No bigger Compadre fan than me out there.
Bought a 7" coil version from Skiwhiz in 2010 and went on to find more than 10X's what it cost me in clad, silver and gold since then...and I only use it part time for fun when I want a change from using my Fishers.
Still, that added up to many hundreds of hours and I learned it well and passed on all kinds of knowledge about how I use it to many.
If you have ever heard anyone mention the term "Church of the Compadre" it was me that started that and coined that term in a funny little post I wrote about it years ago that started it all.
The resulting thread is responsible for many Compadre sales to new users that stumbled on it and read posts from many rabid owners that added to it.
I bless the day this thing came into my life because it is responsible for uncountable hours of shear pleasure, fun, shocks and surprises.
That all being said a few weeks ago I got a Mojave just on a whim hoping that it might do just a tiny bit better in my oh so difficult devil dirt and even though I am not done testing all the abilities of this thing quite yet in every situation I am likely to come across I have used it enough to start thinking I might not be pulling out the Compadre much anymore.
It seems to be deeper in my soil than the Compadre and not just a little but by a lot, it's abilities to notice good targets in heavy iron does not just match the Compadre but might be even better and that extreme hypersensitivity to chains and really small targets also seems to be part of this package.
I used the Compadre for many hours in this bad dirt but also a lot in much better dirt out west where it performed more than admirably.
It did everything I ever asked of it and more and could reach the 6-7" depth level which was fine because most of my deepest targets never laid a whole lot deeper than 5-6".
Here I can't make it much further than 3" with that one in the bad stuff around here but the Mojave has shocked me and gotten to the 5-6" area on a few in that same bad dirt and it might get even deeper than that.
I would have been happy with just one more inch than the Compadre so that is why I am shocked...and thrilled.
Let me add I also have used a Vaquero for hundreds of hours here too, I found plenty but with all its extra power and features the performance, which was insanely great out west, here was never much to write home about for me...and I had 3 coils for the thing.
I am having just as much if not more fun if not more using the Mojave around here and my finds volume and quality is startling with just the few hours I have on it.
I traded away that Vaq to get the Mojave as a matter of fact and it is looking like this was the very definition of a win-win deal for both of us.
In great soil it might not matter so much, they both would probably be on more of an even playing field and will probably perform similarly to each other but if you hunt in mineralized red clay soil like I do or in sites with insane amounts of iron which I also deal with that extra $90 cost for the Mojave would be well spent in my opinion.
That would be considering just what they can do and find in less than perfect conditions and sites, add in the ability to change coils on the Mojave and that is just a bonus.
The Mojave is not just a hyped up 12kHz 180 ED Compadre nor is it a Silver either with the sensitivity knob but some sort of strange and wonderful hybrid of both, with maybe a little of the DNA of other Tesoro models thrown in.
Or so it seems to me.
Many Compadre owners bought one and still sing its praises so that must count for something.