Settings for coins and gold..

Disc.

Without having my hands on the machine it's hard to advice accurately. But try putting the machine in Discrimination mode and then use the discrimination knob to adjust the amount of discrimination down to the level where the machine will sound on nickels. You can do this by air testing. If it takes nickels it will accept most small gold objects. Of course you could wave gold rings and things of various size and karat in front of the coil too. Find the spot on the disc knob where you can hear the object you want. Usually at this "gold" setting you will knock out small iron and some small foil. You will find every pull tab within 200 miles of you, but that is the price of gold. The best advice anyone can give you is to place objects on the ground and play with your detector. Get used to how it sounds on different coins, simple gold rings and pull tabs. Find some shredded aluminum can pieces. Bury these objects at shallow depth. Listen to all of them at different settings. You can learn tons by setting up your own finds early on. Then when you are actually out searching you'll have a little better idea of what you are doing. Experience cannot be shortcut.

Hope this helps a little. It's tough to give proper advice without the machine in front of me.

Jennings

Thanks Jennings. Very good advice. I really thought that I'd just have to go 'All Metal', but didn't realize (or think about) turning the disc down enough to just pick up gold. I will definitely spend the time practicing out in the yard. I have 'can slaw' that I dug up the other day, along with other items that should give me a very good array of what I may come up on. I have a couple of pretty good sites I have permission to get a shot at (one is a 1796 home that to the owner's knowledge has never been hit) so I want to get fairly familiar with the device before I venture on these.

Thanks again!

I've always looked at the use of discrimination a little different for someone who believe in having a full featured detector. I set my discrimination to only reject iron and accept everything else, and I use it everywhere I hunt. Tot lots, parks, schools, relics it doesn't matter. I do this for two reasons. First I want to know what type of ground I'm dealing with. If the ground is high in foil, tabs, caps or trash free, I want to know and I don't want any masking if possible.

Second, and most important, is that I think it's good to have your detector set the same at all times because you get more familiar with how your detector responds, and always responds the same. If you're changing settings all the time your detectors response is also changing all the time. I find the settings I want and leave them there everywhere I hunt so I can always expect the same response unless something about the area is different.

set it on tone and rotate the disc control until the nickel just loses the high tone and all you have is a low tone. This should be the almost perfect setting where tabs break with the split tone. You will now be picking up everything from bottlecap to coins. You will get a mixed or split tone for the rings in the tab category but you will at least be able to decide whether or not to dig. You will in effect be hunting in lowest disc with tone sounds for an id.

sllingshot47 said:

set it on tone and rotate the disc control until the nickel just loses the high tone and all you have is a low tone. This should be the almost perfect setting where tabs break with the split tone. You will now be picking up everything from bottlecap to coins. You will get a mixed or split tone for the rings in the tab category but you will at least be able to decide whether or not to dig. You will in effect be hunting in lowest disc with tone sounds for an id.

Click to expand...

Exactly what he said.

Detector said:

I've always looked at the use of discrimination a little different for someone who believe in having a full featured detector. I set my discrimination to only reject iron and accept everything else, and I use it everywhere I hunt. Tot lots, parks, schools, relics it doesn't matter. I do this for two reasons. First I want to know what type of ground I'm dealing with. If the ground is high in foil, tabs, caps or trash free, I want to know and I don't want any masking if possible.

Second, and most important, is that I think it's good to have your detector set the same at all times because you get more familiar with how your detector responds, and always responds the same. If you're changing settings all the time your detectors response is also changing all the time. I find the settings I want and leave them there everywhere I hunt so I can always expect the same response unless something about the area is different.

Click to expand...

And again! This is very well put. I hunt the same way for the same reasons. The only thing I'll adjust on either of my detectors is sensitivity.

A lot of gold items read in the foil range. Only the heavier items such as rings will be in the nickel and pulltab range. A ladies engagement ring is in the low foil range just above iron. To get it all you must dig everything above iron. A real pain...but pays off, especially in the parks around playground equipment. When I used my Landstar I always hunted with the desc. set to the lowest and dug it all. With my M6 I hunt with no desc. and dig everything in the pos. vdi numbers. I found lots of earings and small pendants in the foil range.

Great advise all. Thanks! I went out Friday to a local park that use to be a water source for my city back in the early 1800s, one of the first of it's kind in the nation (they used hollowed out cedar logs for pipes). I thought I had my detector on Full Disc and got right against the old damn and got a hit, dug up on old horseshoe, I would assume from when they pulled the stones from the creek to build the damn. I actually had acidentally set the detector to All Metal. I kept searching and found another horsehoe.

I guess I should play with the Tone as has been suggested and see if I still hit items like this. Full Disc didn't pick them up as I tested after I found the first horseshoe. I just need to spend more time testing out in the yard with 'test' items.

Thanks guys for the great info!