Tesoro Golden uMax Goes Deep

[tabman]

I went for a few hours to a local school that's fairly new. I was trying some different things with the Golden to see what it would do. I ran it for awhile with zero discrimination and no notch. I set the 'notch width' knob just a hair past the 12 o'clock position on my old tone Golden. At that setting on my detector a foil sports drink cap will sound off under the iron low tone with the notch switch in the off position.

The foil sports drink cap is about halfway into the foil range. I carry a foil sports drink cap to set the tone and discrimination.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a picture of a couple of them next to a quarter.

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Any target above the foil sports drink cap and up to and including a nickel will sound off like a duck with a sore throat. That's the range and sound that I like the most and love to dig, because that's the sound that small to mediumn gold rings make that are most likely to be lost at a school or local park. I ignore the next to the highest tone which includes zinc pennies, pull tabs and screw caps. I also ignore the low iron tone. I dig all the high tones which includes copper pennies, dimes, quarters, half dollars, silver dollars and silver rings.

Oh, I had the threshold and sensitivity both set to their highest settings. The Golden ran smoothly and quietly at those setting.

Did I find a gold ring or silver ring today? Nope, but I did give myself a good chance at finding one. However, I did find 58 coins without having to dig a bunch of trash.

Later on in the day I notched and discriminated out everything but my favorite gold/nickel range and high conductive coin/silver ring range. Here's the kicker, even with all that discrimination and notching I found this deep old penny. It was nearly 7 inches deep.

The Tesoro Golden uMax is one sweet machine.

tabman

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[DiggerDug]

No doubt it's a good machine. I love tone id and would like to have a golden. But my question is if there is a way to adjust the GB on it? Is there a pot on the board?

 

[tabman]

No doubt it's a good machine. I love tone id and would like to have a golden. But my question is if there is a way to adjust the GB on it? Is there a pot on the board?

I'm not certain, but there should be one. Whatever it's set at, it's perfect for my soil. I see that you're from Georgia. Does your Cibola and Compadre work OK at your location?

tabman

 

[DiggerDug]

Soil? LOL I wish. Red devil clay here. The Compadre does fine most places. I adjust the gb on the Cibola with the trimmer inside. I hold the pinpoint button in for all metal and turn the trimmer after pumping the coil up and down. Works great too.

 

[tabman]

Soil? LOL I wish. Red devil clay here. The Compadre does fine most places. I adjust the gb on the Cibola with the trimmer inside. I hold the pinpoint button in for all metal and turn the trimmer after pumping the coil up and down. Works great too.

I was born and lived on Sand Mountain in Alabama for most of my childhood and go back there to visit quite often. That's not far from you. That red dirt is hell to detect in.

tabman

 

[tvr]

tabman,
Nice write up on how you set it up. Someday I may get a Golden.

Those peel off foil drink seals come in at or above the conductivity of thin gold and very thin silver chains. If you aren't digging those foils you won't get a thin chain that does not have a pendant or charm attached to it (unless chain is spotted with your eyes).

As an aside, if you call that penny old, I'd hate to think what you'd call me. ;-)
Cheers,
tvr

 

[tabman]

tvr, I know that about the small chains, but I can only dig so many targets in one day, so I'm selective on what I dig. I average digging way over a hundred targets a day.

tabman

 

[DiggerDug]

I was born and lived on Sand Mountain in Alabama for most of my childhood and go back there to visit quite often. That's not far from you. That red dirt is hell to detect in.

tabman[/quote]

That's cool. I lived in Chickamauga for a few years and detected in that area. Stevenson, Bridgeport, and Trenton. Some good relic hunting there if you know where to look.

 

[ds6191]

Tabman do you have good soil where you detect ? I have real good soil here in Illinois and I get really good depth with the silver. I have it down to the Golden vs Vaquero. It's great to hear what the golden can do once you learn what it's telling you. Dan

 

[slingshot]

Yes, there is a g/b trimmer. Look up all posts by Mike Hillis because I think it also affects the tones.

 

[DiggerDug]

Tabman, have you ever done an air test on the Golden ? If so could you post them here please. Thanks

 

[tabman]

Tabman, have you ever done an air test on the Golden ? If so could you post them here please. Thanks

Man I'm really glad that you brought that up.

I haven't tested my old tone Golden again since I sent it in to Tesoro for a tune-up and service. Whatever they did, it's now running like new. I first tested it with no notch, full threshold, full sensitivity and zero discrimination. It had absolutely no chatter at those settings in my backyard.

Nickel -10 inches
Dime - 9 inches
Quarter - 10

Tested with wide notch and the discrimination set to the preset with all the other settings remaining the same:

Nickel - 6 inches
Dime - 7 inches
Quarter - 8 inches

I used my Teknetics Omega to see how it would compare to my Golden.

I set the Omega at zero discrimination and turned the sensitivity up as high as I could without getting any chatter. The setting was 59. I used the 3 tone setting.

