High End Detector Owners ..do you?

[larryk56]

Here's the question for the owners of the high
end detectors?

Are you Disc out pull tabs? and foil?

If you do, you are missing out some of the gold
and the rings correct!

What's the point of a high end detector with bells and
whistles when you have to dig up all the pull tabs and
foil anyway.

I went full circle and no longer do a study before I dig.

I just dig it all !

You?

 

[wasp]

I usually do not disc out foil and pull tabs. When my detector sees them I can choose to dig or not based on several factors. There are times and places when there is so much junk in the ground that I will set up my detector to coin shoot for dimes, quarters and silver jewelry. Then I can set it up to pick thru the junk for any larger gold items. If I tried to dig everything in some places I could spend hours in a small area sifting thru everything down to gum wrappers. But I generally like to at least try to see everything.

Not all of the "bells and whistles" on a high end detector have to do with discrimination. A lot of the features have to do with customizing the detector for your hunting area conditions and your style of detecting. Some of the high end detectors have more available coils to choose from to help customize the detector. Also, features that handle ground mineralization so your detector "sees" what is in the ground and not just the ground itself. Some detectors allow you to disc out a very narrow "notch" to eliminate a particular type of tab (where there are lots of tabs of a particular type) and still detect gold rings above and below that narrow notch. Lots of different detectors with lots of different bells and whistles out there. You just want to have one that suits your particular needs.

Of course, there is no sure fire way to tell some junk items, such as pull tabs and foil, from gold rings. If you're after gold jewelry you're gonna have to dig lots of tabs and foil.

So, if your style of detecting is "beep and dig" you really don't need a "high end detector" just a detector that is going to give you good depth in the areas where you hunt and help you detect whatever it is you are looking to find. Some of the "low end" detectors are very good at what they do and will keep you busy digging goodies. Generally speaking, they just aren't going to give you much depth or the ability to customize for some conditions you may encounter.

I have two "high end" Bounty Hunters and a Whites DFX. But, if all I had was a Bounty Hunter Jr. or some such, I would still be happy to get out there to beep and dig as much as possible. I love this hobby pastime addiction affliction. I just can't wait to see what comes out of the ground next!

Good luck Larry and Happy Hunting!

 

[Jason in Enid]

Depends on the location. If I am turf hunting I am after silver. Why waste the time digging thouaands of bits of aluminum for a gold ring when I can use that high end machine to find silver that others walked away from?

 

[wasp]

Jason, the only reason I can think of to dig the aluminum to get the gold is that as of now gold is over 52 times more valuable than silver per ounce.

Takes a lot of silver to make up for a nice gold ring.

 

[Sailorman]

I hunt spots often times where digging everything would give me a five gallon bucket of trash and a few coins at the end of a long day. For those spots I can set up my machine to look for coins and silver jewelry. With my "higher end" machine I have yet to see anything but a pull tab on a classic pull tab number so yeah, I ignore them now. Digging either side of that number has got me a few goodies though.

Now if I'm on a spot with a lot less trash I'll sometimes dig some of those signals but no gold rings on that number yet.

For me it's about being able to set up for the different conditions and maximise trash seperation through different set up and coils.

 

[Southwind]

I buy a "high end" detector to increase my odds of finding gold, and other keepers.

20 years ago I had no choice but to use a beep-N-dig but today there is simply no reason to be forced to dig it all. Think I'm missing the good stuff? No, I have faith in my high end machines. You're more than welcome to follow behind me in an attempt to prove your point. Good luck and don't expect to go home with much for your efforts.

 

[Jason in Enid]

Jason, the only reason I can think of to dig the aluminum to get the gold is that as of now gold is over 52 times more valuable than silver per ounce.

Takes a lot of silver to make up for a nice gold ring.

I understand that. My point is that there is VERY little gold lost. If you are digging all the aluminum in the search for gold then you will spend months to work through a single park. I can hunt a park for a few days, walk away with a pile of silver and start working the next spot.

