Frustrated Cibola owner

[WhiteTornado]

Frustrated Cibola owner -- now with renewed faith

Okay, I have become a pretty frustrated Cibola owner. This is the first machine I have owned. I've had it for about a year and have approximately 40 hours hunting time in it. But after all this time I still don't have a good feel for using this machine and interpreting the tone. I say tone, since it only emits one kind of tone.

Coins like cents, clad dimes and clad quarters make a very strong tone even as I turn up the discrimination to the highest levels, so those are usually not an issue. But, I seem to struggle with any other tones, the ones that are not consistently strong and/or break up as I turn up the discrimination.

I'm in a local metal detecting club and they had a group hunt over the weekend at a park. They arranged a test area with some targets lying on the ground in baggies and some buried in baggies. My detector was fine with stuff above ground, especially cents, clad dimes, and clad quarters. Even modern nickels seemed to give a strong, consistent tone. But, the tone seemed to break up when going over silver coins such as a Mercury Dime. That kind of broken-up sounding tone didn’t seem different than many other times when I’ve heard it in the past, only to dig up trash.

My Cibola also seemed to struggle with deeply-buried items, those down lower than 6 inches. For example, they buried a Morgan dollar in a baggie about 8-9 inches deep. My detector didn't make a sound over it, even with the discrimination at its lowest and the sensitivity increased up around 9 or 10. That was a bit disconcerting. I thought the Cibola was supposed to be good on the deep stuff, 8 inches or more. They had a Mercury Dime buried deep and again my machine did not make a sound. Then they decided to replant the dime at about 6 inches. After they replanted it, my machine was finally picking it up.

My hunting mostly tends to be in trashy areas like schools, tot lots, and parks. Is the Cibola a poor choice for trashy areas? I am wondering if a different unit with a screen and different tones might help. I heard some of the club members discussing VDI readings and for example, one guy was saying that most people know to “dig an 84 reading, but you should also be digging the iffy, in-between readings like 82 or 83”. I have no idea how I would equate that knowledge to a beep-and-dig machine like I have, especially a monotone one. I saw some other guy using a different brand of machine without headphones (couldn’t see what it was but I believe it was either a Garrett or White’s model) and it was making so many different types of tones it sounded like a symphony LOL.

I live in the mid-Atlantic area, in Maryland. I’m in the central part of the state, not near the shore. Maybe the type of soil around here is not the best for the Cibola, I don't know. Seems like nobody else in our club uses a Cibola so I don't really have anyone to use as a direct mentor. One member has a Cortes, but that of course is a different class of machine.

 

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[rainyday101]

Where do we start?

Freshly buried coins. Don't cry in your Wheaties on this one. Freshly buried coins are no depth test for any detector. Disturbed soil gives poor results. If you want to know more on this and the ground matrix spend some time Googling this subject.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but you seem to be suffering the new guy syndrome. You read the forums and saw all the great finds everyone makes every time they go out and at least every 10 minutes when they are out detecting. Simple fact is they all post the goods finds, not the hours and hours of junk and clad. It all comes down to location, location, location.

Then we got the VDI question. You hunt trashy areas. What do you think the VDI would do in a trashy area. Between the jumping numbers and tones you would go crazy. It's not the detector, the Cibola is fine. You just need a little experience and help.

So here comes some help. Start out by just cherry picking coins. These will be pennies, dimes, and quarters for the most part. To do this set your disc just past tab. Pass a penny by the coil to make sure it still hits clearly on the penny. Now go detecting. Anything that hits giving a good clean tone from two directions ninety degrees apart dig! My personal preference is to not use the pinpoint button. Instead X over the target from side to side and front to back until you zero in on it. I prefer this method because you are sizing the target up. Throw some coins down and practice. You will see how you can size a coin up very easily. The reason for doing this is you will be able to rule out digging targets that size up to big. This would include larger can slaw, cans, and large metal.

