My second detector I ever owned was a used Tesoro Silver Sabre Plus. a TH'er friend sold it to me when I was just 16 and at that time had a $100 piece of crap detector from Radio Shack. the Tesoro SS+ was a godsend as it was Simple, Easy to handle, and Deep seeking. I used it for 6 years and also had both the 4" coil and the 8" open center coil that came with the detector. 3 controls, Disc knob, Sens knob, and mode/Retune switch. the only thing I wished for more was some sort of ID Meter. I used the thing primarily hunting Beaches and when I went to old Schoolyards and Ghost towns. I found many Indian Head pennies, Wheaties, Buffalo Nickels, Silver Mercs, old Square nails, Axe heads, farm implements, Tokens, buttons, once even a small cache of 6 silver dollars.

2-The Cortes'is much more sensitive than my Bandido II umax which means it has better depth.

3-The target IDing was excellent; better than my Whites XLT which is a more expensive unit.

4-Pin pointing is as good as the Bandido II umax which is excellent.

5-I switched over to SUM mode from DISC and liked the different tones.This audio feature will come in handy as I'll explain later.

6-The CORTES worked great in wet sand (which is the extent of our mineralization here in S.Florida. My partner dug a coin that was at least 7 or 8 inches out of the wet-salt-sand, and most other machines usually have a problem with this type of sand.

7-The display light worked fine, especially since we usually start detecting beaches just prior to dawn.

The Cortes is a POWERFUL machine, so much that I was forced to turn down the sensitivity to 5.

Hey, lets face it T'H'ers are extremely loyal to the machines they own.One will tell you there unit will detect chinamens fillings while letting you know that with your unit you couldn't find your way home! Not me,I'll tell you the best unit is the one you can find what your looking for.

For me its the Ban. M.M.II, I don't call it a detector, its a discriminator--- heck, a magnet will detect metal, but our hobby has no use for just finding"any" metal, we need to find "certain" metals. I guess what I'm trying to say is it all boils down to DISCRIMINATION.And the Ban. M.M.II does it and does it very good, separating trash from treasure like nobodies business.

Some have said Tesoros lack in the depth department.I agree and disagree on this, would you rather have a unit that can detect a target at 2ft. and not know what it is ?Or a unit that can only go down a foot but can answer that age old question "to dig or not to dig".The Ban. M.M. II ,at about 10" can I.D. a silver dime buried an inch away from a nail, no confusing numbers,target I.D's, just a repeatable signal ,that's it.Sure there's units that display what you have found and its depth,but that's IF there's nothing around the target.

In August of this year (2000), I was attending my first treasure hunt as a participant. During this hunt, I was using a Bounty Hunter Sharp Shooter II for my hunting. Being new to metal detecting, I had considerable trouble trying to use all of its features and many of them are not explained adequately in the manual. In addition, the weight of the thing was getting heavier as I was lugging it up hill and down dale (literally...it was on a farm in hill country). After a great deal of frustration, I was almost ready to give up and go home.

A fellow detectorist that I had befriended from the "Silver Seekers" club in Ohio had a new Compadre for sale that she had won in a contest. The price was quite reasonable, so I bought it then and there.

The biggest advantage that this detector had over my other detector was the light weight. It made the hunt rather fun. I was able to find 4 or 5 targets to the one that I had located with the Bounty Hunter.

The Compadre has just one knob for discrimination. There is no sensitivity adjustment. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing comes from the fact that the only things you have to do are put in a 9 volt battery and turn the knob to the on position. There is an audible tone that is loud and lasts for about 5 seconds. I can only assume this is used to help you set the volume control on your headphones or to make sure you can hear a target in noisy conditions if you aren't using them. The single knob means that there is less weight and headaches getting set up. For a beginner, the Compadre isn't a bad choice, but I could recommend a little better.

I mentioned earlier that the one knob (discrimination) is a curse as well. The curse comes in because of the fact that the sensitivity is always at one setting and I can only presume it is set high. The problem that this creates is that even with the knob set all the way to the high end of discrimination, it will still beep (albeit erratically) at targets lower on the knob. I have even found nickles with it set to the high end, if that tells you anything at all.

