Frustrated Cibola owner

[rainyday101]

Great headphones. You are doing it right. Keep at it and keep us posted!

 

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[digger27]

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

Spending less time hunting this year, and trying to learn the F70 with the time I have, mostly.
Still have great fun with my Tesoros so I still pull them out from time to time, especially that Compadre since it is a total blast to use.
Used it yesterday and found coins and some pretty cool things till the battery got low and it went fuzzy on me.
Last fall I pulled out the Vaq and mounted the concentric sniper coil on it that a very generous person sent me as a gift out of the blue.
Just a few hunts with it but that small coil goes amazingly deep, finds coins like mad, and seems to find silver well and even gold.
I will never get rid of my Tesoros.

 

[goldnrelics]

well i'm not going to read all those postings, but the Cibola is badass, just dig every beep, especially the solid ones. GOOD LUCK!

 

[eyemustdigtreasure]

I used my Cibola in most of soil conditions, and highly mineralized soils in burnt-over areas , where you have to lift your coil up some to get rid of the weird sounds, and thus lose depth and smaller targets, but manageable.
Generally, the machine has a very good discriminator. I think my large coil is 8x9" and my DD 5.7" closed coil is very effective, reaching far past their diameter ("limitation") for depth.. Run with just audible threshold, crank up the sensitivity, and dig everything! ...oh yeah, air-testing is good, but burying things in the ground, next to a rusty nail, should test your abilities and patience!

 

[Keppy]

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.
.

..OK .. Here goes this makes no sense to me … With freshly buried coins are no depth test for a detector…….. BUT if other detectors are picking up the freshly buried coins and yours is not it has to be the detector ..i have seen this said so many times were all the other detectors sound off on freshly buried coins and one model did not .. Then they say oh it is in freshly buried dirt .. WHY THEN ARE ALL THE OTHER DETECTORS PICKING UP THE COINS ?? The reason yours is not picking up the coin the depth on yours is not as good on your detector as on the others…. I seen this said before what do you need a special type of dirt for the detector to get depth ..

 

[rainyday101]

..OK .. Here goes this makes no sense to me … With freshly buried coins are no depth test for a detector…….. BUT if other detectors are picking up the freshly buried coins and yours is not it has to be the detector ..i have seen this said so many times were all the other detectors sound off on freshly buried coins and one model did not .. Then they say oh it is in freshly buried dirt .. WHY THEN ARE ALL THE OTHER DETECTORS PICKING UP THE COINS ?? The reason yours is not picking up the coin the depth on yours is not as good on your detector as on the others…. I seen this said before what do you need a special type of dirt for the detector to get depth ..

I totally disagree with you on this one. I have a test garden just coming up on two years old. Nobodies detector does worth a darn in it. They all struggle at 6" targets. Lucky Larry has posted much on this. Undisturbed soil has molecular alignment such that all the particles + and - are aligned. Disturbed dirt does not. Do I know that for a fact? Nope, but I have read much on it. Does it mean it's true? I read it on the internet, it has to be true. There is however something to it. My test garden proves it. Now cut a plug with a 3" pipe, put the coin in the bottom of hole, remove the plug from the pipe in one piece, put the plug back in the hole, and the detector will nail the coin no problem. So that is a test between undisturbed soil and the disturbed soil of my test garden. There is a difference. Don't believe me, try it. I also read something from Dave Johnson on this once too. I tend to believe him.

So can I give you the exact scientific explanation? Nope! But I know what I tried and I know what the results were.

 

[Keppy]

I totally disagree with you on this one. I have a test garden just coming up on two years old. Nobodies detector does worth a darn in it. They all struggle at 6" targets. Lucky Larry has posted much on this. Undisturbed soil has molecular alignment such that all the particles + and - are aligned. Disturbed dirt does not. Do I know that for a fact? Nope, but I have read much on it. Does it mean it's true? I read it on the internet, it has to be true. There is however something to it. My test garden proves it. Now cut a plug with a 3" pipe, put the coin in the bottom of hole, remove the plug from the pipe in one piece, put the plug back in the hole, and the detector will nail the coin no problem. So that is a test between undisturbed soil and the disturbed soil of my test garden. There is a difference. Don't believe me, try it. I also read something from Dave Johnson on this once too. I tend to believe him.

So can I give you the exact scientific explanation? Nope! But I know what I tried and I know what the results were.

Your wrong if one model detector picks it up why will not the other ..WHY because the detector that will not pick it up is not as good as the one that does pick it up .. not scientific ..Juat plain common sense …..

