Mojave...Relic hunter?

[REVIER]

Been messing around with the Mojave on way low gain for the last hunt or two.
Seems to tighten up the signals for me, somehow a bit sharper disc in some way and I thought it would kill my depth by moving it down to 1 but I am still beating my Compadre depth even set there.
Not super deep but I am still digging coins at a depth of up to 5" or so and I might get deeper but I don't think I have come across a coin deeper than that since I changed the gain.

On the other hand this iron thing was way deep, did not disc out, sounded solid so I went after it.
Coins deep here have modulation and do sound further away and this thing did not, also when I got past 4-5" I knew this was something bigger than a coin and way deep but I kept digging just to see what it was how far down it was laying.

Would you believe at least 8-9"?
Only because I had my Sampson with me could I even get down that far because the soil was hard and bone dry.
In my dirt that depth is amazing with just about any detector around here, on gain setting of 1 I was shocked.
I guess this is some sort of horse tack or something, horses haven't rode through this park since the early 1900's and the depth bears his out.

As a relic hunter I bet this thing might be...great.

 

[jak135]

Revier - was it set on the High or Low ground setting?

Thanks

 

[Electricfrontporch]

It's definitely an amazingly versatile machine Revier.
Relics, coins, heck I've even had one pretty decent hunt on east coast Florida wet sand.
Scooped a few coins and a silver earring at a good 5" plus.
I personally think that for $250 they hit a grand slam.

Doesn't seem to be any depth difference from 1-4 on the sensitivity in my experience.
The lower sensitivity seems to really help when hunting trashy parks loaded with little foil bits.
Definitely helps the good targets stand out audio wise.
All the foil and can slaw will sound really mushy for lack of a better word.

The only time I've used the high ground setting so far is along the edges of some gravel lots.
The gravel must be a little "hot" and falses in the low setting.
With the switch in high the falsing goes away and it works great.

Noah

 

[Electricfrontporch]

Also.....that's a cool piece of old horse tack.
Love finding neat old rusty relics.

Noah

 

[REVIER]

Revier - was it set on the High or Low ground setting?

Thanks

Low.
As bad as my soil is I have never needed to switch it to high as yet.

 

[synthnut]

Hi Revier

You seem to be doing a lot with the Mohave .....Can you switch it to the "high" setting and tell us how much of a performance hit you take by doing so ? ......I have a few area's that are somewhat mineralized and wondering how the performance will deteriorate with the "high" setting .....Thanks for your time ....Jim

 

[REVIER]

Hi Revier

You seem to be doing a lot with the Mohave .....Can you switch it to the "high" setting and tell us how much of a performance hit you take by doing so ? ......I have a few area's that are somewhat mineralized and wondering how the performance will deteriorate with the "high" setting .....Thanks for your time ....Jim

I have switched to the high setting over several targets here and there, played with it plus combinations of different gain settings before I dug a few.
None were really deep, maybe up to 5" or so, seemed to hit similar depths and signals on most of them in either position but I always hunt in low.
We seem to be getting into the dry time around here, we might get rain this weekend but for the next few months the dirt is going to be be dry and hard packed in most areas so tough to get deep...for now.
The other day I hit an old park with my F70 that has history going back to the 1800's but didn't dig anything much past 3" except in chips in a tot lot.
Any deeper than that just destroys the ground too much when it is bone dry.
That will change in the fall but I will mess around with that switch some more on future hunts with the Mojave and try to see if it makes any difference.

I talked with Alan Cannon at Tesoro once a few weeks ago, he told me this is not just an upgraded Compadre but a new design and there were serious discussions about how hot to set the gain range on this thing before they released it and they settled on a range that is nowhere near top end to keep it quiet as possible in the most environments.
I believe him.
Somehow, some way and for some reason I seem to be able to get deeper here in my difficult mineralized iron infested dirt more consistently or at least with better ID's than I could with my Vaquero despite the major power, GB feature and even using a big DD coil.
Don't exactly know how that is possible but so far it seems to be what I am experiencing...but I need more hunting time digging deeper targets to be sure.
Definitely this thing is getting deeper on a gain setting of 1-2 than my Compadre could go and that one had the sense turned up internally to just about max and uses the older 7" white coil.
It is like the Mojave was designed to optimally hunt here in these conditions, somehow.

I would have been happy to get just one more inch in depth than my Compadre in the bad stuff here but it is doing way better than that plus it is doing everything my Compadre could do but better, I am plucking out some extremely masked great targets around a ton of iron in this red dirt plus lots of regular coins I evidently missed in sites I have scoured in the past dozens of times.
I keep mentioning this was a gamble, I had the Vaq and the Compadre that did pretty good and no information or data from anyone around me or specifically in my city and area where the challenges can be especially daunting on exactly how well the Mojave could handle this devil dirt but I took the chance, traded my Vaq away to get this thing and now I am very happy I did.
I am having more fun than I ever have hunting here using a Tesoro plus I am finding some great things along the way.
A gamble that paid off for me and I expect even more surprises to come.
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?17,2383875

 

[Electricfrontporch]

Hi Revier

You seem to be doing a lot with the Mohave .....Can you switch it to the "high" setting and tell us how much of a performance hit you take by doing so ? ......I have a few area's that are somewhat mineralized and wondering how the performance will deteriorate with the "high" setting .....Thanks for your time ....Jim

When I first got mine I did some bench/air testing.
Seemed to be a little less than an inch of depth loss going from low to high on coin size targets.

Noah