Well went ahead and got me a Minelab CTX 3030 and I must say (5/18/2013 using 50 tone conductive to unmask in nail's VIDEO)

The CTX seems like it would be a fun machine to have for coin hunting. My experience behind one is limited to about 30 minutes last year when Don came up and relic hunted with me at one of my bad dirt sites. He brought the CTX and Deus up with him, and since he is primarily a Minelab guy, he had it most of the time. Don showed me what it could do on the screen and in audio and it was impressive in what it could do on there as far as waving objects by the coil in air and such....but all that mattered to me was if it could handle the soil at the bad dirt bullet place, and if so, I was going to get one. I agree that they've came a ways with the balance of these machines. The Explorer II I had was horribly balanced...with that heavy coil in the front. The eTrac made that nicer with the different angled grip and lighter coil...I could swing the eTrac a lot longer than I ever could the Explorer II. But when I picked that CTX up in the field, I was like "wow". Very well balanced machine. Everybody cringes at the overall weight of it...but as long as something is balanced, you don't feel it. That's exactly the case with the CTX.

I'm not sure what mode Don had it setup in or any of the settings he tried. He had contacted Minelab prior to coming up to visit for some settings to use in bad soil...so he had a few things he tried after he initially got there and we got set up to start hunting. I know in the time I had it, he was running a wide open screen on it. Long story short there...after signal checking a number of bullets I had located with another machine, changing various settings on the CTX, and failing to even get them to sound off, he started using the Deus. If there was indeed a machine that I wanted to make work...it was the CTX. But it just didn't handle the rough stuff up here that well...at least not in the settings Don was trying on it. Reports came back the same from Culpeper, VA at the DIV hunts and you can watch in at least one video with a button how it handled Culpeper dirt. I don't recall how they had it setup for that video but the results they got duplicated what Don and I were seeing down here.

Explorer's etracs and ctx's are really deep in bad dirt if you run them right dont look at the screen and learn a false tinker bell hit froma legitimate tinker bell hit...

on the ctx dont let the ground track and keep the sens wide open,,, screen wide open,,, deep on,,,, the deepies will sound like mineral false....but train the ear for the ultimate deepies..

bad dirt makes them ring but thats the key to getting the depth... hear the mineral noise instead of havinf a machine that is quite in mineral that scariffices depth by doing so...

Keith

Ahhh but the catch to that is...it has to make a sound on the target in the ground first...whether false hit or legit hit...whereas I'm talking about it making no kind of hit lol. Here's the one video I was talking about. The CTX is at the front of it. Like I say, I don't know how they have it setup in that video but that's exactly what we were seeing with 5-8 inch bullets at my bullet site...if you were lucky you sort of heard a null, otherwise it was just the sound of a smooth threshold.

CTX & cuff button, Culpeper dirt:
[www.youtube.com]

And another one with a mineralized rock from Culpeper and a civil war bullet:
[www.youtube.com]

Yes Daniel, my stomping grounds. Welcome to my unfortunate ground reality. . I absolutely love hunting on family land up in the WVA mountains...soil so benign my Deus and CTX are hitting targets easily at 12 and beyond...then I come back home and snap back to reality. For such an artifact rich state, Mother Earth is doing all she can to keep things hidden.

I will say that my first CTX was erratic and could not come near the overall performance my current CTX achieves in the same hunting theaters. Still makes me wonder if the machine I have now, even as good as it is, is as up to speed as ML had plans for and what others may actually be experiencing with their CTX's given such performance extremes between my two examples.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this machine in yards/parks and in water use. Amazing what is not found, or even searched, in 3-4' of h2o.

Randy

Wow... variability in a Minelab product. Seriously, I've not experienced that.

Thanks for the Video links Daniel...

I know they are hard to do and time consuming so I hate to say negative things about them ...

