The Holy Grail Of Park Hunting ?

[tvanwho]

I never had much like for the Tesoro Golden Umax until I saw this video tonite. Looks like this user has almost

achieved the Holy Grail of ring hunting and aluminum discrimination. Maybe older is better? Can any of the recent detector offerings

pull off these miracles?

 

[argyle]

All seems fine on top of the ground that's for sure.

Unfortunately the tones of the Golden simply do not reproduce those quality of tone ID at even three to four inches.

Nice units if you bought a good one and didn't have to send it back, but very limited on tone ID depth.

 

The 305 for instance is three times the detector the Golden was.

Tesoro die hards will have the opposite opinion to mine though... 

[Steve Herschbach]

You can only separate aluminum from gold targets by choosing the targets to show the result you want. For every gold target there is an aluminum target that sounds the same. I cherry pick myself based on various criteria but all cherry picking techniques ultimately run afoul of this basic detecting fact. If you skip a target thinking it is aluminum, there is a chance it could be gold.

The problem with the Tesoro Golden is that while the notch window adjustment was ok, compared to digital units like the Racer 2 it is not adjustable enough and therefore too constraining. No surprise that the detector has been discontinued.

[auminesweeper]

Amen to that Steve, over here if you notch out pull tabs then you can say goodbye to Hammered Silver Coins and Cut Halves which come in at around 26 on the VDI on the MXT and I would have definitely missed out on a Gold and Platinum Diamond ring that Gave a VDI of 4,, Remembering that Iron starts at 0 = ZERO and because of how pull tabs read like Cut halves the Tesoros that are Tuned to UK conditions are rebranded LASER, Same machine just tuned to suit, and they were the best at finding Hammered coins until XP turned up.

john

[Steve Herschbach]

All a person can do is try and estimate and play the odds. If you have a good idea of the type of target you are going to find you can eliminate common trash items that read differently. If I am hunting men's rings I can pretty much ignore foil since they read around U.S. nickel and higher. But foil is where chains, ear rings, pendants, and other small jewelry items fall. Women's rings and platinum fall around high foil range below U.S. nickel.

Rings being round with a hole, one strategy is only dig tight VDI spreads. But something like a gold chain will read very trashy with bouncy numbers, often dropping into ferrous indications.

It is fairly easy to cherry pick rings but there is so much jewelry that is not rings. Just browse any jewelry store window. The most commonly lost jewelry item is the women's ear ring, and it is also probably the least found.

The real secret to jewelry detecting is site selection.

[auminesweeper]

That is a good feature on this machine, But I never set my Disc above nails and if I dig more junk so be it, the  chance of finding pull tabs on ploughed land is a bit less that what one would find In a park so there is always a chance that the next beep could be a hammered coin, Like all things everything in moderation.

[RickUK]

One big difference is that you folks across the pond tend to hunt different locations to what we do over here in the UK and what i mean by this is that you are able too hunt in parks most of the time without any hassle from folks who have authority to stop it,but over in the UK 'almost' all our park are out of bounds as they tend to use the old trump card of health and safety issues,or the few parks that do allow metal detecting have a 'stupid' cop out clause that you are not allowed to dig down to retrieve the find/s.So basically we are unable to hunt in parks or recreational facilities unless they are private but then you still require the land owners permission.

So we only tend to hunt on private permissions with of course the land owners permission,this is for the most part 'farm land' or pasture,as John was saying on farmland as a rule although we do get general rubbish of course ie iron etc we dont have as much problem if at all from the likes of ring pulls or foil as much,you will get some usually near a beauty spot or picnic area but its not a major problem as hunting in parks when you will find abundance of ring pulls and foil and cans.

Our main targets that we are after are generally silver hammered coins these can go back say 2000 years or so,and these coins come in the foil range on a detector,also the silver content is not always the same as some are of a higher silver content and some of a much lower silver content,it all depends on how much silver was around at the time as too how much silver was in a coin.So what does this mean in the detecting sense,well if you knock out foil either by using discrimination,notching or what ever makers call it then 'you' will almost certainly knock out silver hammered coins an this is what most detectorist in the UK are after.

