that's because we didn't have visual display when I got started in this great sport. Matter-of-fact, we didn't have Discrimination or Ground Balance or Tone ID or Auto-Tune. Several different batteries were used that are not available today, or they are expensive and very difficult to find, plus they were large and heavy. They were necessary to help power-up the vacuum tubes in some of the models I used.
Another expense was sending a detector in to a factory to get the search coil waterproofed, if desired and if they did it. Even the red, wooden search coils. Many search coils fastened to a rod with a couple of nuts and you couldn't change the coil angle, and the rods didn't adjust to different lengths. No 'S' rods and comfortable designs, just some awkward and clumsy, heavy contraptions to search with.
To my benefit, the primary trash encountered at most parks and schools, parking strips, hiking trails, vacant lots and other urban locations were iron nails, bottle caps, women's hair pins, and foil. Small foil from gum wrappers and bigger foil from discarded cigarette packets. There were a few other occasional ferrous based junk encounters, and a lot of smaller non-coin finds that were always enlightening to find, such as lead soldiers and Indians, toy cars, and many things often found then, but seldom located today in typical coin hunting locations, such as roller skate keys, bottle openers, and old Cracker Jack toys that were interesting and not the cheap worthless stuff we've seen for decades now. We used to find many more keys and key rings, including 'skeleton' keys.
'Depth' wasn't such a frequent discussion because we didn't really need it, with most targets being found in the surface to 2" or maybe 3" range. Earlier detectors didn't go very deep, and there wasn't much need to because the bounty of coins and other neat 'keepers' where all just waiting to be found without all the clutter we encounter today. Nope, no need, back then, as visual TID and VDI numeric read-outs weren't around. From March of '65 to the summer of '68 I used home-built BFO, then went to factory produced BFO and TR detectors.
As time progressed I moved up to the models with Discrimination, then the VLF/TR-Disc. models, but about the time I started to concentrate more on old homesteads, stage stops and ghost towns, along comes the Tesoro Inca in mid-'83. That slow-sweep/quick-response performance instantly satisfied my needs for having a very workable detector for the iron infested old sites I hunted as well as urban renovation, demo sites, vacant lots, and so forth. I was so impressed I started selling Tesoro's right away and continued until late 2004. I promoted Tesoro's to a lot of folks who had gone with early Target ID detectors for one simple reason: They worked well and didn't need to brisk sweep speed those early models did.
I added a TID to my arsenal for limited use for urban Coin Hunting in the early '90s, and went with an XLT in '94 .... but it was only part of my personal detector battery to complement my non-display Tesoro's. In '94 I also added a non-display White's Classic, and as time progressed I also moved up to some of the better performing models that happened to have visual displays. They performed well, even without the TID and VDI info, and I considered the added features simply a bonus. But that was still twenty years ago.
In the 'hey day' coins were plentiful in the bigger, populated towns, and the latter '60s through the '70s, when better years produced 120K to 130K, and when I was working more overtime and had to limit my detecting I was pulling 60K to 70K a year. Although coin recoveries started declining by about '80 or so, and by then I was also encountering more and more modern trash, such as pull tabs, I was still using non-display detectors the most as I shifted more of my attention away from urban Coin Hunting to concentrating on older sites.
Yes, I found more coins and good stuff using Tesoro's and other non-display detectors, but that was because there used to be a lot more out there to find and less modern, higher-conductive trash. A glance at my personal-carry detectors below tells it like it is. From an old and simple straight TR to a current high-performance detector with a TID and VDI display, including a non-display yet versatile Tesoro Bandido II µMAX, they all have their place. Non-GB to preset GB, to Manual GB to fast automated Ground Balance, yet they are all alike in one way. They are metal detectors.
Different features and performance, but they can be used to find metal and that's what I am after. Beyond that it is a matter of operator skill and knowledge of the detector, the search coil choices used, and the site selection because 'location' is the big key. I hunt basically the same way I have always hunted, and that is to rely on the audio response foremost. I use discrimination, but no more than barely enough to reject iron nails, and sometimes even less. I don't use Notch Disc. to be selective, and I don't "thumb the Discrimination control" either.
I just hunt the good old way by listening, but I do reference the visual display information to help classify some potential ferrous trash, and mainly to get an idea of what it is I am about to recover.
One thing I have always promoted, before I went to TID/VDI models and since, for success you should use little Discrimination and follow the "Beep-DIG!" approach to success.
If a person relies too heavily on a detector's visual display, or if they use too much Discrimination or don't go after the 'iffy' signals, then it doesn't matter if a detector has a display or not, their overall success will be diminished.
Monte
