11 reasons why not to buy a TESORO...

Friends tell me that FT has had a pretty good year - another few hundred thousand metal detectors sold world wide.

Our high end hobby is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Tesoro lost access to the marketplace.

Minelab’s Equinox has dramatically turned around their fortunes in the hobbiest marketplace and the GPZ still sells well in Africa - although it is apparently a “replacement” market at present.

Whites seems to be struggling - we’ll see in a couple of years how they do.

Garrett has good marketplace penetration but must be challenged by the Equinox.

It’s a funny business. The amount of money made on selling into the “direct from Christmas Tree to closet” market is huge.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

I just hope FT keeps the CZ-3D in the line up. That way they have parts to repair the analog CZs. I think it's the only true analog being made today?
Yeah I am Old and love analogs.

Me too.

One of these days they will replace it with a digital machine with enormous audio capability as well as visual ID.

Of course, being 71, I may not see it. Lol

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

calabash digger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I never knew a bunch of old farts could get so wor
> ked up over a metal detector.... By the looks
> of Tesoro will be too....


This was a baited Tread from the start. One doesnt shake a hornets nest and expect to be left in peace. Surprise surprise....LOL

calabash digger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The same reason I have videos of the AT PRO gettin
> g spanked. To put information out there and let pe
> ople make their own informed decisions. I dont hav
> e a love affair with a metal detecting company so
> comparing it to kicking a beloved pet doesnt reall
> y register with me.

This is precisely why you earn so much respect and appreciation.

Up to my ____ in Pulltabs, Grant

I have been on this forum for 9 years. Others for as long or longer.

I have climbed on the occasional "high horse".

The bruises from my headlong falls have largely faded - the pain remains.

Strong assertions require solid supporting evidence.

Strong opinions are like the wind - it blows....sometimes.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

I think this is a fair assessment based on what I have seen on detecting forum classifieds.
In the last seems like 2-3 years most folks wanting a Tesoro bought a used one, not a new one,
There were plenty available used units.
Their latest release maybe not so much, but eventually I did see quite a few up for sale used.

There is nothing really modern looking about a Tesoro detector.
Folks are into iPads, cell phones, things with legible displays.

I have been predicting this happening on this forum for a while now.
I predicted we may even see a merger as well.

I don’t think anyone in their right mind would buy a detector (new) made by a manufacturer who seems has closed up shop with manufacturing.
Unless maybe one wants a souvenir detector to keep.

We will see more changes coming, you watch.

Troy, now Tesoro.
Who’s next??



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2018 05:32AM by tnsharpshooter.

doc holiday Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's NOT the detector---it's the message(ger).

You nailed that one :-)

HH
Johnb

Check the Freq switch it may very well be stuck between freqs .Its acting like ground balance is too high..a freq misalignment can cause this.

Also turn the Threshold up if you haven't..

The Tesoro circuit especially the 180 on the Tejon in iron litter will be in top tier level performance..Its just not for everybody as it takes time to learn the language..The Cibola Ive had over 40 in my possession for modding for people and to be honest about all of them hadabout the same performance ..Your machine is working its the ground balance is off or freq is misaligned...or maybe even the coil which I doubt.

Before you sell it or whatever your going to do with it flip the freq switch around a few times and recheck..If you'd like I will check it out for you ..Im sure its a simple remedy ..

You would be quite surprised to take the Cibola with that stock size coil and run it against other machines on a Known test like Montes nail board test and see 100% pass rate.

