The X-Terra Pro Settings Guide: Because Treasure Doesn’t Find Itself

So you’ve picked up the Minelab X-Terra Pro. Good. That means you’re not just someone dreaming of buried loot, you’re someone doing something about it. But let me tell you, owning a machine like this and not knowing how to use it? That’s like having a pirate map and never learning how to read the compass rose. This thing can find coins in clutter, relics in mud, and gold in the salt. But only if you know how to unlock its settings.

I’m going to walk you through every major mode and setting the X-Terra Pro has to offer, not just what it does, but how, when, and why to use it, based on real-world hunting. Whether you’re sweeping beaches, plundering parks, or chasing ghost stories through the woods, these settings can make or break your hunt.

Park 1 and Park 2 – For Modern Treasure and Urban Noise

Park 1 is your general-use setting designed for high-trash, high-activity areas, think modern parks, tot lots, or around picnic tables where people drop coins, jewelry, and unfortunately, a whole lot of junk. It’s optimized for finding medium- to high-conductive targets like clad coins and silver jewelry while helping you filter out most of the typical aluminum trash.

It runs at a slightly slower recovery speed than Park 2, which allows it to pick up deeper targets, making it a good choice for less-cluttered parks or lawns where you want to hear those older, buried coins that others missed.

Park 2, on the other hand, is the sleeker, faster cousin. It runs at a higher recovery speed and is tuned to respond more aggressively to low-conductive targets, that means it's better at sniffing out small gold rings, chains, and tiny bits of metal. You might get a bit more chatter from trash, but it excels when you need to separate the treasure from the noise, especially in trash-heavy zones.

Use Park 1 when you’re coin shooting and want to keep your sanity. Switch to Park 2 when you’re ready to dig deep, work fast, and maybe uncover that gold earring hiding under a bottle cap.

Beach 1 and Beach 2 – For the Salty, Sandy Life

If you're hunting the coastline, Beach 1 is where to start. It’s optimized for wet sand and shallow surf zones. Saltwater creates a unique type of ground interference that can drive detectors nuts — Beach 1 keeps the machine stable by filtering out salt noise while still letting valuable targets ring through loud and clear. It’s great for surface targets and doesn’t go overboard on sensitivity to tiny junk like foil.

Beach 2 cranks things up a notch. This mode is meant for more intense saltwater conditions and fully submerged coils. It handles high mineralization better, making it perfect for black sand, surfline detection, and even detecting a few inches underwater. It’s slightly less sensitive to smaller targets, but that’s a tradeoff for keeping stability and depth in a notoriously tough environment.

Bottom line: Beach 1 is your dry-to-wet sand option. Beach 2 is for getting your boots wet and chasing treasure where the ocean hides it.

Field 1 and Field 2 – Where Relics Wait in Silence

Now we’re into my favorite territory, relic hunting. Open fields, cellar holes, and abandoned farmsteads are where legends are found under layers of history, rust, and roots.

Field 1 is tuned for high-conductive targets. That means silver coins, large relics, and brass objects, the kind of stuff you dream about finding at old homesteads. It operates a bit slower, allowing for greater depth and smoother tones, which helps in areas that aren’t cluttered with iron or modern debris.

Field 2, on the other hand, sharpens its senses for low-conductive targets. Tiny buttons, lead musket balls, thimbles, it locks onto the kind of small, historically-rich finds that make your hands shake a little when you pull them from the dirt. It’s more reactive and may give more chatter, especially in iron-laced sites, but it lets you detect between the junk.

Think of Field 1 as the setting for deeper, larger finds, and Field 2 as the one for delicate relic work in gnarly terrain.

All Metal Mode – Hear Everything. And I Mean Everything.

All Metal Mode turns off discrimination entirely and lets you hear every metal target beneath your feet. That includes the good, the bad, and the downright annoying. You’ll hear nails, foil, bottle caps, rusted iron, and yes, treasure hiding among them.

Why would you ever use this? Because in some sites, especially colonial or older relic spots, iron is part of the story. Large concentrations of nails or farm iron might signal an old structure nearby. And sometimes, treasure gets masked by junk if you’re running discrimination, you might never even get a tone for that hidden coin next to a rusty nail.

Pros: Maximum depth and no risk of missing a target due to preset discrimination.

Cons: It’s noisy. You’ll need patience and a good ear to work through the chaos.

Use it when you suspect a site hasn’t been hunted thoroughly or if you’re relic hunting in an area full of iron signals. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it gets results.

Accept/Reject – Filtering the Noise

The Accept/Reject feature lets you fine-tune which target IDs you want to hear. If you know that bottle caps consistently ring in between 21 and 24, for instance, you can reject that range and focus on better targets.

