I normally only use just barely enough discrimination to discriminate out a common iron nail at a lot of sites that I detect. I can still hear nails clicking and popping in the audio response. That's the best setting when detecting a site for the very first time, because you'll need to find out what you're up against.
After digging a dozen or so targets change the discrimination if you feel the need to do so. Some sites you may want to dig it all and some sites you may want to use more discrimination. If I'm not feeling too sparky and the ground is hard to dig, I'll run up the discrimination. Not a good thing, but I'll do it sometimes. Only use as much discrimination as absolutely necessarily.
My favorite setting in the discrimination mode is a little negative on the ground balance, a very sight hum on the threshold before switching over to discrimination mode, discrimination set just barely high enough to discriminate out a nail and as much sensitivity as I can use without the detector becoming unstable. I want a quiet ride.
My favorite headphones: Killer B Wasp. They work great with Tesoro detectors.
I found that it's best to work small sections of a larger site and grid it off to make sure that I cover it completely coming at it at all angles. The great thing about Tesoro detectors is that you can work them super slow. The slower the better. It took me awhile to get that figured out. I thought by me covering more ground quickly, I'd find more. Nope!
I buy and tryout a lot of different detectors, because I want to see first hand how they'll do. I'm mostly a dig it all type hunter, because I'm curious to see what is making that audio beep so all those screen numbers and tones don't do a lot for me.
Once you get it figured out that a detector with a ID number screen and tone ID is not all that smart when using it at a normal site then a single tone detector will start making more sense. For an example, a so called smart detector will tell you that a Barber Half laying next to a nail is junk. The so called smart detectors only works well when air testing targets or finding a target in the field that's not laying close to anything else.
I think most people who detect are silver coin hunters, because they don't want to do a lot of digging. If that's the case, a single tone audio detector like the Vaquero is up to the task. By setting the Vaquero's discrimination up just barely high enough to discriminate out those pesky pull tabs it can out do most screen detectors. To top it off the Vaquero can do it without a bunch of noisy racket. Like I said before, I like a quiet ride.
You did great getting a Vaquero! Learn how to use it and it will become your favorite detector.
tabman
Here are a couple of examples of my testing:
