AT PRO what readings have better chance for gold.

Hi i have a ploblem.


lots of pull taps range 54 - 55 -56

foil all range in 40 to 49


so i stated skiping 40s and 50s and started collecting many coins and other stuff.


but what about the gold, small gold white gold??? what numbers do you think i should always digg ?? maybe 1 of 50 diggs will come out as a winner (gold ).

[youtu.be]

Tests alot of differant rings and shows the VDI numbers.

Never skip the 40-65 ID range on the AT-Pro.

What Tom said. Round up.every piece of gold you and your family have ,and play with it. If you have a big enough selection,try to figure where the majority ids at,and concentrate in that zone. Good luck!

Just a fact from many tests done over the years....about 35 to 40 percent lost are thin womans gold rings some with nice stones...which fall in the foil region...

With the price of gold square pulltab up to Zinc penny will have the larger gold rings so thats what you should be looking for now as one hunker large mans college ring may bring
5 times what a thin gold womans ring would bring and getting to be gold is worth more than a nice stone.

I would heed Tom's advice as odds are in your favor considering large gold rings versus thin ones...bucks wise.....

PS: as far as white gold expect it to come in low foil or perhaps high iron if real thin....

Yes, never skip the 40-65 range on the AT Pro as Tom says:

HOWEVER, if you want to give yourself a little bit of a break, you can skip 40-44. You will avoid some micro gold and TONS of very small foil.

I found some very thin and small women's rings with the Pro and they came in at 45 at the lowest.

This is based on my experience. I don't hunt beaches so keep that in mind.

Pinpoint twice, dig once



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/2012 05:59PM by pulltabMiner.

The thin ladies ring I got rang in at 43-45 and it was 10k.

It's out there fellows! Go get it!
"Ged Peacehavens"

thanks every one for youre help.


so never skip 40 -65

but if i want myself a little bit of a break ican skip 40-44 i could miss some micro gold and but TONS of very small foil.

OK, I am going to eat some crow now...

This morning I got a nice, chunky low foil signal on the XP Deus. It wasn't very deep so I thought 'why not?' and I dug it. The VDI on the Deus was 40 and I was using the standard Deus Fast program.

What I got was a 14K gold chain, very thin, with a nice 14K pendant on it. The Deus bit on the pendant. The chain was only about 1.5 inches deep.

The chain by itself reads like very small foil (VDI 35).

All of this is equivalent to the low 40's on the AT Pro.

So there, now you know that it is always better to listen to what Tom says and ignore all my dribble.

Pinpoint twice, dig once



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 02:18PM by pulltabMiner.

Dribble or not depends on the situation...I have hit areas just loaded with foil and would never get off my knees if I dug all of it...but again the foil area of any unit consists of about 1/3 of gold rings lost...some with nice stones...and your call to dig or not...Lots of good advice on this forum but again depends on your circumstances and your neck of the woods..and again your call to dig or not....

Over 97% of the gold jewelry in this world ID's as 'foil'.
You have a 80% chance of the stones being real diamonds......... if the item is truly 14Kt. And if the stones are quite small....... there's even a better chance the stones are real.

While my own testing of over 100 random unbiased rings shows numbers a bit different than Tom's, I still found that as a whole in terms of the conductivity "zones" (foil, nickle, pulltab, and coin), there were far more rings (almost fully half) to be found in the foil range from just above iron to right at the bottom of the nickle zone. Foil is where it's at for ring hunting. Of course you have to change your strategy if a site is loaded with small bits of foil. If the site doesn't have a ton of tabs then dig the nickle and tab zones. If it's loaded with tabs but not much foil then dig the nickle and foil range. You've got to adjust to what the site dictates.

Look up a thread on here (do a search for "splitting hairs on rings") for a thread where were we all went over this land hunting for rings stuff. No sense in repeating it.

Although I don't believe some of the aforementioned stats lets put it this way(foil will get you more gold rings) than any other facet.

As far as precious stones they used to put fakers in 10 kt gold rings and now with the price of gold they are now putting them in 14kt so don't be surprized if that large diamond is a faker and thats why they have ways to test and experts to tell you one way or the other...

