grubstake said:Monte's a pedantic old coot, but generally knowledgeable and reliable, IMHO. If you read again what he says, he is talking about the Discrimination mode not actually going down to zero. He is NOT saying that there isn't a separate, true All Metal mode on these detectors, as you have concluded. There is no confusion on his part or mine and my above comment stands.
The Gold Bug/G2 and related models use a control panel like that below, where the red dot at 6 o'clock below the Mode knob on the right, indicates a switched Discriminate mode (DISC), with the level of discrimination controlled by the +/- buttons (DISC LEVEL). Switching the Mode knob clockwise from the 6 o'clock position, changes the detector into true ALL METAL mode with a variable THRESHOLD level. In All Metal mode, the +/- buttons manually control the detector's level of GROUND BALANCE and discrimination is not available:
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/4012/1455932232_all_metal.jpg
For somebody who has never used such devices, this may be somewhat hard to follow, but in use, the sound and 'feel' of detecting in All Metal vs Discriminate mode is very clearly different and there is no mistaking the one for the other.
You really helped me a lot. Thanks to your post, and explanation, I started reading (that is why I disappeared for a while) about how metal detectors really work, what different options mean, and how to use them. About the importance of frequency, ground balancing, threshold, and so on. I think I will go for G2, because it seems to have frequency high enough to detect small objects, but not to too high. Some detectors dedicated for gold hunt have around 70-90kHz, but I guess, that makes them too targeted, and G2 (19kHz) should be sensitive enough for a needle, but also versatile enough to give me some opportunities to play it with it outside.