targets by ear and locate desired targets; very low conductive can be small gold jewelry, low conductive can be gold rings or nickels (or the infamous pulltab), mid conductive can be gold rings (or again the infamous pulltab), and high conductive can be silver rings or quarters. With enough practice, beach silver rings and quarters are usually easy to distinguish from iron, at least where I hunt.

Detecting since Feb, 2010
E-trac with 18"x15" SEF, 13" Ultimate coil, Pro coil, Minelab 8" coil, 4.5"x7" SEF, Sunray target probe
CTX3030 with 17"x13" DD coil, 11" DD coil

Hey Weldwood..

in Combined I like it more than ferrous...I have the ability ot use the excellent Ferrous iron rejection at the bottom of the screen.. and then the reactive Conductive mode also...

Set the 4 Conductive bin's stock and leave the tone's alone also in each bin...
I set the Ferrous bin and the bottom on 31Fe line....then the 32-35 Fe tone is set to 75Hz.. the lowest tone....

I set the other setting's like trash and deep or fast etc to site conditon's.....

I really only use two Modes on the CTX the Combined is the workhorse..it's gets the most use for day in day out multi-site use...The combined takes care of the earlier problems of the Etrac or explorer of having to hunt twice if you like open screen hunting.....

Then if I want to try and massage some low conductors out of nail's...I Go strictly 50 tone Conductive...and use the lowest tone as the dig me signal...ignore the high tone's...but do this on dead site's that are not producing...Also have to use the smooth audio option and the high trash with fast on.. and listen for the low blat's to come in ...and having the 6 inch coil on helps too..

Keith

Thanks Keith,

..........and thanks for your many enlightning posts and videos.

Bought a E-trac about 3 weeks ago started out in Minelab coin pattern ,4- tone conductive for first week.Then downloaded some patterns tried some different settings along with TTF mainly in a open quickmask screen.Swung down a section of sidewalk in conductive 4 tone then turned around in TTF and found a Wheatie midway nothing else.Last few hunts trying the Response=pitch hold(conductive) its out of Andy's Book page 51.First time i used it turned my head sideways-puzzled look took a while getting used to but produced some nice targets and some small 22 casings in some mineralized ground (5 channel) on the Ground Cancel usually runs at 9?

I never liked 2 tone ferrous and here's why. According to etrac's manual a high tone will only be reported with a ferrous number 17 and lower. That's no good for me. I dug several good targets using my etrac with ferrous numbers of 25 and 2 real nice silver finds in a nail pit reporting in at 27 ferrous. Would the targets in question have reported a high tone in 2TF. Don't think so. I have read where folks in the midwest have had good luck with 2TF. I think their soil is mild so the ferrous number on deep targets stays below 17 for the most part. Cheers.

I'd agree with tnsharpshooter - the TTF wasn't quite able to handle those coins that dropped above 17Fe. They'd get lost in the Low Tones on the E-Trac. It was fine for most other purposes - but hunting small, low conductors or copper/brass amongst iron/minerals wasn't its strong suit.

TTC & 4TC had similar problems, except it was now all High Tone - nails and high conductors were identical in audio character. I never found conductive modes useful (just didn't suit my style of hunting).

Instead, I liked a mostly open screen in 4TF - at least for the first few hours of the hunt. I'd search with the pattern below in 4TF. The audio was separated enough that Low Tones (above 30Fe) naturally produced by this pattern were easily ignored - which were mostly nails and iron. With this pattern, the higher the tone the more likely it was valuable so the audio was the key discriminator. Though any repeatable audio was worth investigating. The horizontal DISC band at 29-30Fe was just to keep nails from responding as a Med-Low Tone. This helped make Med-Low more useful. Thus, all tones become important - any audio signal that repeated was of possible interest - and looking at the screen wasn't that important anymore. Cursor position didn't matter too much because I'm going to have to dig it anyway (probably 80-90% was dug to check its identity). It might be a pull-tab or bottle cap or foil - but without digging it who could know. It might also be a thin gold ring or some other jewelry - so you dig or take the risk of losing valuable low conductors.

I say the pattern below was good for about two hours because after that I'm audio tired and also tired of digging. At this point it was time to change to another program. I can only endure so much noise and falsing.



Below is the other program that I'd use when I felt I'd had enough audio discernment time (i.e., punishment) and wanted a break. Here I'm NOT looking for great depth or to squeak out that copper target amongst nails. This is the simpleton program. If it is a Low Tone in TTF (18-35Fe) it is a small, low conductor - which might be worth investigating. Or if it is a repeatable High Tone (01-17Fe) it is probably something worth digging (or the usual trash suspects - but now I'm being more discerning and digging only 20-30% of them). The iron response (including wrap-around) is almost completely gone - it is just a conductive target show. At this point, to spare digging, I'm making assumptions that what appears to be conductive trash by its audio/TID signature, is indeed trash - just to take a break from digging foil and pull-tabs. I also tire of shallow pennies and am willing to leave them in the ground at this point (pennies and pull-tabs - worthless pests). After a few hours of this pattern I'm usually ready to go back to the pattern above and again be more selective and methodical. After 8-9 hours of hunting - neither pattern is going to suffice and I'm done for the day (with a stiff right forearm, two sore legs from squatting hundreds of times, sore palm from digging, and cramping toes from kneeling). Naturally, I also keep a second completely open pattern (QuickMask) just in case I need to see where the null is actually hitting. The first pattern was great for unmasking that iffy signal while the second pattern made for a relaxing easy hunt.

