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Subject: NEW TESORO TEJON vs. SHADOW X5 - Short Report

Author: Shadow21 - West Palm Beach, Fl

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 21:18:16 09/12/03 Fri I did a preliminary depth test (Air Test) on the Tejon vs X5 Tejon Disc Set at Foil and Shadow Set at the 4 mark to eliminate iron. ...........Tejon Sens 10 ...... Shadow X5 Sens 8 Dime .............10" ...............12" Nickel ...........12" ...............14" Quarter ..........12" ...............14" Maximillion Gold Coin .........6" ................7" 1/4 oz Gold Eagle ............10" ................12" 58cal Minnie......11" ................13.5" Sml Button .......11" ................13" 14k Wed Band 3dwt.........13" ................15" The Tejon at Sens 10 was at the fringe of being unstable... it would jump every once in a while. The X5 of course was fully stable and could have been turned up to 9 or more Sens. I then took an iron buckle I dug, approx 1" x 1.5" rectangular The X5 gave a short chopped signal, absolutely obvious it was iron. The Tejon sounded off on it like it was a coin. No way to distinguish it was iron, even when raising the discrimination some. Right off, there is nothing in the Tejon's performance to even remotely make it comparable to the Shadow X5 in any way, shape or form. Difference in price... difference in quality and performance too. After the air tests I took the Tejon out to a park and then to the beach. I found the Tejon to be well balanced, but a little on the heavy side. They put the electronics into that small package, but then add all those heavy AA batteries. So it looks lighter than it really is. The disc settings are a little off, so to help disc out small iron, like bottle caps I had to raise the disc level a little. It appears that it is not calibrated correctly on the dial. Secondly, making sure the GB is set correctly helps with iron discrimination. Having said that, the Tejon still has a little difficulty with larger pcs of iron and nails. Much more so than the Shadow (in comparison). Once the detector was adjusted properly, it handled iron bottlecaps just fine. So regarding iron discrimination, I guess it is as good as any other Tesoro detector. I found that if the GB is not adjusted properly, the detector will false and chatter, almost like there was outside interference. When passing over deep iron drainage pipes, it caused the detector to false, as if it were responding to ground minerals. In that same location with the Shadow, the iron is discriminated out, period, the detector is silent and I can still detect a target. Not so with the Tejon. I was able to run the detector at 10 sensitivity, but no higher. Even at 10 there was some chatter now and then. Otherwise, the detector operated very well. I first ran the disc just below Nickel to eliminate iron. Dug some trash to see how the detector handled along with using the alternate discrimination. It is basically a duplication of the Fisher 65x and 66x... even sounds similar. I did notice quite a difference in sensitivity to foil and lower conductive targets by way of the 17 khz frequency. That is a huge plus for any kind of hunting... relic or coin/jewelry. I dug several coins and even carried the Shadow X3 to compare target signals before digging. There was nothing that the Tejon responded to that the Shadow X3 could not hear... in some cases the X3 was even stronger and that with the 7" coil. In my personal estimation, the Shadow X3 with a 9" coil would be an even match, if not a better choice over the Tejon because of the additional features. I then tried the Tejon at the beach and it worked very well. Nice footprint which made for covering lots of sand quickly. It hit hard on every target. Dug some deepies (9"+) coins too in the dry sand. I then took it down to the wet sand and found that in our area, by turning the Disc up a little and making sure the GB had been balanced in the dry sand, the Tejon was able to handle the wet, salt sand too. Getting several inches on a penny was no problem in the wet sand. Understandably, the Tejon was designed to be a low price high performance detector. Comparing it to other Tesoro models, the Tejon beats out all the other (non target id) Tesoro models. Die hard Tesoro fans will love it. But it cannot compare to the Shadow X5... if it is to be compared to a Shadow, maybe the X3. As far as depth, the Shadow X5 is a full 2 inches deeper across the board both in air tests and in ground tests. Dollar for dollar, the Fisher CZ-5 would be a much better choice over the Tejon, the only thing the Tejon going for it is the 17 khz freq which gives slightly better sensitivity to gold and smaller relics, but not much. I hope everyone finds this helpful. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]