Tesoro Mojave

26 January 2019 10:55 am
Purchased a used Mojave and am awaiting delivery
Price was right and the machine has an ok reputation, so thought I would give it a try out.
Unfortunate about Tesoro.
I have still not received a reply to my email to them and from what I have read it seems that they are not answering anybody. That is not doing them any good when it is an extremely simple matter to reply to an email..
Keep up that attitude and even their hard core fans will find Tesoro fading from memory.

30/01/2019
I received the Mojave yesterday. It is typical tesoro. Light weight and no frills and well constructed.
Gave it a try out this morning.
A depth monster it is not but never the less it can find our Aussie coins at approx 8 or 9 inches in dry sandy ground which is ok for a 7 inch concentric.
The discrim works well and can be set to give a signal that is fairly accurate on steel bottle caps without loosing sensitivity to gold and silver.
I tried the two GB modes (High & Low minerals) and did not notice any change in depth between the two settings.
Neither mode could knock out heavy iron mineralisation, so I would not bother trying to use the Mojave in the gold fields, it is a coin and relic machine with performance similar to the Compadre although the two GB settings  give it a distinct edge over that machine
There is no pinpoint mode but I found the small coil to be pretty accurate at pinpointing.
Setting the disc above foil will loose small low grade gold. I found half way between iron and foil to be about right but if you want to cherry pick your targets then you can set the disc wherever you like.
There is no volume control and the vol can be quite loud so use a set of HPs with vol control.
The Mojave is a nice little detector that you can keep in the car for those random quicky detects. It would be a great first detector for the kids.
If you already own a Compadre or any other Tesoro vlf machine then I doubt that you will need the Mojave unless you want absolute simplicity with good performance.....Don't race out and try to compare the Mojave to an Equinox or Deus or LST or Gold Bug . They are in a different league.
I like the Mojave and it found a nice sil ring and 25 cents this morning in about 15 minutes.


31/01/2019

Today 10:12 am
Okay so I took the Mojave out for another run this morning to give the 2 GB ranges a proper try-out.
I feel that I have to rate this detector better than th beginner machine that I suggested in my previous post. Sure it is a good entry level detector but an experienced operator could still do ok with this machine.
The low GB setting will handle fresh water river sand and gravel very well but this time I moved over to the large rocks where a lot of swimmers sit or dive from.
These rocks gave a strong ground signal in the low setting and zero ground signal in the high setting and the mojave easily picked out an Aussie 5 cent coin at approx 5 inches deep and the coin was found to be hard up against the rock surface. Disc was set at midway between foil and iron.
Several of my detectors do not respond well when scanning over these rocks including my safari.
So the simple fact that the Mojave can penetrate these river rocks and locate small crap metal coins impressed me. I switched to Low mineral mode to re test the signal before recovery and the coin signal was drowned out by the ground noise.
Whenever max sesnsativity can be used depth can be very good indeed; I was able to use max sens on this sandy beach at Pine Island in both High & Low mineral mode although at max there was the occasional false signal when the coil contacted the sand. This is not uncommon even from very expensive detectors.
It would be interesting to see what this little machine could do with a larger coil.
How the unit performs at the salt water beaches is as yet untested
I purchased this detector second hand from The States and by the time it arrived on my doorstep the 408 AUD price inc freight and import was excessive.

The Mojave.

Gday Adrian. Good report as always. Is Tesoro still going. I thought I heard somewhere that they have closed down. I could be wrong.
Regards big fella

Not even the Yanks know what has happened to Tesoro but at the moment Tesoro seem to be caput.
Their web site is still up but they are not answering emails or responding to people who have sent detectors to them for repair.

The latest info I have heard is that Tesoro is still open and doing repairs

adrian ss wrote:

Imported a new one in March 2013 for someone, all up $411,54 delivered by Australia Post.
At the time they were new on the market and hard to get .... that's the part which make it a challenge and exiting.

Hi Ivanll.
Good to hear from you. It's been a while.
I am not disappointed with the Mojave, it does a fair job on coins rings and jewellery. I guess most digital fanatics would refer to it as Old School but there is a reasonable amount of micro circuitry jammed into that little box and I will admit that I find  I do not need tricky displays and multiple tones in order to know whether to dig a target or not these days.
The Mojave is an All Metal single tone nil display VLF discriminator with two very handy ground balance settings and if you know your discrimination well enough then once set to where you want it you will know whether to dig or not to dig. Ferrous readouts, iron readouts, conductivity readouts,Black sand readouts, numerical readouts and multi tones are all fun but I find myself doing just fine without them. Which is why I like my PIs.