Overall, it is not a bad detector, but there is room for improvement. I know that Tesoro makes a detector that has the additional sensitivity knob and would recommend something closer to that for the beginner. Digging up every target because you are not sure of what it is can be quite frustrating.

Three years ago I decided to expand my horizons, and start detecting water as well as land. My first water detector was a Fisher 1280-X Aquanaut. The 1280 was always a reliable hunting companion, however, I get bored quick and decided to experiment with other detectors. My second summer, I purchased a used White's Surfmaster II off of a friend who had upgraded to a CZ-20. I quickly realized that the Surfmaster wasn't for me.
Once again, I was back in the market. During the past winter I found myself carefully researching various water detectors. Seeing as water hunting is my favorite hobby, I did not let money be an issue in my purchase. I was willing to spend any amount of money to find the right detector for me. I started asking around and talking to different dealers. I considered the Minelab Excalibur, the CZ-20 and the Tesoro Stingray II. I had heard from many people that the Stingray II was a great water detector. After talking to several dealers, I learned that the Stingray II had been discontinued and was going to be replaced by the Tiger Shark. I decided to wait for the new Tesoro Tiger Shark.

Once the Tiger was released, I ran out to my local dealer and picked one up. Here is my review of the Tiger Shark: The day after receiving my new Tiger Shark, I went to my local freshwater beach. I live in Ohio, which means that swim season is only three to four months in the summer. The lakes are drained, and the land lubbers scour the dry lake beds with their land machines. These areas get cleaned out in the winter! The swim season hasn't been in too long, so I didn't expect to find much. I performed the ground balancing ritual that Tesoro details in the user's manual, set my discrimination to 4(which i determined was what I needed to reject iron and hit small gold in my test garden) and headed straight for ankle-deep water. I started swinging, and within five minutes(to my amazement), I hit a strong signal. I made one quick scoop, looked in my basket, and sitting in the bottom was a small silver hoop earring with .925 plainly stamped on the folding clasp. I was fairly happy. Now I can honestly tell everybody that the first target with my Tiger was silver! Beats the heck out of a pop tab! As I continued to detect, it started sprinkling rain and thundering. I decided to give it a few more minutes and leave. Right before I was about to wrap it up for the day, I hit a strong tone. Scooped the area, and heard that pleasant "jingling" in my metal basket. Looked down and saw a beautiful man's sterling silver ring with six small white stones. A very large ring at that. I am 250 pounds with relatively large fingers, and this ring was loose on my ring finger. Nice find! I decided to call it a day.

I own a Cutlass umax that I bought this past summer. I have to say that I haven't been so impressed with a detector in years,it sure is the smallest control box I have seen since the garret gta.

Thought I'd just drop my 2 cents worth in, got started several years back with an old used bounty hunter, held together with pop rivits and super glue, well it worked pretty good, found lots of stuff with the old thing, then I decided to upgrade, got a new garrett with push pads and digital readout, was really good machine never a minutes trouble, found coins like a champ, ran bout 70--80 % accurate but all it wanted to do was find coins, i found few other relics and stuff but lots of coins, in the meanwhile i picked up another bounty hunter for backup (tracker) worked good was lots lighter than garrett, 3rd time i used it switch broke, excellent repair and warranty, they took care of it very promptly, but all the plastic parts on it squeaked and moved around, wrote the factory, they said was not cost effective to stop this, so i decided to live with it since the machine worked so good.

I've owned a Tesoro MicroMax Cutlass for a couple of years now, and I would certainly recommend it for a beginner or as a backup detector. Here goes:

After swinging a detector for a couple of hours, even the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of us appreciate a light weight detector -the Tesoro MicroMax line is exceptionally lightweight -in fact I've never had an aching arm or back because of it. This can be a huge bonus which can prolong your detecting day comfortably.

The Cutlass is powered by an over-the-counter 9v battery which I've found always lasts for at least 20 hours (conservative estimate). Obviously this is great for running costs and ease of battery replacement as well as carrying a spare around with you.

