Digger tell those who don't know how to thumb how it's done. You're great at explaining things.
beephead
Sure.
Back in 2011 I had lots of hours on my Vaquero but a newbie asked about how to hunt with a Compadre he was getting and this was my reply.
Pretty much the basics, and I didn't have my Compadre yet so I just pretended I took the Vaq and ripped all the knobs it except the disc.
Below that I will talk a little about the method I eventually evolved into using the thumb past and then thumb back down method which is the only way I do this now.
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Here is where metals will show up on your dial.
Forget the numbers, just study their locations.
The way you figure out what you are digging before you dig it, which is never 100% by the way, is to "thumb" that disc knob and figure out where the metals in the range you see in the picture go away or "disc out".
*Tip*....It is more accurate to turn the knob way up and then turn it down slowly as you are swinging over the target and stop at the area where you hear a tone come in, than to turn it up until it fades out.
Now you have done this and lets say it was silent till you got to the zinc mark.
Now you have a clue, and this hobby is all about taking all your clues and putting them together to make an educated guess.
From studying the picture, you remember that this zinc area should sound off if you have a zinc penny or other zinc item, an Indian head penny, a screw-cap or gold.
Might be some other things like can slaw, but it could be one of the first four, too.
Maybe you want to run your coil around the target area and try to size the target.
Where does the tone sound loudest and then fade out?
Hit it from a different angle and try to get a picture in your mind on how big it is...coin size, maybe a little bigger?
In low disc down to all metal to get the clearest signal or at least turning it back below zinc on the disc knob, how loud does it sound when you scan it?
Really loud, maybe medium loud or softer?
This gives you a clue on the depth.
Another depth trick is lift the coil and swing over it.
Do you lose it at 3 inches above the ground, 4-5?
If you know your limit of your detector, and subtract the height of your coil above the target where it goes silent, this can give you approximate depth.
Now you decide to whip your coil over the target real fast and see if the tones stay solid from all angles or breaks up.
If it breaks up it could be trash, if not, still might be a good target.
All of these techniques are aimed to give you clues, and those clues will lead you to an educated guess and that will lead you to digging a hole...or not.
As you put in your time, you also start to hear slight differences in that tone.
A zinc penny might sound very solid and full and the same all the way through, but a screw-cap might not sound so full.
Maybe you noticed after locating and scanning hundreds of these that a screw-cap doesn't stay full, but maybe breaks a little right at the end of the signal as you thumb that coil up and down.
It gets a little fuzzy.
You never could tell the difference at the beginning, but now, after much practice, you can hear that difference, and so you have another good clue as to what you might have sitting in the ground below you.
Solid tone, rings true, no breaking of the signal, small like a coin, really loud tone, can raise the coil pretty high before it fades out or comes in at the zinc area...I think this is a zinc penny that is about 1 inch down...then you dig it...and it is.
Or maybe not, like I said, not 100% in this hobby...ever...but you cut your odds down some on digging trash, and you made a good guess.
It's a process.
As you progress, your guesses get better.
The universe must be laughing at us that do this hobby because it made so many bad things ring up in the same areas as so many good things.
Aluminum hangs out where the high tone coins do.
Nickels and gold can live in the same neighborhood...as a matter of fact, gold seems to live in almost all the neighborhoods.
Nobody is perfect, we all dig lots of trash, but the better you get the less trash you dig and the more treasure you find.
Study the picture, know your metals and where they line up in relation to your disc knob.
Then practice, practice practice.
Really listen and try to remember that tone you hear before you dig a target, then remember what target you dug after that specific tone.
It takes time for your instincts to kick in and this stuff becomes second nature, but it will eventually happen.
Once you dig enough holes.
That's how I do it.
HH
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Once in a great while I might turn the disc up to max and just cherry pick but most times that knob is way low.
To set that knob anywhere higher than iron and just dig whatever beeps drives me insane, I just never did it that way, I have always thumbed the disc knob to figure out all my targets because it is a little game I enjoy playing with myself and always did since day one.
After a long time digging a whole lot and thumbing that knob up to the fade out point I decided to listen to what others were suggesting and not just thumb up to the fade out point to figure out targets but go past it to silence, if they indeed did go silent, and then thumb back down...and listen real hard to what was happening as I did this while making short, quick side to side movements with the coil as I did so.
I finally realized how much more accurate this way was, I can't count how many targets came in at a certain spot on the disc dial coming down that weren't all that close to where they faded out going up.
The accuracy thumbing down was far and above much greater going up every time.
For the life of me I can't figure out why Tesoro never this method anywhere...in their manuals, on their website or anywhere else...but they never have.
Maybe they don't care about this accuracy, maybe they don't know about it, (doubtful), maybe they don't want to reprint all their manuals.
Whatever, I am not the only one out there that does it this way either, by far.
Usually I hunt in all metal or close to it to get the strongest, loudest, clearest tone possible because some Tesoros lose a bit of depth as you increase the disc.
When I get a pretty good sounding solid signal I thumb up and then when I am thumbing down I listen to the tones I hear closely.
How sharp is the sound of the edge of that tone, is there any noise at all before the signal solidifies, crackles, fuzz, clicks, anything, or does the target just come in with very little or no noise.
I have learned good targets, most of them for me, usually just come in with hardly any noise while most bad targets and junk tends to come in noisy.
Most foil is noisy plus depending on the frequency of the audio on my Tesoro just don't sound good at all.
On my high tone Vaq all foil made me wince and gnash my back teeth every time I heard that super annoying tone.
Most tabs are jumpy and noisy coming in if they are not shallow and laying flat...and so on.
Dig enough of any single classification of target enough and you usually get to learn their most common sound and behavior.
Not 100% on either type either, some bad targets can come in pretty silently and solid, (flattened old rusted crown caps laying flat in the soil), and some good targets can come in a bit noisy, nickels come to mind, for some reason out of all coins many of those seem to be the least stable and noisier dialing up or down.
Some are perfect, a lot are not and just noisy on the ends so I just dig a lot of those in case gold is hiding.
Most other targets I go by my strict rules, if it is too noisy I walk on, if it comes in solid I dug them every time no matter what area that knob is pointing to.
I have dug small, thin tiny silver chains in iron this way, gold rings from foil on up to the zinc area at 3:00, waded into the most extreme trash infested sites you can imagine and dug relatively little trash while still coming out of those sites with a surprising amount of great treasure by just thumbing that knob and digging the solid sounding targets as I thumb back down.
I also got very fast at doing this over the years, just about as fast as swinging a screen unit over a target and looking at that screen.
It took a long time to learn to do this effectively and efficiently, I don't believe shiny newbies can do it to this degree until they get a whole lot of hours in listening to signals but with work anyone can do this if they chose to eventually.
Also I dug a train car load of trash for a long time before I got confident enough to leave noisier targets in the ground and just go after the higher percentage solid ones but eventually I got there.
Can I miss something doing it this way...sure.
Do I care...no, I am pretty good at this method after several thousands of hours with my Tesoros and what I don't know I miss doesn't bother me especially since I have the attitude I will find anything good I missed...eventually.
Now all of this is regarding normal depth targets, 98% of everything I have ever found has been no deeper than 5-6".
On super deep targets things may be way different.
So whether you just dial up to the fade out point or take the extra step and go past and come down that disc knob movement and the sound and behavior of targets as you manipulate that knob while swinging over them can tell you a ton once you learn the Tesoro language.
Every model is far from just being a beep and dig like many think...but we Tesoro guys already knew that.
