Oh drat.
Here is my sad story.
I stumbled across what I considered a great buy on a used Tesoro SandShark. I scooped it up, so to speak and it arrived yesterday afternoon. I was on the beach with it before sundown. My wife came with me, the sweetie. And wouldn't ya know that she hit "treasure" right away: a 926 very pretty bracelet of interconnected dolphins. Terrific shape and it fits her beautifully.
This morning, at the crack of daylight, I hit the beach again (before work) and found a few clad (27 cents) and a 10 franc piece (from France) that polished up beautifully at home. I'm at least 4000 miles from France. I have no idea what the thing is doing here.
OK, so this isn't sad, right? Correct. Now comes the sad part...
This evening, as soon as I got out of work, I dashed off to the beach once again. I turn on the SandShark and it immediately starts acting up. It is registering hit after hit after hit in mid-air. I'm in VCO mode at this point. The machine is pinging again and again really loudly (in my headphones). I try lowering the volume and it does make it less intense but it's still obviously not right and not at all like it was behaving on the 2 previous outtings.
I fiddle with volume, threshold, mode (switching between the SandShark's 2 operating modes, plus the "f set" mode). It seemed like the dials did make some changes to the tone/pulse I was getting but it still seemed like ping after ping randomly.
Then, suddenly, the unit dropped into a state where it now emits a steady hum with none of the sort of random background waves that I would expect from a PI.
I took the unit home at this point and carefully brushed away all sand. When it was all clean and I had proper lighting, etc., I opened the sealed inner chamber. I'm sure the battery pack is operating well. I'm sure the headphones are fine. The dials do seem to impact the circuitry but the unit absolutely fails to detect any metal.
And, as I said, the unit has a steady hum when turned on, now. Here's a really weird clue. If I unplug the coil cable from where it plugs into the box that has the power pack, etc., and turn the unit on it then makes the sort of wavy humming (in VCO mode) that I heard when it was all working properly! Of course, the coil isn't connected so the detector doesn't actually detect metal at this point but it is interesting that when the coil is connected the unit makes a very, very steady hum but when the coil is disconnected the hum wavers in the random way that the unit did before it broke down.
The plug that connects the cable from the coil into the main box seems entirely fine. No problems. The cable itself seems fine. The coil seems intact with no obvious cracks or bruises, chips, etc. It really looks mint and has the original Tesoro labels.
Unplugging and replugging things doesn't help. Jiggling things doesn't help or make any difference. There is no water or any sign of corrosion anywhere inside the unit or out. I really looked carefully. Nothing seems broken or compromised in any visual way. Nothing seems burnt out, though I can't see the most inner circuitry because Tesoro has sealed some of the boards inside housing.
Any ideas? At this point the only option I can think of isn't appealing: send the until into Tesoro. I contacted the nearly "gold star" Tesoro dealer and said I should send it back to Tesoro directly or try to return it to the seller on eBay. Frankly, I don't blame the seller. It worked for 24 hours and it was sold as-is. My fear is that some 2-cent capacitor or something silly like that has burnt out because I started using the unit after the original owner had kept it in some closet unused for years.
If anyone has any concrete suggestions on how to "debug" this, I'd like to know. But I'm reluctant to take the unit apart any further than I did. At this point I haven't done any further damage in my explorations and I want to keep it that way.
THANKS.
Reference:
http://www.tesoro.com/Manuals/SandShark_Manual.htm
Here is my sad story.
I stumbled across what I considered a great buy on a used Tesoro SandShark. I scooped it up, so to speak and it arrived yesterday afternoon. I was on the beach with it before sundown. My wife came with me, the sweetie. And wouldn't ya know that she hit "treasure" right away: a 926 very pretty bracelet of interconnected dolphins. Terrific shape and it fits her beautifully.
This morning, at the crack of daylight, I hit the beach again (before work) and found a few clad (27 cents) and a 10 franc piece (from France) that polished up beautifully at home. I'm at least 4000 miles from France. I have no idea what the thing is doing here.
OK, so this isn't sad, right? Correct. Now comes the sad part...
This evening, as soon as I got out of work, I dashed off to the beach once again. I turn on the SandShark and it immediately starts acting up. It is registering hit after hit after hit in mid-air. I'm in VCO mode at this point. The machine is pinging again and again really loudly (in my headphones). I try lowering the volume and it does make it less intense but it's still obviously not right and not at all like it was behaving on the 2 previous outtings.
I fiddle with volume, threshold, mode (switching between the SandShark's 2 operating modes, plus the "f set" mode). It seemed like the dials did make some changes to the tone/pulse I was getting but it still seemed like ping after ping randomly.
Then, suddenly, the unit dropped into a state where it now emits a steady hum with none of the sort of random background waves that I would expect from a PI.
I took the unit home at this point and carefully brushed away all sand. When it was all clean and I had proper lighting, etc., I opened the sealed inner chamber. I'm sure the battery pack is operating well. I'm sure the headphones are fine. The dials do seem to impact the circuitry but the unit absolutely fails to detect any metal.
And, as I said, the unit has a steady hum when turned on, now. Here's a really weird clue. If I unplug the coil cable from where it plugs into the box that has the power pack, etc., and turn the unit on it then makes the sort of wavy humming (in VCO mode) that I heard when it was all working properly! Of course, the coil isn't connected so the detector doesn't actually detect metal at this point but it is interesting that when the coil is connected the unit makes a very, very steady hum but when the coil is disconnected the hum wavers in the random way that the unit did before it broke down.
The plug that connects the cable from the coil into the main box seems entirely fine. No problems. The cable itself seems fine. The coil seems intact with no obvious cracks or bruises, chips, etc. It really looks mint and has the original Tesoro labels.
Unplugging and replugging things doesn't help. Jiggling things doesn't help or make any difference. There is no water or any sign of corrosion anywhere inside the unit or out. I really looked carefully. Nothing seems broken or compromised in any visual way. Nothing seems burnt out, though I can't see the most inner circuitry because Tesoro has sealed some of the boards inside housing.
Any ideas? At this point the only option I can think of isn't appealing: send the until into Tesoro. I contacted the nearly "gold star" Tesoro dealer and said I should send it back to Tesoro directly or try to return it to the seller on eBay. Frankly, I don't blame the seller. It worked for 24 hours and it was sold as-is. My fear is that some 2-cent capacitor or something silly like that has burnt out because I started using the unit after the original owner had kept it in some closet unused for years.
If anyone has any concrete suggestions on how to "debug" this, I'd like to know. But I'm reluctant to take the unit apart any further than I did. At this point I haven't done any further damage in my explorations and I want to keep it that way.
THANKS.
Reference:
http://www.tesoro.com/Manuals/SandShark_Manual.htm
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Is there a chance you got water into the coil?I had a Hot Head coil on my Garrett--got water into it;never worked right after that with that coil. 
