???Vaquero???

[BillF]

For the last couple of months I have beat myself up popping zinc pennies. I get the occasional dime,nickel or quarter but the V has been a magnet for zinc.
Last fall and throughout the semi-mild winter I hit the yard of an old house at least 20 times, maybe more, with both the stock coil and the 5.75 DD. Pretty much felt that I had cleaned it out. The V seemed to work well for me then, alrhough now I have my suspicions that I was only hitting objects up to 4-5 inches. This week I met a gentleman with a ML Safari that had gone into that yard and pulled another couple of wheats and a merc. He told me they were at 6-7 inches. I find it hard to believe that after as many times as I had been through that yard that I just hadn't put my coil over those coins.
Last night I had an hour or so while waiting for my wife so I went to an old park. I set the disc just off all metal, got signals that I just couldn't seem to locate. There was a 6" pipe about a foot or more under the surface, I could see it running across the creek and as the soil for deeper and deeper I could follow the pipe with no problem. I search for 30 minutes not finding anything, then decided to backtrack some of the area in AM. Almost immediately found a quarter, nickel and penny. No silver or anything with age, but better than finding nothing. And remember, this was after going through in silent search mode.
These last couple of months have had me wondering about how efficient this V really

 

[bigtim1973]

Well he does have a DD coil on that safari. Maybe just maybe there was trash next to the mercury dime and wheat pennies he found that you coul not locate becase the Vaquero was nulling out the trash and ignoring the coins next to it. Not sure what to say here but that would be the only thing I can think of. Tim

 

[Topdecker]

One thing that I noticed is that the Cibola, with the factory coil, had a habit of easily picking up coin-sized targets 2" to 3" off to the side of the coil. That means that the foot-print for picking competing surface trash is a lot larger than the size of the coil and it bothered me. Anyhow, there is a better than average chance that bigtim's comments are dead on and you should do a little air testing so you can get a better idea of what is going on and pay special attention to the perimeter of the coil.

If you want the short version: try dropping your sensitivity down to 4-7 and see if that doesn't help you out.

Top

 

[BillF]

I spent quite a bit of time last night playingwith pinpointing. In AM pointing is pretty dead on. Raising the coil and even cranking up disc will give a smaller target making for easier PPing, I just couldn't seem to find my target. Hell, maybe it was beyond my 10" screwdriver, I doubt it though.
As far as the old yard, I went through it many times with the DD coil.
Lately I've noticed quite a few folks here unloading their V's even after a short time of having them. Makes me very curious.
Before I closet this one or sell it, I will send it off and have it checked. Rusty Henry assured me that this machine would find me good targets in places that I figured I had cleaned out or had been hammered by others. So far that hasn't been the case.
I have found a few pieces of silver and quite a few wheaties this year alone, but at the depths I'm finding them even a cheapo BH will pick them up. That isn't what I paid for, and isn't what I expect for performance.
I've been a loyal Tesoro user for 30 years, so I think it may be a problem with the Vaquero itself.

 

[Hombre]

Bill,

Your V is a beep and dig machine, the guy with the Minelab Safari has the advantage of Target ID and can therefore 'cherry pick' coin signals.

This is the only advantage that I can see is the Minelabs have the advantage of deep target ID, whereas the Vaquero at high discrimination to ID deep high conductive coins you will be losing depth. Now in a different scenario, in a relic rich area hunt with good targets mixed with iron nails and a dig all attitude, the Minelab dude would be overwhelmed at looking at the meter, while you would be digging the goods. Just my take on it.

 

[kansa54]

I wonder if there are any Vaquero users that think the Vaq. is a great detector? I've only used mine on four hunts so I'm not sure yet. I have found a Barber dime and a gold ring in those four hunts but both targets were very shallow. I've also experienced the Vaq. barely hitting on a quarter at the surface. Just curious what the people that have used them alot have to say.
Clint

 

[joe dirt_1]

I have had my Vaquero for almost 3 years now and I love it more each time I take it hunting.
With all the tiny targets I have dug that were 7 inches plus deep I have no doubts my Vaquero
will hit a coin that deep easily. The Vaquero does like big iron but most detectors do and it's easy to tell from a good target.
I did notice the Vaquero is not as expressive with its tones over different targets as my Silver

 

[BillF]

When I first got this it took me a couple of weeks to really figure it out, but I was quite happy with it, especially with the 5.75 DD.
Its just been this last couple of months that my confidence in it has dropped.
If I had or knew someone with an old test garden I could check this puppy for depth on COINS. It is the uncertainty of not knowing whether I'm giving up good targets that's killing me. I'm not the young guy I was, getting up and down all day for new pennies just beats me up and I can't do it.

