Golden Mask 5+ User Guide
GMD -
www.goldenmaskdetectors.com - Golden Mask Official Distributor
12
Golden Mask 5+ User Guide
GMD -
www.goldenmaskdetectors.com - Golden Mask Official Distributor
13
Setting the discrimination depth (Disc. Depth)
The Discrimination Depth setting is something different from the usual discrimination you
see on some other brands and models. On the Golden Mask 5+ this setting controls the
depth the detector discriminates targets at. The lower the value, the closer to the coil the
discrimination works. And vice versa. The default setting is 8.
In general, you’ll want your machine to discriminate at the maximum depth of detection.
The problem is that the discrimination and the depth of detection are opposite, that’s why
the default setting is 8, not 15.
So, what are the lower values for? If you set the Disc. Level to zero, you will discriminate
the objects near the surface and dig all the deep targets. Deep targets are usually ancient,
so they could be interesting, even if they are made of iron. Another use of the lower Disc.
Depth values is when you search on a mineralized ground. On such ground, all metal
detectors tend to indicate deep non-ferrous targets as ferrous. With Disc. Depth set to or
near zero, these deep non-ferrous targets will be properly indicated as non-ferrous. In ad-
dition, you will have a slightly better detection depth.
With higher values of the Disc. Depth the detector is faster, so if you want maximum
recovery speed, use higher values and 18kHz working frequency.
To set the Disc. Depth, press the DISC MODE/DISC LEVEL button, select the Disc. Depth
option and confirm with ENTER. Then select the desired value with the - and + buttons
and confirm with ENTER.
Ground balance (GB)
The ground balance is a setting that compensates for different ground conditions. There
are soils with no to very strong magnetic properties (the so-called mineralization), and
the detector needs to be tuned-up for the soil conditions on the area you are searching
in. There are also conductive soils (salt soils or wet beach sands) that also need ground
compensation. There is also a combination of both mineralization and conductivity, which
is the worse case - on such ground most detectors cannot be ground-balanced or are run-
ning with strongly reduced performance. The Golden Mask 5+ is no an exception.
Strong mineralization reduces the working depth of the VLF (very low frequency) metal
detectors and their discrimination capabilities, while on low mineralized soils detectors
achieve their best working parameters. Again, the Golden Mask 5+ is no an exception.
Ground balancing depends also on the coil used. Usually, larger coils are harder to ground
balance.
The Golden Mask 5+ has two options for ground balancing: Auto and Manual.
As you could guess, Auto ground balance is made automatically. In the Golden Mask
5+ this mode is improved and now it’s done fully automatically. Golden Mask 5+ has a
separate processor unit to perform the ground balance in the best possible way. And it
does it quite well, especially on non-mineralized soils and lack of electromagnetic fields.
However, the best ground balancing is done manually, especially on mineralized soils, clay
soils or wet beach sand.
Manual ground balancing the machine is best, if you perform it the right way. On min-
eralized soils a proper manual ground balance could dramatically increase the machine
performance and depth of detection.
DISC MODE DISC DEPTH
SELECT
DISC. DEPTH
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