Tesoros for the last 35+ plus years have put a hurting on iron infested relic sites...and they have made it very hard for me in my area to make finds in alot of these sites today..I know I did it to alot of the sites with tresoro's...even the 120 disc units cleaned out the severely masked stuff.Of course the sites used to be plentiful with finds..actually amazing!! A Bandido 2 U-max netted me 400+ Military buttons ..Not civilain/flats etc...But Reb and Yankee in about 7 years in Iron pits..Those same sites I can go back to now with modern machines and I'm lucky to find anything more than small tiny grass nap stuff.Admittedly I worked on alot of those sites that were heavily producing buttons but it still shows the capability of the Circuit no matter what...The Tesoro's brought in the Golden age of Button recovery especially Two Piece ones in Civil War circles never to be reached again..Its visible on the forums as well..Go back to the mid 90s and look at what was found and look at today..I know IN 95 or so I was on the Old original treasure depot and posted heavily on there as well as others and the sheer amount of finds and especially buttons at that time period was astounding..JAW-DROPPING...Thats not going on anymore..and most the guys back then were running the Tesoros and had been for a decade and knew how to use them.


Tesoro fell behind in the Visual and Digital world thats true but the analog circuit they had and do have is still better than alot in terms of being able to unmask in thick iron..Mixed use sites with limited digging then a modern machine with display can be better for cherrying the site.

There's even better blending and bleeding circuits in the digital world today approaching analog audio feel..thanks to Makro/Nokta XP and some others..But the finds arent like they used to be either.Relics dont replenish themselves.If they did I wouldn't of had to move to high freq Gold machines years ago to Get some more out of iron laden sites..

a Deeptech to me is what a tesoro could of been with an added tone break option..

Tesoro may very well be at the end of their life...But what a life they gave US.!!

Ton's of manufactures of detectors have went out of business over the last 60 years ..D-tex,Relco,Jetco,Treasure Mtn,,Compass( huge well known company),Discovery Electronics,Usika,Wilson and Wilson Neuman...just off top of my head.

What's in store in another decade???If manufacturers dont push past where there at now..the finds are going to dwindle even more and alot of people will move on to another hobby..Or someone will develop new tech and reopen depleted sites and the older tech will eventually cease and builders of that tech will either climb on board or not be able to use the new methods either by cost or by patent blocks.


Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Well said Keith.

Harold,ILL. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well said Keith.

x2

tabman

I have seen your nail test videos and they pass with flying colors. Just not my cup of tea... I might send you the cibola to check out. Its my buddies and I will talk to him. . I heard a Ole timer talking about a Union Camp close to Wilmington where they were restocked and what they found there back in the day.