For now I'm concentrating on my CTX - the E-Trac was a great machine though.

Thanks for the pattern Johnnyanglo, edited that in(flubbed the 3-35 square, left open,oop's) picks up the silver halfs nice as well as the peace dollar, one of the few patterns that you might dig a 1943 steel wheat-back! HH& P.S. anyone ever dug one?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2013 07:32PM by rapidroy7.

Johnnyanglo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd agree with tnsharpshooter - the TTF wasn't
> quite able to handle those coins that dropped
> above 17Fe. They'd get lost in the Low Tones on
> the E-Trac. It was fine for most other purposes -
> but hunting small, low conductors or copper/brass
> amongst iron/minerals wasn't its strong suit.
>
> TTC & 4TC had similar problems, except it was now
> all High Tone - nails and high conductors were
> identical in audio character. I never found
> conductive modes useful (just didn't suit my style
> of hunting).
>
> Instead, I liked a mostly open screen in 4TF - at
> least for the first few hours of the hunt. I'd
> search with the pattern below in 4TF. The audio
> was separated enough that Low Tones (above 30Fe)
> naturally produced by this pattern were easily
> ignored - which were mostly nails and iron. With
> this pattern, the higher the tone the more likely
> it was valuable so the audio was the key
> discriminator. Though any repeatable audio was
> worth investigating. The horizontal DISC band at
> 29-30Fe was just to keep nails from responding as
> a Med-Low Tone. This helped make Med-Low more
> useful. Thus, all tones become important - any
> audio signal that repeated was of possible
> interest - and looking at the screen wasn't that
> important anymore. Cursor position didn't matter
> too much because I'm going to have to dig it
> anyway (probably 80-90% was dug to check its
> identity). It might be a pull-tab or bottle cap or
> foil - but without digging it who could know. It
> might also be a thin gold ring or some other
> jewelry - so you dig or take the risk of losing
> valuable low conductors.
>
> I say the pattern below was good for about two
> hours because after that I'm audio tired and also
> tired of digging. At this point it was time to
> change to another program. I can only endure so
> much noise and falsing.
>
> [i1155.photobucket.com]
> lo/E-TRAC-USETHETONESPATTERN.jpg
>
> Below is the other program that I'd use when I
> felt I'd had enough audio discernment time (i.e.,
> punishment) and wanted a break. Here I'm NOT
> looking for great depth or to squeak out that
> copper target amongst nails. This is the simpleton
> program. If it is a Low Tone in TTF (18-35Fe) it
> is a small, low conductor - which might be worth
> investigating. Or if it is a repeatable High Tone
> (01-17Fe) it is probably something worth digging
> (or the usual trash suspects - but now I'm being
> more discerning and digging only 20-30% of them).
> The iron response (including wrap-around) is
> almost completely gone - it is just a conductive
> target show. At this point, to spare digging, I'm
> making assumptions that what appears to be
> conductive trash by its audio/TID signature, is
> indeed trash - just to take a break from digging
> foil and pull-tabs. I also tire of shallow pennies
> and am willing to leave them in the ground at this
> point (pennies and pull-tabs - worthless pests).
> After a few hours of this pattern I'm usually
> ready to go back to the pattern above and again be
> more selective and methodical. After 8-9 hours of
> hunting - neither pattern is going to suffice and
> I'm done for the day (with a stiff right forearm,
> two sore legs from squatting hundreds of times,
> sore palm from digging, and cramping toes from
> kneeling). Naturally, I also keep a second
> completely open pattern (QuickMask) just in case I
> need to see where the null is actually hitting.
> The first pattern was great for unmasking that
> iffy signal while the second pattern made for a
> relaxing easy hunt.
>
> For now I'm concentrating on my CTX - the E-Trac
> was a great machine though.
>
> [i1155.photobucket.com]
> lo/JUSTTHEGOODSTUFFPATTERN.jpg

Hey Johnnyanglo

would you please post a link to share/download the above 2 patterns pls?

Thanks in advance

MRH

I experimented with TTF but went back to conductive as I primarily hunt silver coins and with conductive sounds its easy for me to just listen for "the" tone and then investigate. Yeah I fight the high iron tones sometimes but for the most part conductive gets me to the coins I'm after.

For me and the ground I hunt 4 tone ferrous is making me a believer in the finds. Like John said you can only take it so long if its trashy, just go to another pattern! Between the CZ's and E-Trac not sure what one likes nails better? Impressed with E -trac and it's ability to pick up the small low conductors, CZ's are the only one to get the big silvers and a v nickel, & flying eagle cent so far have not heard the high CZ tone of a gold coin! Have not switched back yet, time will tell? HH