While I definitely enjoy the Bandido II µMAX and Silver Sabre µMAX as two of my five or six all-time favorite Tesoro models, it is the original Bandido and Bandido II that provided me the best field performance in the nastier iron littered sites where I Relic Hunt the most. The others hold their own and have strengths I like for more Urban Coin Hunting where ferrous trash is minimal by comparison.88junior said:
You're fortunate to still cling to the Bandido II.
As for the use of Coil Covers or coating the bottom of search coils, I prefer to do neither with most makes and models I have used. The exceptions are my current Tesoro's with the thin-profile 6" coil and all my Makro and Nokta detectors which came standard with very thin, practically weightless coil covers. Long, long ago, in the era of conventional TR's, TR-Discriminators and the dual mode VLF/TR-Disc. models, it was kind of 'popular' at the time to encourage folks to "scrub their search coils." The reason for that was the traditional TR modes lacked any Ground Balance circuitry and were very prone to falsing if the coil was lowered toward the ground [size=small](the Threshold audio would null out)[/size] or raised away from the ground [size=small](which caused an abrupt increase in audio, kind of considered a 'false beep')[/size]. This was even more true with the TR-Disc. modes operating in the VLF range.
With our modern VLF-Discriminating models [size=small](the current designs like the Tesoro's, etc., that are silent-search mention-based Discriminators operating with ground compensation)[/size] that also work with greater sensitivity, the manufacturers of almost every make and model tell us in their operator's manual to keep the search coil 1" to 2" above the ground and do NOT scrub the search coil. There are several reasons for this, to include:
a.. Scrubbing a search coil especially on dirt, sand, rocks and other abrasive material, will wear out a coil or coil cover.
b.. Scrubbing a search coil usually results in a varied or interrupted sweep speed as you encounter dips, bumps, weeds, rocks and other things, including the drag factor from scrubbing.
c.. With the more modern, higher-gain detectors we are using, working the search coil on or too close to the ground will actually cause a loss of depth and/or target detection performance due to the ground mineral compression of the EMF close to the search coil.
Therefore, it is best to NOT scrub a search coil but instead maintain a 1" to 2" coil height from the ground during searching.
Then let's consider the coil cover or coil coating itself. Many times a coil cover, especially the thicker-bodied coil covers such as Tesoro's brown 8" open-center cover, will add a noticeable weight to the far end of the rod from you and, quite often, this adds to fatigue. Not only fatigue, but I have seen it cause some people to start using a too-fast sweep speed instead of maintaining a relaxed, comfortable sweep with ample overlapping for efficiency. I have also held detectors with a thick coating of protective material on the search coil that even weigh as much or more than a plastic coil cover, and that increases a poor coil swing and increased fatigue.
So, congrats on a great detector model, but work the coil an inch or so off the ground, remove the coil cover, and enjoy a more comfortably balanced package.
Monte
