If you discriminate, you lose!

Today almost every metal detector has a discriminator. Even inexpensive entry-level detectors can filter out unwanted metals so that the detector does not report them.

What used to be a rather crude feature now works almost perfectly thanks to modern technology – turn up one control or setting and unwanted metals such as iron objects or old ring pulls from drinks cans are ignored. But should you use discrimination, i.e. filtering out signals, without a second thought? That is the crucial question!

A little story to start with: everyone on our team knows the story of a detectorist and beach hunter from the USA who said in a conversation that he had been detecting on the beach for years and in all that time had found only one (!) gold ring. Later in the conversation he mentioned that he always set his discriminator very high, because after all he did not want his detector to report ring pulls and other scrap metal. What he had not considered was that such a high discrimination setting also filters out gold rings. For an experienced detectorist a story like that is painful to hear, because over all those years the man has surely walked straight over more than one gold ring.

So when does using the discriminator actually make sense? On our team we have come to the conclusion that, for us, discrimination only makes sense for filtering out iron or iron objects. A classic example would be filtering out iron signals on a field full of scrap. There are simply days when you do not want to dig up every single signal, and that is exactly what the discrimination function is good for – it is a really useful feature.

But if you turn the discrimination up too far, it can quickly happen that you unintentionally filter out good objects and finds as well, because they have a similar conductivity. So if you discriminate, you lose! You could say that discrimination can be both a blessing and a curse.

Our tip: always use the discrimination mode with great care. We ourselves use the discriminator only very rarely, and if we do, then at most to filter out iron signals with a low conductivity.

To get to know your metal detector better, test its discrimination mode with different metals in an interference-free, metal-free place before you go detecting. That way you get to know your detector and its discrimination function and can find out quite easily which metals are no longer reported at which setting. This is the best way to develop a feel for which type of metal you hide with which discrimination setting.