This is especially helpful in areas with a ton of repeat junk targets. But be careful: over-rejecting can cause you to miss unusual coins or odd relics that fall into those ranges. It’s a balancing act between convenience and coverage.

I recommend using this feature to reject known nuisances after you’ve hunted an area once in a more open setting. That way, you don’t leave something good behind just because it sounded like a pull tab.

Noise Cancel – Your Signal Jammer's Worst Enemy

EM interference is everywhere , power lines, nearby machines, other detectors and it can cause your machine to start chirping like a nervous parrot. That’s where Noise Cancel comes in.

By holding the Noise Cancel button, your detector cycles through available frequencies to find the quietest one, reducing chatter and letting you hear real targets more clearly. It takes just a few seconds and should be done every time you move to a new location or notice interference.

Skipping this step is like showing up to a stakeout with a broken radio , you’ll miss the signals that matter.

Ground Balance – Tuning Out the Earth

Ground Balance is your secret weapon when the soil itself starts lying to you. Mineralization in the ground can produce false signals, especially in hot or variable soil conditions.

The X-Terra Pro offers several ways to balance your detector:

• Auto Ground Balance: Pump the coil up and down over clean ground and let the machine calibrate itself.

• Manual Ground Balance: For those who want to fine-tune every last squeak and signal.

• Tracking Ground Balance: Constantly adjusts as you move through varying terrain, perfect for hikes through mixed soil and patchy mineralization.

Always ground balance at the start of a hunt. Rebalance if the ground composition changes, or if your detector starts acting squirrelly.

Volume and Iron Volume – Control What You Hear

Your main volume controls how loud the machine speaks to you — obvious enough. But Iron Volume is a more subtle tool. It lets you decide how loud (or quiet) iron signals are. This is useful when you want to be aware of iron in the area (especially in relic hunting) without letting it drown out your ears.

Turn it down when the iron gets overwhelming. Turn it up when you want to map out a foundation or cellar hole.

Threshold – The Background Hum of Opportunity

Threshold is that faint, constant hum you hear when your detector isn’t actively picking up a target. It’s not just background noise — it alerts you to very deep or faint signals that barely break the surface of detection.

A quiet dip in the threshold tone could mean a target just at the edge of detection. However, threshold isn’t beginner-friendly. It can be tiring to listen to, and in busy areas it might drive you a bit nuts.

Pros: Lets you pick up on the faintest of signals and subtle ground changes.

Cons: Requires more focus and a trained ear. Can be distracting in noisy environments.

Use it when you want to squeeze every last whisper out of a promising site.

Tones – Learn the Language of the Land

The X-Terra Pro lets you customize how many tones you want to hear based on conductivity. You can run it in single-tone mode where every target sounds the same, or scale it up to five tones or even multi-tone mode where the machine gives you detailed audio clues about what’s under the coil.

Multi-tone mode is the endgame. Once you’ve trained your ear, you’ll be able to tell a zinc penny from a silver dime without even looking at the screen.

Learning the tones is like learning a language. Stick with one mode until you can interpret it naturally, then level up to the more complex settings.

Custom Coin Programs – Build Your Own Treasure Blueprint

Once you’ve learned what coin signals sound like in your local soil, you can create your own custom coin-hunting program. Start with Park 1, dial in your discrimination settings to reject obvious trash, tweak the tones and sensitivity, then save it for easy recall.

This is especially handy for places you hunt regularly, where modern coins are the main prize and trash is predictable.

Factory Reset – When You Need to Start Fresh

If you’ve gone too far tweaking settings and your machine starts acting like it’s been cursed, just hold down the coil button until the screen blinks. That’ll return everything to factory defaults and give you a clean slate.

Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to hit reset.

Recovery Speed – Fast Hands vs. Deep Digs

Recovery speed controls how quickly the detector resets between signals. A low recovery speed gives you greater depth but can struggle to separate targets that are close together. A high recovery speed picks up and isolates signals faster, which is ideal in trashy or iron-infested environments.

• Low (1–2): Clean fields, maximum depth.

• Medium (3–4): Balanced, good for most general-purpose hunting.

• High (5+): Fast recovery for cluttered sites where separation matters more than depth.

Choose the speed based on your surroundings. Faster isn’t always better ,sometimes it’s what you don’t hear that matters most.

Final Thoughts: The Detector Is Smart — But You’re Smarter

The X-Terra Pro doesn’t find treasure on its own. It listens, calculates, and reacts. But you’re the one interpreting what it says. The more you understand these settings, the more the machine becomes an extension of your instincts.

So get out there. Adjust your settings, dig your holes, and trust your gut. Because under the right patch of earth, with the right combination of settings and a little bit of luck , there’s a story buried just for you to find.