Just remembered something else I noticed today re the Mojave.

While running in either gb mode with sensitivity at pre-set over noisy ground trying to locate a one dollar coin in my test patch and the tecta chirping away from ground noise and EMI......Turning the sens down until the emi and ground noise went quiet at sens setting 2, the detector picked out the 1 dollar coin well enough at 5 inches  to trigger a dig me signal.......Often with many detectors  when winding down the sensitivity to silence ground and EMI noise,you also loose your  target signal but in this particular case the signal improved quite significantly... Another surprise from this little detector which means that in EMI noisy suburban areas you can turn down the sensitivity to a very low level and still get good enough depth in parks n gardens and not have to be digging big holes in the grass etc.

Went out with the Mojave again this morning and still managed to find some long lost coins at Pine Island.
    I think I will call this detector my happy detector because I don't get cranky with it, it is light, a no brainer to use and it finds stuff that might not be a ring at 20 inches but a ring at anywhere between the surface to 10 inches is pretty good enough for me.
   The tone does not jangle your brain and I am not having to dig steel bottle caps anymore.....well almost, some weird platings can fool the disc occasionally.
I had not originally intended to keep this machine but now I think I will try an elliptical coil for better ground coverage. Tesoro have done good job of selecting two ground balance ranges that cover a good range of mineralisation and that is what has caused me to hang on to it for a while.
    I have not been able to take it to the beach yet but some operators in the States have good things to say about the Mojave and wet salt beaches.
It is very unlikely that this detector would work over black sand.. If you want a detector that will perform well over heavy magnetic black sand then you will need a PI or multi frequency VLF.

Let us hope that Tesoro manage to keep their highly respected company afloat

It is all a bit strange when you look at this:
https://quartzsitegoldshowcom.wordpress.com/

I appreciate the few replies to this topic fellas. At least I feel as though there is still some  beach coin and relic detecting life out there.
I have been a bit down in the dumps lately because I have to have an Angiogram, then an Oblation and then another knee replacement, so this year is going to be a bit of a bummer. I am trying to motivate myself to get out and do stuff.

Yesterday I took the SOV and the Mojave down to Pine Island for some response testing. Both detectors had the disc set to midway between iron and foil and sensitivity at about 50%.
    Searched with the SOV and then rechecked  the detected targets with the Mojave. Results were interesting.
Several of the targets were out of the depth range of the Mojave but four gave a strong Low iron tone from the Sov (ground was black dirt and sand in amongst rocks on a walking track). The Mojave gave a definite solid Dig Me signal. I pinpointed each target with my new combo pinpointer and digger which performed very well and proved to be stronger than it looks.
     The targets turned out to be (long time lost) 2 x 2 dollar coins and 2 x 10 cent coins at near enough to 6 inches down in amongst the rocks.
It appears that the Sov was fooled by the mineralisation causing it to produce the Low tone. The Mojave was not fooled when the mineral selection was set to High.
    Now the Mojave is not a depth monster but I am having a real fun time with this little detector.
Cheers
Adrian

Tried an 8 x 11 inch Epsilon DD on the Mojave......Depth on most Aussie coins is about + 3 inches on the standard 7 inch concentric, and of course ground coverage is much better. Discrimination is not as accurate as with the concentric but is OK. Pinpointing is a bit tricky.

Hi Adrian , I don't get to post much , but much appreciate yours , I do have a sovereign and have hauled it out of semiretirement ,considering how old it is , I think its still one of the best, pity mine has  developed an fault,  a broken  coil lead ,I think , but not  had time to sort it yet.
Sorry to hear of your  health problems , good luck in the coming year, hope it all goes well.
Mogy

Thanks mate.
Yes I agree, the SOV is easily one of the best VLF salt beach discriminating detectors along with the Excal. I am not sure why I do not use mine more often. I think maybe I got hooked by the PIs.

One thing I like about the SOV is the capability of the threshold after being nulled out by a discriminated or notched out item, to return at the frequency that the target would have created had it not been disced or notched out. This gives you a more informed choice as to whether to dig the target or not.  That plus the fact that the detector runs a steady threshold without having to fiddle with adjustments all the way from the play grounds at the top of the beach to the dry sand all the way into the water.
   Not many vlf detectors can do that today.