With your disc set where I told you, you will get pops and clicks when detecting. These are items below your disc. setting that are getting partially discriminated out. Ignore these, but embrace them. When you get lots of pops and clicks you are in a trashy area and your disc setting is ignoring this junk not giving you good clean tones. When this happens, slow your swing down, overlap your passes and listen for that clean tone amongst the crap. When you get the clean tone, zero in on it and pick the coin right out of the trash.

Now most people will tell you to turn your disc down low and dig everything to learn your detector. This obviously hasn't worked for you and is a cause for your frustration. So by starting with a higher disc setting and cherry picking coins, you will experience success much quicker. Then as time goes on and you think you have a pretty good handle on your detector, then you can turn your disc down to just short of nickel and have it again. At this point you WILL dig tabs. With tabs come nickels and rings, but you gotta dig the trash to get the cash. NO VDI machine can tell if the target is a ring. At some point you will more than likely know the target before you dig it. This will take lots of time.

As far as the Cibola goes- you have a great detector. You are new and have tried to go it alone. With a low disc setting this can be a bit overwhelming. Doing what I said well get you getting coins much quicker and build confidence. Without getting experience changing detectors will NOT help you. You will be having the same problems with a different detector. I am not against VDI's but they are nothing more than a micro-processors programs best guess.

Try what I said and see if that works for you. Let us know how it goes and if you have any questions.

 

[WhiteTornado]

Rainyday, thanks for a very informative and even humorous post. You didn’t come off as harsh at all and in fact were probably spot on. I reread my original post and it sounds kind of whiny, or like a rant (or both).

You are right about freshly buried coins and I should have realized that myself. I planted a test garden in my backyard a few weeks back and did read about the need for a test garden to “season” and about halo effect, etc. Also, the test setup at the club outing had the buried items in baggies which could have further affected the results. Guess I was not putting two and two together.

I like your idea of sticking with discrimination settings beyond the pulltab range for a while. I do indeed use the “X marks the spot” technique, and almost never bother with the built-in pinpointer button on the Cibola. I have a separate Garrett Pro Pointer which works great once I’ve dug a hole.

I like your motto, "gotta dig the trash to get the cash" Now I need to go eat a Snickers and squash my inner diva

 

[KennyD]

Wow, that was a great post rainy day. You Da man!

 

[dirtscratcher]

Okay, I have become a pretty frustrated Cibola owner. This is the first machine I have owned. I've had it for about a year and have approximately 40 hours hunting time in it. But after all this time I still don't have a good feel for using this machine and interpreting the tone. I say tone, since it only emits one kind of tone.

Coins like cents, clad dimes and clad quarters make a very strong tone even as I turn up the discrimination to the highest levels, so those are usually not an issue. But, I seem to struggle with any other tones, the ones that are not consistently strong and/or break up as I turn up the discrimination.

I'm in a local metal detecting club and they had a group hunt over the weekend at a park. They arranged a test area with some targets lying on the ground in baggies and some buried in baggies. My detector was fine with stuff above ground, especially cents, clad dimes, and clad quarters. Even modern nickels seemed to give a strong, consistent tone. But, the tone seemed to break up when going over silver coins such as a Mercury Dime. That kind of broken-up sounding tone didn’t seem different than many other times when I’ve heard it in the past, only to dig up trash.

My Cibola also seemed to struggle with deeply-buried items, those down lower than 6 inches. For example, they buried a Morgan dollar in a baggie about 8-9 inches deep. My detector didn't make a sound over it, even with the discrimination at its lowest and the sensitivity increased up around 9 or 10. That was a bit disconcerting. I thought the Cibola was supposed to be good on the deep stuff, 8 inches or more. They had a Mercury Dime buried deep and again my machine did not make a sound. Then they decided to replant the dime at about 6 inches. After they replanted it, my machine was finally picking it up.

My hunting mostly tends to be in trashy areas like schools, tot lots, and parks. Is the Cibola a poor choice for trashy areas? I am wondering if a different unit with a screen and different tones might help. I heard some of the club members discussing VDI readings and for example, one guy was saying that most people know to “dig an 84 reading, but you should also be digging the iffy, in-between readings like 82 or 83”. I have no idea how I would equate that knowledge to a beep-and-dig machine like I have, especially a monotone one. I saw some other guy using a different brand of machine without headphones (couldn’t see what it was but I believe it was either a Garrett or White’s model) and it was making so many different types of tones it sounded like a symphony LOL.