My BIGGEST mistake in detecting was to give up on digging pull tabs one day .....I must have dug 200 pull tabs and all at the same VID ..... I was exhausted from digging and on the way to the car as I was getting off the beach , I hit another PULL TAB TONE !!.....I sad " screw this ....I'm tired and I'm going to the car " ........My partner said " What was it " .....I told him it was another pull tab .....He said " DIG IT " .....I told him that he could have the last pull tab and pointed to the area that it was in ......He dug it alright , and it turned out to be a HUGE platinum wedding band that he got a LOT of $$$ for ........My bad !!.......Don't get lazy like I did ...... You'll never know what you are missing !!......Jim

Synthnut, if I'm not mistaken that was in the sand, wasn't it? I'd never argue to not scoop every signal in sand because it's so easy to do with a long handle scoop. On the other hand, I have read of guys who have tons of a particular trash item on a beach due to something like an on the beach bar. In those situations they'll ignore that one, two, or three specific VDI #s and dig everything else. Of course if your machine doesn't have very high resolution in the low and mid range of targets then if you avoid that one VDI # you might be missing a bunch more than that. That's one of the things I like about the 180 meters on the Sovereign. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any other machine (?) that has such high resolution from small foil all the way up to copper penny. That's why nickles are such a sure bet on this machine, because they are distinctly below all known tabs and yet are distinctly higher than most junk foil or various bits of can shards. Some people on the beach will also avoid zinc pennies if they are loaded at a site. I even caught a guy once seeding a beach with clad dimes to try to slow down his competition.

Luckily, all the beaches I hunt seem to have hardly any competition. Over two years two friends and I have seen maybe 2 or 3 water hunters, and maybe about a total of 5 to 7 dry sand hunters in all that time. And we aren't missing them at different times, because these beaches they only allow you to hunt at sunrise to about 9 or 10 when the first swimmers start showing up. Despite all that, some beaches we hunt aren't overly loaded with tons of signals, but on the other hand they aren't lacking targets either. Only one beach I hunt is a virtual trash heap. One day a guy was hunting the sand and I noticed he would leave his trash behind. We talked and he said he is on disability and hunts that beach every day. He smiled and said he knew how to avoid most trash and pulled out a handful of coins (no apron to throw trash into, the coins were out of his pants pocket). No wonder the place is loaded with trash. Makes no sense to dig up the same trash day after day if you hunt it all the time. In a place that loaded I just pick out a small 20x20 foot area and dig every signal. When I'm not in the mood to do that, I'll only dig targets that don't sound sick and will only change by at the max two VDI digits no matter what way I sweep over them. I find that most odd shaped trash will change by 3 digits or more if you change angles on it but not most rings I've tested. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. I'm just talking about when I want to be picky.

synthnut/ JIM

ohhh my god... :0 i see why a pull tab is the wort nightmare.. ill try not to be lazy no matter how many pull tabs i have dug.

thanks for sharing.

That particular day was in fact on the beach .....My partner and I had just spent a good 7 hrs in the park digging hard soil ......We then went to the beach for another 6 hrs ....I did not have my beach scoop with me and borrowed my buddies vacation scoop which was a tiny scoop that took time to dig down 6 inchee and more ......I was EXHAUSTED ......He had the bigger scoop with him ....... WHen in area's like this BE PREPARED !!.....My bad !!......Jim


As far as resolution goes, there are 1,750 pixels that can represent many different targets on the ETrac ..... It does not gang many different targets into the same number as the Sovereign does ......The ETrac will even tell you the different typse of pennies all with different Ferrous/ Cond numbers .....Jim

Don't agree on that pretty much. I've used the Etrac and it compresses most targets into the 12th ferrous line. Even if that is not a limiting factor to some, the ferrour number ranges so wildly on it that many guys pay no attention to it and dig by conductivity alone. That means you are left with a scale of 1 to 50. Compared to the target scaling of the Sovereign, where foil starts at about 60 or so in VDI and ranges up to about 178 to 180 for a copper penny, the equivilent scaling on the Etrac is from 1 to 38 (about where copper pennies start on it). As you can see, there is vastly more conductivity scaling on the Sovereign using the 180 meter. Sure, the Etrac has better coin resolution above copper penny, but when I'm old coin hunting I don't care about what type of coin it is (dug too many that read like others to trust that on other machines I've owned)...If it's deep or shallow but in trash I'm digging it. Too many factors can make a coin read like some other. Being worn, ground minerals, orientation, proximity to trash, dry conditions, etc. In my use of the Etrac the floaty resolution on coins renders my ability to "tell" a probable good coin signal a bit harder to judge by way of VDI, at least for my tastes.

The ability to judge various penny types if easy on the Sovereign. Certain Indian heads and wheats and zincs have specific numbers. Even a high reading wheat for me will often read in the 178 to 179 range, or at least float on those while reaching 180. For that reason I can also somewhat judge other clads and silver. Clad dimes will get up to 180 sort of quick, but clad quarters will climb a good bit faster. A silver though will usually hit 180 almost the instant you sweep over it and is so quick that, combined with the sweet audio it produces, you just know usually when it's a silver coin. The only coins I really care about seeing distinctly (and can) are zincs when I'm in the mood to avoid those for say clad hunting, but in terms of old coins I only look for deep coins or ones shallow but in trash. In those two instances I don't care what the machine thinks the coin might be because I'm digging it and don't trust what it thinks it might or might be.