I look at it as a ROI. I get a LOT more return by focusing on only silver.

At the beach its totally different. I dig EVERYTHING at the beach because digging is 10x faster.

 

[Critterhunter]

I know one or two guys who do REALLY well land hunting for gold rings, and that's just about all they do. They don't hunt for silver for the most part. Ring hunting on land involves picking likely spots where rings would more often be lost. And the greater resolution of some high end machines can be very useful for ring hunting. The Sovereign, for instance, has a 180 VDI target scale. I'll often note the VDI number of one, two, or three pesky pull tabs in an area and dig everything else the locks on good (trash uniniform in shape often won't lock onto one or two numbers like most rings will).

I did a study with over 100 gold rings found by a guy water hunting with an Excal digging everything above iron, so this ring pool isn't biased in any way. I charted the VDI numbers of all the rings, then charted a large test pool of pull tabs we dug over time. What I found was that I could set the notch just high enough to block out a 165 numbered tab (the width of the notch also kills 12 digits below it), and this would eliminate 84% of all pull tabs while still allowing the vast majority of the rings to be found.

One of the old myths is that most gold rings are found in the nickle zone. Not true. I believe that myth derived from the fact that many machines don't have very good resolution in the foil/nickle/tab zones, and so often gold rings would show up in the "nickle" zone on those machines even though the target actually read much higher or lower than a nickle.

My strategy is to avoid the most common trash item (such as a specific tab # or two by noting the number and watching for it, or a group of them via the notch) and then dig all other target numbers that sound smooth, soft, warm, and "round"....and lock onto one or two VDI numbers. Of course there are places you want to dig it all, such as at the beach or in a place that isn't real trashy to begin with. But when it comes to an old park that has thousands of pull tabs then I'd rather play the odds, avoid those tabs, and still (according to the data we compiled) most of the gold rings. It's the trash to ring ratio you are trying to to improve.

 

[matthias]

I dig everything. HH. Matt

 

[Elton]

I think the point is............ Disc is available if you want to use It.

Say you get in a park and every other signal is a one type pull tab... You have dug a 100 of them , and it's getting aggravating.

Disc them out and keep on detecting... Just know you will lose some masked items.....


With more Bell & Whistles "YOU" can control what you dig.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Larry, your question gives a false implied premise that persons with high-end machines keep them in the same control settings, all the time. What's to stop users from simply adjusting their accept/reject patterns based on the type environment they're in? I mean, who said those who elect to pass foil or tabs, *always* reject foil and tabs?

For example: If I hunt the beach, then sure, I'll grasp for anything even remotely conductive, no matter how small or whispy. But if I'm hunting under old grand-stand bleachers hardpan soil, where 70 years of pulltabs have rained down from above, I might elect to angle for silver. Would I be missing a gold chain under those grandstands? SURE! But to get that gold chain, I would litterally dig 100000 pieces of trash, before ever finding gold jewelry. It's just not a condusive type site for jewelry losses, to begin with, but IS a good site for coins (since people are up above paying vendors for their hot-dogs and sodas all those years). If I was that h*ll-bent on finding gold jewelry, I would simply go to a swimming beach, not pound a junky park or under bleachers, to begin with.

So your question seems to fail to keep in mind, that those controls can be adjusted to suit various environments, and various goals, at differing times.

 

[Jason in Enid]

What I found was that I could set the notch just high enough to block out a 165 numbered tab (the width of the notch also kills 12 digits below it), and this would eliminate 84% of all pull tabs while still allowing the vast majority of the rings to be found.

One of the old myths is that most gold rings are found in the nickle zone. Not true. I believe that myth derived from the fact that many machines don't have very good resolution in the foil/nickle/tab zones, and so often gold rings would show up in the "nickle" zone on those machines even though the target actually read much higher or lower than a nickle.