The whole look and feel of the detector is one of quality -I believe this detector is very well made. Though I haven't broken anything on it, my impression is that it's a tough little detector. My detector experience is only limited to Whites, Garretts and Tesoro, and in my opinion, the Tesoro looks to be the best made. I'll mention the easy breakdown of the detector too (though I know that from what I've seen most detectors are comparable from this aspect).

*Unlike my other detector, the Cutlass doesn't seem prone to sensitivity to the usual bumping against the odd tree root.

The guarantee -assuming Tesoro lives up to it (and I've heard only positives about their service).

Simplicity -this detector has three controls -no big bells and whistles but it just does the job. I used this detector with my friend who has Whites XLT and I am pretty sure it would never miss "beeping" at anything he detected, however one might ask, why not buy a Tesoro Cutlass then? Read on for the negatives:

*Let's take it for what it's worth; this detector is simple and has less bells and whistles. Though I was always confident it would signal a target, one event caused me to go out and buy a more up market detector. I found a great signal once, but it was mystifyingly over a large rock in the soil. After (much) careful sifting and examination, I decided that the rock was the cause of the signal. I got up and walked on -however my friend who had a Whites XLT happened to pass over the same site -result: a whopping silver dime signal on his display. Sure enough, a lovely 19th century dime was resting on the surface. After wiping a tear from my eye, I asked myself "Why hadn't I seen it?" I just don't know. All I do know is that if I had a detector that identified this signal as a dime, I would have more than likely looked further. I know some enthusiasts would say that you have to learn to interpret audio signals to their fullest -and hence I would have found the dime -however this assumes some competency in hearing. As my mother always used to shout at me through the bathroom door when I was taking a bath "You're tone deaf!!!!". As such, I just believe that my target interpretation needs more than just an audio signal but a visual one to help out as well -something only supplied on the more up market detector models. I believe that on average, you're going to have to dig up more trash with this detector than a more up market one to get similar results. So to those people like me who aren't very good at audio signals, the Cutlass may present some issues.

*There is no no-motion pinpointing. Yes it would be nice to have this feature, though I've personally found with practice that by "X-ing" that this disadvantage is largely negated and you can pinpoint as well as other detectors with no-motion pinpointing -it just takes a little longer.

*Though I have experienced no difficulties yet, I am a little apprehensive over the choice of a toggle switch on the console face (it's used for switching between discrimination and all metal mode). When you're out in the woods and there is alot of dirt about and I wonder if this might become susceptible to getting dirt inside it. As I said though, no problems yet so this can hardly be counted as a negative.

In essence, these are the only bad things I can say about this detector -it's consistently performed well and done what it's supposed to.

If you are looking for a detector to introduce you to the hobby of metal detecting, but reluctant to spend $300 to $1000 on a machine for a hobby that you aren't even sure you'll enjoy yet, The Tesoro Amigo II is for you!

For around $150 to $190 (new!) this is a quality machine at an affordable price. Of course there are no bells & whistles, but, it gets the job done just fine anyway. Just turn it on, set the discrimination knob as high or low as you'd like, & start swinging the coil, it's that easy to operate!

I used mine for the first two years I detected and found turn of the century artifacts, lots of modern change, numerous wheat pennies, two silver dimes, an 1893 Indian Head penny, and many other interesting items with it. I have recently upgraded to another machine to get those bells & whistles, but that little Amigo II is what got me hooked! It is light weight (2pounds), easy to use, and very dependable. As for depth, I've dug coins at depths of 4-6 inches with it & once it even went down over a foot to reveal a flattened 55 gal drum to me! :-)

The Amigo II's simplicity & adjustibility makes it well suited for use by children as well as adults. If you ever decide to upgrade as I did your Amigo II is well worth keeping as a back up detector or a loaner for friends who may want to join in on a hunt once in awhile. The Amigo II is also tough. Mine has been knocked over and bumped around a couple of times by children in their excitement upon target recovery, and I have never had a problem with it. Then again, I wouldn't have to worry anyway, because the Amigo II, as well as all the Tesoro's to my knowledge, have a life time warranty. In short, I LOVE MINE! Happy hunting!