I believe most Tesoro's would fall into the scope of your post. Tesoro's discrimination is second to none
The ulta light weight is also unrivaled.
All true!
I was at it again this morning, spending some time in dirt church and the Barkchip Cathedral.
I really wanted to get the feel for foil on this trip since it is so abundant at schoolyards and other tot-lots. One of the things both my old Silver Sabre II and 1266X were good at was ID'ing foil. If you worked the coil just right, at the right speed, foil would give itself away by it's weak response, rapidly dissappearing signal and in the case of the 1266X, the "buzziness" of the audio. Well, I can say the Vaquero - - - comes close.
There doesn't seem to be a defined "set and forget" point at the low end of the b1 range where foil will give itself away, but the DISC will do that for you.
To try this yourself, first recall the idea of the Nickel Pivot Point mentioned in the first part. With that as your starting point, every notch below it will be given a negative number hereafter: -1, -2 , etc.
So to hunt for foil, set your DISC at -2, or TWO notches below nickle. Most foil, even the small bitsies, will signal clearly at this level. But, somewhere between the nickle pivot and -1, foil almost always breaks up and cuts out. The small bits dont have enough surface area to give a signal if you raise your coil even a littel bit, either. Only the really large wads will hit up around nickle - not much you can do about that.
So working the DISC around the nickle pivot and raising the coil a bit, I was ID'ing the 'foilies' pretty reliably. I tested this time and again this morning and it was clear... foil will give out somewhere between the notch before nickle and the nickle notch itself.
So what about the pieces of what I like to call "micro-jewelry?"
Examples of this sort of jewelry are gold kiddie pieces, small charms and fine filigree work. We're told by the experts such stuff falls into the foil range, right? Well, I tested a few such pieces from my collection and the experts are correct - you can forget about them at foil DISC levels.
The Vaq wont get them. At least a few of my test pieces were not detectable at all, even at minimum DISC and max settings! The only thing that was reliably detected was a small 10K kids ring.
Unfortunately, this stuff DOES exist around schools, tot lots and other such places. I found a neat little junk kiddie bracelet today, all chain and baubles - which I eyeballed. The Vaq barely picked it up, even at the -2 point (what I'm gonna call the "Foil Detect" setting).
The only way to get such goodies is to hunt in ALL METAL and hope that it'll be big enough....
Now for the good news. Fortunately, there isn't as much really
nice kid jewelry as you may think. Some, but not what I'd call a lot, so I dont worry over missing it - but I DO make the effort in barkchip lots and sand by going to the -2 notch setting. I hit lots of foil, as expected, but it's easy to tell by "thumbing" the DISC knob and shuffling the barkchips around with the toe of my shoe.
I dont think I'll ever have it all figured out, no matter how much I try. But the more I practice and push the limits, the better my results become. Keep at it, Tesoroites.