But on the CTX the screen is in a pattern I see it in his video...it looks like it's almost disced halfway up from bottom and in that dirt that button will be in that disc'd area......and the sens is not wide open....hear how the thresh drops out when crossing the tub after the button is under it.....its hearing something and nulling because of the disc setting....so till we know exactly how it was hitting by opening the screen up the test is skewed.

I know it will not read what a button will but with a wide open screen and wide open disc ...allowong nosie to be heard as you swing the coil across the noisy mineral dirt depth is sacrificed...

Now on that rock...I know those rocks...GOOD LUCK...LOL!!! Nothing VLF can handle them hardly..lets just be glad the earth is not one solid piece of that or we would have to hang it up....


Again I dont want to sound negative on the video's I know the difficulty and for the most part of looking for accurate I.D.s and thing's it shows that it is not going to happen..but in real world RELIC hunt's all we need to know is if it's small iron or not....

FBS machines have the abiltiy once in tune with them and set up HOT to be able to signal funky signals worth diggin in bad dirt and at depth...

All machines have their place ...we have to figure out how to get the perfomance out of them in a conveying way that we the user can put to use...and what one guys learns to get out of a machine will be different form what another guy gets out of a machine...theres no rights and wrongs either way ...

Keith

Keith, earlier it seemed like you said you were having trouble with ground tracking so I thought you said it's better to manual ground balance? How exactly do you initiate ground tracking? Do you leave. "Enable ground balance 'on'"-- but without manual ground balancing? I had a couple guys tell me to let the machine ground track on its own but when I saw your comment about falsing and screeching on iron I started to manual GB again...

Hey D-tone the ultimate depth will come from manual ground bal....bu it runs smoother with auto tracking on....but looses some depth it seems at this point...

I have not seen it track out a good target yet but it can be done in theory as we know...


Heres a how I understand a FBS works...the explorer and etrac safari and quattro all have a fixed ground bal like alot of detector's....Where's it set at ?????Not sure...but what happens on that platform is the Multifreq uses some sophistacted algorithims to remove ground noise/Mineral and it works well at lower to uppermedium sens... but at higher sens the ground noise can become more like a legit signal so instead of removing it the report of hot rocks or mineral starts to come through the audio...it reports it thinking its a good signal becasue of using high gain setting's...yet it is weird sounding and identifiable...thats were the ones in the know let it be noisy in hot sens settings to allow for the deepies to creep in along with some ground signal's....

We do this type of hunitng with single freq vlf's around here to get more depth by running the ground a little negative to allow for some ground noise to come in...this is in bad dirt that has alot of iron ore....becasuse if you completely cancel out ground noise its harder to hear a target come through the silenced ground noise...A ground bal is a disc circuit more or less working in the lowest of ranges below iron yet in hot dirt too quite a ground bal and it shuts down the targets that are not really strong enough to rise above the ground bal setting....Set it low enough to get some feedback and some ignored smaller weaker deeper targets have a bit ore chance of reporting yet when hot rocks are present they will wreak havoc...The fbs has enough character to be less FLUTEY on hot rocks compared to a legit singal.....

Now enter the CTX it is FBS but it also has the ability to set the internal ground bal. manually..you can set it to curent ground by checking enable ground bal...then scroling down and hit ground bal start...you set it for your ground in that exact spot..so there you have an advantage over the factory set older FBS...more cleaner signal less ground signal yet I notice the hotrocks still creep in and that's good for a deep hunt...but they have a unique tonal quality...

Now in really challenging ground you can uncheck the box and let it trac the ground very fast I might add for a smooth run, even wide open sens in my dirt...yet I see MAYBE the depth is a tad off so far...not conclusive though...Should be though...

to get the ultimate depth on the CTX I seem to favor locking the ground bal and running it wide open sens and let the mineral other than the ground setting ring in...I can dig rocks like this with the CTX also...but it helps when you are after the real deepies in certian sites...but at other times I enjoy the smoothness of the tracking also..