Keith Southern Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Check the Freq switch it may very well be stuck be
> tween freqs .Its acting like ground balance is too
> high..a freq misalignment can cause this.
>
> Also turn the Threshold up if you haven't..
>
> The Tesoro circuit especially the 180 on the Tejon
> in iron litter will be in top tier level performan
> ce..Its just not for everybody as it takes time to
> learn the language..The Cibola Ive had over 40 in
> my possession for modding for people and to be hon
> est about all of them hadabout the same performa
> nce ..Your machine is working its the ground balan
> ce is off or freq is misaligned...or maybe even th
> e coil which I doubt.
>
> Before you sell it or whatever your going to do wi
> th it flip the freq switch around a few times and
> recheck..If you'd like I will check it out for yo
> u ..Im sure its a simple remedy ..
>
> You would be quite surprised to take the Cibola wi
> th that stock size coil and run it against other m
> achines on a Known test like Montes nail board tes
> t and see 100% pass rate.
>
> Tesoros for the last 35+ plus years have put a hu
> rting on iron infested relic sites...and they have
> made it very hard for me in my area to make finds
> in alot of these sites today..I know I did it to a
> lot of the sites with tresoro's...even the 120 dis
> c units cleaned out the severely masked stuff.Of c
> ourse the sites used to be plentiful with finds..a
> ctually amazing!! A Bandido 2 U-max netted me 400+
> Military buttons ..Not civilain/flats etc...But Re
> b and Yankee in about 7 years in Iron pits..Those
> same sites I can go back to now with modern machin
> es and I'm lucky to find anything more than small
> tiny grass nap stuff.Admittedly I worked on alot o
> f those sites that were heavily producing buttons
> but it still shows the capability of the Circuit n
> o matter what...The Tesoro's brought in the Golde
> n age of Button recovery especially Two Piece ones
> in Civil War circles never to be reached again..It
> s visible on the forums as well..Go back to the m
> id 90s and look at what was found and look at toda
> y..I know IN 95 or so I was on the Old original tr
> easure depot and posted heavily on there as well a
> s others and the sheer amount of finds and especia
> lly buttons at that time period was astounding..J
> AW-DROPPING...Thats not going on anymore..and most
> the guys back then were running the Tesoros and ha
> d been for a decade and knew how to use them.
>
>
> Tesoro fell behind in the Visual and Digital world
> thats true but the analog circuit they had and do
> have is still better than alot in terms of being a
> ble to unmask in thick iron..Mixed use sites with
> limited digging then a modern machine with display
> can be better for cherrying the site.
>
> There's even better blending and bleeding circuits
> in the digital world today approaching analog audi
> o feel..thanks to Makro/Nokta XP and some others.
> .But the finds arent like they used to be either.R
> elics dont replenish themselves.If they did I woul
> dn't of had to move to high freq Gold machines yea
> rs ago to Get some more out of iron laden sites..
>
> a Deeptech to me is what a tesoro could of been wi
> th an added tone break option..
>
> Tesoro may very well be at the end of their life..
> .But what a life they gave US.!!
>
> Ton's of manufactures of detectors have went out o
> f business over the last 60 years ..D-tex,Relco,Je
> tco,Treasure Mtn,,Compass( huge well known company
> ),Discovery Electronics,Usika,Wilson and Wilson Ne
> uman...just off top of my head.
>
> What's in store in another decade???If manufacture
> rs dont push past where there at now..the finds ar
> e going to dwindle even more and alot of people w
> ill move on to another hobby..Or someone will deve
> lop new tech and reopen depleted sites and the old
> er tech will eventually cease and builders of that
> tech will either climb on board or not be able to
> use the new methods either by cost or by patent bl
> ocks.
>
>
> Keith


right! dwindling finds,and a*s wipes tearin' up real estate!
fishing anyone?

(h.h.!)
j.t.

Oh trust me, buttons are still being found in large quantities in the current time with other machines. The difference is, is where they are shown. The 90s and early 2000 time frame, forums were the only places to show stuff online. That's when forums were at their peak. Now there's Facebook and that's where most are posting finds at. Just last month, a couple of guys were in one of Longstreet's known winter camps in northeast TN digging the crap out of I and A, CS buttons. I bet they found a dozen of them in just a few hunts. I've lost count now to the number they have found. Newer machines...old pounded sites. I did much of the same when I jumped into pulse machines around here.

Another side to that is, nearly all (over 90%) of the sites I used to find stuff in back in the 90s and early 2000 era are now developed. Stores, parking lots, and houses sit on them. The exact spot I dug my first eagle breastplate and 200 or so drops to go with it, now has a 4,000+ sq ft home and paved driveway directly on top of it....and it's along side of 5 acres of other houses and a culdesac.

I have been over several of my earlier sites that were pounded by me with several Tesoro's ranging in frequencies from 10khz to 18khz. These sites included homesteads, railroad camps, ghost towns, mines etc. I have hit these sites with every known new machine that comes out including the Deus and NOX800 and I'm sorry to say that I found nothing new of significance. Every time a new machine comes out I get excited to and think just maybe this will make my old sites come alive again and it doesnt. The newer machines with the higher khz have helped some with finding smaller buttons or maybe the occasional masked coin or button but not like when I first was hitting them. If people are finding lots of round items like coins and buttons at heavily pounded previous sites with newer machines then I have to think I was either very efficient with my older Tesoros or they weren't very efficient t with their older machines. Fact of the matter is a Tesoro just doesn't leave much behind if used properly.

Thanks Keith for a peek into the ole Glory days---Ole times are not forgotten.


