Compadre 8 inch mini review.

[rob0260]

My new Compadre with 8 inch coil arrived today and I got out for a quick 20 min hunt. I wasn't concerned about the number of targets retrieved but was more concerned about learning the machine. Not too much exciting to report but I did find a 1954 penny so there may be some silvers at this site. It was a very trashy site at a park with a pavilion and beer gardens so there were no shortage of signals. Before I went out for this hunt I did some air tests and there were no surprises. Clad dimes gave clear 2 way signals out to 6 inches and quarters out to 7 inches. What I did learn was that this detector was VERY sensitive to a depth of 7 inches. Since we all know that most of our keepers are in the first 6 inches of soil, I wasn't too concerned about depth. There were many more signals with the Compadre than there were with my Ace 250 that i have used at this site several times. The discrimination circuit worked flawlessly and it seemed a very natural process to thumb the discrimination knob up and back down to identify the targets. The resistance on the discrimination knob was just right and it seems to be VERY accurate. I also noticed that this detector has a very fast recovery time. It really puts my Ace 250 to shame as far as recovery time is concerned. I know that this will be my primary machine for tot lots and trashy sites and general detecting until I decide to upgrade to a higher end tesoro. I will be using my ace 250 with the 8.5x11 DD coil for open sports fields but I think that's all the use it will see from now on. I may end up taking the front cover off the Compadre and tweeking the sensitivity pot to get a bit more depth but I will leave it alone for now. The Compadre is very light and I could swing it all day and I wanted to. The Compadre has good depth, a great discrimination circuit, is light as a feather, pinpoints your target using the X method VERY WELL and has a lifetime warranty. I only wish I had tried one before buying my ace 250 years ago. I hope this mini review will help thoes contiplateing purchasing a first machine or thoes who want a great backup or loaner detector. HH, Rob.

 

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[Stoof2010]

First, congrats on the new compadre!!! I love mine.
Second, be careful about messing with that pot, it voids your warranty and Allen told me at tesoro that they put that pot as high as it will go while still being stable and not falling. Just a word of warning.

Also. The first day I got my compadre was also the last day my ace 350 saw the light of day.
It sat for a while until a friend interested in the hobby wanted to try it. He like it and ended up buying it from me.
The compadre can be used in the same open areas you use your ace. Just need to be sure to overlap your swings properly.

It's a really great unit and kills anything at or even a bit above its price range.
Haha try putting down different coins and changing their spacing and you'll see how crazy fast the recovery it on that. You can almost have them next to each other and when you disc out one in the middle it will skip and then keep in beeping on the rest.
Truly is a great and simple machine.
Good for the new and old to the hobby.

 

[digger27]

They might turn it up pretty high at the factory but never as high as it can go because many can turn it up even higher than factory settings and do successfully.
Mine is turned up further, almost to max, just up to the point of noise then backed down to be stable and quiet.
I can't get closer than 1 foot to a piece of tot lot equipment now before it goes off but I can still find targets next to or even leaning on large iron like that or fence poles by listening for the telltale double beep so max sensitivity does not affect that prime little superpower this thing possesses.
Even hyped up like this I still never have EMI chatter problems...never.
Sounds like yours is plenty sensitive if you can reach 7", if you can get even a bit further with disc in all metal I would probably leave it alone for now.
Those pots are very brittle, fragile and sensitive, one wrong move or an adjustment too far and you can mess things up bad but if you are careful it can be done easily.
I usually hunt with the disc very low or in all metal because you will get the deepest, clearest signals that way, using disc you do lose a bit of depth the higher you go along the range of that disc.
It might not be a whole lot at all, maybe way less then an inch, and all units seem to be slightly different in this regard plus soil types might affect this too but I would rather get signals on everything including the very deep stuff at the very end of the scanning field and figure them out and make digging decisions by thumbing that knob which I do on every target....always have.
Setting the disc and just digging everything that beeps above it drives me crazy even though many do it this way, for me the game of figuring out good from bad and treasure from trash before I dig is much more fun and satisfying.
Over the years I believe I got pretty good at this, maybe not Tabdog good but good enough to cut out digging about 80-85% of the trash I come across and make pretty good educated guesses about the rest.

