Compass Metal Detectors
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Number of Reviews: 8
on 2 pages.
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Compass - Coinscanner Pro
Davew in NW Indiana//////Chicagoland -April 30,2006.......... Hello, I have a 10+ Year old,Compass-Coinscanner Pro....It has the older RED/Gold color sticker...
Let me start by saying that I have had and sold many,many Detectors__________ from ________the Garrett Master Hunter CX III _and _other Garretts,---to the Whites XLT,---several Fisher models___ one being the Fisher CZ-5,---and Several other Detectors (but still own my Compass.)
No other Detector that I have owned has surpassed its depth capabilities.Some of the others were a little more fun (with all the bells and whistles)...But I always came back to the Coinscanner Pro when I needed a dependable coin or Ring finding machine.It is a killer on rings/nickles,,,,and silver coins....The weight of the machine seems fairly balanced,and I can swing the 8 inch coil all day,,,, the technology doesnt look like it has changed in 15-20 years but it deffinately gets the job done.
Its meter is highly accurate,you have a choice of 1,2, or 3 tones,and if the tone stays high but the meter is a little jumpy and it pinpoints deep,,,You Better Dig it !
It has an Auto Notch feature on its Trash Out Button or (Disc Knob)When I use this AutoNotch Feature .I still find Nickles ,Pennies ,Dimes and Quarters in Heavy trash,but the down side is I loose about an inch in depth (because of the high disc)and I miss I.H. cents along with Zinc cents,,,,,,,but lets face it .....Who wants to dig all those Zincs ?,,and the I.H. Cents will most likely be a little deeper than AutoNotch can reach anyways,,,6-8" ??When using my coinscanner in an older area..I set the disc to foil,and I can still tell where most tabs and junk read,I therefor avoid digging allot of them...
The deepest coin that I have dug with it? I was in an old park that opened in 1890's,ground was fairly mineralized,so I turned the sens to 7 out of 10...Set the disc to foil and after digging several clads,and some deep junk I got a high audio tick,,,the meter was quite jumpy but it pinpointed at 8-10 inches (Week)and the high audio tick was there 3 out of four dirrections.......I dug down atleast 8 inches and got a VF + 48 rosie....I later found out this area of the park used to have a pond on it and was back filled in the 50's......
I have also dug Nickles in this Trashy Park...and iron ore infested ground.... with the Sens set at 6-7 out of 10 in the (High-Disc)Auto-Notch Mode ,at 4-5 inches...(Which I feel is Good seeing that the Disc was set fairly High,while the sens was fairly LOW).The machine was (a little noisy because I should have had the sens set at 5 ... I guess).
I recently bought A Tesoro Tejon,and it is a fun machine to use,,I use IT on allot of sidewalk tear-outs to give my Compass a rest.....
I also decided to try the Minelab X-Terra 70,
and after 15+ hours I am tempted to go back to using my compass...The XT-70 has 1, 2, 3, 4, or 99 tones,BUT does Not hit hard like my old Compass..
and as of yet I have not dug a target over 3 inches with it...I guess I will give it another 35 hours or more --time to see if I can figure out its audio lannguage and see if it will pick up deeper targets.
I cannot vouch for the newer Coinscanner II Pro becuase I own the older model..But I am VERY HAPPY with it.
Apr 30, 2006
39 people found this review helpful.
Compass XP Pro
Larry D Gressel in Sweet Home, Oregon -I recently bought a used Compass XP Pro. I already knew that it was a good detector, and WOW does it get right in-between targets in the real trashy areas, and gravel-filled or crushed rock parking areas! It is absolutely the very best at this that I've seen. The only detector out of all the 17 I own that even came close to the performance was the Tesoro Tejon. The Tejon doesn't handle bad ground as well though. The Compass probably does it the best while still being able to see good targets right through iron and other bad targets. The signal came through so well, that it reminded me of a snare drum roll..
I did a test; I placed 4 coins on the ground less than 3 inches apart in a line. My cz-70 would give me two blips as I swung the coil at "mach1" over them at 3 inches. The Tejon would give me 3 bleeps, never 4. The Compass gave me all 4 of them, all four made a quick "beep", even when I made the coil pass over them at about 6 feet per second! No other detector I own could do this. My Minelab only gave me one flute note one direction, and none at all the other direction. They actually cancelled out!!! My White's 6000 di Pro? It gave me one signal both direction, and didn't break it up into 4 targets or even two. It was barely better than the Minelab.
Apr 10, 2006
22 people found this review helpful.
