Notching Will Cost You Targets

I've explained many times in my blogs and my videos why I dig all non-ferrous targets, I'm wanting to open the ground up so I can bring in my larger coils and search for those deeper signals. I like to keep everything really simple, I don't use machines that you can punch magical programs into. I believe less is more when it comes to metal detecting, this is an aspect of the hobby that's been lost in recent years. Complication doesn't find you more in the ground, actually it can hinder you in more ways than one.

Tesoro Cutlass

Tech machines are all about target identification and shortcuts, people get so hung up on what the screen is telling them. If companies can keep people distracted with the promise of 'accurate' target identification and how stable it is to certain depths. They can carry on selling you machines with little to no variation in performance. Taking into account how detectors have moved forwards in recent years, there's still basic elements that aren't being achieved. I don't believe they're as versatile as we're led to believe and there's certain areas of performance that my older analog machines excel in compared to the tech units. 

Lots of people like to come up with programs, many of them involve notching out unwanted targets. These usually consist of bottle caps, ring pulls and foil, this might make for a quieter hunt but it's going to be costing you targets. Firstly all the desirable items that fall within the same numbers are going to be knocked out, and secondly, nonferrous targets close to the notched out items have a risk of getting masked. On both my Equinox 800 and Nokta Legend I can't disc out foil so I have to notch it out, in doing so this stops both machines from being able to hit on a small silver coin under the foil.

Equinox 800 & Legend Failed To See This Coin Under Foil

If these machines are so advanced how come my old Tesoro Cutlass can discriminate out the foil and still see the small silver coin underneath? There's literally nothing to this machine, I've said it many times before, you can't modify the digital machines as acutely as you can with the analog ones. I don't believe the 'one machine and coil can do it all' statement, I'd much rather have a variety of machines that all have their strengths. Some might go really deep, others might do well on the river in iron and others might just be really fun to swing, but I'd rather be swinging a detector that excels in the area I'm using it for, as opposed to a 'jack of all trades, master of none' type machine that shows average performance across the board.

Below is a video demonstrating the point I've made in this blog.