Digital Machines & Modern Trash?

Before I start this blog I'd like to make a point that I've made many times before, I dig all foil, pull tabs and bottle caps, however tedious and ridiculous it gets I still do it.

If I Was To Discriminate Out Modern Trash Would I Use A Digital Machine?

No I wouldn't, I've demonstrated on my Equinox 800 and Legend how notching out foil, pull tabs and/or bottle caps masks targets really badly - as does any bottle cap reject setting. Actually to put it bluntly notching out any segments of the VDI or "Cherry Picking" as some like to call it is a mugs game. I understand that some people might assign an iron tone to foil if their park is totally littered with it but this still doesn't eliminate target masking it simply changes the tone of the foil.

Some like to push the "Digging By VDI" approach, so you're basically targeting and isolating the 'coin' numbers in-between the 'trash numbers'. This has to be one of the most ridiculous pieces of advice I've ever heard, digging by VDI in heavy modern trash will not only drive you nuts but it's literally impossible because so many targets fall within, or close to the same numbers and these numbers will be all over the place due to the sheer amount of targets in close proximity to each other. This approach might seem like a great idea when showing it in your test garden but out in the real world it's useless and ridiculous 

What Machines Would I Use In Modern Trash If I Was Hunting A Park?

This is a very easy question to answer, any of my analog machines including my Fisher F75 which I look upon as a hybrid detector, their ability to discriminate out pull tabs and foil and still detect a nonferrous target in close proximity or directly underneath is a subject many choose not to talk about. Tesoro machines handle both pull tabs and ring pulls very well to the point where they make little to no noise on either if you've discriminated them out. 

BUT let us remember that not all pull tabs are the same so you will still dig a few. On analog detectors you don't have to arse around with notching out segments of a VDI scale "that will cause target masking". You simply turn the disc dial to the desired position and start swinging. Bottle caps can be a little more complicated due to their composition, but, with the exception of my Golden Mask detectors and my Deeptech Vista X the disc can be set so the signal breaks up but you can still detect a nonferrous target underneath or in close proximity to the bottle cap. Both the Golden Mask and the Vista X struggle to unmask nonferrous targets in close proximity to or under bottle caps. 

My Nexus machines work exceptionally well in modern trash as well and there's plenty of videos on my YouTube channel demonstrating this. You can actually cancel out pull tabs and still pick up small silver and gold. Guys out there that want to continue to crap on single frequency analog machines won't acknowledge anything I've mentioned here in this blog. Now let me make this point regarding Tesoro, they aren't as deep as the digital tech machines and this is always stated when people are making comparisons between the two. But let us remember that you can't go deep in trash just like you can't go deep in iron without removing it. So the depth point that some people like to push is meaningless in the scenarios I'm talking about.

Three Bars Of Bullshit

This is why I choose to dig it all out because you're clearing the top layers of the soil which over time will open the ground up so you can hunt for the potential deeper targets using proper deep machines and coils.  Discriminating out the 'nuisance' targets is never going to allow you to do this, there are no short cuts in this hobby but a lot of digital machines try to provide them, target trace, VDI and multiple bars of identification, to me this is all bullshit that catches the consumer more than catching the finds in your finds pouch at the end of a hunt.  It goes back to that age old point that I keep making, I'd rather use different machines that excel in certain areas of performance as opposed to one machine that can 'sort of' do a good job in most areas. In my opinion analog detectors deal with modern trash far better than the digital machines. 

Feel free to argue amongst yourselves about this subject!