 

[rainyday101]

Your wrong if one model detector picks it up why will not the other ..WHY because the detector that will not pick it up is not as good as the one that does pick it up .. not scientific ..Juat plain common sense …..

All right I agree on detector vs. detector. One is better than the other. There is however a big difference in freshly buried vs one that has been there for awhile. My test will prove that point. I wasn't disagreeing on detector vs. detector. I should have read that a little better- maybe slower!

 

[eyemustdigtreasure]

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.

I'd like to help, after a LOT of use, 4-5 years and have mastered the machine where everything is intuitively run and quickly recover the goodies. No ground balance, just set the Threshold to barely audio (for small near surface - to large, but deeply buried.)
Depth, not much beyond coils' largest dimension....however, set everything to max, (if the machine will let you, for the ground mineralization) might force you to swing higher for smaller targets near the surface, or (better) lower sensitivity, and no discrimination - you will find a .22 short cartridge a real great depth! - try it. Use Feq 3, with no interference like EMI,
The # (three) frequencies, help you out on hunts where there are other Tesoros - (they talk to each other!) - it works, where I was on a PIT (Passport in Time), that had FIVE Cibolas working in the narrow area of a wagon road...!
At 12.7 khz, this puppy can get you there....!!
Tones - hmmm, I can't speak to that as I'm mostly deaf, but use headphones minus my hearing aids, in order to not miss anything on windy days or noisy environment. You'll definitely hear speak to "small" or "LARGE" targets. The impact, the delivery of the targets' sound makes them seem "soft" or "sharp" or "HARD" metals as they sound harshly-sharp! - so, I guess the machine does give different tones, that helps, plus with the skilful use of the discrimination knob, you can guess fairly accurately, between a copper cent and a bottle cap, most-of-the-time....
Keep it, take care of it.
Hope I helped some.
GL and HH

 

[WhiteTornado]

Thanks, I appreciate your input . I did a group hunt this past weekend and experienced first-hand how handy that frequency switch is!

 

[dirtfisher]

Your wrong if one model detector picks it up why will not the other ..WHY because the detector that will not pick it up is not as good as the one that does pick it up .. not scientific ..Juat plain common sense …..

Sorry Keppy,

But you are wrong on this one. There is nothing wrong with the detector itself. There are other factors at play here. The other factor would be the lack of an adjustable ground balance on this detector. The ground balance on this detector is preset at the factory for best over all performance. If you are over soil where the ground does not match the balance of the preset then you are going to lose depth. The other detectors either have an adjustable or automatic ground balance tuning to the soil to hit the target, but does not mean they are better detectors. The Cibola does it's job for what it was designed to do. A "turn on and go" machine. Do that test in an area of soil where the ground matches the preset ground balance and it will hit the target just fine. Most of your dropped targets are not going to be beyond 5" or 6" anyway. Occasionally you will get the rare deeper ones every so often. Add a ground adjust knob to it or buy a Vaquero (same circuit) and it will give those other detectors a run for their money.

 

[atomicscott]

Sorry Keppy,

But you are wrong on this one. There is nothing wrong with the detector itself. There are other factors at play here. The other factor would be the lack of an adjustable ground balance on this detector. The ground balance on this detector is preset at the factory for best over all performance. If you are over soil where the ground does not match the balance of the preset then you are going to lose depth. The other detectors either have an adjustable or automatic ground balance tuning to the soil to hit the target, but does not mean they are better detectors. The Cibola does it's job for what it was designed to do. A "turn on and go" machine. Do that test in an area of soil where the ground matches the preset ground balance and it will hit the target just fine. Most of your dropped targets are not going to be beyond 5" or 6" anyway. Occasionally you will get the rare deeper ones every so often. Add a ground adjust knob to it or buy a Vaquero (same circuit) and it will give those other detectors a run for their money.

Nope. Some detectors are better than others. I will put my XT 505 up against any Vaquero. I owned both. Vaquero found much less for me.

 

[Turbo21]

It does t make sense why your machine wouldn't pick up the freshly buried coins. What happens if he decides to detect a freshly
Plowed field? Same thing will happen. These objects won't have a halo and he will miss them all

 

[dirtfisher]

Nope. Some detectors are better than others. I will put my XT 505 up against any Vaquero. I owned both. Vaquero found much less for me.

Still not true.

