Chris's Metal Detecting Page -
Side by Side Comparison -
Minelab Explorer XS vs. Tesoro
Tejon
Chris's Mineral
Collecting Page is mainly about [what else?] mineral collecting,
but I
thought I'd put a little bit of Treasure Hunting stuff up here as
well... I may start enlarging this little sub-section if time
allows. Behold, Chris's Metal
Detecting Page.
When doing a
side-by-side comparison of metal detectors, one mustn't be tempted to
say "Stan with detector X found more coins than Timmy with detector Y,
therefore detector X is better". If they were hitting different
targets in different areas of the place, this test tells us nothing!
Passing it off as a scientific comparison would be committing an
especially gross act of junk science;
Stan could have gotten very lucky and put his coil in just the right
places that day, while Timmy might actually have the better detector
but was having a bad day. It's true that
comparing two different brands of detector may be like comparing apples
to oranges anyway, but in this case we're going to compare them as best
we can. The way I test
the machines is to set them up the way I prefer to use them, given the
particular soil conditions where I hunt (in other words, tweaked for
maximal depth while remaining stable). You may notice the
Explorer was not set to its absolute limit of sensitivity. At
least one technician at Minelab USA has told me that 24 actually gives
the highest sensitivity for a lot of soil conditions. I don't
know if that's always true or not, but 24 is about as high as I can run
the
machine in the magnetite-rich soil where I hunt.THE PLACE: An old fairground site. This place was hunted heavily by a couple guys with White's metal detectors in the late 1980's and into the 1990's. Therefore, it does not have that many shallow targets, and nearly all of the remaining coins are at least 6 inches deep. It is not an easy place to find something good.
THE DETECTORS were set up as follows:
Tejón:
SENS = 10
DISC1 = FOIL
DISC2 = TABS
THRESH set low (not supertuned, because I like to trigger into All Metal sometimes)
Ground balance slightly positive
COIL was stock 9x8 concentric
Explorer XS:
SENS = 24 / Manual
IRON MASK = -14
GAIN = 7
SOUNDS = Ferrous
COIL was the stock 10.5" Double D
SOIL CONDITIONS: A dark soil composed of organic matter, iron minerals (mostly magnetite), and clay minerals. It becomes like wet cement after a good rain. This time, the soil was moderately damp but not soaking wet.
THE TARGETS were unknown until they were actually dug. This is the only way to do a scientifically valid test, because (1) freshly-buried targets will lack the ionization halo that takes years to form, and (2) knowing what the target is can bias the operator's interpretation of the signal. The former is especially true for iron targets; a freshly-buried nail is not going to react to the metal detector's field the same way as if it's been buried for a hundred years. (I wrote to Gary's UK Metal Detecting site about how his test doesn't actually disprove the "halo theory". So far I haven't gotten a response).
Now let's see what the detectors said and what the targets turned out to be:
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Target 1. Both detectors gave solid "DIG" signal. The Minelab showed it in the area of the screen where I usually get Lincoln pennies- very consistent, did not bounce. The tone was a very nice, fluty high tone with modulation. The Tesoro gave solid tone even on DISC 2.
What it was: An iron ring or collar, thoroughly rusted, depth about 6-7 inches. Its circular shape is probably why it registered so well. There was nothing else in the hole.
------------------
Target 2. Both detectors gave solid "DIG" signal. Minelab showed it in the area where it could have been either a larger silver coin or a piece of magnetite. The sound was a nice, fluty high tone with modulation. The Tesoro gave a solid tone even on DISC 2.
What it was: a 1911-D Barber Quarter at 7". There was nothing else in the hole.
 |
When I set out
looking for something great, I rarely find it. When I set out to
do a comparison of two metal detectors, I find something great.
This is one of the best things I've ever found. I used to wonder how the guys in the treasure hunting magazines could nonchalantly find these great old coins during the course of their field tests, while I was struggling for months to find anything pre-1965. I think I understand now. |
------------------
Target 3. The Minelab suggested there were 2 targets. One of them showed in the silver zone. It gave a high, fluty tone with modulation; it sounded like a very good target. The Tesoro gave a good but very LOUD signal that began to break up in DISC2 (which I usually keep just above "pulltabs").. The Tesoro also led me to believe it was about 6 to 8 inches from where Minelab said it was. The Tesoro was right.
What it was: A rusted piece of iron strap hinge. The Minelab had me digging everywhere. Even when I uncovered the hinge with the aid of the Tejón, the Explorer was still telling me there was a coin 6" or 8" away. There wasn't. After I took the hinge out of the hole, all signals went away.
