[buck colmen]

I'm new at this and learning quite a bit. What's the best setting to keep it on so I don't keep digging nails or should I just dig everything cause you never know? It seems like some places I go it just goes crazy and I get erratic readings over every inch of ground. Any advice?

 

[morelsurcher]

Buck,
I do not know much about the controls on the Ace 250. When i go into a new place with my Whites I usually run the discrimination pretty high to accept dimes and above. You can usually get a feel for the place in a little while. If you are noticing a lot of dead air you can back the discrimination down and proceed. Many times I find out the place is pretty clean and I back it down and also dig the broken up sounds around the nickel range. If you don't dig those you will be missing out on rings, Indian head pennies and other various jewelry pieces. As long as you know you can go back to the property you can crank the sensitivity high and discrimination low the next time for deeper and older finds.

 

[willyp]

I keep my Sensitivity set at "3" and the "Mode" set on "coin".Here,in Pa.,we have lots of iron in the soil and this has an some to do with the detector picking up targets.
The 250 doesn't have a manual ground balance setter,to balance out the high iron soil?
If you go around old buildings you will have lots of old nails and other iron stuff,if you go to old picnic areas, you find tons of snap tops!
Anyhow,it is great fun,when you do find an old coin or even a newer coin!

 

[richbat]

One thing to remember is if you start notching out to much stuff your gonna miss alot of gold signals.If your just looking for coins then disc. everything up to pull tabs out.Erratic signals could be from EMI in the area,powerlines,WIFI,Underground cables and such,to cure that you have 2 options move away from the area or decrease your sensitivity which will also make you lose depth.What i do in a new area is cherry pick the good stuff then come back and run at less disc.and start digging everything.You have to remember gold will come in at just about anywhere on any machine.

 

[phillyfireman]

from what I have been reading on the metal detecting forums you want to run on all metal then take notch out everything but the coins 5c, p,d,Q and silver. Then reduce sensitivity to a decent level. You really want to reduce sensitivity as little as possible and train your ears to filter out the good signals. As far as finding gold save that for likely areas.swimming holes etc.