But in theory we know a locked ground perfectly set has bit more depth over a tracking system...

So you can build a picture of what is happening I hope..

I dont Know all the in's and out workings of the FBS and I have simplified what I do know for lack of better words to describe it....

but I think you will find the reasoning behind the more accurrate I.D. and cleaner sounds are because of the abiltiy to take the ground bal out of a factory setting either manually or by a Auto tracking system Like I have yet to see on any other platform......

Keith

Keith I'm glad you got the CTX. By doing so we can get some good info.from you about the machine.

It really does do a great job at idling at depth.I have really mild soil here and I can crank the sen. up without any problems unless we have had a lot of rain.
The depth is great also. I posted about a object that I dug that was coin shaped about the size of a half dollar that was a good 15 inches deep. No one believed me but that is ok.

I was hunting a sports field that had been brought tho grade with fill I assume in the 60s. I have dug clad dimes to 10 plus inches and clad quarters to 12" in that location.I quit hunting it because of only digging clad at such depths. Might hit it again at some point to maybe find a ring or two.

Any way any info you feel like posting on the CTX will be welcome.
Pac Man

Sounds great pac-man...

Hope we can have some good discussions on the CTX

Just got the large cloil in form Tmanly yesterday...

and have the small coil on loan from Southernexploer...so the next few day's I will have some info to add hopefully....

Keith

Got tmanlys Big coil Yesterday...

Man this thing is huge...

tried it some today...My bad dirt seems to struggle with the coil when I run the gain above 22....Lots of ground signal falsing even in auto tracking....its seeing alot of dirt for sure....

it is quite deep though but hard to run it above 22-23 sens...so the stock coil in my dirt runs better and seems deeper...now in beter dirt like South of here about 30 miles It mightr be different and I plan on going down South with it to a Rebel camp this week..Maybe Tomorrow...

hard to manuever in the woods ...

Maybe a beach coil is where its aimed...or open fields..still retains sensitivity to coin size object's very well...

Keith

Ran the 6 inch coil today in a house site....the site is loaded in iron..the non ferrous has really dried up in here.....

To say I was not amazed at the outcome would be an understatement...

Nothing great was found but non ferrous came to light all the same...

I was actually taken back by the target's....nothing small...but coin sized and up luring in some nast falsy iron....the 2 tone ferrous set at line 31 like in the video was the game plan for this site...Fast on....Deep off...high trash normal tone auto sens ground bal locked....

I pulled the targets out of some nasty awful iron...and I am not sure any machine I have used to date would of got these target's....I know strange but they were severly masked....the CTX seems to like round objects coin sized in the iron with an uncanny ability.......I get used to pulling small targets in iron with the HF rig's yet this machine is set up for ROUND in iron it so seems...

Now the target's did not jump out but they had a smoother sound Vs the same type yet flat splat false tone that iron produces...

I learned alot in this site about the detector...

I dug one piece of brass ...it was a trigger guard,,,and it was in the hole with a nice chunk of iron and quite alot of nails...after the trigger guard was removed the large iron went to the more typical high low roll tone...but while the gurad was in the hole the high roll was more pronounced on the high side tone more round ...

Man this thing need's an iron volume control.......And I bet its doable with a software update ...Just have the machine be able to adjust the 130Hz tone volume wise...

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2013 02:54AM by Keith Southern.

Just run a little iron disc and manual sensitivity.

It will break up the Iron tone and bring out the non-ferrous. I haven't noticed a small amount of disc hurting speed or depth.
You'll also see the size of your finds become smaller/deeper.

HH
Johnb

Congratulations Keith you deserve the new CTX.

Can't wait to see your next batch of goodies you end up finding with

The CTX.

Thanks for posting.

Joe

Hey Scoop...Thanks for the feedback for sure...

The problem with the 2 tone ferrous just breaking at nails is the small non ferrous stuff ends up on the same line but on the left side...

the settings I am using works fine for coin sized and up objects but the small stuff is eliminated in the lower left......



