I took my brand new Spectra V3i to the park where the large cents were found. I met my hunting buddy at lunch and he told me the precise spots where he found the large cents, both from the 1840’s (!). So I turned the V3i on and went to work. Here’s what happened:
The V3i can be configured in a kazillion different ways but for the new user, White’s put some programs in there for us to use. The machine comes with the Coins and Jewelry (C&J) program loaded as default. Loading a program is as easy as bringing the menu up and selecting a program from a list. Anyway, the C&J program has the ubiquitous three tones: High, Mid, and Low, plus a threshold tone, which I still don’t know the purpose of since the tones are different than it. I always thought that the usefulness of the threshold was that it would change as a target was detected. This threshold doesn’t change but stops to allow the other tone to sound. Hmmmm…I must be doing something wrong.
I used that for an hour and found no coins nor jewelry. I did get to use the analyze tool and I really like it. The three pieces of metal I dug all gave me odd patterns and not the hump pattern White’s says I will get with a good target.
After the first hour, I changed the program to Deep Silver (DS). This changed the tones COMPLETELY!. No longer did I hear the high, mid, or low tones but instead, the sound changed to a whine-like sound, similar to the sound the Minelab E-trac makes. I tried that for a while and I actually found a 1966 clad quarter with it.
Last, I changed the program to Coins and again, the tone situation changed. Now I had only ONE tone. No matter what I was running the coil over, I only heard the same mid tone. All the while, everything else stayed the same. It’s going to take a few hunts for me to get used to this. I now can see why this detector is not as popular as it should be. Fortunately for me, I like this kind of thing. I want more tools, especially to find gold.
Tomorrow, we drive to a small town for Thanksgiving. I may get to hunt a little more with it.
Ok, now I promise this really is the last text-only post. I just wanted to put this on the blog for me to look at it later and go, “ahhhh, I was such a noob!”
Thank you for looking!
The Dirt Is Good To Me 
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