Questions for you 'Cortes' guys..............

[James/Washington]

I have had two Vaqueros and now have a Cortes. I can not find a lot of information or videos on the Cortez but I have been detecting since 1971 and have been through a lot of detectors so I am very familiar with detectors, how they sound and how they work. Now to my questions. I have only been out on two short hunts with the Cortes and my ground is consistent medium mineralization and I hunt in some trashy, newer parks where I do not need depth. The Cortes hits hard and loud on coins but I am getting falsing. It is not EMI. I have ground balanced in all metal and adjusted threshold(from slight hum to just a whisper) so I can switch to all metal if I need to. All metal seems to work fine but I do not hunt in that mode. I have set sensitivity to anywhere between 2 and 8. Disc is just above foil. Notch in off(center)position. If I switch notch to narrow, it takes out pull tabs and wide takes out zinkers as they should. I am hearing target sounds and indicators in the display with the 'smeared' indicators. The Cortes is falsing. I go back over the spots and then get no other signals. I am wasting time going back over these falsing locations. I would think the Cortes would be a fairly quiet detector until it got a reportable and repeatable target. Is there something that I am missing. Also, nickels do not hit on air test farther than 4" from the coil. That doesn't seem right. I would think the Cortes would hit nickels very well. Quarters around 8", which is fine Any help? Ahould it go back to Tesoro for a checkup"

 

[BarryL]

only owned one Cortes many yrs back it was great detector and don't remember it falsing much at all unless I got next another detector and it would do a lot of falsing then. I never hunted in all metal either so never checked it and to my recollection I never thought it was a very accurate one on Nichols Traded it for a Deleon and liked the Deleon a lot better . I would say send it to Rusty and let him retune the coil

 

[pinenut]

From what I understand, Cortes will ground balance in all-metal only, and discrimination mode uses a preset ground balance. If that's the case, I think you'll need to contact Tesoro and send it in for a re-tune, describing how and when it's falsing. I suspect that they'll need to trim the disc mode GB a bit more positive. ^_^

 

[James/Washington]

Yes, the Cortez has set gb in disc and manual gb in all metal. I set the gb at each site I visit just in case I want to go into all metal and inspect a target a little further. I think you are right, I will probably need to send it to Tesoro for the detector to be returneded to the coil. Didn't want to have to spend more $ but may have to.

 

[Mike Hillis]

A couple of things.
1 - the Cortes will respond to ground minerals so you need some disc in play to reduce the ground feedback. The ground feedback can be very fatigueing to listen to.
2 - along the same lines as number 1, the Cortes likes an air gap. If the coil is too close to the ground you'll get feedback and jump id numbers. A good 1-1/2 to 2" air gap works best.

3 - high sensitivity setting increase the surface footprint of the coil. That creates more falsing on the edge of the sweeps, requiring even more air gap.

Good luck.
HH
Mike

 

[thumperjones]

I have a DeLeon, and can agree with what Mike Hillis says concerning the air gap. If it doesnt make the false signal go away, it will at least make the display a little more accurate.

That's my opinion from using my DeLeon at least.