What we need is to be able to split the ferrous vertically in a combined mode...the conduct 1200 Hz and the left of the ferrous 1200Hz..then the right ferrous bin 130Hz.....

this would be keeping the audio gate open continously and also be able to hear the low conductor's intmeringled with iron that drops into the lower left...

I have Emailed this idea to Minelab.....


I was running today in ahouse site and just not really digging anything... after about 2 hours I left my custom TTF program and went to open screen Conductive....and the small non ferrous objects started banging in ...really impressive for sure...this place was scoured to death for years.. yet its a blanket of non stop nails...hard to believe the HF rigs left so many small targets in here .....

so thats were the small stuff is hiding in nails lower left....

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2013 04:06AM by Keith Southern.

Thanks Wolf..

Not sure I deserve it but I got it LOL!!!

I will try to post finds as I make them..

Whats bad is I have had it a couple of weeks and the finds I am making are the wrong finds to show ...

Eventually!!!!!!!

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2013 04:07AM by Keith Southern.

Your welcome Keith.

This is what life is about - enjoyment.

Keep posting with what you are discovering.

Thanks

Joe

Great read Keith.

Just to let you know, I contacted Minelab a while ago regarding the iron volume control and they said it WASN'T possible. I forget the reason but they said they can't modify that setting. (You can probably find my post over at Finds with a search though).

I'm still hoping they can add variability.

Albert

@Keith

Yep, you've got it.

The small non ferrous targets that usually end up at the 12 ferrous line, get dragged down by the overwhelming ferrous under the coil.
So they end up on the lower left side.

Somewhere you can adjust analysis coin-ferrous if I'm correct, this should pull those signals back up to the 12 ferous line.
Anyway I just use a small amount of disc like a 4x4 box in the lower right corner.

If the signal gets broken up when you sweet spot it on the coil, probably is a small nail.
If the signal still persists and wants to give me a decent grunt, I'm digging it!!
Usually it's big iron,.... call me weird,... but if it is, I want it out of there anyway....

Dug a few large pieces of iron at my local beach, next visit I had this very nice WWII key chain tag labelled "MINE STORE"
Just trust a Minelab to find that.
Once the mass of the objects beneath the coil tend to swing in favor of the non-ferrous anything goes with the CTX.

HH
Johnb

Keith, what kinds of things are you finding "lower left"?

Objects smaller than say a dime of low conductivity.....

That brings up another thing....

The ctx for unmasking in dense iron...like machine gun nails....has no equal...what I have been doing the last week with the ctx in iron has amazed me...

What the ctx sees in conduct wide open screen is amazing...

Set it up high trash...fast....smooth

I dont care what machine you have ran in there you have left lower conductors than any other machine can see..

Why? Because of the way the ctx looks at a target in conduct..

The best unmaskers to get these small non ferrous targets cant because the machines would have to pick up too much of the nail as a high tone to grab the small non ferrous...

The smooth option allows for almost non motion continous report..

What happens is the small targets will give a low tone the nails will give a high tone..

I have a video in the works...

A typical world class unmasker to get what the ctx can get is not possible at this point...the deus or g2 or whatever....

the CTX using the conduct mode and signal a target below a nail in condcutivity if that makes sense....

the inique disc circuit can find target's smaller than other machine's can see in the super dense iron....I have proven it to myself in the last few day's in head to head testing...

its got to be smalle targets though...smaller than dimes etc

I am digging P-Caps in wall to wall nails...boot eyelet's...small pieces of cut brass etc...

Keith

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2013 01:36AM by Keith Southern.

Keith, running in iron and nail carpets I'd recommend ferrous coin seperation rather than high trash.. Ferrous coin will bring caps, and brass items up closer to the 12 ferrous line.

I'm with Albert on adding variability for sure-that would be the single most improvement for the ctx.

Thaks for that...