-----------------
Target 4. The Minelab gave a super high tone with very little modulation (this is the "nail sound" that I've learned to avoid for the most part). The cursor jumped from extreme upper left to extreme upper right, also suggesting nails; according to the Minelab, this was a "NO DIG" signal. The Tejon was still giving me a "DIG" signal, somewhat faint but very steady.
What it was: A small brass air valve, from a bicycle or a very old car. It was hiding among rusted nails. Depth was about 6".
-----------------
What This Comparison Didn't Do: It didn't test the absolute depth limits of the detectors in the particular soil conditions. Is the Explorer deeper than the Tejon? I wouldn't say that.
A good friend of
mine is a die-hard Explorer fan. I am a die hard Tejon fan.
When he gets a faint signal on the
Minelab, sometimes he asks me to come over and check it with my
Tesoro. The same signal will be also be faint on the Tesoro, but
I'll
detect it just as well as he will.In fact, the
deepest coins I've found so far have been with the Tejon.
You may not want to hear this, because your Minelab dealer says nothing
can even come close to his $1300 prodigy. I'm not bashing
Minelabs-- I love 'em-- but I'm going to put it to
you this way: the depth of these two machines is about
equal. There are some ways the Minelab Explorer beats the
Tejon, but not by as much as the $400 to $600 price difference would
suggest. At the price of a new Tejon or a used Explorer XS, on
the other hand, now I'd say it's a toss up. Both will find
dime-sized targets at 8 to 9 inches pretty reliably. If you plan
to hunt coins buried deeper than 10 inches on a routine basis, forget
both machines and
save your money for a Nexus. You might find
the occasional coin at 12 inches with either the Tejon or the
Explorer. These extremely deep finds do happen. I found a
wheat cent at 11 1/2 inches and a Jefferson nickel at 10 inches with
the Tejon. That's very impressive, considering most other VLF
detectors max out around 6 inches on coins this size. Some
Explorer users have reported coin finds at ridiculous depths (16-18
inches), but where I hunt, a dime begins to sound faint on the Explorer
at 8 inches. That's not to say an Explorer can't do those
super depths if the conditions are right, it's just that it requires a
lot of experience, perfect ground conditions, and optimum machine setup.Some relic
hunters have reported Minie ball finds at 18 inches with the
Tejon. I cannot vouch for this personally. At such depths
the sound won't be so much a "beep" as it will a faint
"click". The other thing to remember about the Tejon is
that these extreme depths are best achieved on mid-conductive targets
such as lead, brass, bronze, nickel, and gold. The Tejon's
designers intended it to be a relic hunting machine first and
foremost. Silver coins may not register as strongly as bronze or
bullets at the outer limits of the Tejon's depth; however, I do
know a lot of Brits swear by the Tejon for hunting those thin, hammered
silver coins from the Middle Ages. Most of those register
somewhere in the Aluminum Foil range anyway.Finding coins at
over 10 inches requires ideal
ground conditions for either machine. Most of the sites you hunt
won't be ideal. I read a booklet from the early 1980's that
claimed people were finding small targets at up to 22 inches deep
with the detectors of their day. By "small" I take it they
meant "Volkswagen bus". CONCLUSION: The tests suggest that both the Explorer and the Tejon are excellent, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Tejón pros:
-Great depth
-Light weight
-Analog knobs are easy to adjust on-the-fly
-Precise pinpointing
-Good at picking out small targets among nails
Tejón cons:
-Only one tone
-Can be fooled by iron targets sometimes
-Manual ground balancing may need readjustment as you hunt
Explorer pros:
-Great depth
-Tone ID
-DD coil covers more ground per sweep
-Display screen and programmability
-Automatically deals with ground mineralization
Explorer cons:
-Heavy weight
-Can be fooled by iron targets sometimes (even Tone ID and Display will give false indications)
-Pinpointing difficult (especially if there is rusty iron or multiple targets near each other)
-The XS model has very slow threshold recovery (improved in the II and SE models)
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Some dealers claim the Explorer can mask out iron completely. This absolutely not true. There is not a metal detector in existence that can distinguish 100% of the time between a good target and a piece of iron that has built up a large halo in the ground. If something shows up in the "coin" area of the screen and makes a nice, high, fluty tone, you're going to detect it even if running Discrim or Iron Mask at a high level. The Explorer SE reportedly has better iron discrimination than the II or the XS, but I doubt it's magical. There is always going to be that piece of badly corroded iron that has just the right characteristics to give the "high fluty tone" of a coin.
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