I'm not sure since it's been a while but I don't remember my three Explorers ranging in ferrous numbers as wildly as the Etrac. At the very least, if that's not true based on memory, I at least found the smart find crosshairs much more useful to judge targets on the Explorers. On the Etrac even if the ferrous number doesn't range any more wildy, the 12th line compression alone makes splitting hairs on probable targets far less telling to me than it did on the Explorer II. That's my opinion anyway.

I can tell you that digging things like nickles is far less of a sure bet on the Etrac. There "zone" is far wider with less distinction than on the Sovereign. I can almost bet money if I get around a 143 to 146 VDI number on my GT with good tone and stable ID it's a nickle, where as foil will usually read lower, and tabs start at around 148, and trash in the nickle zone usually won't lock onto one or two VDI #s while sweeping from various angles while something round like a nickle will. Then of course there is the long rich detailed "round" sound the Sovereign produces that just isn't there on any of the FBS machines, CTX included from what I've read. In fact, seen some CTX guys are going back to the Excal or Soveriegn for that reason alone.

I'd add that the high resolution on the Sovereign gives vast ability to avoid targets. You can not 1, 2, 3, or even 4 or 5 specific tab VDI numbers at a site and dig all other targets only 1 digit off or more. In our graphing of the Etrac's tab range, it's far less distinct and so far more prone to block out a wider range of potential good targets if you avoid even say 1 or perhaps 2 VDI numbers for a common trash item.

The Etrac, like the Explorer, has a lot of strengths, but IMO target resolution isn't one of them, in particular in conductivity since ferrous is so unreliable if not impossible to use as any real useful too, and in particular on the Etrac due to it's somewhat different nature than the Explorer VDI IMO. I know others disagree as I've seen this Explorer/Etrac VDI debate go back and fourth between users of those two machines for several years, but I myself fall on the Explorer side of that debate others have had. I will pick up another Explorer II one day to add once again to my lineup, but with a good coil this time (the 10" coils on them were junk), such as a 12x10. The main difference between Explorer/Etrac isn't depth at all, but rather which does what better on silver at depth. Many agree the Explorer has better silver audio at depth (the classic warble), while others believe the Etrac might have slightly better VDI capability at depth. I'll take the audio myself, and in fact I bet the slight difference might be a non-issue when a better coil such as the 12x10 is put on an Explorer, as the 11" Pro Coil is a deeper coil than the old 10" train wrecks the Explorers used IMO.

I've seen some who have owned all the FBS machines swear up and down the EII is the deepest on silver of them all, compared to even the SE and Etrac, when compared with the same coils on both machines. Still a few others swear the XS Explorer was where it was at for max silver at depth ability. And, I'm not just talking depth ability on these two machines. Some say the Explorers will "warble" out a silver in iron better than an Etrac, although I know others strongly disagree and say the Etrac is superior among trash at unmasking targets, but then again that once again could fall largely to differences of coils..Because the Pro Coil does separate much better than the old 10" coils. There is good reason why Minelab would go through the expense to manufacture a new 11" coil for the SE and Etrac. That being IMO more depth and better separation than prior Explorers. Had they been able to do that soley through improvements in electronics in the box there would have been no need for that. Just wouldn't make sense to have to tool up and make a new coil when they could have saved money by sticking with the old one.

The majority of gold IDs in the range where a lot of trash is. No getting around it.

Sure does, but do you go to Vegas and bet all your money on every hand? It's all about the odds. Pick your land site wisely based on activity where rings could be lost, and if it's loaded with tabs then dig all else, or if it's loaded with small bits of foil and tiny can shards then avoid the foil range and dig the nickle and tab range. All about increasing the odds of trash to treasure when you don't have the time to dig billions of one common trash target at a site.

The fact of the matter is that the ETrac reports a MUCH WIDER VDI range than the Sovereign ....... Just because there are individual pixels does not mean that you have to block them out ....You can choose to block out what you want to ..... Many times pixels in the same area are also openned \up to allow for various angles that the target may be sitting ..... and there are more ways to check the target on iron inlike the Sovereign that gives you now choice ....It discriminates iron automatically and only gives you a null ....... If you so choose , you can hear the iron on an ETrac .....

Critter ,
You have always loved your Soverign , and justfully so .....It works well for what you do and how you hunt .......I have already owned a few different model Sovereigns, and they have all served me well .......After hunting along side of an ETrac and having also hunted with seasoned veterans who still hunt wth Explorers with my Sovereigns , I have gone to the ETrac and have really not looked back .... For me , and the way I hunt , the ETrac was an advancemet in technology, and also in my finds ...... The ETrac has also taken a lot of the guess work out of my hunting ......I no longer have to spend precious time going thru the rituals that I had to go thru with the Sovereign .....To each there own ....Jim