Impressed

I continue metal detecting with the Tesoro Compadre metal detector while I work to get my XP Deus in.

I have hunted with the Compadre a few times now and one thing that continues to impress me about this little machine is that often I will retrieve a rusty nail along with a good target from the same hole. To be sure, I have done that with all my other detectors at one point or another but never in the numbers I have with the Compadre.

This leads me to believe that the Compadre can compute the iron out and show me the coin. What does this mean? To me it means that if there are coins in iron infested sites, the Compadre can definitely hold its own.

Case in point: yesterday, I took the Compadre to the Iron Pit. There are segments of the Iron Pit where I have extracted every target that wasn’t iron (and a lot of iron too!). I have gridded those segments from every direction with all my other machines. At the Iron Pit the other day, I dragged a magnet over the surface a few times and I filled a plastic cup with iron chunks ranging from pea size all the way to quarter size. Anyway, I wanted to see how the Compadre did in this mess.
I should mention at this point that as a rule, I run my detectors wide open because I like to know what the iron situation is at all times. I also scrape the soil whenever possible and always use a mid to slow speed swing.

I set the Compadre on Max discrimination (the equivalent of only high tones in other machines) and the very first swing produced a hit. What!? I couldn’t believe it. The target turned out to be a bullet casing but still, this was missed by more powerful and more expensive machines.

I detected for about ten more minutes before I got yet another hit! This one was a clad dime about two inches down. I was utterly amazed. This dime was big enough and shallow enough I should have never missed it!

Soon I decided to call it a day but before I left, I opened the Compadre all the way to nickels. I swung for about five minutes and bam! I got a nice loud signal. I was flabbergasted!! This small area I was detecting was still heavily littered with iron both under and on top of the ground and this was the original spot that I found last year and I have painstakingly gridded up, down, diagonally and over again. So how did I miss this nickel?
The target was not a nickel in fact, but it was a machined cylinder about a quarter of an inch high and 1/16 inch thick. It was about two inches down.

Color me IMPRESSED.

Now I wonder if the more expensive machines from Tesoro are this good. I mean, put more power on this little wonder of a detector and it could really pose a threat to some of the flagship detectors out there. But the Compadre is perfect as it is. I love how light it is and like I said before, its brutal simplicity makes it a ton of fun to use.

Even after I get my XP Deus, expect more reports on this marvel.

Thank you for looking!

Tags: Compadre, parks