I live in the mid-Atlantic area, in Maryland. I’m in the central part of the state, not near the shore. Maybe the type of soil around here is not the best for the Cibola, I don't know. Seems like nobody else in our club uses a Cibola so I don't really have anyone to use as a direct mentor. One member has a Cortes, but that of course is a different class of machine.

What you have said is how some like a detector to work with one tone rolling the disc with your thumb to guess what is in the ground. You may learn to like it but put no weight into a tid is of no use in thrashy spots. Go with some of the guys in your club and see.

 

[rainyday101]

WhiteTornado, After a long break in metal detecting I came back into it with a Silver uMax. At first I went through exactly what you did. My previous detector was a Garrett GTAX 500 and it had a display. It told me what was in the ground. I found a lot of goodies with it, but I now know I trusted the display sooooo much I left a lot of goodies behind. If it didn't tell me what I wanted to see, I didn't dig. So this new single tone Silver had me frustrated much like you are going through. Then I set it up to cherry pick and things changed. I very seldom get fooled on coins, but sometimes it happens. When I am in an area that has ring potential and is not to trashy, I turn the disc down and dig all good sounding signals. When you do this you are going to find a lot of trash, but if a ring or nickel is there you will get it.

A display can give you a numerical readout that relates to conductivity of the target. If you are after rings though, so what! What is the conductivity of a ring? Depending on size and shape they can be almost anywhere in the conductivity range, so a display cannot tell you if it is a ring or not. I believe people get to reliant on that display and do some pretty selective digging, which means they miss some good stuff. Where a display can excel a little is at ID'ing a penny, dime, and quarter. For these coins you will probably dig a little less trash than with the Cibola. At depth though the ID on a display becomes unreliable, so the edge go backs to the Cibola there. Both forms of detectors in the right hands can be very effective. The point is- don't discount the Cibola, it is very capable.

Just stick with it and give it some more time. I know exactly what you are feeling, I've been there myself!

 

[Hobojo]

Yep what he said!!!
My resident Cibloa operator pretty much says the same thing, one note on depth she will add is if the soil is dry like here in sunny So Cal then depth will be affected. She has dug some deep quarters in areas that are wet, 8" to 9". She recently dug an old pocket watch in bone dry soil that was about 7" deep , so in some case's the bigger the item then the less affect. Also items that are round give a smooth round sound , so setting the Cibloa to max and digging the coins like Rainyday says will help you learn that sound.
The Cibloa is a fine machine and I am sometimes jealous of my wife's turn and go capability with great depth but, I still love my Outlaw.

 

[rainyday101]

Hobojo, I like your list of detectors! A true Tesoro Man!

 

[luvsdux]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned that may apply to the scratchy/broken signal on the merc. Coins that lay vertically or at a slant will often give that type of sound, not the solid, sure tone you get when the coin is laying flat level. I attend several club hunts each year where many coins are planted not deep, but randomly, sometimes just dropped in grass where they're hard to see. After a bit, you recognize the ones that are not laying flat by the variation in the tone.
luvsdux

 

[digger27]

Great info, rainyday!

40 hours is not much in the scheme of things, especially spread out over a year, more hours in and you will eventually learn a whole lot more if you open your mind to the experience.
I always laugh when people post that there is only one tone on most of the Tesoro units, like this is some sort of handicap, or that these are "only" beep and dig machines.
Nothing can be further from the truth on both these statements.
There is a world of information in that one tone once you learn the real Tesoro language, and using that language these are actually beep, figure it out then dig detectors, and pretty darn accurate ones at that.
I have used it that way on every target I have come across since I first had one in my hands, anyway.
At first that one tone did sound the same to me on all targets too, but over time I learned little by little that the information you receive and what I learn by thumbing that disc knob can tell you volumes...you just have to get comfortable using the best processors you have out there in the field with you to interpret that info...the ones in your brain.
Target types can be determined with a great amount of accuracy, by maneuvering the coil you can make great guesses on target size and depth, also.
I also use Fishers...over 1000 hours in with a couple of units, but no matter what I see on the screen the number one piece of info I use on every target to make digging decisions are the tones I hear...I have hundreds of hours with my Tesoro's to thank for that.
I have always said that learning to hunt the Tesoro way with audio only can only make you a better hunter, even if you also or eventually use detector with screens...any model or brand.