And then after graciously offering to fix--for free--an apparently broken detector--Keith is "thanked" by a petulant "I might send send you the Cibola to check out".

Daniel Tn mentioned - sort of “by the way” a huge new factor in new finds at old sites for Civil War relics. It is namely the fact that keen hunters, especially - but not only - in terrible dirt like Culpepper - are using PI machines, it started with some Infiniums, then TDI’s, then the deepest ground balancing PI’s currently available - the ML GPX machines.

The difference in depth on all targets in mineralized soil is dramatic. Using current PI’s in an iron contaminated site is a challenge, but the pay-off is huge, Dan Tn has written extensively about this before.

I recently had a communication from a very experienced and successful relic hunter on the West Coast where he told me this...

I use top end Pulse Induction for my detecting needs both land and water. Everything else are toys, Inland or fresh water black sand mineralization is tougher than west coast black sand. That’s all I use now the GPX 5000 for relic hunting, and a good pi or Minelab for ocean

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

Nobody must have used a Tesoro around here because I still find a few . Found these over the last two years....Guys around here still finding military items. Maybe not by the 5 gallon bucket fulls but they are finding them. Daniel TN is correct about Facebook. My buddy is on there and guys are finding killer finds almost everyday.

lytle78 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Daniel Tn mentioned - sort of “by the way” a huge
> new factor in new finds at old sites for Civil War
> relics. It is namely the fact that keen hunters,
> especially - but not only - in terrible dirt like
> Culpepper - are using PI machines, it started wit
> h some Infiniums, then TDI’s, then the deepest gro
> und balancing PI’s currently available - the ML GP
> X machines.
>
> The difference in depth on all targets in minerali
> zed soil is dramatic. Using current PI’s in an ir
> on contaminated site is a challenge, but the pay-o
> ff is huge, Dan Tn has written extensively about
> this before.
>
> I recently had a communication from a very experie
> nced and successful relic hunter on the West Coast
> where he told me this...
>
> I use top end Pulse Induction for my detecting
> needs both land and water. Everything else are
> toys, Inland or fresh water black sand mineral
> ization is tougher than west coast black sand. Tha
> t’s all I use now the GPX 5000 for relic hunting,
> and a good pi or Minelab for ocean

I honestly think that is a big part of it too, at least around here and in other places. People have started to grasp iron masking and ground masking. Using the DIV as an example...there was a time when the 3 most popular machines were a Whites 5900/B&G Pro, a Whites MXT, and a Fisher F75/T2 and people were VERY adamant about those being all a person needed. Matter of fact, I recall several forum topics about this when the pulse machines JUST started to show up, and how many naysayers there was that basically said people were stupid for buying an Infinium and then that progressed into the TDI. By the time I made my first DIV, there had already been a half dozen hunts on the big properties and I wont lie...a ton of relics were found with the VLF machines there. I was in that naysayer boat too, to be honest with you. I had clicked with the F75 and the all metal mode. I thought I was doing extremely well up there with it until I ran into a friend of mine that had a TDI. He was having trouble pinpointing a target and asked me if I could use my machine to pinpoint for him. I didn't get a signal at all. I told him I thought it was probably just the ground falsing. I was on cloud nine after just digging a breast plate about 20 mins prior to that. He says "Here listen...I'm still getting something there..." and sure enough, there was. After that, I had to have a TDI. Then a couple/few hunts later, this repeated itself as I ran into the same guy who was then hunting with a GPX, and I had just dug another breast plate a few mins prior to running into him. He had a deep signal that he said sounded big and wanted to be sure of the pinpoint spot...I couldn't hear it with the TDI at all. And I stood there and watched him pull out a whole pile of dropped 3 ringers in one hole, approx arm pit deep in the ground. I think there were over 100 of them. When he finally got down to where they were, he was pulling them out by the hand cup full. He eventually got so deep that all you could see was his boots sticking above the ground lol A few days later I had a GPX ordered.