Nickel - 9 inches
Dime - 7 inches
Quarter - 8 inches

I tried to test the Omega at full sensitivity, but the chatter was so much, I couldn't even hear the tones to do the test. I really enjoy using the Omega in places where there's no EMI. It's a great machine. It's well balanced and easy to swing, but the engineers really need to address its EMI problem. If I'm going to a new location with the Omega, I always take a back-up detector in case there's any EMI in the area. In all fairness, the Omega does goes really deep in areas that have no EMI.

After doing the test, I'm going to be taking my Golden uMax out more, because it's plenty deep without any annoying chatter.

tabman

 

[DiggerDug]

Thanks a lot for the info. I think you are the first to put up numbers on the Golden. They are realy good. The Teknetics look like good machines except they seem to be a bit overly sensitive in some areas. But I think with cell towers, powerlines, and other interference in our airwaves it's the norm now. Thanks again.

 

[tvr]

tabman,
Interesting that the notch and discriminator setting affect the dime / quarter end of the conductivity range as much as it does. I'd expect the disc and notch to eat into the response on the nickle like it does in your test; the high end surprises me.

Which one affects the high end more, the zero vs default disc setting or the notch?
Cheers,
tvr

 

[tabman]

tabman,
Interesting that the notch and discriminator setting affect the dime / quarter end of the conductivity range as much as it does. I'd expect the disc and notch to eat into the response on the nickle like it does in your test; the high end surprises me.

Which one affects the high end more, the zero vs default disc setting or the notch?
Cheers,
tvr

I'm scratching my head over the big difference with the nickel myself. I'm not sure what caused the big difference. I see that I'm going to have to do some more air test at different settings. Zero discrimination with notch, preset with notch and preset with no notch compared to zero discrimination and no notch.

tabman

 

[tvr]

The nickle, conductivity wise, would be closer to the discriminator cut off and close to an edge of the notch filter. So, I'd expect both to affect response for the nickle.

Use your favorite search engine and look up low pass filter and high pass filter. Many entries will give you pictures or diagrams of a frequency response curve. An ideal filter will have a square shape in the response curve. Real life filters are not ideal and do not cut out just what you want them to cut out, they have a slope. The slope is representative of where that nickle is ... on part of the slope of the notch. It is also not too far from the discriminator cut out when discriminator is at the default setting rather than at minimum.

There is also a term with filters, insertion loss. That is how much of all the signal band you loose. I am wondering if turning the notch off helps the dime and quarter range. That would indicate some insertion loss with the notch.
Cheers,
tvr

 

[tabman]

Good info tvr! You got my curiosity up. I know on my Vaquero that full discrimination doesn't affect the depth all that much on dimes and quarters. I'll try to do the air test tomorrow and post the results.

tabman

 

[Mike Hillis]

Good report on the Golden, Tabman.

HH
Mike

 

[tabman]

The nickle, conductivity wise, would be closer to the discriminator cut off and close to an edge of the notch filter. So, I'd expect both to affect response for the nickle.
tvr

Tvr, the tests appear to support your statement.

I went ahead and did the entire test over again since I had to do it inside, because it's wet, cold and rainy outside. Keep in mind that the numbers represent the very edge of what I would consider a tone that I would dig. That's a hard thing to decide and is not precise. Also I could not set the the discrimination to it's minimum inside, because It started to get a little chatty at that setting. Since I wanted a test done with no chatter, I set the discrimination at the 'iron' setting instead of at the minimum setting. Also the notch width control settings are not included, because it had little or no effect with the depth as far as I could tell.

Discrimination set at 'iron' with no notch - Nickel 9 inches, Dime 8 inches, Quarter 9 inches

Discrimination set to the 'preset' with no notch - Nickel 7 inches, Dime 7 inches, Quarter 8 inches

Minimum discrimination with notch set to wide - Nickel 5 inches, Dime 7 inches, Quarter 8 inches

Minimum discrimination with notch set to narrow - Nickel 5 inches, Dime 7 inches, Quarter 8 inches

Discrimination set to 'preset' with notch set to wide - Nickel 5 inches, Dime 7 inches, Quarter 8 inches

Discrimination set to 'preset' with notch set to narrow - Nickel 5 inches, Dime 7 inches, Quarter 8 inches

tabman

 

[tvr]

tabman,
Now you have a feel for what settings on the Golden may do to affect detection depth. Terrific test exercise.

Couple of things that the results make me think about:
-with this detector, the discriminator when not at minimum, affects depth some across the whole range and not just near the cut off of the discriminator setting.
-Variance in test results don't mean each test is not valid. It means you need to expect variances and if you care to figure out why there are variances, you can account for them and make tests more consistent. First test with minimum disc and no notch were 10 inch on nickle and dime and then when repeating the test on a different day they were 9 inches. So what changed? air humidity, carrying cell phone, detector nearer to interfering signals, different sweep speed on tests, not as centered on coil on second tests, an accumulation of factors? My thoughts, (opinions) are that piecing together all the observations as you hunt and test your unit(s) adds to how effective you can be hunting and reading what your detector is telling you about changing conditions and how you may compensate for changing conditions. (sorry for the run-on sentence.)
Cheers,
tvr