I think you have a very good system you've developed. I guess it's all in how you look at it. I have iron disc out on my E-Trac but I still dig a few in my quest for silver coins. I imagine that you probably still dig bent tabs and odd junk items, but are avoiding the bulk of the "junk".

 

[pasttom]

I dig and pick up pull tabs on purpose to donate to the Ronald McDonald House throough my Kiwanis Club.
Tom

 

[Critterhunter]

What's surprising is that with the notch set just right most tabs, even bent ones or ones missing their tail, still fall into the same general VDI number range of pulltabs that are in perfect shape, both round and square tabs...So when I'm doing the notch thing I hardly dig any tabs at all for the most part. Sure, there are exceptions to that. The main problem seems to be square tabs that have been cut in half by a lawn mower. Those usually read a good bit lower than the normal tab range.

My main point is that if you're at a park that has millions of tabs proper notch use (on a machine with high enough resolution in the low and mid range conductors) you can still recover the vast majority of gold rings while avoiding those tabs. As said, by paying attention to the sound and VDI stability (on a machine that is strong in those abilities) you can also avoid oddly shaped or jagged trash as those targets usually sound bad or jump in VDI by say 3 digits or more. Most rings, like coins, have a nice smooth "round" sound to them. On a machine with good quality audio (IE: Not overly processed by the machine) that you can hear traits of the target with many rings have a nice soft, warm, round, sound to them. Not saying you can avoid junk and only dig rings by paying attention to that, but it can help the odds somewhat.

Machines with a much lower resolution in the low and mid range conductivity range aren't as good to use a notch or avoid certain numbers with. Notch out a tab or two on some machines and you are actually blocking on a much wider window of targets than you need to to avoid the tabs in the area.

My machine's strength is in the low and mid range of targets. It has excellent resolution on those. It doesn't for coins, though. Everything above a copper penny reads the same number. But when I'm old coin hunting I don't really care what the machine thinks the coin is. If I find a deep coin or a shallow one in trash I'm digging it regardless. Besides, I've dug many silver dimes on machines in the past that ID'd them a pennies due to ground minerals, being on edge, being worn, and so on. The only time I'd really care to be able to ID certain coins is if I was clad hunting and wanted to dig quarters while avoiding everything else. Really, it's more important to me to be able to avoid zinc pennies and still dig dimes and quarters when clad hunting, and I can do that with my machine, so I'm at least happy it can do that.

 

[Advent]

Each signal has the potential of been good.
Discrimination not only knocks your depth
but there is a high risk of blanking out something
gold..
No discrim the better finds you'll gather....

 

[Critterhunter]

I look at it this way....If you are in a park that is just loaded with thousands of pull tabs that show up under a few specific VDI numbers, are you really going to spend a life time digging each and every one of those things out of there? Not me. I'll take a loss of say 30% of the gold rings that fall in the tab range, recover the rest, and dig WAY less trash.

 

[larryk56]

Excellent discussion with many outstanding points.

Thanks for all who shared!

 

[MNCoinhunter]

I will never, ever pass up a good nickel signal .. ... just found yesterday. AT Pro indicated a target just slightly under the nickel range. It was solid so I dug it.

 

[Jason in Enid]

Discrimination not only knocks your depth ....
....

You need to move into the 21st century. Discrimination doesn't affect depth on the high end machines. That was true up to the 1990s machines, but not anymore.

 

[Mtnmn]

(1.) In answer to your questions, I only disc. out iron and nothing else. (2.) Yes, if you disc. out foil and pull tabs, you will be missing out on potential gold jewelry and rings. (3.) I use higher end detectors for their extra depth and their better disc. capabilities, so as to have a better idea of what lies under the coil. (4.) There are so many trashy signals in my area that it would be impossible to dig it all, unless being willing to settle for covering a very small area each time out. As a result I concentrate on clad and silver, but at the same time always keeping an ear and eye out for any possible gold signals. Not to mention that I dig all nickel signals, none of which have turned out to be gold this spring, but 121 did turn out to be nickels.