XP Pro Plus - Old Coin Magnet
Scott Beasley in South Carolina -This is a classic Analog detector. It has great depth, very forgiving on sweep speed, good target ID, sees though iron like Super Man and runs extra smooth on bad mineralized ground. This detector is a true joy to swing, not letting much slip by. It has a nice easy to use Notching system as well as Auto Notch. A super True All metal mode and easy to use pinpoint. It is a little heavy, and uses three 9volt batteries. Not much else bad can be said about this machine. If you want a great relic and coin hunter and don?t mind a 3+ pound machine, this is it!
Apr 03, 2006
15 people found this review helpful.
Garrett vs Compass vs Whites
Larry in Sweet Home, Oregon -The Garrett GTA series is designed for simplicity or ease of use. It is not designed for a professional detectorist. The White's medium priced detectors are of about the same lot..
So are Tesoros and Bounty Hunters. If one wants a Garrett more powerful, one of the 1200 series or up to the 2500 series would be a good ticket, however, there are more problems with the more powerful Garretts. When standing next to one while they are being used, the 1200-2500 sound like a bunch of magpies and computers talking to each other at a garage sale. A lot of noise, and false noise too..
The Compass XP Pro was put on the market about 20 years ago. It was basically an experiment to see if a "single-filter" detector could outdo one that ran on a double, or 4-filter. One filter operated fast, the other was a slow phase shift.
Whites and another detector mfg (also created by George Payne, the father of GOOD ground-cancelling discriminator technology) in a town 12 miles from White's, along with two other detector brands (A.H Pro (which produced the FIRST ground-cancelling discriminator called the "Phantom", I believe), were having a race to get the filtered machines working better than one another's competition.
With enough experience and a VERY GOOD understanding of the principals of phase shift and filter technolog, one with a powerful machine like the XP series could walk all over the very best of other brands. It could also beat many of the top-of-the-line detectors now made. It also had a lot of nobs and "toys" on it. Oftentimes though, the XP series would malfunction. They were having trouble with broken connections due to mis-use and/or abuse (being tossed around or dropped, left in a hot car, etc).
In those days, the company was under different ownership, yet still produced some of the finest metal detectors in the world. Under new ownership/management they do again today.
The XP Pro series is still one of the most powerful detectors one could ever find, and there is a site online whereby it was found to be only second to a Garrett 2500 series in all-metal mode depth while using it in Florida on the beach, but, it takes nearly an engineering student to understand how to use it. In the hands of a novice, even a cheap Bounty Hunter or an old cheap Wilson-Neuman would work better.
PS: Fisher makes and sells detectors to the Military. So does White's. Fisher has made and sold more mine and metal locating equipment to the Military than any other company. Fisher INVENTED the mine-locator, in WW2.
Sep 23, 2005
26 people found this review helpful.
Compass xp-pro plus
Bill in Upstate, NY -
Hi,
I first caught the detecting bug as a kid of 10 when mom let me buy a Compass Coinhustler for around 50 bucks...I found everything with that machine and it was great.
In my later years i stepped up to the xp-pro plus machine which retails for $771.00.
What a piece of crap! My buddies and there Garretts were finding all kinds of nice things and nomatter how committed....i couldn't find Squat.
So we ran some experiments, they would get a hit and we would see if my machine could also pick it up. Can you believe that nomatter how we set the Compass, it still hard a hard time getting so much as a chirp,even in all metal mode?
It wasn't that the batteries were dead, the thing was like new, what a piece of junk,i will never again spend that kind of money on an unproven machine again.
I now own a lesser classed machine (supposedly) that outperforms and was $200 cheaper, a Garrett GTA-X 550, i wouldn't trade it for the world.
The depth of the Garretts is without paralell,i don't care what you've read, or what your buddies tell you, they are the best detectors period.
Why do you suppose the Military and every police force in the USA uses a Garrett?....Because they are without paralell thats why.
I hear all kinds of great things about Minelabs new machines and am curious.
But they want over 2 grand for the high enders and i will never again drop over 700 without having a detector i can take for a demo spin.
If you don't find somthing in the first hour or so in a known hot-spot, take it back.
Now don't anyone go getting angry, thats just my opinion. Have fun!
Sep 20, 2005
16 people found this review helpful.
Review of my review
Larry D Gressel in Sweet Home, Oregon -Well, here I am again, with another piece of info about the Compass "Scanner" detector.
I've really begun to nit-pick the Fisher cz-70 vs the Compass Scanner.
I've found another interesting quirk between the two. Lately, I have noticed that the Compass Scanner actually makes a sound (tone) ID deeper than the Fisher cz-70 on a coin-sized object. The Fisher often will ID it on it's meter deeper than the Compass Scanner, but it won't actually locate it deeper.
