Why the big deal on Discrimination?

[hAyyoUinAU]

I do play around with discrimination a lot with my kids at the park as well. Its fun to try and guess what it is though and trying to use the numbers and sounds as well.

All good. I don't hate discrimination idea, I just don't use it all when looking for AU.

Alfoil is the biggest pain...same numbers as coins and good stuff. lol

 

[Heatho]

Same here, I don't bother even trying to descrim on the hunt for gold, I do cherry pick in trashy goldfields but usually try to dig everything.

 

[Ridge Runner]

I would not use a CTX in a prospecting area because it is not sensitive enough for tiny nuggets, My VLF does not suffer from Disc Lag so using the Disc is not a problem with Iron stained Gold or jewellery, I have areas where I can hit 30 or 40 targets in one sweep of the coil and I can still pick out the good and the bad, Even though hearing every target whether they are good or bad can drive you nuts by the end of the day/weeks so it is important to take regular breaks just to give your mind and ears a rest, I have the option of cutting out the signal of the junk targets but I don't bother because I like to hear whats going on in the ground.

J.

 

[Roscoe]

If you fellows are digging every thing? Then how come there is so much iron invested sites around the gold fields? and i know for a fact some of them have gold amoungst them. So there is two possible scenarios here 1- people walk away from these areas or 2- people are using discrimination

I would say number 1, because 99% of people are using mono coils with super sensitive machines whoo... not a good combo for iron areas, hey?

 

[Ridge Runner]

If you fellows are digging every thing? Then how come there is so much iron invested sites around the gold fields? and i know for a fact some of them have gold amoungst them. So there is two possible scenarios here 1- people walk away from these areas or 2- people are using discrimination

I would say number 1, because 99% of people are using mono coils with super sensitive machines whoo... not a good combo for iron areas, hey?

Spot On Roscoe, a lot of my sites have been hammered for over 50 years yet I am still finding stuff but there is a massive amount of junk and Iron left in the ground, It took me 3 weeks to do one area the size of 2 tennis courts and that was 7 days a week 12 to 14 hours a day, So discrimination has something going for it because every time they Plough it the finds come up.

John.

 

[hAyyoUinAU]

If you fellows are digging every thing? Then how come there is so much iron invested sites around the gold fields? and i know for a fact some of them have gold amoungst them. So there is two possible scenarios here 1- people walk away from these areas or 2- people are using discrimination

I would say number 1, because 99% of people are using mono coils with super sensitive machines whoo... not a good combo for iron areas, hey?

Scenario 1 is most likely.

Scenario 2 you are kidding yourself. What you guys discriminate the pull tabs from the iron nails. Great stuff. Wow. lol
Ferrous or non ferrous, that's it hey. lol

Anyways your points have been made over and over but nothing proven to be a certainty. Far from it.

My question is, why do some people throw back rubbish they dig out of a hole? I come back from every trip I make with a bag of rubbish, not always full but will contain junk metal and plastics I find. To me, cleaning up gets rewarded later with nice gold.

Whilst others are busy discriminating and deciding the unknown, I am just busy digging. I am 40, far from old, and I will dig till the cows come home if I have to. If you don't like digging and get disappointed, then this isn't the right hobby for you.

Is it fun to guess what it could be and dig it up and be right? YES
Is it cool to decide not to dig a target only to have some other dig up that rusty pin? YES

Is that why I prospect? NO. I am not a gambling guy. To me, everything that comes out of the ground can be information, very useful too. And it is history, regardless if it is 2 years old or 50 years old. Thus me not understanding why some like to discriminate. Unless the price of aluminium went up... lol

 

[hAyyoUinAU]

Everything removed from the ground is information, useful to the modern day prospector. Whether it is gold, junk, whatever... its all clues about what happened.
And only the person who removed it knows that information. If they never share it, it is lost forever.

Good luck everyone. may your discriminating or non discriminating bring you plenty of joy.

 

[Ridge Runner]

If you fellows are digging every thing? Then how come there is so much iron invested sites around the gold fields? and i know for a fact some of them have gold amoungst them. So there is two possible scenarios here 1- people walk away from these areas or 2- people are using discrimination

I would say number 1, because 99% of people are using mono coils with super sensitive machines whoo... not a good combo for iron areas, hey?

Scenario 1 is most likely.

Scenario 2 you are kidding yourself. What you guys discriminate the pull tabs from the iron nails. Great stuff. Wow. lol
Ferrous or non ferrous, that's it hey. lol

Anyways your points have been made over and over but nothing proven to be a certainty. Far from it.

My question is, why do some people throw back rubbish they dig out of a hole? I come back from every trip I make with a bag of rubbish, not always full but will contain junk metal and plastics I find. To me, cleaning up gets rewarded later with nice gold.

Whilst others are busy discriminating and deciding the unknown, I am just busy digging. I am 40, far from old, and I will dig till the cows come home if I have to. If you don't like digging and get disappointed, then this isn't the right hobby for you.