It sounds like you thumb the knob and do this like I do, this is the only way I do it because over the years I found it is way more accurate than doing it the way all the manuals say to do this.
I always turn past the fade out point then back down and notice where the targets comes in plus I listen close to exactly how the target comes in.
After digging thousands upon thousands of targets I experienced most, but not all, targets that are good will usually come in clear, solid with very little chatter, noise or clicks before they firm up, they just appear, while lots of trash will come in way noisier.
There are exceptions...some trash will come in solid like coins usually do, nickels are weird and out of all the coins might not be so silent until they firm up and really deep stuff can also act differently than shallow targets and not come in so solid, either.
Also that high disc depth loss thing, a very deep high conductive coin like a dime at the very limit of the scanning field may well disc out way before top end where it ordinarily would never disc out at all so you have to be on your toes all the time when making digging decisions.
I also had some experience using an 8" coil model for a couple of weeks and noticed the disc was not exactly as sharp and exact as the smaller coil models.
Very close but not exact...not a deal breaker by any means but just something to be aware of.
This is something you might not notice at all unless you had hundreds of hours swinging the smaller, solid coil units like I have and I do believe this slight difference might have to do with that donut coil but nothing to worry about or concern yourself with.
The little extra depth you might get using the bigger coil pretty much makes this forgivable and a wash for overall hunting in my opinion.

The good thing is all the gold at any size from tiny to large I have found with my Tesoros at 6" or less have always come in solid, clear and a for sure dig-me signal every time from all angles so far, as always super deep gold targets may act different.
You never ever know what you have in the ground below that coil before you dig it 100% but I have found the accuracy of this method is the best way for me to enjoy this hobby by far.
I cannot dig every signal I come across anymore, don't really want to either and without doing that there is always the possibility of missing something but I really don't care and the "what ifs" never bother me because my success rate is way better than I probably deserve or have any right to expect...surprisingly high as a matter of fact so I learned to live with all that.
Plus I hunt my spots more than once anyway so I figure what I don't find one day I have a shot to find on another.

A couple of other things...
It is possible to estimate target depth pretty good with practice, there is some modulation in that signal on normal rings and coin targets and deeper targets do sound a bit further away and shallow targets closer and louder plus by swinging over the top of these target types before you dig if you know your scanning range and do the math regarding the amount of space between the target and the fade out point you can get pretty accurate at this.

Finally there us one more thing that I hope you get to experience one day...the very rare and unique sound of big gold like a class ring and maybe smaller but very high karat gold.
This sound will be different than any other sound you are likely to hear come out of this thing.
Out of the huge amount of targets I have dug with my Tesoros I have only heard it twice, the first time with my Compadre and months later the second time with my Vaquero.
It is my holy grail tone, the one I long to hear every time I hunt with either detector and if I am lucky I will get to hear it again one day.
This sound is slightly longer than normal, clear and sustaining as the most perfectly cast bell you have ever heard and as I mentioned unique.
The first time I heard it was using my Compadre and got a signal that came in exactly at 3:00 on the disc knob.
It was different but I didn't know it at the time and when I dug a class ring instead of a zincoln I was shocked but for some reason that sound stuck with me after that.
Months later using the Vaq I heard it again.
This time it rocked me back on my heels and I remember taking a short, quick breath when it happened.
This signal was the only time in my entire career that I knew for sure 100% what I was swinging over, the only time before I dug it and I was positive it was going to be big gold.
I would have bet you my car with confidence that is how sure I was about this sound....and I was right.
Turned out to be a the exact same class ring from the exact same high school as the first one but just a different year.

Learn this fine tool well, not even close to an actual beep and dig machine like many believe and so much fun to use and learn not to mention highly productive.
Welcome to the world of Tesoro...there are many reasons why we think so highly of these things and why there is an actual cult built up around the Compadre.
We got a church...welcome to the congregation!

 

[rob0260]

Thanks Stoof and Digger 27 for your thoughts and sharing your experience. I'm a truck driver and usually gone for 5-7 days at a time before I get back home. I will be taking the Compadre with me on the road for some quick hunts when I have a bit of time. I'm starting to get up there in age now (56) so I'm not all that interested in "digging it all" so I'm taking my time and thumbing the disc on every target. I know it will take many hours to understand it's language and for me that's a big part of the fun factor. I don't usually chase the really deep targets but I may one day. A good excuse to get a Vaquero! Maybe next year. Thx for the link to the church of Compadre. I read the whole thing a few days ago. Save me a spot on a pew and I'll bring donuts. All praise the mighty Compadre. Amen.