When the TDI and GPX caught fire...that's when the relics really began coming out of the ground at those hunts. People had began to grumble that the farms were hunted out and that they weren't coming back to another hunt til they found new spots, and the pulse machines opened them up so much that people are still begging to go back to them. Now, nearly everyone has a GPX that attends them regularly, and there is big business in renting them out to people that don't want to buy one just for the hunt. Those first half dozen return hunts to those properties with pulse machines....man those were the days. You could fill an entire large Riker case with relics....one per each day of the hunt. 100 drop bullets a day...easy, and probably 30 to 50 buttons a day, and more than likely a deep plate or two too. What made a believer out of the naysayers was having people come in behind them with a pulse machine...in an area they had just covered with a machine they trusted and had confidence in...and watching those people dig bullet after bullet, button after button. In the early going of it, it was a regular thing to have people get curious and or frustrated enough to come over and see just what you were finding behind them...then they would always want to check the next signal with their machine. I couldn't tell you how many faces I saw that gave the "Ohhh crap" look when they would run their machine over the marked spot of the likely bullet or button and not get a signal at all, or a signal that they would dig. Then they would stand in amazement as you dug it and they saw what it was. That's when it clicked in their head "There's no telling what I've walked over that I never heard..." and by the next hunt, they had a pulse machine too.

"I have seen your nail test videos and they (Tesoros) pass with flying colors. Just not my cup of tea..."

Some people like higher end teas, some people are perfectly happy with a cup of Lipton.

No fair-minded person would take offense to someone not liking Lipton tea or elaborating on why they don't like it.

The offended part comes in when someone mocks and belittles people for being Lipton tea drinkers.

Lipton Tea stinks and cant believe anybody would drink that out of date stuff...

Daniel TN...… a good example/case of:

You don't know.... what you don't know.
How do you know what you are missing...…. if you don't know it even exists.

And to think...….. we are only just beginning to 'touch-the-surface' ….with current-day technology ....of what's really out there.

Just once.,.,.,.,.,., go on a Phase-2 Archaeological pit-dig.

Sweet tea and Dunkin' Donuts large iced mocha with sugar and cream was my goto fuel for midnight shift. Now the wife has me on this 30 carb a day diet, and I've had to give up my tea and mochas. It has been killer. Now here ya'll are on one of my favorite forums talking about tea. Temptation everywhere I go.

calabash digger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lipton Tea stinks and cant believe anybody would d
> rink that out of date stuff...

Yeah,it can't be" Recycled" so easily. They caught an ole gal at her BBQ place "recycling" glasses of returned tea.

Its not my detector to send him so the word MIGHT was used.doc holiday Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks Keith for a peek into the ole Glory days---
> Ole times are not forgotten.
>
>
> And then after graciously offering to fix--for fre
> e--an apparently broken detector--Keith is "thanke
> d" by a petulant "I might send send you the Cibola
> to check out".

A friend is suppose to watch out for/help friends---How could you ever allow a "buddy" to commit such a horrible mistake as buying a Tesoro??

I didn't ! He won it......

There are so many variables in searching. Makes it seem like a site is never worked out. I used to live on 10 acres which had some passing CW activity. I used a minelab to focus on a hot spot and found everything I could. Few weeks later I used the same minelab in the same area and found few more things. What gives?? Began to wonder....maybe I swept slower or maybe the ground has more moisture than before. I changed coils....guess what...found more stuff...LOL My King Cobra found more CW bullets than any model I owned. Some people may prefer Vanilla over Rocky Road ice cream. If one eats Vanilla ice cream everyday you become a self proclaimed professional connoisseur of Vanilla. One could even argue about which flavor is better. Is there a correct flavor ??? People just click with certain metal detector models over others. Many still hold the Tek Mark-1 as one great metal detector. The fact that it isnt currently being manufactured doesnt change its performance. Have fun. Its all good.