I will begin my initiation into the Treasure Talk team with a story that best illustrates the question most asked by new owners of a metal detector, “What are the best settings?” I was approached by a novice beach hunter who asked me if his new Sovereign GT was set at the maximum settings, because he could not find any gold jewelry on the beach. He confessed he had flicked thru the owner’s manual but used settings posted on a metal detecting forum.
A quick glance at his controls confirmed that almost all the controls were set at the incorrect positions to find any gold jewelry on the beach. My advice to the frustrated beach hunter was to set the Sovereign GT’s controls in the following basic beach hunting control settings. I recently bumped into the now much happier Sovereign GT user who thanked me for helping him. He told me that he was now finding gold & silver, but most importantly understanding why he was finding gold and silver.
These are the basic control settings needed to find jewelry and coins on the beach with the Sovereign GT. If you are new to beach or land hunting with the machine, this photograph highlights the easiest way to set your Sovereign GT controls.
Most of the Sovereign GT controls can be set before ever leaving to go metal detecting.
A good basic discrimination level is the 8 o’clock position, a position that causes junk target signals to break up but still avoids missing most gold jewelry.
The notch control is set at the minimum position, the track-fix-pinpoint features are automatically disabled when searching in the discrimination mode.
Use the volume control to turn the GT on and leave the volume control on the 3/4 setting.
Turn the Threshold control clockwise until you hear a constant and clear background hum.
These set and forget beach settings for the Sovereign GT only require an occasional slight adjustment of the threshold control for smooth operation. In these beginner Sovereign GT beach control settings the auto feature on the Sensitivity control will make all the necessary adjustments automatically for you to deal with the conditions present on the beach you are searching.
Discrimination search mode
Iron Mask: On
Noise Cancel: Optional - Band 1 or Band 2 for quiet operation
Disc: 8 O’clock
Notch: Minimum
Volume: 3/4
Sensitivity: Auto
Threshold: Audible
These basic Sovereign GT settings will be your building blocks, a good solid foundation to build on. I found a 300 year old Spanish emerald treasure ring using the same exact beach settings shown below using a Minelab Excalibur, the waterproof version of the Sovereign.
Basic Sovereign GT users control setting goals
Using auto sensitivity will leave you free to concentrate on learning the tones that various targets produce and to get a feel for a comfortable threshold level.
Maintaining a smooth operating level and background hum by slight adjustments of the Threshold control.
Identifying the tones produced by different types of metal searching in the Disc mode.
Identifying the nulls in the threshold produced from ferrous targets by the iron mask feature.
NOTE: Thru out this article you will see photographs of my control box speaker covered with painters masking tape, this is because I prefer to use headphones when metal detecting.
Gary Drayton
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