flysar said:
Picked up a Golden Sabre II at an estate sale and everything seems to be in good working order, even the notch feature. Notch feature is a neat idea for the old style pull tabs (still get nickels) but if you notch out the new tabs the nickels and small gold rings go with it so I probably won't be using that feature.
The Golden Sabre II started out as the Pantera, a manually GB'ed model with variable Notch Discrimination, but they discontinued the Pantera and used the Pantera circuit board to make the Golden Sabre II in a 'preset' GB, "turn-on-and-go" Notch Disc. model.
The 'Notch Disc.' concept had been around from the mid-to-latter '80s with the Royal Sabre, Golden Sabre and Golden Sabre Plus, but those models all had the more limited lower-end adjustment range. The Pantera and Golden Sabre II used the newer ED-120 Disc. circuitry, and that added to their all-purpose versatility. Early on, the 'Notch Disc.' concept was okay and we had a lot of the older ring-pull type tabs scattered about all the places the Coin Hunters liked to search.
By the time the Pantera, then Golden Sabre II, were brought into production, we had already been using a lot of beverage containers with the rectangular-shaped pry-tabs so they were already causing a lot of problems for those who wanted to try and reject a "common tab" because nothing was 'common' anymore. For target group rejection, the Golden Sabre II's Notch Disc. circuitry was already close to useless, but it was still functional,
audibly, for many users.
I very, very seldom used Notch Disc. with any of the Tesoro Notch models, like perhaps 8 to 10 times from the latter '80s until I let my last Pantera go about 2004. lI didn't want to reject any targets above iron nails, so just like today, I set my Discriminate level at 'minimum' on all ED-120 models or those with more limited adjustment range. However, with the Notch toggle in the 'Off' setting, the variable Notch Level control can then be used to set an audible 'Tone Break' that can be helpful for some Coin Hunting needs.
You can set it to register all US 5¢ coins and higher as the High Tone. Or, you might want to Notch a modern Zinc 1¢ and set it to break just barely above them and put the Zinc in the Low-Tone range and better quality Copper 1¢ and all 10¢, 25¢ and greater in the High-Tone category.
Oh, and about the modern rectangular Pry-Tabs that are out and about these days. I have one that registers exactly like a modern US Zinc 1¢, which is also where most Indian Head and early-date Wheat-Backs will register.
flysar said:
Couple questions for the folks that have used this machine and the current models.
I was wondering if performance on coins is as good or better than the current Silver? Pretty much the same controls (disc & sens) but the Sabre II is 12 khz.
The operating frequency doesn't really matter. I prefer the performance of the Pantera and Golden Sabre II, as well as the 'original' Bandido, Silver Sabre II and Bandido II which were all from that same production era, because they handle most nails and similar ferrous trash better, or quieter, than most of the models that followed them in the micro-housed configurations that used the Low-Noise/High-Gain circuitry.
I had a Silver [size=small]micro[/size]MAX on-hand when I had my last Pantera and I never found it to be a better detector or a deeper detector. and definitely preferred the Pantera/Golden Sabre II performance.
flysar said:
Since the Sabre II is 12 khz does it match the small gold performance of the Compadre with a small coil on it?
The Golden Sabre II has a Threshold-based All Metal mode and that can give it better performance on small gold jewelry over the Compadre.
In the Discriminate mode, the Compadre does have the ED-180 Discriminate range of acceptance, so 'in theory' you can adjust for a little better Disc. mode acceptance, but I would still prefer to hunt with the Golden Sabre II, if I was to pick between the two models. Yes, I know what a Compadre is capable of doing IF all of the internal adjustments leave it reasonably functional for the ground mineral challenges it can be used it, but I also know the limitations of many Compadres in some more 'difficult' ground. I also know from experience that Compadres are often opened up and tinkered with, leaving them with messed-up adjustments and they get sold or traded and down the road people have a noisy and/or a poor performing Compadre.
flysar said:
I have a Compadre 5.75 but thinking I may be able to sell it to cover the cost of the small coil or get a clean sweep for sports fields.
The 6" Concentric coil is my favorite and I keep one mounted to each of my personal Tesoro's. MY opinion is that whether you sell or trade the Compadre, or just save up and purchase a new coil for the GS II, I would definitely suggest getting a 6" Concentric coil for it. It will improve performance in trashier spots, if you hunt them. It is more versatile than the Clean Sweep coil which is not a good pick for hunting in trash, and the 'coverage' topic can be argued a lot and I would be more in favor of using the stock 8" Concentric over the Clean Sweep DD coil for working more open/sparser-target sites such as sports fields.
My biased opinions have now been offered. Now I can get ready to head out early tomorrow morning, Tesoro w/6" Concentric already loaded and ready-to-go ghost town hunting!
Monte
HH!