If you discriminate, you lose!
What used to be a rather unsophisticated thing now works almost perfectly thanks to the latest technology - just turn up a control or a setting value and unwanted metals such as iron objects or old can tabs from drinks cans are filtered out. But should discrimination or filtering out signals be used without hesitation? That is the crucial question here!
A little story to start with: Here in our team, everyone knows the story of a prospector and beachcomber from the USA who told us in a conversation that he had been exploring the beach for years and had only found a gold ring once ( ! ) during this time. During the conversation, he then explained that he always sets the discriminator to a very high setting, as he doesn't want any can tabs or other scrap metal to be displayed by the Metalldetektoren. The only thing he hadn't thought of was that the high setting of his discriminator also faded out gold rings. For an experienced detectorist, such a story is of course more than painful, because the man has certainly "walked over" one or two gold rings over the years.
But when does it really make sense to use or activate a discriminator? We here in the team have come to the conclusion that it only makes sense for us to activate a discriminator to hide iron or objects made of iron. A classic situation for this would be, for example, filtering out iron signals on a scrapped field. There are simply days when you don't want to dig up "every" signal and the discriminator function is very practical and actually a great thing.
However, if you turn the discriminator up too high and set the value too high, it can quickly happen that you unintentionally hide " good " objects and finds due to the similar conductance. So if you discriminate, you lose! You could also say that the discriminator function can be both a blessing and a curse.
Our tip: Always use the disc mode with extreme caution. We personally only use the discriminator very rarely, and if we do, then at most to filter out iron signals with a low conductance.
To get to know your Metalldetektoren better, you should test the disc mode of your Metalldetektoren with different metals in an interference-free and metal-free environment before you start probing. This will allow you to get to know your detector and the discriminator function better and find out relatively easily which metals are no longer displayed at which setting. This is the best way to develop a feeling for which type of metal to hide with which disc setting ...
