Which Tesoro to buy...

[Richard-N-FL]

Hello all, I am not new to detecting. I own a Minelab Elite and am getting tired of the weight and the SLOOOW response in trash. I am interested in a Tesero but not sure which is best. I just want the BEST one for hunting old home sites and parks for coins. I will hold on to my elite for the beach.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Macaco]

Hi Richard.

I'm a Minelab guy too. Sovereign XS and Excalibur. Used an Explorer only once.

The Sov is a great coin machine but it is heavy and a little slow to recover between close together targets. I sold my Sov and I'm going to keep the Excal for salt water beaches.

I did a lot of research here and on some other forums and decided on the Cibola. It got here a couple days ago. I'm going to be using it hard the next few days and I'll post my impressions of the machine under field conditions.

So far I'm impressed. It's light, easy to use and air-tests like crazy. It's going to be a deep machine for sure.

I bought it for the same kind of sites you're planning to hunt, parks, school yards, ghost towns and I'm also going to be using it at freshwater beaches.

This Sovereign guy decided on the Cibola.

 

[North Georgia Relics]

you should consider the Cortes, DeLeon or Golden. These are the machines Tesoro recommends for coins. The Cotes and DeLeon are both TID machines.

The Cibola and Vaquero are great "all-terrain" machines. The Cibola is pretty much a turn on and go, while the Vaquero offers manual ground balancing.

All the machines are good, just depends on which features you want.

 

[Richard-N-FL]

Thanks for the info...I was considering the vaquero. How good is the target ID on the Cortes and Deleon? I am reading they are slow.

 

[North Georgia Relics]

The Vaquero is an excellent all-round machine and will probably give you more depth. The discrimination circuits in all the Tesoro machines are really hard to beat.

 

[Richard-N-FL]

Ok...good. So then the Cortes and the Vaquero are about the same in performance just that one has I.D and the other doesn't? I think I would like I.D better but don't know how well the Vaquero can tell me the difference between good and bad targets with just one sound. The minelab Elite had many different so I can sorta tell what is good or bad. Hoe can you tell the difference with the vaquero?

 

[Pap]

The Vaquero will have an advantage in depth in most cases. You would need to "thumb" the discrimination knob on it to make a determination on what was under the coil. If you are more comfortable with TID then you might be happier with either one of the TID units.
Pap

 

[Michigan Badger]

it depends on if you want a TID meter machine or sound only model. If you really want the meter I'd favor the DeLeon. The readout is larger and it gives you all you really need as far as target ID goes.

If you're a sound hunter like me, I'd say go with the Silver uMax or Tejon. The Tejon has the advantage of ground balance and is a great coin/ring finder. It isn't the greatest at iron discrimination though.

The Silver uMax is better at working around iron but isn't as deep as the Tejon as it comes stock with 8-inch coil. Put a 9x8 concentric coil on the Silver uMax and it may match or even go deeper than the Tejon at trashy sites. I think it clearly beats a stock Tejon at any site if fitted with the big 12x10 coil.

The Silver uMax with 12x10 coil is probably the ideal fresh water beach/civil war relic machine. However, the Tejon is also a great machine as it comes stock. But having logged lots of hours on both I'd say the Silver is clearly the better machine in trashy locations.

Take a Silver uMax with it's stock 8 inch coil to a trash filled site and laugh as you dig coin after coin at 3-5 inches deep. You wonder how everybody missed them. Oh, by the way, my two oldest coins last summer (1865 IH's) were less than 3 inches deep.

Sorry about this long post.

Badger

 

[Richard-N-FL]

No problem about the lenght of the post. actually liked reading the info you had to say. I really want the best detector for trashy parks and home sites. That is all I really have to hunt so want the best for that task. I.D, tone I.D or both it doesn't matter to much. I heard the Tesoro line has probably the best discrimination on the market...

 

[North Georgia Relics]

I think the Vaquero will give you better depth. If you want to be able to use tone ID then the Golden would be the way to go. It has 4 tones. Do a search on the forum and see what some of the others have to say about the Golden.

 

[Corteser]

The Cortes's TID is fast, as fast as you can swing the coil. I have never noticed any lag time and it is as accurate as any that I have used.

 

[Michigan Badger]

it's clear good signal. With those multi tone pitch machines you're listening to all that sing-song music and trying to recall what that sound means, etc.

With Tesoro it's usually just a solid smooth BEEP and dig. Away with all the nonsense.

And too, one reason some think Tesoros aren't very deep is because Tesoro detectors pinpoint correctly thus making finds appear to be shallower.

With my Minelab I'd sometimes dig a hole 12 inches wide before I finally found my Memorial cent. Nuff said.

Badger

 

[jbow]

The Tejon is really good in the iron with the 5.75 coil. In the really bad iron it is my "go to" machine. my T2 and F75 are both too noisy in the heavy iron and my SovGT stay's in null. The small coil on the Tejon works the holes well, IMO.

J

 

[tab-nabit]

The 5.75 coil on the Tejon can make a big difference compared to the stock coil in trashy/iron sites.

 

[jbow]

the Cortes give's you more info. As far as the electronics and hte depth, they are the same.

The Tejon has two discs, you push the toggle under the handle forward to access the second disc. I set my #1 disc on foil and #2 where a nickle just breaks up. If I get a good signal on disc 2 I turn #1 up to see if I have a tab or a coin. If it goes all the way up and still signals, then it is a usually a coin, just not a nickle. The 5.75 coil is a must. You lose very little if any depth with it and it work's very well in trash.
The Cibola is also a good machine but IMO the Tejon rule's in the non-TID Tesoros.

J

 

[tab-nabit]

The Tejon and Cibola are my 2 Tesoro's.
The 5.75 coil works well in trashy areas. The Tejon with the 5.75 coil enabled me to work a site earlier this year when a couple other machines were useless. I have used both machines coin hunting and found they are fast and accurate.
For some odd reason I have an urge for the Cortes, but wonder about it since I already have the Tejon, Cibola, and a few other machines.

 

[Michigan Badger]

[quote Richard-N-FL]Thanks for the info...I was considering the vaquero. How good is the target ID on the Cortes and Deleon? I am reading they are slow.[/quote]

The target ID on the DeLeon is excellent but it takes time to learn what the various readout pattern mean. The depth helps to save time not digging near surface new coins.

As for the Cortes, remember it only ground balances in all-metal mode, not in discrimination mode. So if you hunt mostly in discrimination mode you have basically a factory preset GB detector like the DeLeon, Cibola, Silver uMax, etc.

There's nothing slow about either the Deleon or Cortes. All Tesoros are fast machines. This is a major reason why I left Minelab and now use mostly Tesoros.

 

[Richard-N-FL]

I want to get a I.D machine get the Deleon and the Tejon if I want the best without I.D? Right? I have read good things about the Vaquero but not much talk about it when explaining the better derectors Tesoro makes.

 

[Pap]

The Vaquero is an excellent detector! And for what you plan to use it for I would recommend it. However you will need to decide if TID is what you really want or if you will be happy without it. I have both. And honestly use the non TID in parks etc. more than I use the TID unit. But that is what I do and may not be what would make you happy.
Pap

 

[Richard-N-FL]

Macaco,

Please let me know your impressions of the Cibola. With you also owning a soverign you can see the difference and I can be able to relate to your judgement of the differences between the two machines.

Thanks

If anyone elso out there has used both a Soverign and a Tesoro please give me your feedback on the differences and if the Tesoros are better for parks than the Soverign.