If the area is loaded with pull tabs and is a huge area that would require you to take years to dig them all out then to me it makes no sense to even start. Despite what people say most gold rings do not range in the pull tab range any more than they do any of the other areas on the VDI scale. Just look at my Splitting Hairs On Rings thread to confirm this for yourself. We sampled over 100 rings found water hunting digging everything above iron so the test pool is not biased in any way. Another common myth people say is to dig the nickle zone. Again, there aren't really any more rings in the nickel zone than any other. The only place you can really say there are less gold rings is somewhere around the zinc penny range and above. Everything below that all the way down to about 75 (or foil) is where the gold rings mostly range, and not in any particular specific spot more than others for the most part.
What's important to keep in mind is that the Sovereign's VDI scale is very high in resolution. While it's true that it's compressed from copper pennies up to silver dollars (meaning they all read around 180, the VDI scale below that on the Sovereign is very wide and broad, allowing fine detail to be had in splitting hairs on targets. That's one of the reasons why this machine is known as a gold ring killer, along with the fact that it has excellent telling audio and depth as good or better than anything on the market. The Whites M6 and MXT are also known as great gold ring machines due to their excellent VDI, but keep in mind that their scale has somewhat LESS resolution in this area than the Sovereign. I know because we scanned those same rings and tabs into an M6 as well. Those machines also aren't going to get nearly as deep on a gold ring (or a coin for that matter) than a Sovereign.
You might ask why use a notch when you can just mentally note the VDI numbers for the most common tabs at a given site and then avoid them. The reason for me is that it quiets the machine down drastically and thus causes me to be more prone to investigate and dig any other numbers that fall outside of the notch and could be gold rings. I've noticed that when I run the notch in a sea of pull tabs my nickle count goes way up. Why? Because I'm more apt to notice and check out any target that does sound off. It's way too easy to just try to wander through the tons of "mid range" hits from the audio until you get to a more quiet area. Most people don't want to admit it but they'll start ignoring all the tons in a really trashy area like this and just start listening for something that could be a silver coin.
But, the other lethal weapon in gold ring hunting on a Sovereign is it's audio. This machine has more subtle differences in audio (not just the tones) than most machines on the market. It probably is the best in that respect to me. Once you hear the good, smooth, round, soft, warm, telling audio of most gold rings you'll know what I'm talking about. Even a pull tab with the exact same VDI # will sound harsh, hollow, or at least different than the gold ring does most of the time. That's a good reason not to run a notch so long as you've practiced with tabs and gold rings so you know what you are looking for. It can be done so long as you have your ear trained for it.
If the area is small I would advocate digging all the tab signals even if there are tons of them. If the area is large, however, I just don't think it makes sense to even start digging those signals unless you are planning to keep coming back over the next ten years until you've dug each and every one out of there. Lacking that kind of effort, you can vastly increase your ring to trash ratio by running the notch and you'll still get the majority of the rings. If you decide to take however long it takes to dig all those tabs over months, years, or decades, remember that somebody could very well be doing what I suggest and thus end up beating you to most of the rings while digging hundreds or thousands of less tabs than you had to per ring.
When an area is really loaded with all kinds of trash besides running the notch the other way to improve your ring to trash ratio is to listen to the audio. If it's broken, hollow, bouncey, scratchy, or just doesn't sound good in some odd way then you can bet it's probably trash. The VDI on a lot of trash, mainly stuff ununiform in shape, will also bounce around more than most rings will. Your typical ring will usually lock into one VDI number, maybe only changing a digit or two at the most as you change directions over it. The reason for that is that rings are for the most part round and uniform in shape.
The other day I was hunting a dirt foot path through a section of woods. I would hit the occasional tab number and choose to pass it by because I just wasn't in the mood to look for anything but potential old coins. However, I came across a real smooth and "round" sound target at I think 120 or 130 on the VDI that just had that great sound that screams "dig me". It ended up being an old flat button from the 1800's. True, it was lower than tab numbers but it was also out there in no man's land in that a 120 # is something most people would be interested in digging unless they were ring or relic hunting. The reason why I dug it was because of how soft, smooth, and warm the audio sounded. It wasn't flakey or fuzzy like trash or foil of some sort. I highly recommend anybody who questions my thinking on this to gather together as many gold rings, old buttons, or any other "keepers" that are uniform in shape for the most part. Also grab yourself a bunch of round and square tabs, odd shaped foil, and other trash. Sweep over all that stuff and you'll soon figure out what I'm talking about. Not the difference in audio quality and also the difference in VDI stability between the good and bad targets.
Now, I know a broken ring can give a really bad junky signal and so can some rings due to a design with many holes in it or such. That's the exception to the rule, though, and so I don't worry about those types of signals...Unless I'm water hunting or hunting a site that isn't loaded with trash.
I've said it before but I'll say it again as to an analogy to what I'm talking about with all the above theory. Do you go to Vegas and bet all out on each and every hand? No, depending on your cards you'll decide to fold in order to cut your losses. That's the way I think about gold ring hunting. If the area is trashy then I want to improve my odds by being selective and in the processing digging less trash. After all, they didn't put meters and speakers on these detectors for no reason at all. Use your eyes and your ears and the brain the good lord gave you when the amount of trash in the area would require nothing short than a full time job to remove it all. Otherwise you might as well be running a PI unit with no discrimination if these things didn't matter at all.
A good way to train your ear is to stick different pull tabs each in film canisters and then do the same with some gold rings. Jumble them around so you don't know which is which and then sweep over each one and try to identify each one. Make sure you've got some tabs that read the same or very close to at least a few of the rings so you aren't telling the difference by the audio pitch but rather by the quality of the audio.