 

[digger27]

You read that long thread, probably responsible for more Compadre sales than we are likely to believe, and then you drank the Kool-Aid.
Put a fork in you...you are done.
I wrote that silly post just a few days after I got mine I was so impressed and since then nothing has changed.
As a matter of fact my jaw still drops almost every time I take it out after seeing what it can do.

I use other tools also, I never said using this exclusively would be the right decision for everybody but from the minute I started hunting with mine I did come to one conclusion.
No matter what brand or what detector you use as a prime hunting tool if you don't add a Compadre to the arsenal you are crazy.
It costs so little and does so much and it does a couple of things better than any others out there in certain situations like near large iron or in heavy iron infested sites.
A no-brainer...not to mention the pure joy we all get when using one.
In my case, anyway.

 

[bibelot]

It is a great machine for the money.I found a lot of stuff with mine, It doesn't get as much run time as it once did since I've bought a sabre and Deleon but I don't ever want to be without it.

 

[luvsdux]

If one could a price on the fun to use and the simplicity, the Compadres would be much more expensive than they are.
luvsdux

 

[Stoof2010]

To date, and probably because it has the most hours in it out of all my detectors,y compadre is my favorite detector so far for all around. It's easy, it's sparky on small jewelry, I have 2 different coil options.
Don't get me wrong I love my others and use them alot, but the compadre was one of two detectors for some time that I owned (other was an ace 350).
Then i started buying alot of them so my limited time got spread alot more and never got as comfortable with any of them.
I do have really high hopes for my cutlass Micromax. Got a sensitivity knob, all metal disc (like the compadre all metal area, but it clicks down into it so it bypasses the disc circuit but still in disc mode (I.e. not threshold based all metal, true all metal disc) it's 12khz (the cutlass II went to 10khz) it has the higher frequency audio like my Bandido II. The list goes on and on.

To me it's a compadre with a sensitivity knob and a higher more pleasing audio
As soon as I can get some time on it it might take my #1 all around spot. It also can switch coils.

But it will be hard for any detector to overtake my co padres. They truly are wonderful machines.
Nothing else better to give to a brand new person to use. Simple powerhouses.

 

[steve1357]

Is there a hack for the battery test tone? Geez!

 

[Stoof2010]

Haha no Steve. But I'm sure that there are a million people out there that would like to hear about one if you find one.

 

[rob0260]

Haha, that battery test is a little annoying. What I do is plug my headphones in and just hang them around my neck then turn the machine on. Seems to subdue the sound nicely but loud enough to hear.

 

[ToddB64]

Compadre 8 inch mini review.

Hi Digger27 !

Below are a couple of comments I pulled and colored from your Post #3, Aug. 7, 2016.

During your thumbing of the Compadre Disc. knob thousands upon thousands of times, have you ever had to replace the Knob pot due to wear & tear ?

and make digging decisions by thumbing that knob which I do on every target....always have.

After digging thousands upon thousands of targets I experienced most, but not all, targets that are good will usually come in clear, solid with very little chatter, noise or clicks before they firm up

Thanks,

ToddB64

 

[Stoof2010]

Well the POT for the disc knob does have a likely cycle life expectancy. Most nice ones are very high, around 25000 cycles so I wouldn't really worry about replacing it. But if it ever does go wonky, tesoro can fix it. Free if you are the original owner.
I have some very old units that still don't have any POT issues.
But I'm sure at some point they will fail. But I'm also pretty sure tesoro uses high quality POTs.

 

[digger27]

Hi Digger27 !

Below are a couple of comments I pulled and colored from your Post #3, Aug. 7, 2016.

During your thumbing of the Compadre Disc. knob thousands upon thousands of times, have you ever had to replace the Knob pot due to wear & tear ?

and make digging decisions by thumbing that knob which I do on every target....always have.

After digging thousands upon thousands of targets I experienced most, but not all, targets that are good will usually come in clear, solid with very little chatter, noise or clicks before they firm up

Thanks,

ToddB64

No problem at all with the disc knob.
Still as solid and firm with no play as a brand new one out of the factory and I have many hundreds of hours using this thing spinning that knob on every target I ever came across...and I am at least the third owner, there might have even been more than that.
Tesoro quality...can't beat it.