 

[Rawhide]

Heres a test, bury a small glass jar of pennys about 16 inches deep. Thats what I use to test my detector every once in while. Anything deeper than 16 inches just gives me a blank screen. Now you may need to get your machine checked out. But freshly buried coins are a bugger to detect. I also have some large granite stone and I put a dime under them to see if my machine is working. Make your own test garden and keep water to it for a bit. You will see your machine come alive. Is there a small coil you can use till you get good with the iffy and weak signals. My coils dont loose much depth, not sure about your machine. My last test is to see how small a gold or silver item I can find while hunting. Tricky to do in town. I usually get 10 inches in black sands and such, but on bullets. The vdi helps for quick settings change, and there is some test you can do to see if you have a bottle cap or keeper. But confidence is what you need. I can dig a coin almost every time. But I hunt by sound. The vdi will lie to you. I dont have the funds to pick up a tesero but Im sure they are capable machines. Depth is over rated, you waste too much time digging and missing other targets. Get yourself a smaller coil, I think you will do well.

 

[SvenS]

Not all Cibola's are created equal.

There's hot ones, cold ones and average ones. They all fit into the quality control spread.
Since there is no manual ground balance, in some soils detection depth plain-o-sucks.
Won't pick up a silver dollar, find Mont's silver dollar test. GB might be way off and the detector rejects it as iron.
Add external manual GB and you should see improvement. Or adjust the GB trimpot inside.
Cibola target tones are tough to hear a difference. You need to listen to it in pinpoint mode and disc mode, compare the signals.

Here's the link to the mod
MODIFICATIONS

 

[atomicscott]

Still not true.

Ok, did you use the 2 back to back (LIKE I DID)? Try it, then tell me its not true. You won't know unless you try. Either I got a 'cold' Vaquero, or a 'hot' Minelab. Proof is in the finds.

 

[rainyday101]

Ok, did you use the 2 back to back (LIKE I DID)? Try it, then tell me its not true. You won't know unless you try. Either I got a 'cold' Vaquero, or a 'hot' Minelab. Proof is in the finds.

Scott, did you ever compare both of the detectors on the same target? I mean hit a target with the 505 and without digging it check with the Vaq to compare?

 

[atomicscott]

Scott, did you ever compare both of the detectors on the same target? I mean hit a target with the 505 and without digging it check with the Vaq to compare?

Mainly it was the grassy area (always damp soil) of an elementary school where alot of kids gather waiting for their parents. Found a few bucks with the V & thought I had cleaned it out. Found 59 more coins there with my F2, some down to 10" or so (deep as the Lesche). Granted the sens on the V was usually around 9 or so, but stable thresh. Found nothing over 7-8" with it at this particular school, I just assumed the V found it all. Sorry, but I am really too busy to plot 'schemes' on how to dis Tesoro, lol. This was just my experience. Maybe if I would have cranked sens past the red and upped the threshold, I would have found those other coins. I would then have no disc, as it is so inaccurate when supertuning it is basically useless

 

[SilverFinger]

A TID machine in heavy trash would do nothing to help your success. It'd be going -12, 14, 47, 55, 73, -9, beep, boo-beep, cough, fart on a good target that's in close proximity to junk - so you'd probably pass it up anyway. Where the Tesoro's shine is in their ability to see through the crap and still provide a 'dig me' single tone even if there's trash or small iron near the good target.

I usually run mine right around the "L" in the word "FOIL". When I find a signal, I check it at "Nickel". If I still have a good signal, I then crank it up to full discrim to check if it's a loathesome, lowly zinc cent. If the signal is loud and breaks up at zinc cent, I don't dig it. It's probably a shallow stinkin' Zincoln.

If it breaks up at "Nickel", its either a nickel, new style pull tab or gold. Coins go 'pop pop' and have a definite strong, more staccato tone that can be repeated by swinging the coil north, south, east and west. Maybe I have a super ear, but small aluminum bits and trash have a 'soft edge' type of sound - a longer attack, less staccato. They also break up when you swing the coil north/south. I've checked a lot of those signals and I swear I've been 100% with them.

My first day out with the Compadre I found a little 10k ring. I'll dig every 5th or so 'nickel' break-up signal. Law of averages says most are new-style tabs, some times you'll be surprised with gold.

Also, 'super tuning' the Cibola helps. Turning up the threshold to the 2:00-3:00 position will help the gain making for a louder target resonse. You'll lose the pinpoint feature, but these things are so fast, you really don't need a pinpoint.

As for checking depth, personally I don't care about knowing approximately how deep it is. You'll find that out when you dig the target.