 

[Ism]

My Vaq has a non-linear sensitivity. If I have the sensitivity at 10 I may only get 5-6 inches max on a dime, push it into the red and it will go much deeper 8-9.
RFI will also affect the depth as well as lots of iron. As far as RFI, there was a time I could only get 3 inches on the wheat pennies I was finding in one particular area.
I got curious because one of the wheat's at 3-4 inches was barely giving me a signal. I raised the coil and tested it in the air....same thing.
Yet when I moved to another location, the good performance returned.

This is the only drawback with the Vaq. It doesn't complain about RFI by chattering or warbling, but the performance seems to diminish.

Another thing is the direction you approach an object. It doesn't matter the coil, you won't hear a target if the iron or other disc-ed trash is masking it in one direction.
That's why experts advise gridding in many directions. Place a 5 rusted nails around a dime (2-4 inches from the dime) on a piece of cardboard.
See just how your VA performs under those conditions. Its a good demonstration of how a coin can be masked and how it will sound when you can detect it.

 

[Monte]

THEY ARE NOT PERFECT !!

No single detector is perfect and that's why I always encourage the avid detectorist to own 2 or more detectors and have 2 (or maybe 3) search coils for each. They should first work with detector and several coils to determine if the detector and/or coil is a good fit for their hunting needs. Hunting needs are determined by the type of hunting they do and the site environment they usually anticipate using one or more detectors. If the detector or coil just doesn't feel right for them, get rid of it and search for a more pleasing detector, or coil, to take its place.

For the last couple of months I have beat myself up popping zinc pennies. I get the occasional dime,nickel or quarter but the V has been a magnet for zinc.

Sometimes it is simple the location, but we have to also figure that, usually, the modern zinc cents are shallower than some older dated coins.

Last fall and throughout the semi-mild winter I hit the yard of an old house at least 20 times, maybe more, with both the stock coil and the 5.75 DD. Pretty much felt that I had cleaned it out.

Clean site out? Close to impossible, unless you hunt in the all metal mode with a proper slight audio threshold and recover every target, ferrous and non-ferrous. AND, you hunt that same way from several directions, overlapping the search coil by advancing it no more than 1", AND you make more than one sweep in each direction.

The V seemed to work well for me then, alrhough now I have my suspicions that I was only hitting objects up to 4-5 inches.

Maybe that's all the depth they were at?

This week I met a gentleman with a ML Safari that had gone into that yard and pulled another couple of wheats and a merc. He told me they were at 6-7 inches. I find it hard to believe that after as many times as I had been through that yard that I just hadn't put my coil over those coins.

First, if you didn't witness the recovery depths in person, you only have his best guess at the actual target depth during recovery. Second, to know how well your detector/coil combo would have performed would mean you needed to be there at the same time and check your set-up against his p[prior to any target recovery effort.

Last night I had an hour or so while waiting for my wife so I went to an old park. I set the disc just off all metal, got signals that I just couldn't seem to locate. There was a 6" pipe about a foot or more under the surface, I could see it running across the creek and as the soil for deeper and deeper I could follow the pipe with no problem.

Minimum Disc. responses should have been isolated and pinpointed for recovery using the All Metal/Pin-Point function.

The underground pipe isn't a good tool to figure coin depth capability because the pipe is BIG.

I search for 30 minutes not finding anything, then decided to backtrack some of the area in AM. Almost immediately found a quarter, nickel and penny. No silver or anything with age, but better than finding nothing. And remember, this was after going through in silent search mode.

A.. Could have not swept directly over them the first time.

B.. You might not have follow an exact return route for he coil.

C.. The All Metal mode is more forgiving of sweep speed, and if he sweep was too fast in he silent-search Discriminate mode, you might not have been able t get a good target response.

