Tesoro Tejon
Price: $700
Avg. Score: 
4.49
Based on 43 reviews
4.49Based on 43 reviews
Avg. Durability:
5.00
Avg. Ease of use:
4.25
Near Perfect Detector
May 05, 2007
I have been into this hobby since 1968 when I purchased a CoinMaster IV via
a Whites treasure finder magazine ad.Over the years I've used more brands and models than I can now recall. Last year I purchased a Nautilus IIB and thought I had finally found my brand for life. But this year I ordered a new Tejon off ebay and the Nautilus has been pushed aside.
The Tejon is about as close to a perfect relic/coin/jewelry finder as one can get. It's very deep, fast, light, stable, and it's an absolute dream to learn and use. This machine is excellent in high trash areas and every other type. It will avoid trash and hit hard on coins and rings mixed in with junk metals.
Buy this machine and you'll soon be selling your others.
The Tejon is a WINNER!
Overall Rating
Michigan Bager from
Northern, Michigan
508
Tejon is a Relic Hound!
March 01, 2007
The Tejon is A nice machine i have fond buttons 11in. down in southern Utah
i hunt Ghost Towns and i love the Tejon it loves Brass,Silver,Gold,ect.you
will like it from the start I have had a lot of machines from Whites
Mxt,Sover.Elite,but the Tejon is were its At!
Overall Rating
Harvey Enloe from
Utah
253
No better for the money
February 11, 2007
Purchased the Tejon when my Minelab Explorer went bad. The Tejon is very
lightweight and has a very quick response time. The depth is incredible.
The two discriminators had to convince me, and they did. The battery
compartment is a bit cheezy and I do not like the location of the headphone
jack, would rather it face me rather than face the searchcoil, plus awkward
for us lefties. Other than that the machine works great. I have used detectors since 1970 and this is definitely one of the better detectors. Once I replaced my Minelab I went back to my civil war site to get the deep stuff and found the Tejon had found almost everything, including the deep. For the price it is hard to beat and I have confidence in this detector, which is what you must have in order to find the good stuff. I am not a dealer, but would recommend anyone desiring a fairly cheap excellent detector to spend about $550 on ebay, or some dealers, and buy this detector. Much better than similar priced detectors, that is a fact.
Overall Rating
Joe from
Missouri
385
8 months later..
November 26, 2006
Well, after using the Tejon for 12 months now, I have discovered a place
for it in my arsenal of detectors..It is very lightweight and although the PVC search rod made a lot of squeaking noise when I first bought it, that noise eventually quit after a few hours using it and breaking it in.
It is the first choice out of all my detectors for wide-open areas in moderate to lightly mineralized soil. It does not go as deep in either mode in high-iron (highly mineralized) soils as some of my other detectors, but in the less mineralized soil it often beats all of them, it, and the Fisher cz-70.
In the high iron (black sand) salt beaches here in Oregon it has way too hard of a time operating well or ground balancing well, so I don't use it there, but in normal big playfield areas it is my first choice because it locates two or more good targets real close to each other the best of the best. When there is one bad target right next to a good target the Compass outshines all others, but at a rate of 10+ feet per second the Tejon will find ALL the good targets even faster than the Compass, even if they are only 2-3 inches apart in a row. It's the only detector that will do that. It is almost as good a cherry-picker as the Compass but it is better than a cz-70, MXT, Sovereign Elite, BH Land Ranger, White's 6000di, or DFX for cherry picking.
Overall Rating
Larry D Gressel from
Sweet Home, Oregon
4313
Tejon, Super relic hunter
August 27, 2006
I watched my hunting partner dig a Spanish pillar dollar (piece of eight),
from 16". Although this is a large coin it was on edge in the ground! This
was in a heavily hunted Confederate camp that had all of the top rated
relic detectors over it. Before this signal was dug another hunter was
called over to check the spot with his machine, (no signal). I had been
over this area several times with a Nautilus IIb. All I can say is if you
get a Tejon, go back over your old sites. Don't ever consider a place
hunted out. The Tejon will open another window in these areas. I have found
mine very easy to set up and ground balance, no problems learning this
detector.
Overall Rating
Jerry from
Southeast Georgia
334
Great machine all-around
June 20, 2006
If this machine had tone ID (different tones depending on conductivity or
ferrous content), I'd give it a perfect 5. So I gave it a 4. It's an
absolutely great machine. I found a wheat cent at a measured 11 1/2 inches
(with the stock coil) and am pretty sure the Tejon will detect even deeper
coins. The wheatie was next to iron, no less. The machine picked up the
coin over the iron. A lot of other machines would have just nulled out the
whole thing.Other Tejon users have told me they have found coins at 15 inches, and I believe it. The key is to ground balance it correctly. People who claim it loses depth are not balancing it properly. I hunt in some heavily mineralized soil, and this machine does quite well. If I had it to do over, I'd still buy the Tejon.
