Metal Detectors & Discrimination

Almost all multipurpose metal detectors have been made with some type of discrimination or target identification that is placed inside the circuitry itself. People that are interested in projects such as coin hunting will be interested in knowing this aspect is very useful and it can also be useful for gold prospectors if the feature is able to do what the prospector wants and does not eliminate localizing of gold as if it were iron. Bear in mind that in most cases this type of discrimination can only be depended on as long as the mineralization in the ground is not too high. The more the iron mineralization increases, the discriminator is no longer as reliable and the target identification reduces. Make sure you run some tests on the ground such as burying nuggets and testing the discriminating circuit to see if it works appropriately. You should do this test on nuggets of different sizes to be able to see at what depths they would be rejected and which they wouldn’t be. Motion discriminators and the older TR discriminators’ ability become reduced in their performance when it comes to increased mineralization. Discrimination can be as a type of elimination or modification of the audio signal when it passes over an unwanted item and it can also be an analog or have a digital reading on a screen that would show if the target is good or simply trash. Keep in mind that in some cases these kinds of features on metal detectors can mislead a prospector especially if the ground is highly mineralized. This does not mean though that just because a metal detector has these features that it can’t be used for prospecting. If you see that the detector can be relied on then use it, if not, consider getting a new one.