These last couple of months have had me wondering about how efficient this V really

 

[BillF]

Monte,
I'm not ready to give up yet, will keep trying some different techniques first.
I fully understand every point you made and would agree with most of them, it still doesn't change the fact that I,Me,Myself,and my Vaquero have not been having what you would call a symbiotic relationship. Not mutually satisfying or any number of other phrases that explain my frustration.
When I feel certain that it isn't up to par, off its going to Tesoro.
Thanks for everybody's input.

 

[GunnarMN]

I was not Impressed with the Vaquero on high conductor coins , I would really like to compare it with the outlaw in my ground in a real world test with Identical coils. maybe i can get one on loan to try . but it seems to have a great all metal ,

 

[Humble Hunter]

I feel for ya Bill, I've owned my Vaq. for several years now and it will pick up darn near everything. I get pretty good depth around 8-10 on the sens and super depth when cranked all the way in the red, rarely do I hunt in the red (too much chatter) for me. In my opinion the Vaq is very similar to any other Tesoro except when ran in the red zone, it is there that it becomes a super detector if you can handle the chatter. I see that you have many years of experience so if you think your detector isn't working correctly, your probably right, send it in for a checkup. Happy hunting.

 

[Hombre]

Bill,

I'd look for the brown 8" concentric coil, best coil Tesoro ever made, just ask tabman. I'm pretty sure he has one for his Vaquero.

My experience with the 8" coil is with the older models, what I like about this coil is because it's a deep seeking coil and has good iron separation qualities.

Just my honest "opinion"

 

[BillF]

I don't know if I want to buy anything else until I know for sure if there is a problem or not.

 

[plidn1]

Coils won't help a lame detector.

I cut my teeth on a beep and dig machine with manual ground balance. After buying a new compadre, and think it is one of the best detectors I have ever owned, I wanted to buy something a little more adjustable. On paper and reading the forums, the vac looked like the one.
It didn't take long to figure out the Vac was a joke (at my expensive). Having bought it with the extra 5.75 coil, I headed off to find tot's to learn the machine. I found a new tot by accident and went to work.
By tot standards, it was a small one with wood chips. I spent about half an hour with the vac and found about 30 cents in change but nothing over 3".
After working the swing area hard, I decided to grab the compadre and compare. Boy did I get an education. To make a long story short, I ended up with 2 rings and over $9.50 in change. Of that was 100 pennies. One ring was silver and one I found at 5" was a 14K white gold diemond engagement ring right under the swing. I was shocked at how bad the Vac performed in comparison to the compadre.

My next hunt was in my favorite park. I hit a picnic area that produces coins at 7". After an hour of hunting, I had found about 6 pennies, none deeper then 4".
Just to keep the detector honest, a few hours later I went back with my MXT and re worked the area I had with the Vac. Not only was I finding coins, I found them in my own holes. That was the end of the Vac for me. It went away without any more use.

 

[BillF]

I wish that our local dealer had various machines that we could take out and try. I bought this on the recommendation of RH at Tesoro, but 1st hand experience beats out others opinions hands down.

 

[kozyman]

I know of one small field that I hunted was loaded with iron and any piece of a house you can imagine over and over again the last few years with my ML SE Pro. I took my Compadre with the 7 inch coil and hunted it an hour and dug 3 IH's..I tell you that Compadre can eliminate the junk like nothing I have ever used.

 

[Minas man]

I use the AM mode when hunting by pressing the pinpoint button and then releasing it when I hit on a target this technique works for me. Slowing down your swing when using discrimination mode makes a big difference. When I slowed down my swing my recovery's went way up. I am using stock coil on the Vaquero. Being of Scottish heritage, I was keeping my battery in to long decreasing depth performance especially in discrimination mode.
It took me a year to learn the Vequero and there were some frustrating times but my second season start was silver and gold which proved that this machine could find the goods if I would slow down and use fresh battery's.

Minas man

 

[BillF]

Minas man,
I'm a slow hunter, although in new places I do wander. Once I figure its a good spot then I start being more methodical.
Don't quite get the battery thing, these have a regulator that should give you full power for detecting until the batt reaches a certain setpoint, then it dies. But who am I to argue, obviously you get better results with a full battery. Maybe I should charge mine before EVERY hunt.