I was hoping someone could help me figure out what each mark on the Discriminate knob on the Vaquero roughly equates to? The first notch is obviously all metal. Then goes mark - iron - mark - mark - 5¢ - Tab - mark - mark - Max. What do the marks after iron and before nickel supposed to equate to. I have found that foil seems to be around the mark before 5¢. What about the 2 notches after Tab, or the mark after iron? Thanks for any of your experience as I learn my machine better.
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First off, you have to understand that certain targets come in at specific places most of the time, tabs around tabs, dimes high and you can't disc them out, zincolns around the 3:00 range most of the time, trash all over the place..but none of this is in stone, ever.
Too many things happening out there, soil conditions, masking metal near other targets changing the signal, how targets are laying in the ground and even depth can affect everything.
Look at this scale of common targets on this old Whites unit, it translates directly over to your disc knob, iron low, silver high and everything in between.
This is a normal range for targets on all detectors including the Vaq but again, normal is not normal all the time.
Past that iron mark you are into the foil range on those next two marks but don't believe only foil comes in there, if you do and avoid digging all of it you might miss many gold rings and even decent sized silver chains.
The marks after Tab are the range between higher tabs and lower zinc to about the 3:00 area and tabs, especially beaver tails, can easily come in higher than that dead on tab mark and some zincolns can come in below the 3:00 usual zincoln range especially if they are eaten up rotten types...or other zinc items can come in this range too like junk jewelry and I have dug a few zincolns above that 3:00 area, too.
Above the 3:00 area you can get into all sorts of things like some pop tops, screw on caps, decent sized can slaw and even full cans sometimes but not only junk all the time.
I have found a few large brass or bronze tokens in that range.
Maxed out the knob will still not disc out copper cents, dimes, quarters and the other large denomination US coins although you can still get some large trash that won't disc out either.
That disc knob is a range that can give you clues about what you are swinging over depending on where it ends up as you dial or thumb up to the fade out point or the way I always do it dialing past the fade out point and then back down to listen how all targets "come in".
A more accurate way to do it IMO.
Below will give you some information about your disc knob and two specific types of metals I usually hunt for, silver and gold.
The pic of the disc knob is off a Compadre but it is the same on the Vaq and matches up so a little more info about targets for you.
Notice the silver chain picture...those chains that came in at foil were in the range you asked about, the two marks between iron and 5¢.
Look at the gold info.
That stuff can come in anywhere and I have found most of mine in the area above iron into those two marks up to the 3:00 area in zinc on big gold 10k class rings.
It just takes practice and after digging enough targets at all levels you start to remember where most things usually shake out but always keep this in the back of your mind...
There are many techniques we can learn and use to help us make some pretty good and accurate educated guesses about what we are swinging over but without X Ray vision the only way to know 100% what is laying in the ground hiding is to dig it.
