se or etrac in "bad soil"?

People that hunt in this red clay of the Virginia's and Carolina's would a Minelab SE or a Etrac work better coin hunting?Which would have a depth advantage and/or more accurate coin ID? Thanks Bill

I live in the Upstate of SC and my earth is solid red clay under an inch or so. I've done considerable testing of my Explorer II against my F75 and have found that the EXII gives equal depth to the F75 but better ID capability for deep copper and silver. The moisture conditions play a big role and I also find the F75 degrades on ID capability as the ground dries at a faster rate compared to the EXII.

Another big difference is the quality of the tone, again with the edge going to the EXII on faint silver. Yesterday I ran my F75 on my 7" deep dime in my test bed and heard a very faint high pitch swinging the coil fast. The signal got very weak and broken if I slowed my swing and I would have definitely passed it by (settings: JE, DISC=6, SENS=50). The problem with the F75 is it's somewhat noisy at this setting and the sharp noise ticks mask some of the silver tone and the display immediately jumps off the high 70's/80's after the signal is gone due to the noise effect. Without hitting the target just right, and concentrating hard on the audio, I would have missed the target signal. In all-metal mode the F75 tone is mono and the display remains blank so I wouldn't know I was ever over silver or iron.

The EXII allow you to increase the sound of the weak signals (GAIN) relative to the background level, thus the deep silver sounds much stronger compared to the same signal on the F75. Plus, the EXII is inherently less noisy compared to the F75.

Two other myths:

THE F75 IS FAR TOO SUSCEPTIBLE TO EMI RADIATION. Yesterday my EXII became unusable near by home, even after noise cancelling the unit and dropping auto-sens to 10. The F75 ran slightly noisier, but nothing that would prevent hunting.

THE EXPLORER PROCESSOR IS TOO SLOW TO HUNT IN IRON INFESTED AREAS. Most people run the EXII with the standard 'Coin' program but, like the F75, shows good speed if the unit is not allowed to null. In that regard, the EXII can be run with no Iron Mask (screed wide open) to see the real capabilities. In fact, that's a good 2nd program to run on an iffy signal as it always improves the audio by eliminating the clipping resulting from the discrimination setting. The standard 10.5" DD coil is the major limiting factor and performance can be greatly improved in the trash through the use of a wide variety of smaller coils (I like the new 6x8 SEF). Try running the EXII with a wide open screen using FERROUS tones in a trashy area and you'll know what I mean.

In my test bed I have a nail buring at one inch and a silver dime buried at 4" deep and 4" away from the nail @ a 45 degree angle. When passing my F75 using the standard 9x11" DD coil over both the nail and dime 'in-line', I get a display of "8" or "9" with DISC=6 and a deep tone. This 'upaveraging' is expected, but in the field, if I'm tired or lazy, I won't bother with that low signal (the F75 with the 3x7" concentric coil or 5" DD coil sounds high on the silver). On the other hand, the EXII often emits the high pitched silver tone passing the factory 10.5" DD coil over the targets in the same direction. The electronics see the silver as silver and produce the high tone. In the field I would always dig that signal. This is the one very significant advantage of the my EXII over my F75, the ability to signal silver in the simultaneous presense of iron, rather than upaveraging the iron signal into the 7-15 range.

But there are significant advantages of the F75 over the EXII in my mind:

1) The better balance of the F75 and lighter weight allows more time in the field. More time = more finds.
2) The F75 is very efficient using 4AA batteries. The EXII needs to be recharged often.
3) The F75 tends to give one signal on shallow objects; the EXII gives multiple signals as the target passes over the coil. This can often be confusing in the field and results in longer pinpointing times and target retrieval. In fact, I often do not use the pinpoint function with the F75.
4) The F75 has the 3H/4H option making nickels sound high like silver. I personally like that option and usually hunt that way.

This is only my opinion and your performance may be different in your ground.

Wow, I really didn't answer your question very well. Did you query the Findmall site?

"""The moisture conditions play a big role and I also find the F75 degrades on ID capability as the ground dries at a faster rate compared to the EXII."""

This explains why the last two weeks very few coins are IDing correctly. It's been bone dry here. The soil is powder down 7+"

Go-Rebels
You answered my second unasked question perfectly.You gave me alot to think/rethink about an Etrac.I will always keep an F 75 unless Dave Johnson and company put out the next"super detector".I'm still unpacking from my move.I've only got out hunting 3 times in 2 weeks.Thanks. Bill

Hey Go-Rebels,

Great post! Wealth of information and well written. Thanks for taking the time to write up your experience for the rest of us.

HH,

Drew.

Bump