The way I have it set up in condcutive right now...theres nothing made that will touch it on small conductor's unmasking in dense iron...

I have proven it to myself ....

I have alwasy wanted a detector to have a non motion disc circuit...the Smooth option allows as close as I have yet seen...

just a bare wiggle and it it sounds off...I can meander through iron ultra slow and hear the lightest of low grunts intermingled in the constant high ring of nails and produce small non ferrous...

AMAZING!!!

Keith

Heres a video showing how the 50 tone conductive when used to your advantage can unmask the smallest of conductors other machines can not hear due to nail false restriction..I.E. to get other machine to hit these small conductors you would have to turn the disc down so far the nails would start sounding as good as the non ferrous.....

the unique way the CTX and the other FBS machines discriminate you can listen for targets in iron that are actually lower conductive than the nail's when the naisl drag those target down...IF that makes sense...

the unmasking actually works better in the dirt than in airtest as here.....and I can find smaller target's than I am showing here...usually p.cap size in nails is doable..

this is nothing new I have ran explorers like this....yet now with the smooth option and the high trash option the abiltiy has become more pronounced...

it works best on sites that have stopped producing...it will aslo get high conductors like this that are intemingles so bad wiht the iorn that they become pulled into the low tone...even silver coins can get down here...lots of nickles can hide like this also...and buttons for sure....

the multi tone allows you to hear a waiver of the tone dropping down then you can start approaching the waiver sound at different angles..if you get the low blup to come in its a non ferrous for sure....iron does not go to that tone...it can go higher like fasling iron can do but it wont go to the lowest of tone...

you can get sone medium conductors like this also...but it takes time and patience....as some of the nickle and quarter size iron can be a mid tone....

its a very advanced way to hunt and requires patience and a understanding of what's taking place..but it does produce target's...in sites that are not producing but worth hunting...

the unique thing about smooth is when comparing it to normal is the abiltiy not to drop in and out on length wise nails and such..that hinders the unmasking I have found...the smooth keeps it running and stable at different approach's adn allows for ultra slow movement to signal..alost like a non motion disc circuit...

I am very impressed with what I am seeing...

it revigorates sites I cant find stuff in...

[www.youtube.com]



Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2013 05:15AM by Keith Southern.

Wow, wonder if ML knows about that Keith. It's amazing how you find a unorthodox way to set up a machine to meet your needs, amazing, I'm impressed.

For what's it worth, the E-Trac in 4TC in smooth will perform similarly to your CTX in 50-conductive. Probably not as sensitive but the E-Trac will audio on the nails mostly in High Tone (39-50Co) and Med-High Tone (26-38Co) while small non-ferrous will be in the lower-left as Med-Low (11-25Co) and Low Tones (1-10Co). Or you can run the E-Trac in TTC and the Co split is at 1-25Co Low and 26-50Co High if you just want to hear something that is not an iron nail.

I don't use these settings and I don't relic hunt - but if all you had was the poor man's CTX, then it might work.

I've run some tests on the E-Trac and with DISC set to quiet the nail response the small conductors do still sound off ( 01-25Co). Just as you saw in the video, despite the tiny coil you used, if the nail long axis is perpendicular to the sweep, you can have the Titanic next to the nail and there will be only the nail response (or silence if nails are DISC'd).

The only way the E-Trac will respond with iron in the volume is if the sweep is parallel to the nail axis, and then the response is erratic and jumpy on the other target. Be slightly off kilter and the non-ferrous target disappears and it's all nail.

I'm curious though - you are looking for non-ferrous in the lower-left quad of the screen. Is that normally where relics that you want are located?

alot of the relics that get mixed in iron Johnny end up down there in the corner...Like buttons especially Confederate local's....Poor quality but worth a ransom...small reale's. half dimes flying eagles....etc can get down there....as other unique relics...

we run the explorers like this for years although the screens are different from the etrac or ctx....

yet at the same time the ctx offers more of a refined hunt more precision laser response....

