Is Tesoro ED120 better than ED180?

First off yes, a 180 ED discriminating circuit will accept everything which means more nails in the lower end that a 120 ED circuit can't/won't.
This is kind of the definition of the difference between the two...how much of that 180 degree range these different units can sense.
Even my Vaquero at about 165 ED would be silent over a few low end rusty iron targets my 180 ED Compadre would pick up easily.

Second, you never mentioned how much disc you were using if any at all.
Plus the Eldorado is a bit more powerful than the Golden so were these problem targets deeper than where the Golden was getting them?

Using my Vaq, a legacy unit related closely to that Eldorado, even rusty nails higher up the spectrum came in pretty nicely a lot of times but there were ways to tell what they were compared to better targets if you knew those techniques.

I hunt in an area of the country where we have mineralized soil and an insane amount of other iron pieces in the soil from tiny to large.
Surprisingly using my F70 with all metal or disc really low on 1 or 0 is actually more helpful to me in figuring out things more accurately here than higher disc does.
I also hunt with both a Compadre and now a Mojave more often than not with the disc really low into iron if not all the way down.
I have two friends I hunt with also and they both use AT Pros, one just got a Max and the other also hunts with a DEUS and both of them figured out eventually that hunting here listening to and getting signals on everything with the lowest disc possible on all these detectors is the best way to be successful...here.
We still dig iron here but not as much as you might think because we learned how to avoid tons of it despite that low disc.
It just takes time to figure these things out.
Higher disc can be a friend but sometimes lower disc, and some good basic knowledge and experience, can be a better friend to you around heavy trash and iron.
Iron can have a slightly different behavior than good targets do, even those that come in higher, but you need to learn to understand how.

Sounds like the Eldorado is working fine with the data and behavior you have described, you just need to get a handle on it a bit more maybe and adjust the disc better and a little higher or get a bit more knowledge about how actual iron behaves on this one.

Some more precise info about your settings and what is happening can help us help you better.
For me I much prefer using 180 ED units than 120 in my sites...but that is me.

Yeah- we have no idea where you set the discrimination, if any.

Oh. Sorry. I disc out the iron on both. I typically turn it to right between iron and nickel. This setting is very quiet on the golden but it but the Eldorado on this setting still hits hard on two inch wire nails.

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I prefer the 180 myself. The clicks and pops from nails help me know when I'm in a trashy area. Used a couple 120 machines and they were so quiet in nails that you didn't know to slow down and pick through the area.

Also if you bought the eldorado used the previous owner may have adjusted the disc knob. Some folks like to adjust the knob to line up a particular target area.
This can make other areas not line up properly with the labels. Test it with nails you might encounter and see where they disc out. Also in heavy iron try running the sensitivity lower. At max sensitivity it will pop and sound off more on discriminated targets.

In the end it just comes down to personal preference. Lots of folks love both types and they all find stuff. It just takes time to learn the language.

You could try 5 different Tesoros and might have 5 slightly different areas where those exact kind of nails disc out.
This would be because of the differences in coil design, circuitry, frequency differences and more.
I have tried 3 different models and none behaved exactly the same on most targets, at least on the lower end trash and iron garbage areas.

If you truly want to hunt and avoid that trash it seems simple to me...adjust the disc a bit higher to an area that knocks those particular nails out, or in my case I would still have them come in slightly but just barely and noisy.
That is in the rare times I would be using that much disc, anyway.

An Eldorado is not a Golden, these kinds of situations proves that.

I'll work with it some more. Thanks for the advice.

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Which detector do you think runs better in a bed of nails if both the ED120 and ED180 detectors are set just high enough to reject nails? I can't tell a big difference, but it seems to me that the ED120 detectors runs smoother in a bed of nails.

beephead

I agree Beephead, my Cibola runs a lot quieter than my compadre. I think think the ED-120 has some discrimination going all the time.

I recently bought a Silver Sabre micromax which is also ED-120. I hope to do some testing in the field this weekend and compare them over the same rusty nail targets. I also have a bunch of different sized concentric coils to try out with them too. I'm curious to see how the SS, Eldorado and Golden match up in terms of discrimination. I use all of my detectors primarily for relics and so far, the Golden is easily my favorite. It loves brass so much I think it should be called the Tesoro Brass instead of Golden