Tesoro Cortes
Price: $850
Avg. Score: 
4.21
Based on 24 reviews
4.21Based on 24 reviews
Avg. Durability:
4.67
Avg. Ease of use:
4.33
Cortes
January 13, 2019
The cortes is light and can swing all day, it also has a great notch system
as I use it to count out the tabs and it does a great job at that. The
screen is a little small but its still readable although the bar graph and
the sum mode works great 3 different ways to tell what is in the ground.
Not many detectors have that feature. The cortes runs very quiet even with
max sen and is a coin magnet.
The cortes is as deep as the cz5 with no problem every target found with the cz5 was also checked with the cortes and it beeped on every target finding coins 10-11 deep with ease.The weight is great and will not tire out my arm. I do not relic hunt so I cannot comment on relics but for coin its great.
Max Depth: 10 inches on US quarter
Overall Rating
Durability
Ease of Use
Would you recommend this to a new user?
I have no clue...
Mike from
Louisiana
20
Great detector
September 29, 2014
Similar to the Deleon but with some added features. Manual GB in all metal
mode. Has notch disc. Narrow and wide. Display is smaller than Deleon.
Performance about equal to DeLeon. Display has backlight feature. SUM mode
gives a multi tone audio signal for different metal types. Can be backlit
for nighttime use. Battery doors are a bit flimsy, an elastic band over
them ensures they are kept shut. Otherwise construction is good quality.
Lots of bells and whistles, would not recommend for a novice detectorist.
Overall Rating
Durability
Ease of Use
Would you recommend this to a new user?
No, not really.
Hg from
Canada
134
Tesoro cortes
April 15, 2013
New to metal detecting. First metal detector was a coin master. Back in the
80's First metal detector have owned. But was in a field in all metal found
a piece of barb wire over 15 inches deep. About 4 inches long. Yeah it will
go deep as some of the others in all metal. Found a old dime at 8 or 9
inches. Disc mode still getting used to what I'm looking at.
Takes time but worth it.
No problems...
Overall Rating
Durability
Ease of Use
Would you recommend this to a new user?
Yes, absolutely!
Mark from
Oklahoma City
177
"The one"
March 07, 2013
I cannot believe that there are so few YouTube videos on the Cortes,
especially English speaking ones. My Cortes is my eleventh detector, and I
am pretty sure that I have found THE ONE. I have been detecting for around 5 years now and after 5 Whites, a Fisher, 2 Garretts, and 2 Minelabs, the Cortes is a detector that best fits what I want in a detector.
I want a display to give me accurate information about the target, I want knobs instead of menus, I want comfort while swinging,(I don't want to "feel" the coil), light weight, good depth, good battery life, good audio discrimination, and good build quality.
After trying all the previous units, I always found something that bugged me enough to want to move on to the next one. Thank you Ebay. I have had the Cortes for a few months now and have taken it out quite a bit. So far, I am still very pleased with it and do not have anything to fuss about. It took very little time for me to get acquainted with this detector and to feel at ease with it.
I opened up the control housing in order to check out the way it is designed, and I have to say that it is well built. I have included one of the pictures I took while I had the unit opened up, see for yourself.
Overall Rating
Roger from
Lake Placid, Florida
464
Tesor cortes vs fisher quicksilver
July 03, 2012
I bought mine used along with a Tejon and a Lobo ST. I sent all 3 to
Tesoro for re-calibration and told them they were all 3 bought on
Craigslist and Ebay. They worked on all 3 machines and did not even charge return shipping.
Now for the detector. I give it a 3. The one I bought was from the original owner and only 6 months old. The notch mode was rejecting nickels. Tesoro fixed it free of charge.
I test out Machines at the fairground location in Cartersville GA. It's a good place to compare detectors. I used it for several hours. It seemed to mask targets too much. I had an old fisher 1266x with me. After several hours, I compared the two units on signals before I dug them. The 1266x really pulled coins out much better.
The LCD was too hard to look at and lots of stuff came in (at) 95. The depth was quite bad, but a lot of that is Georgia.
If I set the discriminator high for copper clad and silver, I would only hear the high stuff, but the junk metal would reset the display. This makes it extremely difficult in extreme trashy areas.
I sold it and go an old Fisher CZ5. I didn't have this problem with the CZ5. The CZ5 holds the meter position for the last good signal. The CZ5 also had much better depth.
With the great customer service, I hate to give a machine a low rating.
Overall Rating
Joe from
Canton Ga
1420
Cortez 2
June 30, 2012
Wrote my review a little early. Seems my Cortez did not like the way I set
it up. I increased the Sensitivity all most all the way and backed off on
my Threshold. My Cortez is working good now. I was ready to send it back.
That being said the Cortez is now one of the most accurate ID detectors I have ever had. I have hunted two days with it and can accurately predict any coin coming out of the ground. I hunted to day and found over a hundred coins, three rings, and about 5 nickels.