Early gold also can vary by a massive margin,as gold standards had not even been thought about then,once again you could place a fair few gold items on the ground including say celtic gold staters,rings or what ever and of course if you have a screen based machine the TID could vary by a massive margin once again,so this is why we tend to knock out a small nail and then dig the rest.If you solely rely on making a dig-no dig decision just by looking at the screen after you have notched out foil or have alot of discrimination on then you will 'miss' alot of good targets.

The Tesoro range of detectors from say the mid 80s ie the Silver Sabre range etc they became the holy grail of detecting over here especially on very trashy roman/saxon sites,not the deepest machines going but possibly the best discriminating machines going,then the Laser brand of detectors came out over here which are basically Tesoro main stream detectors but slightly modified internal settings wise for our ground conditions and also the targets that we are after,so we dont have such things as notching or anything like that,some of these machines within the Laser brand name like the legendary BI and B3 machines suited our sites to a tee and ticked all the boxes for our hunting requirements,and the find that folks got after buying these detectors just went through the roof.

Around the world we all detect differently albeit they are all metal detectors,but if you detect in Aussie land or Nevada then you use a different type of detecting,of course gold is your target so the weapon of choice and the best platform is mainly a Pulse machine,but for us as we have some iron due to sites being habitable for 1000s of years then we dont want to dig iron,hence we dont use PI machines as much as you do.

I do own a few Tesoro/Laser machines and they are good at what they do these are mainly for site specific use predominately trash roman/saxon sites,but technology moves on and no one detector/coil combination does it all,so its a tough one to find the perfect combination and as yet i still have not found that perfect machine.

As i say we are all searching for metal,but all our targets are different and we all have to adopt methods for the situation we detect in.

Of course this is only my take on the subject and i how i see it.

 

[Steve Herschbach]

On the general subject of notching, tones, etc. I like having capability available and not using it than not having it and wishing I had it. You can have a machine like a Deus or Racer 2 and just run it like a single tone dig all non-ferrous Tesoro, but if you have a basic Tesoro there are too many things you just can't do. They are great machines for what they do and if they suit a persons style of detecting (generally "beep-dig") then a great detecting value.

Sadly I think their day is done. People just want more and Tesoro is not delivering. They have a hard core fan base but no longer any real presence in the metal detecting world as a whole. I don't pay any attention to the company any more and that's bad.

[argyle]

One thing I should have mentioned, is that this guy '53Silver (apologies for not remembering his name ) has made some really nice clear crisp detecting clips with Tesoro's and MXT's and Minelabs and popped them on YouTube many moons ago, that give really nice information out regarding the units he's using. So kudos to him, as they can really help someone that hasn't used, or is struggling to get the best out of a certain detector.

 

A lot of guys here detect private farm land, State owned land called Crown land, inland river banks and picnic spots along those, and a lot of this ground can and does correspond with British pasture. Without the dreaded 'coke' of course.

Pre-decimal coinage along with British and American coins are a favorite.

Did Trident have a unit corresponding to the Golden... Rick/John?

Jewelery I simply do not get very much of, maybe five rings a year off park land. And even a fat mens wedding band isn't worth the trouble as the sale value is low compared to the time spent hunting our main coins.

But I do target golf courses and inland river banks for coins and jewelery and my count on rings and bracelets ect. jumps dramatically here.

 

Sad about Tesoro, really is. They weren't even interested in improving the HOT line of units. 

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Jewelry detecting for me much of the time is just aluminum detecting. It is just that they way I do it is fun and relaxing for me. Shallow targets only, no digging, just pry out quickly with screwdriver, move on. Lots more coins than jewelry normally but the difference is the coins are accidental. Just a nice way to spend some time I can do anywhere any time.

Blind squirrel detecting - sometimes I find an acorn!