So... taking some good advise, I made a small test garden. I planted a Franklin half, silver quarter and dime. All laying flat at 7 inches down.
The next day I had a little time and decided to hear exactly how the silver sounded with the Explorer (w/stock coil). I was quite shocked to find out that the machine barely picked up on the half and quarter... couldn't even see the dime. Nothing even close to a solid signal for numbers or sound. I boosted the sensitivity and switched to Deep, but that only made it slightly better. I also noticed that the best tone came to the right or left of the target... depending which way I was swinging and I was swinging very slow. Most of the time I could get the signal to hit in the high conductive range, 26-29, but the FE range was way up there too... like much of the iron I have been going over lately.
I decided to grab my Ace 250 with stock coil and see how that did... believe it or not, the Ace gave me a little bit better id on all three coins. Not a solid signal by any means, but just a little better than the Explorer SE Pro. I did have to swing the Ace much faster for it to even register the coin.
How can this be Is a test garden not a reliable source comparison for deep silver. I don't consider 7 inches deep for this machine. Granted the coil was probably close to an inch off the ground.
Any thoughts? Does this sound right?
Thanks,
jk