The only complaint I can think of is the 2 disc knobs are not calibrated identically on mine. For example, "Tab" on Disc 1 is actually a higher disc level than "Tab" on Disc 2. That is just my particular machine, though. Yours may be OK.
The only other "problem" is that the machine is so sensitive even to the tiniest bits of metal that you might as well forget all-metal mode when you're hunting a heavy trash area. You will get signals everywhere. I have dug some of these and found they're not the ground minerals, they're tiny, tiny pieces of wire, nail heads, foil specks, etc... some no more than 3 mm long. You could probably find a needle in a haystack with this detector. (The Tejon would be a great nugget machine.)
Overall Rating
Chris from
Pennsylvania, USA
342
Problems with minerals, iron and auto-tune..
March 16, 2006
Well, I live in the PAC NW, USA, and in this country the Tejon is no better
than most detectors. I put my Fisher cz-70, Compass Scanner R&C, Minelab Sovereign Elite, White's Coinscanner di Pro, and my Tesoro Tejon in the van and went out to a lake to test one against the other.
The Tejon had some real bad problems discriminating steel and rusty iron (larger than a pencil). It also has too slow of an auto-tune to deal with highly mineralized soil. Even if I turned the sensitivity down to zero it has these two problems.
Of all these detectors the Compass Scanner Relic and coin did the best in depth AND in this extreme mineralization. This ground was very bad, and it read a #2 on the Fisher scale of 1-10, #10 being the best soil, and #1 being the worst.
In the air, the Tejon actually read 16 inches on a nickel, but in the ground, it detected about 6 inches, all-metal, or discriminate. In all-metal, it made so much noise and drifted so much, that I had to put it away for the duration of my tests. Again, out of all the detectors, the Compass did the best.
The Compass Scanner R&C (same as a Compass GoldScanner Pro) did the very best of all, no matter which mode I was in. The Compass also found more things (especially smaller-than coin-size objects) than did any of the other machines. On the Sovereign, I was using an Excellerator 12.5" coil, because it goes deeper than the stock 10 inch coil.
The Tejon fares a bit better in more neutral soil, but who needs something that only works better in moderate to gentle soil? Well, the answer is simple, it is lightweight, and someone who has poor health might like it, and maybe they live somewhere in the Eastern US or in Europe with gentle soil. But, of course they could Buy a Fisher ID Excel for $479 instead, and it would work better in all categories, and it weighs even less than the Tejon.
Right now, I would gladly trade the Tejon for a good Fisher Excel.
By the way, I was a detector repairman for a multi-brand firm for 10 years back in the 80's.
I hope this helps.
Overall Rating
Larry D Gressel from
Sweet Home, Oregon
3654
Tejon THE BEST
January 21, 2006
I have tried them all, DFX,MXT,CZ5,EXII,Quattro,DMCB2,xlpro,and many more
the TEJON is the best bar none!I have found more with the TEJON in the first month than I have in the last two years with all the others
It is simple and deep and can find the good items in heavy iron and trash
Overall Rating
Randy329 from
Anytown, AT 55555
306
Great coinshooter for trashy sites
November 04, 2005
For me, the Tejon is a great detector for coin shooting trashy modern
urban/suburban parks, ball fields, schools, etc. Time constraints limit my
detecting to these types of sites and I have three criteria for successful
coin shooting at these sites:1. Trash separation--the Tejon responds very quickly and its 2" receive coil on the stock coil allows excellent target separation (the 5.75" coil is even better).
2. Depth---my unstable, low mineral soil results in targets sinking quickly so I've got to be able to go deep. The ID detectors I've used tend to lose accuracy (bouncing numbers/icons/tones) between 6" and 8". The discrim circuitry on the Tejon is useful out to at least 11" at my sites.
3. Square tab/nickel IDing---By far, the most important criterion for me. The sites I detect are absolutely loaded with square tabs and the ID machines I've used have not been good at all at telling the difference. With the Tejon's dual discrim feature, I can set discrim #1 to "crackle" on a nickel but hit solidly on a square tab (a touchy setting but doable); and set discrim #2 to "crackle" on a zinc but hit hard on a high coin. I now dig very few square tabs (bent ones still can fool), many nickels, and my good target-to-trash ratio is at an all-time high. The dual discrim feature also allows you to cherry pick a given target (e.g., only nickels) by setting the two discrims to "just accept"/"just reject."
I have several detectors for different purposes but the Tejon is the best I've tried for the combination of trash separation and deep, accurate ID's (although it can be fooled by, for example, rusted washers, clipped zincs, bent tabs, etc.). Until I find something better, the Tejon's my main coin shooting detector.
Overall Rating
GT from
Florida
4511
Tejon for UK users
September 12, 2005
Fantastic machine for Roman sites,chatters on iron but has the ability to
pull small coins from next to nails.Have found it to work very well in high mineralisation and under power lines. At the moment I am testing the 12x10 widescan coil which is suprisingly very sensitive to small targets.
www.garysdetecting.co.uk
Overall Rating
Gary UK from
United Kingdom
395