minelab xt 50 discrimination question

[matters]

I'm new to this and have a question on my new xt 50. I can set it on number 1 or 2 discrimintion level and it still picks up ferrous metal. It gives a reading between 33-36. One more question this evening while detecting in the garden I got a 33 signal. I dug it up and its a spike. Which should have been canceled out. I recheck my hole to make sure theres nothing else there. I then run the detector over the spike and it cancelled it out I then switched it to all metal mode and it read -6. Why the difference? I have lowered my sensitivity and checked it several times, checked my ground balance and it still pick up the ferrous metal I also have dug several aluminum tabs with the setting on #2 which is supposed to cancell them out. Is this common, am I doing something wrong or should I send this detector back?

 

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[BamaBill]

Nope, nothing wrong with the machine. The X-terras are unique in that discrimination is really a notch affair. Did you try detecting the spike from both directions? It will often discriminate out in one direction as a negative number, but will register as a 30 something in the other direction. Once you begin to recognize this you'll be able to avoid iron. Big iron fools most machines, and you need to get familiar with how it sounds and how the machine sees it. Its for this reason that I usually run in all metal and do my discriminating with my ears. That way I'm not losing depth the way you do with other machines when the discrimination is a gradually increasing kind of thing that will discriminate everything below a certain point. I'm afraid the X-terras are different enough that you have to figure out how certain targets react.