I have been reading the forum for years and finally got around to signing up.
I have some impressions on machines to pass along. They are in approximate order of time used over the last 6 years.
Whites Prizm III, first machine. No good and not much coin, given to my dad before giving it a chance or researching where to actually use a machine. I have since tried this machine and find it works just fine.
Tesoro Vaquero, very very deep on bottle caps and pull tabs. Sensitive to micro jewelry. No display and no pinpointer at the time I used it. I wore me out digging deep on beaver tails. Not too expensive, couldn't be as good as the big machines... Yeah right.
Tesoro Tiger Shark, found my first gold with this machine and quite a bit of clad too. Used it both on land and water but too heavy for land.
Tesoro Compadre, I bought this machine to use on land while I had the Tiger Shark. I regret selling this machine. My oldest coin was found with it. The Compadre is my first and only recommendation for someone starting out and I will probably buy one again someday to have a back up. Turn it on, start finding stuff. Compadre knocks out iron really well.
I sold the Compadre when I bought the VX3, a real machine. LOL I didn't find any gold the two years I used it. The VX3 was going to be my deep seeking silver and gold finder. Some silver jewelry found, no silver coins. If it wasn't so dang heavy I probably would have kept it because when it beeped and read 82 it was a quarter 99.99% of the time, I really liked having a quarter vacuum. But, I never found any real silver coins no matter where I looked. The part that really got me upset about the VX3 was that even with the tiny 4x6 DD coil, it wouldn't make a peep on gold ear rings. No even when scratching the coil on high frequency.
That brings me to my new machine, Deus light package with the ear bud adapter for ws4 control unit.
Wow. A week into this new machine and I have a nice size chunk of gold from a man's watch, more nickels than I have seen in a long time and a small earring stud. I don't like that I haven't figured out how to not dig crown caps yet, but if it means the machine will help me get gold again it's worth it.
There's a guy on here that goes by Tabman who always brags up the Compadre, I can see why. I really like that machine but am going to hold off on buying another one while I learn the Deus. This will be the summer I go out of my way to dig all signals that sound good instead of relying on a spectrograph and so far I am off to a good start.
Happy hunting all.
