WEAPON OF CHOICE!

The Tesoro is an excellent detector except for the beach. You are limited to the dry sand at the top of the beach where it will do well.
Other single frequency machines will perform much better on the damp sand, some will even work on the wet but to get real performance you have to go either twin or multifrequency or preferably pulse induction.
I prefer as a first choice to use an XP Goldmaxx on the dry as it will pick up small rings many other machines miss and its light, easy to use, well balanced and very quick in use (no meter to slow things down).
If its a huge area of open dry sand the XLT with the 18 inch bigfoot coil helps cover the ground quickly though not to the greatest depth.
Directly the sand gets damp to wet its P.I. time, Deepstar or Goldquest. Maximum depth. Tolerant of sweep speed. Little discrimination except the tricks you learn so no gold missed.
If a very heavy iron area then the Minelab Sovereign with 12 inch Sunray or 14 inch Detech coil if targets are well seperated, drop to smaller coils if rubbish close together. Straight shaft to take care of the extra coil weight, no meter, no tones. Some beaches the Fisher CZ outperforms the Minelab, but not on many.
You have a great machine for most sites thats well worth keeping but as a beach bum you should really put your finds towards a detector that will open up the rest of the beach. Trouble is with the 'larger guns' you may find that their not as much sheer fun as your Tesoro.

BRIAN..you sure have a couple of oldies in your arsenal of machines there mainly the simply superb compass 77b and from oens ago the altek..cant remember that exact model but brings back memories of when i started many years ago.
myself i have a lot of oldies like a C-Scope VLF 1000, autodisc 800, VLF 2000, IB100 and a TR 300..and my favourite of them all the immortal Arado 130

BB, the Tesoro is good for land hunting but if you want to be friends with gold-God, you need to get in the water with a bigger gun!

Most people I see in NE use PI's, excals and CZ-20's. I use PI's and happy with that.

I think Brian summed it up well for ya.

BBNY;
Hitting the beaches here in the South, Hilton Head Island, and Myrtle Beach S.C. I own and have used both the PI and VLF type detectors.
My first machine (which I still own) is a Garrett SeaHunter500XLT. It is a good detector even if lacking discrimination capability. I never managed to recognize the difference trash or treasure between any signal generated by this machine so I dug everything. I now own and use the Minelab Excalibur1000. I can hear the difference and recognize when the threshold nulls out over most iron targets so I get to avoid digging THAT particular variety of garbage MOST of the time. I appreciate that. These two are the extent of my experience with water detectors. The Excalibur is head-and-shoulders more expensive than the Pulse Induction models so that is obviously a consideration. Just wanted to throw in my 2cts worth.
HH
Jim

argentum40 said:

i have a lot of oldies like a C-Scope VLF 1000, autodisc 800, VLF 2000, IB100 and a TR 300..and my favourite of them all the immortal Arado 130

Click to expand...

How about the Arado 120b, definately my favouritefrom that era... 

I've a few of the older classics Arado's, Teknetics, Gold Mountain even the first Whites sold in the U.K. (the Tellus) when they were assembled in their bathroom by Savo Whites in Scotland. I found the Tellus whilst detecting. Stem snapped in half and I tipped water out the contol box. Took it home and dried it out. Popped in some batteries and it worked and still does.
Just missed out on a C-Scope 3000 ADC at the weekend, another great machine of its time and even today on the right sites.

ah yes the 3000 ADC..never used one but i remember them very well...another of my faves was the Fisher 553-D..i dont remember the tellus and my first whites machines were the coingetter and the beachcomber 4...did you see the Sol Invictus Invicta D on Ebay?...it never had any bids and the starting bid was only £4-99

That Fisher looked like a dream....the Whites of that period looked as though they had been knocked up in someones garage. There's another (or the same Sol Invictus) just gone on E-Bay. Not to good a machine as I remember. There's an almost new Beachcomber and they are good on Roman sites (a sort of British 77b). Reduce the voltage and its just as good.
Dropped another clanger yesterday when my server went down. Laser B1 with two coils and Jolly Roger headphones went for £99. I could have sold one coil for thirty pounds and the headphones for twenty five and ended up with a good classic machine for £44

yep i was gonna bid on that laser myself...i bought a B3 off ebay earlier in the year for a snip as it didnt work when i got it..after taking the box apart one of the wires leading from the battery connectors had come away from the board...soldered it back and works fine...its a minter as well and got 2 other coils, spare shafts and rubber washers as well for £70..the coils are worth that much on there own...i had the Fisher 553 D and sold it 20 years ago which i regret doing and havent been able to find another one anywhere...another good one was the Garrett Master Hunter ( groundhog) ADS..heavy but very good machine

I had the previous model Garrett Groundhog until someone put a brick through the car window and 'borrowed' it. You do realise the Groundhog was the 'featherlight' version with the lower frequency 6x9volt PP3 being the heavy version.
if you do find another VLF 553 I've still got the instruction book somewhere. Seem to remember it was pretty heavy as well.

yeah brian the 553-D was a heavyweight...similar in style to the groundhog but with more controls (8 knobs) if i remember rightly...was a very good machine although i suppose by todays standards it wudnt cut it.

i didnt know the groundhog was the lighter version..i cant even remember how many batteries it took now and i think it was PP3s but i cudnt be certain as had it 25 years ago...

Howdy,
My weapon of choice is the Whites spectrum XLT I still learning what all it can do for me but still lovin it in fact if my wife wouldn't kill me I'd probubly sleep with it it's a great machine.