I have pulled some targets in nails in the last few days that no other machine's I know of would get...

also if I try to disc out the nails the scenario will not work.. the nulling messes up the recovery...

I like the 50 becasue I can tell when the target might just drop maybe 2 increments yet have a tiy bit lower tone... then I can start to analyze it to see if i can get it to drop...

the fewer tones does not allow for this SOMETIMES...because the initial drop at a certian angle might not be enought ot trigger the next lower tone...

so target will go unoticed if you dont happen to hit the lowest tone on the first pass.

the ctx works better in the ground at doing this than in an airtest....

I was hesitating ot talk about it or show it ..I wonder sometimes if people get what I am talking about???

I might be the only nut in the world that pushes machine's so hard LOL!! And hunt dead sites for the challenge...

Thanks for the question and response...



Keith

Been using Tmanlys Big coil for a few hunt's...

It is a big coil...it is light for the size yet its still heavy on the end of the shaft but managable for a couple fo hours so far...

I must admit the areas I use for deep relics are in campsite scenarios so its hard to find spots thats not got nails involved intermingled on every sweep to some degree....

I feel the coil would be best suited on really sparse ground and objects past 6 inches...

its hard to find the center and its to UNDERSTAND the tonal quality's on coin sized objects less than 6 inches deep...

I believe Its a beach coil..I can't run it as hot as the stock coil...and on coin sized objects the sens i trun down too mkaes the 11 inch as deep or deeper with a higher available gain...

It does cover alot of ground and stays sensitve to small objects pretty well...

one other thing I can add is is separates very well for such a large coil..

I can't run it it over a couple of hours though before My back say's No-More...

I can run the stock coil for 8 hours or more with no real issues ...

its truly a specialty coil....not for everyone....but has its uses for intended purpose of larger items at depth and can cover alot of ground quickly while still being adequate for some smaller items too..

Its deep on coin sized objects but not sure its any deeeper as the stock...Its does hold the target as tight at depth as the stock coil..

Keith

Hey there Keith,

GREAT information on the CTX thus far and It's good to see others experiences with the machine as well. It makes it possible for me to make a more informed decision regarding this Detector and whether or not I 'should' buy it. I'm having good success with my ATPRO (especially running it hot), but I definitely would like to move into another machine with more options and one with an inch or two better depth, but more importantly one with better "ID" at depth...

So having said that, are you doing your 'Depth Tests' with the CTX anytime soon? I'd really like to hear what your thoughts are regarding depth and any of the real advantages over the ATPRO in terms of increased depth and Iron Disc ability w/ 8x5" coil, etc..

Cheers,

Iron disc ability is second to none..

I have not even dug a nail yet with mine...but I have dug targets out of nails at the same time in spot's I cant hardly find targets in with any detector ...so the disc circuit is very CUTTING edge...

the depth is like EXPLORER depth but with more I.D. at depth...

I really like the AT-PRO but it's nowhere in the same leauge in trash or depth coil for coil as the CTX...

The true power of the CTX is unbelievable disc and I.D. accuracy in all hunts site's...

I also Might add the ability to use combined all the time allows for more depth than the explorer or etrac at this point...conduct being the most powerful mode on all of them yet unusable on high conductors because of iron issues is a moot point with the CTX, with the ability to use combined I get depth on a higher accuracy level than the etac and explorer...

I know I have said it before but the FBS platfrom has finally been realized to the fullest ...yet ...

It really is a 21st century detector...not in the geotracking or the software updates which is nice...but the performance has been up anted to there's not alot thats in this league or theres really nothing in it's league in modern trash site environ's...

I can finally venture back into areas I have had to avoid with HF rigs with poor disc ability...I can now hunt modern trash overlaid on top of historic sites with a high degree of accuracy and ability...it really is the best of all worlds..

I am enamored!

I only wish/hope all get to realize the CTX..

Keith