John, I should have gone a little more into detail in my first post. I got the DeLeon as a turn-on-and-go alternative to my Bandido II. I'd never give up my Bandido, but there are times I'd rather just turn on a machine a start hunting. Plus, I wanted to try a machine with target I.D. again. I bought a Whites Spectrum back in the early to mid 1990s and found myself relying on the machine's computerized TID more than my own ears. I took it back and traded it on a Bandido II and haven't looked back. It was just too much involved fooling with that computerized detector with it's reprogramable application.
When I read about the DeLeon, when it first came out, it sounded more like a TID machine that worked WITH the operator. So, I bought one and have no regrets. It is a very easy machine to learn to use and just requires some common sense. Throw some test targets onto the ground and see what your particular machine "reads" them at (numerical and post) and see what kind of smear the trash items give. The DeLeon shows posts and smears for each target the coil goes over, whether or not they are discriminated out. As I've written before, I use that fact to help pinpoint a good target in the middle of a nest of poptops by "X-ing" the nest until the good target gives it's bar and number then narrow the "X-ing" until only the goodie is shown. THAT'S where I'll very easily probe and recover. I've learned to swing the detector the same way I do the Bandido, without looking at it, until a good target comes up, then I'll check the TID. With that Spectrum, I spent too much time watching the screen.
I could have gotten a Cortes, but the DeLeon has the same circuitry; just a couple less target bars and a couple of other things that weren't worth the extra money to me.
Since the DeLeon is a 10 kHz machine as are the uMax line of machines, I emailed Tesoro to ask if the "D" could use those coils and the answer they sent back was "Yes". It will use all of the uMax coils.