Is it fun to guess what it could be and dig it up and be right? YES
Is it cool to decide not to dig a target only to have some other dig up that rusty pin? YES

Is that why I prospect? NO. I am not a gambling guy. To me, everything that comes out of the ground can be information, very useful too. And it is history, regardless if it is 2 years old or 50 years old. Thus me not understanding why some like to discriminate. Unless the price of aluminium went up... lol

I Only disc out Iron, I am fine with digging pull tabs because the more I find the better because they read the same as some on my wanted targets but once I remove them I know that the next time the area gets ploughed that I stand a good chance of finding the targets I am after, I only disc out small Iron and I can tell by the smoothness of the signal what it item is and when the VDI kicks in I am normally right, Having a total of around 200 target ID's does help narrow it down somewhat,

 

[Ridge Runner]

Ya know I have never understood why people throw the junk back in the hole I wear a tactical type vest with so many pockets and I put the junk in them and If I find Farming parts I place them near a tree or at the side of a field, The rest of the stuff I take home,

The only negative side about using discrimination is that 99% of the junk gets left in the ground and although it is good to disc it out, It is not good to leave it behind, In the past I have gridded an area and removed it all but it takes for ever, and the easiest way would be to remove the top 2 feet of soil and screen it, I have tried to remove what I thought was an Iron 1" pipe then turned out to be about 200 yards of Iron fencing, I dug up an area of about 12 feet by 40 feet and gave up in the end, It was just too big for one person to remove.

John.

 

[HarryHoudini]

Well I dug a wonderful signal the other day in GT.
Except someone had dug a hole used it as a toilet and put their finds in the hole.
Wish I could discriminate this...
Not happy

 

[hAyyoUinAU]

Well I dug a wonderful signal the other day in GT.
Except someone had dug a hole used it as a toilet and put their finds in the hole.
Wish I could discriminate this...
Not happy

Or find whoever did it and rub it in their face.

 

[HarryHoudini]

Really who does this kind of stuff.
It is our bush what on earth are we leaving for the kids.
We all plant trees that we will possibly never sit under but a better place for others.

 

[Roscoe]

LOL, I nearly busted a rib with your comment houndiniharry, haha. Now tell me was it ferrous or non-ferrous?

 

[HarryHoudini]

Tuna cans and bullets. All in a slurry

 

[oldtimerROB]

I will hit a hot stone at Dunolly usually within a minute of starting up. You will finds hundreds in a day. I pity those PI users having to dig up everything. My Impact is very good at discriminating them out with a low tone in all metal mode. I have proved this by initially digging them all up over a 3 month period and I can safely say it is 100% accurate and no gold was left behind. However due to the few iron and nails found the statistical accuracy of gold versus iron is not as high as with hot stones,but I have enough faith in the Impact now to give up digging everything and wholly rely what it is telling me,not to mention saving my back.

 

[madtuna]

I will hit a hot stone at Dunolly usually within a minute of starting up. You will finds hundreds in a day. I pity those PI users having to dig up everything. My Impact is very good at discriminating them out with a low tone in all metal mode. I have proved this by initially digging them all up over a 3 month period and I can safely say it is 100% accurate and no gold was left behind. However due to the few iron and nails found the statistical accuracy of gold versus iron is not as high as with hot stones,but I have enough faith in the Impact now to give up digging everything and wholly rely what it is telling me,not to mention saving my back.

Just curious....how much gold was recovered?

 

[patchfinder]

I never used the discrimination on the GPX, now I have a GPZ, I prefer to dig every signal, for me is the only way to be sure if is gold or something else. I don't mind to dig, is part of the fun, the anticipation. So no I don't miss the discrimination on my detector.

 

[hAyyoUinAU]

I never used the discrimination on the GPX, now I have a GPZ, I prefer to dig every signal, for me is the only way to be sure if is gold or something else. I don't mind to dig, is part of the fun, the anticipation. So no I don't miss the discrimination on my detector.

Have you noticed, or anyone else the difference between gold/lead signals and junk signals?

Gold seems to have a softer curve in the signal, where as other junk metals are more abrupt. Not sure if this is a 100% thing, but it is what I have experience so far.
Would be interested in feedback, as I know about the ZED warble and have heard others mention the softness that gold signals seem to have.

 

[Heatho]

Iron can sound a little fuzzy compared to gold or lead, aluminium will sound very bright. Some of the microphone preamps I've used over the years for recording music have different types of transformers on the outputs, some nickel wound, some silver wound, some with an iron core and copper wound. Each of these types of preamp transformers will sound very different depending on what metal is used in them and each inherent difference will suit particular instruments or a particular type of "sound" such as rock music. For instance preamps with iron transformers sound fantastic on heavy electric guitars giving them a bit of a fuzzy sound compared to say a very bright silver wound transformer.

http://www.adesignsaudio.com/500-series-preamps

My point being that each type of metal and configuration has it's own sound type. That being said, pretending you can know the difference between gold and trash with non discrimination detectors is going to lose you alot of gold as there are so many variables. Plenty of experienced detectorists say, "hey look at this 2oz nugget, sounded like trash but it wasn't".

In my opinion and experience iron is the easiest signal to pick due to the fuzz sound in the signal but plenty of nice nugs are encased in ironstone so.... dig everything with PI's and ZVT.

 

[isolation]

I've only just started playing with discrimination on the GPX, and digging "clearly" blanking targets has so far seen it pretty accurate. I still think it could discriminate out gold, but in a heavy trash area, even using it as a patch finder, then going over it without discrimination if you find gold makes sense to my little brain.