Okay, so you finally decided to put the money down and you got your used metal detector. Receiving your metal detector in the mail is a fun, exciting, and exhilarating experience. Remember waiting and checking every day waiting for it to come in? Well now you got it, and now is the time to get going and learning about how to be successful with your metal detector.

One of the first things you will need to do is decide on how high you want to set your discrimination setting to. The discrimination settings are the settings on your metal detector that decide whether or not to register something based on what the sensors tell it. The lower the settings, the more frequently it will find things, the higher, the less things you'll find.

You might think that the best thing to do is set your discrimination all the way zero will get you less bottle caps and more silver, and gold, but that may not be the best idea. Countless beginners over react and set their setting too sensitive, and lose out.

It is a really good idea to keep the settings to zero, or have full metal detection on. Basically, you will be listening to all metal tones in this setting. So the key is, learning to discern a good or semi-good tone from all the target tones. This is a time consuming process but using a good test garden can enhance learning this skill. In many trashy environments this is the best possible method of discrimination. In high trash environments, the trash can hide the good stuff, so having the setting too high, will end up having you lose many opportunities for precious metals.

Lowering the sensitivity level on your detector is the only way that I know to increase good target finds in high trash areas as well as finding some targets that are masked by rejected targets. How much depth loss you get depends on the detector.

When a target is accepted at the lower discriminate level-indicated by a smooth buzzing signal-but changes to a snap or pop when checked, the broken signal alerts the operator to the possibility that a nickel, gold coin or ring has been located. This identifying process can be accomplished in seconds and applies to all metal detectors with two separate discrimination controls.

A favorite discriminating technique is what is termed as reverse discrimination. This technique can be used with all analogue VLF/TR detectors. Search in the VLF all-metal mode and when a target is discovered, pinpoint it to the exact center and place the coil on the soil at that exact point. Without moving the coil, switch the mode to TR and lift the coil from the the soil. If the audio remains the same or decreases you have a good target.

If the signal increases in volume when the coil is lifted the target is bad. This explains the reverse designation for this technique, as in analog detectors, good targets will produce volume and bad targets are silent.

A key point to improving your discrimination with metal detectors that have ground balance controls that are functional in both all metal and discrimination modes, is to make sure you ground balance your detector before adjusting your discrimination. The reason for this is that phase shift takes place in ground balancing and switching into discrimination after ground balancing will avoid any possible phase shift in your discriminator.

Lower your discrimination in almost all treasure hunting environments and yes lower your sensitivity level at the same time. Lower it a little will increase your depth in almost all site areas.

Take the time to practice, and get used to detecting in your back yard. One fun game to do is have the kids bury stuff, and then practice listening to the sounds and being able to identify different kinds of metals. Put you used metal detector to use, and have fun!