Bobby s said:
I haven't tried power balancing with my vaquero and idk if I will try it.
First comment is I'm one of those 'older' guys who's not up on the modern texting type thing and it took a minute to figure out what the 'idk' was.
I have found 'Power Balancing' can achieve the best functional performance in the Discriminate mode, especially if hunting in a more iron mineralized environment. Is it
always necessary to Power Balance a detector? No, but you can get better Disc. mode performance, especially in 'bad ground' if you do. You just don't want the GB setting to be too positive.
Bobby s said:
Shouldn't manufacturers set the machines to where they have the best chance of finding silver and gold?
Technically, they do ...... if they offer a true, conventional All Metal mode, because they we can find everything.
Most of us hunt a site in the Discriminate mode, so the results are going to be based upon how WE have the detector set up and how properly we sweep the search coil. If the detector, in this case a Tesoro, is a factory preset GB model, and of the GB is set too positive, then yes, we can have some impaired performance. If we tweak the GB for peak performance, or use a model such as the Vaquero that has manual GB, the advantage is in our hands to achieve the best all-around GB setting.
With the best settings for the conditions, and if we use a proper slow-motion sweep speed and not sweep too briskly which can cut in on performance, the odds will be in our favor.
Bobby s said:
I haven't found any deep silver with my vaquero yet and im really hoping I'm not missing it.
Facts: There's not as much silver coin age to be found as there used to be. Any detector maker or promoter can say what they want, but most of us who were out avidly detecting in the "early days" (and that would be me from March of '65 on through the '70s and early '80s), most of the silver coins and older coins that were easy picking we plucked. There just aren't that many old silvers or other oldies available.
Oh, there are some out there, but there's also a much greater abundance of modern-day trash. Trash that is higher conductive, like pull tabs and screw caps and more foil type and aluminum type junk, than what we ever experienced way back when. Thus, the shallower positioned junk, or trash too close to desired finds, masks the good targets. And it makes more people increase the Discriminate level, all of which adds up to masking and missing a lot of desired targets.
With your Vaquero, or any detector,
site selection is the important key, and then hunting a good potential site with the highest Sensitivity you can w/o noise or chatter, and the lowest Discrimination level you can tolerate. Be slow and methodical, patient, and dig all the good hits as well as the 'iffy' responses.
Odds are that your Vaquero doesn't need a trip to the factory service, just proper settings and a lot of time afield.
Monte