Clive’s 20 kHz Nokta Legend Gold Settings.
Here is an example of how using basic skills and an understanding of the various target types can improve your success with the Nokta Legend at bottlecap and foil–laden sites.
This is a setting that shows what the Nokta Legend can do on low conductive targets. At the same time—it’s’ not “hunt by numbers”–there is the need to use the coil and your ID skills to determine what responses are good quality ones. There’s also a notch to break up rusted bottlecaps. This also needs some skill building. The idea is to reduce the audio cleanness of any caps coming in around the “20” mark on the ID scale while still focusing on this important small gold range.
Park mode, 20 kHz (note that single fq use removes the v.1.09 Stability and adjustable Iron Bias from the menu options).
Sensitivity: 26 / 27
(If you really want to learn about how coil control target testing operates with the Legend, try some hunting in Gold mode. The high fq weightings make the detector sound off on a lot of “partial” signals that are not there on the return pass or cross sweep. This is what we are going to be doing in Park 20 kHz but it will be a lot easier).
Rec. Spd: 5/6 Where you have a lot of targets or black / grey sand 6 is better. You want to hear the “sides” of your targets.
Tones: 2. This is the best way to learn coil control target testing—two simple tones.
When you hear a repeatable tone with extension in the sound, go to the cross-sweep to check for consistency. As you do this (making sure you are now right over the object) look at the meter to see how “clean” the response is. Where you see clustered numbers—dig. Where you see the meter going “way off” the central numbers—this is a weak signal or alloy. Gold will stay much “tighter” on the meter. (Sweep irregularities notwithstanding). Also where you see the meter going up to “60” (or thereabouts) –this something that the machine is reading the ground right through—iron or a weak conductor in relation to the surrounding ground.
Caps: Without the “FerraCheck” graph the Legend would be a hard machine to learn. This is because it’s multiple frequencies respond to how a bottlecap is “joined” to the ground. So some that have a lot of aluminum corrode less and and read up high. Other’s are more corroded and come in mid way (27/30). Others still have a lot of rust and hit down around “20”. In that his is a specialized gold setting—these are the ones we are concerned with. I knock out “20” and “21.” Because a cap is a wide, spread out signal—this notch will knock the (tone) “middle” out of most of these rusted caps. Now here is where the coil control comes in. When you see a signal in this range “(19” to say “23)”–draw the coil off and do your cross-sweep pass. Keep this pass even and controlled. If the target is a cap you will see some bars on the left “iron” side of the meter. There will also be a significant meter change. This applies to most caps if done correctly although the high aluminum content ones are hardest. Where I want to break up these too I reject “27” to “31” as well. This also knocks out most small oval tabs too where there are a lot of junk targets.
Overall, understanding why caps respond the way they do is more effective than other coil methods such as backing the loop off and listening for the iron tone. You will be more effective in cap / junk laden conditions using the whole detector: audio, meter and coil.
Being able to sort though these gold-range responses accurately is an important skill with this detector.
Where you have a lot of weak foils try running more discriminate. (12/13/14…) The “M3” setting also weakens these foil responses but does so at the expense of gold sensitivity. This setting is smooth because it has a lot of 4 kHz weightingh–weakening the machine’s response to the part of the conductivity scale where both gold and iron come in.
This set-up has amazing low conductor sensitivity and is a great way to learn to recognize solid, quality targets of any kind with the Legend.
With the 20 kHz, expect a lighter, more delicate signal that requires a smooth, even sweep to be stable. It may not feel like it’s going deep—but will bring up some surprising low-conductor targets.
Where possible a slower Rec. Spd. such as “4” will give even more depth.
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