I found this answer on the Tesoro Forum. I tried to post but for some reason I get a "firewall" warning and find it impossible to even post to that forum. And too, since they upgraded it one can hardly read it due to such small and light fonts.
Anyway, Monte gave his opinion of the Golden uMax and here it is:
"Yes, I have used a couple of them and bought one after they were released to see what I thought of it.
Now, while I know I sometimes say things that aren't too favorable about a Tesoro model or some essence of performance, etc., I generally don't go out of my way to sound negative. In this case you asked my opinion. I wasn't pleased with it.
At the time I was looking for something that would provide a little audio assistance in some hunting applications. I was also hoping to find a lightweight model that would provide me the versatility I had with my dual-tone Pantera models. I'll credit the Golden µMAX for being lightweight but that's about it.
Let me explain or refresh reader's memories about some in-the-field phenomena we have to deal with. There are times when, due to ground conditions especially, targets are not easily discriminated and, if using a TID model, they come through with an errant TID registration.
Often, in locations with an above average (if there is such a thing) level of ground mineralization, you might reject a zinc penny laying on top of the ground at a particular high setting. This discriminate setting works fine as long as the zinc cents are within a certain depth range. But a deep zinc cent still responds.
I use this example to explain why the Tejón doesn't work for some hunting applications in bad ground, especially. After its release I went on a three state ghost town and old park trip with some friends. They were impressed how well the Tejón worked in the ghost town compare with their other brand. But they are mainly "silver shooters" and go for the older coins that are deep, relying on the Target ID and audio qualities to help them.
In a visit to my home town I took them to a couple of old parks that have produced silver form me. In most of the old park coins don't get very deep, but out in the center, and in a couple of other parts they do. (By "deep" I am referring to coins from 5" to 8" down.) It's been quite difficult to get any decent depth at those parks with some models through the years, but they were finding, and getting very useful TID readings that let them ignore surface targets and home in on the high-conductive, potentially silver coins.
In an effort to try and duplicate their success, I set the Tejón up with the Primary Disc. control at the minimum setting. I then adjusted the Secondary Disc. level to just reject the common zinc cent. I'd hunt, get a signal, and then toggle to the Alternate Disc. and check the target.
Time and time again I would get a repeatable response with the Alt. Disc. set high enough to knock out a surface/shallow zinc cent, probe the spot, determine it was 5" deep or more, and plug, only to recover a zinc cent, a pull tab, screw cap or other target that was just too deep to generate an ample signal to process. That .. or .. the phenomena of some buried targets reading higher than the discrimination or TID analyzes that to be.
It's much the same as hunting in the volleyball sites or on the highly mineralized river beaches here in the Portland, Oregon metro area. You can wave a US 5¢ passed a coil and it will respond with a proper TID. Tesoro, White's, Garrett, it doesn't matter, they all read "5¢." But toss that coin on top of the mineralized sand or just bury it flat at maybe 2", and you will get a reading that is much higher. A White's XLT, for example, will ID it with a VDI number or 18-19 in the air or on good ground, but on/in the mineralized sand the VDI reading is going to range from about 43-58!
Well, with the Pantera I had a notch discriminate detector that offered a two-tone audio. Below the notch setting it was a low tone and above the notch setting it was a high tone. Even if you were NOT using any notch acceptance or notch rejection, you used the Notch Disc. control knob to set the "tone break" between high and low tones. AND, the Pantera had a 10-turn manual Ground Balance control.
So, with the Pantera you could fine tune the GB for a very functional performance, and Power Balance in the Disc. mode if the ground was a real challenge. Then, with the variable control that allowed the operator to determine the Low Tone/High Tone break point, the operator could set eh audio tone function so that there was "proper" performance on some of the deeper targets or better handle varying ground conditions and target depths.
This isn't possible with the Golden µMAX. While it is light weight, and it does have a broader adjustment on the lower end in the Disc. mode, it lacks manual Ground Balance, and it doesn't provide much useful operator control like the Pantera or Golden Sabre II (which uses the Pantera circuit board but has a preset GB as the only performance difference).
Mind you, some targets don't always 'squeak through' with a higher registry. Sometimes a desired target will respond with a lower TID, or in the case of the Golden µMAX, a lower audio tone, that what it would in an "air test" or where there wasn't any mineralization challenge.
When I got my Golden µMAX, having used three others before I invested in one, we were headed out on vacation to Lake Havasu, Arizona. Looking for good excuses to not hang around with the in-laws, I headed to the beach, taking all three detectors I brought with me. I wanted to use the Golden µMAX because it was lighter weight, and with the stock 8x9 I could get good coverage on the beach.
I did recover a lot of coins, along with bottle caps, pull tabs and screw caps, but I was hoping for god jewelry so I was digging it all. Close to some locations, however, I figured the notch circuitry could reduce the number of hits I got from pull tabs, and the "spring break" crowd was leaving an ample supply to test its ability.
Two problems came to light in the first half of the day of detecting. One, depending upon the Notch setting and Disc. setting used, you might only get 3-tone performance and not a 4-tone response.
The other was that I lucked into a heavy scattering of coins in a volleyball area that was mainly 10¢ coins but with quite a few 25¢ mixed in. About 8 out of 10 times, a surface to 3" 10¢ would register with the next lowest audio Tone, and about 50% of the quarters would also respond in the lower audio category.
I was hunting at minimum discrimination so as to get a hit on gold chains and the like in the very mineralized sand, but some of the low-tone iron readings turned out to be 5¢ coins. Others were iron and various sizes of foil (no good jewelry ), and I quickly became annoyed at the useless audio tones of the Golden µMAX.
That afternoon I switched to a different detector on the beach, but did use the Golden µMAX at two schools with pea gravel, where I had so-so performance. I had to hunt in All Metal because the mineralization was too intense for good Disc. mode performance. I walked the Golden back to my rig and grabbed the Compadre w/7" coil and then I had success, making use of the full-range All Metal acceptance to handle the ground signal and pass along several coins and costume jewelry items I hadn't been able to find.
To be honest, I much preferred the Euro Sabre (which came out about a year later) to the Golden µMAX so far as having any type of functional Tone ID. The Euro Sabre worked pretty well in that most iron gave a low-tone audio and most non-ferrous targets produced a high-tone audio. That allowed me to hunt in an All Metal accept mode and hear ALL targets present at a site, but audibly 'classify' them as probable iron or non-iron.
So, my concluding opinion is I am surprised it is still in their product line. I figure that for those who hunt in locations with very low mineralization, or exclusively in woodchip or good sand-filled playgrounds, the performance is reasonably good. But for me, and many others who reported in the first couple of years after it's Sept. 2000 release, it just didn't do that well in 'bad ground' conditions. That and the fact that many hobbyists who are mainly coin shooters have gravitated to visual Target ID models and audio ID w/o visual ID just doesn't do it for them.
If you own one, use it, and like it .... GREAT! But if you lived where I do it wouldn't please you much, I'm sure.
It's going to have its followers and those who don't like it, just like every model does, some better or worse than others.
Monte "
