Tesoro Tejon Metal Detector

The Tesoro Tejon was designed from the ground up with the coin and relic hunter in mind. It also features a new color scheme from Tesoro- blue, gray and black.

Features a high output transmit oscillator to push the signal deeper and an increased gain for sensitivity to smaller items. The Tesoro Tejon was over a year and a half in the design stages and represents a new generation of Tesoro metal detectors.

Once you get past the new color scheme, the first thing that you will notice is the lack of a mode switch on the faceplate. We have moved it beneath the control housing so that you are able to switch modes quickly.

Pinpointing and checking your targets with the Alternate Discrimination is a breeze. The Tesoro Tejon’s two discriminate modes are fully user definable.

The engineers at Tesoro metal detectors have given the user the ability to set the machine for their hunting needs. Each discriminate mode uses ED180 circuitry. The regular discriminate also incorporates a full-time all metal setting.

Want to hunt in all metal and check the targets for iron or discriminate out iron and perform a check for high value silver or gold targets? Its no problem for the Tejon. Simply set the Discriminate and Alternate Discriminate modes for your style of hunting and swing the coil. Then use the Trigger Switch to quickly change modes to check your targets.

Push the trigger forward to activate the Alternate Discriminate or pull the trigger back to pinpoint the target. The Tejon makes it fast and easy.

Tesoro Tejon Features

• Lifetime Warranty – Made In USA
• Coin and relic metal detector
• All Metal Pinpointing
• Discriminate and Alternate Discriminate modes
• Audio tone adjust

Tesoro Tejon Field Test

I received the Tesoro Tejon just in time to take along on a trip back to Pennsylvania over the Labor Day weekend. I wanted to see how it did in two types of areas–trashy sites and areas where targets were extremely deep.

The first area I visited was the site of an old ferry landing along the shore of the Susquehanna River just north of Bloomsburg that had been in use during the mid-1800s. I had found the site a few years ago and while it did hold some old targets, they were very deep due to the amount of dirt that had been deposited as the river flooded its banks over the past 150 years.

Opting to hunt in All-Metal (Disc) and use the Alt Disc circuit to check signals (set just under Foil), I set the Sensitivity control at 9 and ground balanced the Tesoro Tejon. Even along the river mineralization is a problem since coal cinders have been dumped into the river for close to 200 years; however, the Tesoro Tejon was extremely quiet indicating the ground balance circuitry was doing its job. As expected, signals were few and far between but they were there. The first few signals produced small, unidentifiable pieces of copper and brass from depths up to seven inches deep.

A strong signal near the base of an old tree caught my attention and I removed a six-inch plug. I was surprised to see that the signal was still in the hole considering how loud the audio response had been. As I slowly removed dirt and rechecked the hole, I reached the 10-inch mark before my probe touched something at the bottom edge of the hole. Carefully prying it free with my knife, I could see that it was a coin. Curiosity got the better of me so I walked down to the edge of the river and washed some dirt from the coin to avoid damaging it. The details were quite striking for an older copper coin in this part of Pennsylvania (fertilizer & mineralization usually pits their surface) and the date 1822 was clearly visible on the large cent I held in my hand. Over the next hour I recovered several more targets in the nine- to fourteen-inch depth range including two buttons, several wrought iron square nails and some items I am still trying to identify.

The next site was an old foundation in the woods near my house that had not produced much in the past but dated back into the 1800s. Using the same discrimination settings as I had at the ferry landing I started hunting near the back of the old home. Signals were plentiful; however, by checking them in the Alt. Disc. Setting, I could tell they were pieces of iron.

Since I had a limited amount of time, I set the Disc control to FOIL and moved the Alt. Disc knob to just below the Tab mark. Despite the numerous iron targets that littered the area, the Tesoro Tejon ran silent until a target that fell above the discrimination setting was detected. In the area immediately surrounding the foundation itself I found that the 9 x 8 coil tended to be susceptible to target masking (multiple targets under the coil at the same time; however a trick that helped me pick out several keepers was to lift the coil up a few inches off the ground and slow my sweep speed down just a bit. A smaller coil would have really been effective in this situation. Two hours was all I could afford to spend here before my wife sent out a search party but the pouch full of relics were more than I had recovered in the previous three trips to this site.

Returning to Atlanta, I took the Tesoro Tejon to several Civil War sites that were well known and considered my many to be hunted out. As a matter of fact, I ran into three relic hunters at the first site who had been searching it most of the morning, an area being cleared. After some conversation and taking a look at what they had found, we all picked up our detectors and went back to hunting. One of them had agreed to my request to check each other’s signals so we began hunting parallel to each other.

The first few targets were shallow and we both got clear signals from them. I received what sounded like a deeper signal (a bit fainter that the previous ones) and called Bill over to check it. Knowing where it was helped but even scrubbing the coil over the area, he only received a signal once in a while. He said he doubted he would have even picked up the signal much less deciding it was worth recovering. Hoping for a keeper, I started to dig in the hard red clay. At almost 11, a dropped .58 caliber Williams Cleaner bullet came to light.

Over the next few hours this scenario was repeated several times. Targets that the Tesoro Tejon detected with clear, repeatable signals were either not detectable or produced broken, intermittent signals from two of the three other detectors being used at the site. All of us were quite impressed at the detection depth and sensitivity exhibited by the Tesoro Tejon–several bullets, small percussion caps, brass fragments and a few iron artifacts wound up in my collection that day!

I used the Tesoro Tejon at other sites and found that the ground balance circuit handled even the most adverse conditions I came across. Small rusted iron, which many other detectors find impossible to ignore, was cleanly rejected with the discrimination control set just above the IRON mark. Even in areas littered with ferrous trash, the Tesoro Tejon exhibited no falsing or chattering while easily picking out lead, brass and copper targets at impressive depths.

The name Tejon is Spanish for badger which is an animal known to be tough and capable of digging deep. Tesoro seems to have selected the Tejon’s name accurately for while it doesn’t dig it definitely detects deep! Some detectorists have ignored Tesoro’s in the past assuring themselves that the small control housing can’t equate to top-notch performance; however, the Tesoro Tejon in-field performance should convince even the most jaded treasure hunters that they should consider a Tesoro for their next detector. Many of the finds I made with the Tesoro Tejon came from depths that very few other detectors are capable of reaching and when you combine the lightweight of the detector with this performance, it makes hours of searching an enjoyable and often extremely productive experience.

Tesoro offers additional search coils for the Tesoro Tejon including round and elliptical concentric and wide scan coils ranging in size from 7 to 11 which further enhance its versatility. It should be noted however that only the coils from the Tesoro Lobo SuperTraq are interchangeable with the Tesoro Tejon due to its new circuit design.

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