I've had the Deleon out twice now for a couple of short hunts; 2 hours the first time and one hour just this evening. It may be growing on me but I'm on the fence with it over what I have used in the past but those were a bit higher end machines too though. I'm not too impressed with depth on it right now in my test garden but maybe I don't need to dig 8" dimes but just knowing it's down there and I'm not getting solid, repeatable hits kinda bugs me. The TID is not locking on very well unless it's a coin for the 95 reading. Trash is ofcourse, all over the place but my nickels are very jumpy; varying at times by 10 points on the TID and this is not beyond surface to 4". I'm digging all those signals and am finding nickels but wondering why they are so jumpy with no surrounding metal to smear things a bit. I don't know, I am a bit critical if things are not just right and it's no exception with any of the detector brands I have used; I just tell it how I see it. Also, three hours is not even scratching the surface, but in all fairness I have almost 40 hours on a Cortes that is no longer with me.
Something else to ponder as well here is the internal GB setting. I have flipped it into all metal and bobbed the coil just to see how close it was to my soil conditions and I can swear that it sounds like the setting is too positive for the sites I have checked. I can tell real easy the gb on my tiger shark when listening for positive or negative but this one is a bit harder to distinguish but I'm thinking its getting louder as the coil approaches the ground. I was trying to tweek the threshold a bit to try to get the best audible tone but that's what it looks like. I'm wondering how much the depth of the unit can be affected by a little too positive or slightly positive GB? I also have to wonder if my TID may lock on better and settle down if I were to open it up and turn the GB down a bit to match it closer to my soil. Any thoughts my compadres? (no pun intended lol, Tesoro humor for you amigos
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Something else to ponder as well here is the internal GB setting. I have flipped it into all metal and bobbed the coil just to see how close it was to my soil conditions and I can swear that it sounds like the setting is too positive for the sites I have checked. I can tell real easy the gb on my tiger shark when listening for positive or negative but this one is a bit harder to distinguish but I'm thinking its getting louder as the coil approaches the ground. I was trying to tweek the threshold a bit to try to get the best audible tone but that's what it looks like. I'm wondering how much the depth of the unit can be affected by a little too positive or slightly positive GB? I also have to wonder if my TID may lock on better and settle down if I were to open it up and turn the GB down a bit to match it closer to my soil. Any thoughts my compadres? (no pun intended lol, Tesoro humor for you amigos
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It's not going anywhere any time soon so I'm not looking to get rid of it especially before I have gone through a lot of batteries. I am finding stuff just noticing things and learning about it still.
Like Furious T said, it may be premature to pass judgement just yet with my limited amount of time on it. A lot has to do with what you find as well. Did I go out and find a gold ring or other jewelry with it? No I did not and it's easy to think your machine is sub par if you don't go out and clean up with it. Some guys go out and find a ton of clad and jewelry every hunt, *cough, cough...Phinbolt" and it's easy to make you think you can go out and duplicate another person's results. That's just not the case though b/c the other person may have much better locations/sites than you, have a lot more experience in detecting and with the machine they are using; not to mention more time spent working for those finds. Then again, some of it is not real but made up like on American "wannabe" Diggers. Oh man, I feel for the suckers that get into the hobby b/c they watched that show! Can you imagine them spending a lot of money on equipment, heading out to the park or some other site to get rich and then the sinking disappointment setting in as they pull up foil, tabs, and bottle caps oh my!
I may have had some higher expectations than I should have is all; nothing like what I just mentioned but when you get a new detector of any kind you are hoping that it changes the whole game for you by sucking up the good finds and proving what you owned in the past as inferior. That is just so untrue though; lets say I picked up Minelabs new money pit, the CTX3030. Would it have been any better than my Deleon? Probably not in all honesty but I would have been disappointed for sure for realizing I was the biggest sucker around for spending that much money on something that turns out not to be any more revolutionary than what I already used in the past. I'm sure some users will disagree with me but who want's to admit to being the fool? Again, gonna stick with the Deleon to give it time to prove itself; if I spend a lot of time with it and just feel I can do better, then we can part ways but I'm looking forward to getting out some more and hoping to clean up with it
). I get what you say about the ground balance, so what I'm about to suggest might seem a bit strange to you....dont set the sensitivity very high to start with....I know many people set the sensitivity as high as it will go...with the DeLeon, this will make it difficult to get a good "read" on targets within 2"-3" of the surface. I dont most of my hunting with the sensitivity between 4 and 6.....sometimes as low as 2. At these settings you will probably miss the deeep targets, but getting to know the machine at an early stage could be more important than getting the odd deep coin now....you will have plenty of time to experiment with both the sensitivity and discrimination, and although the DeL has a relatively small screen, it gives a pile of information, once you get to know it. All the best, take your time and you will do well, Pete
As I have said in the past I have been using the DeLeon exclusivly for since 2003 the first couple of years were not too hot but I did find a few more rings and deep silver than I had with low end BH. That is why I bought the DeLeon to begin with I used the BH for 2 years with little success but knew there was more out there. About the 3rd year swinging the D I had a breakout year I found 25 rings and half were gold maybe the locations were the key or I just started digging more of the I call them iffy signals but I did learn the language of the DeLeon on gold I still get surprised once in a while when gold shows up out of the normal values. But I still dig a lot of trash I have heard many people on this site say if u are not digging pull tabs and nickels you miss the gold I would have to add foil and zinc as I have dug a lot of rings there also. I too have had thoughts of maybe if I got a machine with more bells and whistles I would find more I even worked where they sold ML and seeing those ever day was tough but I would tell myself if the DeLeon did not find it, it was my fault not the machine and many times as I was selling a detector I would throw Tesoro into the mix even tho we did not sell Tesoro Some people just had to have the most expensive one out there and it is probably collecting dust somewhere instead of collecting goodies oh well more for me. Anyway guess the long and the short of it is I do spend a lot of time swinging the DeLeon so the law of averages does apply but Do Not short change the DeLeon I would put my machine up against any of the more expensive ones out there!