Tesoro Cutlass

This is going to be an overview of the Tesoro Cutlass and its performance on the river, I don't use anything other than Nexus in the fields so all my other detectors are focusing on "foreshore performance".  I'm really blessed to have the river on my doorstep, not only is it one of the largest archaeological sites in the world, it enables me to use a large number of detectors that I wouldn't use elsewhere. Also I believe hunting the river makes me a better detectorists because the iron content is crazy. It's really important that you understand the audio of your machines. Tesoro detectors are so good on the Thames because they're purely audio based, for an untrained ear it might just sound like the same beep over and over again. This simply isn't the case, the nuance in the audio of all my Tesoro/analog machines have plenty of little layers to glean information from.

I purchased the Cutlass for a number of reasons, firstly I wanted to grow my Tesoro collection and secondly it has a hardwired 7' inch concentric coil. This coil is new to me because I only own the 8' inch CC and this size just isn't suitable for the river, my other coils are DD. Before swinging the Cutlass, it genuinely looked a little "cack-handed" because of the control box, I was worried it wouldn't be nice to swing. To my surprise it ended up being really light and well balanced. The large control box under the shaft might not be easy on the eye but it is easy on both the shoulder and the arm. To put it bluntly, the machine is a bloody joy to swing and I think it looks cool, I love the golden shaft, it reminds me of the old Fisher machines. 

The stem that holds the search coil simply slips into the main shaft and locks into place, there is no tightening screw. The coil lead is hardwired into the control box, you've got to wind it just right so there's no pressure on the coil lead where it's connected to the main box. The box itself is connected to the main shaft by two screws, there's no wobble, the whole machine feels very tight. The controls are on the backend of the control box, this is a little annoying because you can't really see them that clearly.

But due to how simple they are you don't need to be messing with the settings and dials, you have an "all metal mode", disc mode, battery check and a discrimination dial. The disc dial hardly needs to be moved for it to knock out reasonably sized iron nails and other ferrous materials. I never go above one, even with the dial on one the machine can unmask small non-ferrous in close proximity to iron superbly. Part of this is because of the concentric coil, owning other Tesoro machines that have the 7' inch DD coil on them, the concentric gives a clear edge in the iron. The only downside I've noticed with the CC on the river is it being prone to some falsing. This isn't a big deal though, and it only seems to occur in the black sand areas, in the mud it operates seamlessly.

The Cutlass has a nice recovery speed but like all Tesoro units it excels when swung slow, this allows the machine to lock on to the smallest of targets. If you're one of these people that has this incessant need to swing at one thousand miles an hour then don't buy a Tesoro. A slow steady and thorough search will find you the most targets, especially when it comes to hearing those masked signals. I believe all machines have a sweet spot swing wise that allows the machine to excel, below is a basic demonstration of my point.

The audio is very smooth sounding, it doesn't sound as "tight" as my other Tesoro machine, I think this is more from a target response point of view. Good non-ferrous targets sound sharp and rounded, ferrous targets are discriminated out so you get that classic "clipped - stutter". Large iron that does break through can be identified easily by lifting the coil or by drawing the coil back from the target, the audio will start to give tell-tale signs that it's junk. In regards to the size of targets that the machine picks up, I've literally dug tiny pieces of non-ferrous metal with a strong tone. If you swing the machine correctly you're not going to miss much.

It's hard to tell how deep the Cutlass goes but I don't need to go deep on the river, all the targets are shallow, the deep stuff is nearly always junk. I don't buy Tesoro machines for their depth, I buy them for their discrimination, tone and character, when depth is required my Nexus machines come out. In regards to points that I'm not too keen on, there aren't really any apart from the placement of the speaker. On the foreshore when the wind is bad it can be hard to hear the machine due to the speaker being located on the side of the box. That's the only downside, I genuinely love everything about this machine.

To sum up, I believe Tesoro machines were built with performance in mind over profit and I genuinely believe you're getting superb performance for the price. Unfortunately nowadays the priority is inverted, profit is trumping performance, OK ... they might not be fully waterproof, have wireless capabilities or have loads of pointless features, but those who love swinging both analog and Tesoro detectors really don't give a toss about all of that. To conclude, the Cutlass is an awesome unit and if you see one on the secondhand market do yourself a favour and snap it up.