The Cortez is now the best Detector I have had after at least eight or nine Detectors.
I set up the Threshold at almost Null and put the Sensitivity almost at Maximum. I set the discrimination at Foil and set the Notch on Narrow. Nickels hit good and strong showing an ID of about 24. Zincs in good shape hit good at around 71. Zincs in bad shape hit broken in the high 60s. Rings hit as Nickels in size but ID around 14-18. Of Course Dimes and Quarters hit at 95. Deep Cans show as shallow 50 cent pieces or will show LIFT COIL if they are really shallow.
Nickels hitting the ID at 30 or higher are Tabs and sound broken when you listen to them.
I did not use the Wide Notch because it knocks out the Zincs. You must remove the Zincs to unmask the deeper older coins.
My earlier post complaining the Cortez was Chatty was completely fixed by reducing the Threshold. It now hunts nice and quiet. I am not sure about depth right now but I know the ID increased with the Sensitivity increase, because the Display does not bounce around like a Super Ball.
If you are a beginner Metal Detector this may not be the Detector for you because I had just a little trouble getting it set up just right, but after I did get it right, it is a real winner now.
One reason I bought the Tesoro to begin with was the Warranty. If this thing had something not right about it, like I suspected at first, I could have sent it back next week or next year, or my Grandchild could have sent it back and got it fixed for free.
The Cortez is an excellent Detector once you get it set up right and figured out.
Overall Rating
Danny Krumnow from
Riesel TX
261
Cortez
June 29, 2012
I had high hopes for the Cortez. I have a Golden Saber II that is an
excellent Detector. Unfortunately the Cortez that I have has very little
depth in Discriminate mode. Therefore it misidentifies most targets at
anything over 4-5 inches. This makes the Notch almost unusable and the
Machine Chatty. There is no Pin Point on this Machine and the All Metal Mode tunes the target out very quickly if you try to hover over your target for any time at all.
I am still trying to decide if I want to send this Machine back to Tesoro to see if it can be fixed or trade it for something else. Had it one day and would trade it for another Golden Saber without batting an eye.
Overall Rating
Danny Krumnow from
Riesel Tx
1212
Tesoro cortes
February 22, 2012
The cortes goes deep, sensitivity dial goes to 10 and then some more into
the red zone towards the end of the dials travel. Whats important is that
as another poster mentioned the cortes isn't effected much by interference
so doesn't chatter if sensitivity is set high. I can always run mine on max giving me great depth, google 'super tuning tesoro's', you can set the cortes up in the same way, ground balance, then run in discrimination mode and crank up threshold, check the depth then!. Some of the other tesoros don't like much mineralization and lose depth cos of it, not the cortes, maybe thats why its still their flagship model?.
I really like the cortes, does everything I require of it and regularly out hunts my friends 'top brand' heavy detectors over the same fields. It's light and easy to use, well made too, I'm very happy with the cortes, I've owned quite a few detectors as well, including some of the so called top brands but I don't think I'll be selling this one for some time.
Overall Rating
Dave from
Uk
324
Cortes, good around iron
February 21, 2012
How good is the cortes? well it depends what you use it for, if its on
pasture with not much iron then you will probably be better off with
another machine as yes this is not the deepest detector but saying that it
isn't that far behind some of the newer deeper machines either.Just check out how popular the laser hawkeye is (the cortes is even better as the discrimination has more segments hence is more accurate). If your using it to look for hammered/roman coins on iron infested ploughed fields then you can't go wrong with this detector. I've pulled tiny bits of bronze out of amoungst loads of iron because of the excellent crisp signal and id that this detector provides.
When the detector signals 0 you know its iron and I cant begin to tell you how much time this has saved me on digging compared to other machines I've used so when I get a signal other then 0 I dig knowing that theres something down there and not just another lump of funny shaped iron that would fool another detector.
The cortes will id a good target right next to a lump of iron firstly showing a 0 for the iron then id'ing the good target right next ti it with amazing accuracy. Would I trade an inch or so on depth for excellent iron discrimination? hell yes!. Once you get to know this detector you learn that you can trust the iron rejection, I go home with more good finds and less horse shoes/ washers/ bolts etc since owning the cortes.
Overall Rating
Simon from
Kent uk
192
Tesoro Cortes
February 04, 2012
I would have loved this detector if it had of been deeper, I like the build
quality, the low weight, simplicity of use and the digital read out telling
you what it thinks is in the ground, it's quite accurate in helping you
avoid the iron. Pin pointing with this machine is a dream, really easy to get right on top of the target but could this be partly due to the fact that the targets are never deep? This machine feels natural and is quick and easy to learn just such a shame that it does not go deeper, even my Garret blows this away on depth, even on the small low conductivity stuff!
Ten years ago this detector would have been a real contender but is now left behind. Come on tesoro, update the circuitry in the Cortes to compete with some of your later machines and you would be onto a winner and justify the at the price tag.
Overall Rating
Peter from
England
86