I am very grateful I went to Tesoro school before I ever purchased my first good detector with a screen.
I still use both types, and my enjoyment of each kind and the volume and quality of finds with all of them have reached heights I never though possible because I traveled on my journey this way.

 

[WhiteTornado]

I want to thank not only rainyday101 but several others as well who've provided a wealth of information on this thread. I have a newly-renewed faith in my Cibola and even edited the thread title to reflect that . I can't wait to give it another go!

 

[digger27]

Atta boy...go get em!
One tip... you might want to try it the way I do when I used my Tesoros, or try it once anyway.
I always try to get signals in low disc, then I thumb that knob up to the fade out point and then past it, then I'd slowly turn it down as I am swinging over the target and listen.
Targets that just come in and don't chatter, sound fuzzy, or make many if any clicks I have usually found to be good ones.
Most bad targets will be noisy when you do it this way.
Not all... some good targets could come up but bit noisy, some bad targets could be solid, but this is the way I have been doing it for a while and for me it works well.
You never know what you are swinging over until you dig it, but after digging thousands upon thousands of targets good and bad I have found this is an excellent way to tell a lot of the trash from good.
I use a few other techniques to narrow it down but this is my basic hunting style and it has helped me dig more quality targets that probably should have been allowed by law while leaving a lot of the trash still in the ground.

 

[rainyday101]

I have always said that learning to hunt the Tesoro way with audio only can only make you a better hunter, even if you also or eventually use detector with screens...any model or brand.

So true, you learn to focus on audio, not displays. Nothing against displays, but they should be an aid after you analyze the audio. When using a Tesoro some say they can tell a tab from a coin, not me. Even after all the hours I have put in, I still dig tabs when on a ring quest.

 

[digger27]

So true, you learn to focus on audio, not displays. Nothing against displays, but they should be an aid after you analyze the audio. When using a Tesoro some say they can tell a tab from a coin, not me. Even after all the hours I have put in, I still dig tabs when on a ring quest.

I have dug many tabs that actually turned out to be the round, golden kind that people wear on their fingers.
Can't tell gold from anything else, either, except that they have always come in as one of those solid signals for me.
That is except for big gold like large men's class rings.
That sound is unique, it will sound different than anything else you have ever heard.
The first one might make you notice, and when you dig the gold target and relate that sound to what you see you will remember it.
The second one you come across with that tone will rock you back on your heels...as will every one after.
This is what happened to me and the 2 class rings I found when using my Tesoro's.
Dug the first, learned the sound, rolled over the second and I knew in my bones what it was before I bent over to dig it.
Every time I go out with my Compadre or Vaq that is the sound I am listening for...my holy grail signal.
With luck, maybe I will hear that sweet, crystal clear, beautifully sustaining tone again one day.

 

[Hobojo]

Beepch, chbeep or mmbeepmm or oobeepoob or veep, Is any of this making sense??

 

[WhiteTornado]

Thought I'd come full circle with this thread. I got out Friday afternoon for a short while in my own yard. Pulled out a clad quarter, two very small pieces that may have been from a ladies watch band (don't think they are silver, though), and a broken bottleneck with an old Grape Nehi screw cap on it .

Edit to add: took the advice here and kept discrimination above the pull tab range. Skipped the really iffy-sounding signals. Most importantly, had fun!

 

[Terry Soloman]

Are you using headphones?