I located one token in a very badly ironized ballfield in Lebanon, Oregon. that was around 5 inches deep. The Fisher read "$". The Compass read "foil". When I lifted the coils higher off the ground, the Fisher quit making a beep closer to the ground than did the Compass. On nickles, the Fisher will always read "nickel", and (at times) the Compass will read on the high end of foil. But, the Compass absolutely finds them deeper. This is true of other coins too. The Fisher ID's them a bit deeper (about an inch), and the Compass Scanner will locate them (with sound) deeper than the Fisher, by as much as two inches.
Only in moderate to light mineralized soil will the Fisher out-do the Compass, but that' only in in "all metal" mode. In bad soil ussing "all-metal" mode, the Compass will find (anything) deeper than the Fisher..
The Compass beats the Fisher for depth while in discrimination mode, while the Fisher oftentimes outdoes the Compass on it's meter.
Personally, I dig everything but the iron. At times, the Fisher calls a nail a nickle, or, "money" while the Compass ID's it as iron, meter or not. However, there are two good reasons to also own the Fisher; Better battery life (two 9v), and a lighter, better balance of either machine. The Fisher is extremely well-balanced and it's quite light, too. Both of those machines beat the stuffings out of the weight and balance of the Minelab Sovereign Elite Pro. The Minelab does run smoother on the beach though.
Actually, I really don't need the Minelab, because the Compass finds things just as easily, even though it does drift a tiny bit before it automatically retunes itself again (I use it in automatic retune). I find it equally as easy to use on the beach, and it's much lighter..
Incidentally, I own two White's machines. One is the 6000di Pro. It's a good machine when it's running, especially in the all-metal mode, but that's as far as it goes. Even in all-metal, it doesn't even stand a chance against the Fisher and the Compass. Right now, the thing shuts of and quits working completely, and whenever it wants to. I think it has a poor connection inside somewhere. Whites (my next door neighbors) have tried to repair it, but it still does it over and over again. I quit using it, and if I ever had an enemy, it might make a good birthday present for them (just kidding). My other White's is an old TR discriminator..
I have weighed my new machines against other Whites, and found the other White's to be too time consuming to be used in a practical way, and none of them have even approached the capabilities of the Compass, the Fisher, and the Minelab. I leave the White's at home, and I sometimes bring two older Tesoros and two other Compasses and a ten-turn retuned Bounty Hunter along. I considered buying a Garrett just for the fun of listening to it talk to me, but from what I've seen, it makes a bit too much noise and chattering sounds in the field for my tastes. I don't like the idea of spending hours trying to learn all about all the bells and whistles either.
PS I bought my Compass from Anderson Detectors. I think they are in Kentucky or Alabama. It cost me $700
Larry
Sep 18, 2005
12 people found this review helpful.
More about Compass detectors..
Larry in Sweet Home, Oregon -I wrote a review about comparisons between certain Compass, Fisher, and Minelab detectors.
I wish to clerify a few points;
Recent testing has found me a bit in awe at the depth of detecting of the Compass Scanner detector compared to the Minelab Sovereign Elite detector and the Fisher CZ-70, all which I bought within the last eight or so months.
In moderate-to-highly mineralized soil, the Compass Scanner is now consistently outdoing both other detectors while using the discriminate mode. It normally finds a copper penny at about 8-9 inches in this nasty ground here in Oregon. There are times when the Fisher has not been able to quite match the Compass. At times, the Fisher loses an inch or even two inches, depending on the soil. I have been using detectors since 1975, and the first two that I owned, I built from a schematic and was able to find a quart jar sized lid with either of them and at about 2-3 inches in the ground. I am no stranger to the metal detector world. For a time, I repaired many brands of detectors for a dealer in Salem, Oregon, because oftentimes it took too long for the factor to take care of those problems.
I tried the MInelab Sovereign Elite against the other two, and found that it only outdoes them in the most heavily laden of black sand soils.
There werre times when neither the Minelab nor the Fisher would find an item that the Compass found quite easily. The reason for this is probably because the Compass has a ten-turn ground balance, and both the Fisher and the Minelab have this mode functioning in strickly automatic. Nevertheless, my vote now goes for the Compass for the best of all three for depth and ease of detection. The Minelab still gets my best vote for the beaches here in Oregon, and the Fisher does the best and the deepest in moderate soil, and is the easiest to use for long periods of time. The Fisher still goes deeper than all three in all-metal mode, no matter where it is used. Still, I find more things with the Compass than either other detector during the same time period of use. When I looked for lead weights down by the river, it found roughly 4X as many of them in the same amount of time, than with the other two detectors.
Conclusions
Minelab for the salt water beaches ($600)
Fisher for the parks ($800)
Compass for everything
(including nugget hunting) ($700)
Aug 13, 2005
48 people found this review helpful.
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