 

[Sandman]

Where do we start? Freshly buried coins. Don't cry in your Wheaties on this one. Freshly buried coins are no depth test for any detector. Disturbed soil gives poor results. If you want to know more on this and the ground matrix spend some time Googling this subject. I don't mean to sound harsh, but you seem to be suffering the new guy syndrome. You read the forums and saw all the great finds everyone makes every time they go out and at least every 10 minutes when they are out detecting. Simple fact is they all post the goods finds, not the hours and hours of junk and clad. It all comes down to location, location, location. Then we got the VDI question. You hunt trashy areas. What do you think the VDI would do in a trashy area. Between the jumping numbers and tones you would go crazy. It's not the detector, the Cibola is fine. You just need a little experience and help. So here comes some help. Start out by just cherry picking coins. These will be pennies, dimes, and quarters for the most part. To do this set your disc just past tab. Pass a penny by the coil to make sure it still hits clearly on the penny. Now go detecting. Anything that hits giving a good clean tone from two directions ninety degrees apart dig! My personal preference is to not use the pinpoint button. Instead X over the target from side to side and front to back until you zero in on it. I prefer this method because you are sizing the target up. Throw some coins down and practice. You will see how you can size a coin up very easily. The reason for doing this is you will be able to rule out digging targets that size up to big. This would include larger can slaw, cans, and large metal. With your disc set where I told you, you will get pops and clicks when detecting. These are items below your disc. setting that are getting partially discriminated out. Ignore these, but embrace them. When you get lots of pops and clicks you are in a trashy area and your disc setting is ignoring this junk not giving you good clean tones. When this happens, slow your swing down, overlap your passes and listen for that clean tone amongst the crap. When you get the clean tone, zero in on it and pick the coin right out of the trash. Now most people will tell you to turn your disc down low and dig everything to learn your detector. This obviously hasn't worked for you and is a cause for your frustration. So by starting with a higher disc setting and cherry picking coins, you will experience success much quicker. Then as time goes on and you think you have a pretty good handle on your detector, then you can turn your disc down to just short of nickel and have it again. At this point you WILL dig tabs. With tabs come nickels and rings, but you gotta dig the trash to get the cash. NO VDI machine can tell if the target is a ring. At some point you will more than likely know the target before you dig it. This will take lots of time. As far as the Cibola goes- you have a great detector. You are new and have tried to go it alone. With a low disc setting this can be a bit overwhelming. Doing what I said well get you getting coins much quicker and build confidence. Without getting experience changing detectors will NOT help you. You will be having the same problems with a different detector. I am not against VDI's but they are nothing more than a micro-processors programs best guess. Try what I said and see if that works for you. Let us know how it goes and if you have any questions.

Rainyday gave you very good advice. There is nothing at all wrong with your detector it's a very good machine. It lacks a ground balance but that is just a minor thing. 40 hours on your detector is not enough time for you to really learn it. Follow Rainydays advice and soon you will be enjoying the Hobby.
GOOD LUCK,
SANDMAN😄

 

[atomicscott]

Atta boy...go get em!
One tip... you might want to try it the way I do when I used my Tesoros, or try it once anyway.
I always try to get signals in low disc, then I thumb that knob up to the fade out point and then past it, then I'd slowly turn it down as I am swinging over the target and listen.
Targets that just come in and don't chatter, sound fuzzy, or make many if any clicks I have usually found to be good ones.
Most bad targets will be noisy when you do it this way.
Not all... some good targets could come up but bit noisy, some bad targets could be solid, but this is the way I have been doing it for a while and for me it works well.
You never know what you are swinging over until you dig it, but after digging thousands upon thousands of targets good and bad I have found this is an excellent way to tell a lot of the trash from good.
I use a few other techniques to narrow it down but this is my basic hunting style and it has helped me dig more quality targets that probably should have been allowed by law while leaving a lot of the trash still in the ground.

"Used my Tesoro's"? Digger, Is that to say you no longer swing the Vaquero and Compadre?

 

[WhiteTornado]

Are you using headphones?

Yep, a pair of Gray Ghost.