Every since I saw a Compadre Mini on a UK website I wanted one. Since you can’t get them here in the states and I didn’t want to order one from the UK I decided to build my own. I also didn’t want to go out and buy a new Compadre and chop it up so I started saving parts. Through a series of trades I ended up with an almost new Compadre for practically nothing invested. Along with some extra Stingray poles and a cracked 4″ coil a friend gave me I started cutting.

The Stingray pole was cut down and the crack in the 4″ coil was epoxied. Before moving the control box over to the new short pole I did the interchangeable coil mod on the Compadre. This way I could easily put it back on its original pole and coil if I ever wanted to. Also, while it’s on the short pole with 4″ coil it gives me an extra 5.75 coil that it came with.

I thought this would be a fun little detector for tight places like crawl spaces, under houses, thick brush etc. Overall length is approx 14″. I have used it a few times already and it works great. Another use I thought of came about when a friend picked up an Indian head penny off of my tailings while digging bottles. This would be a good little tool to have laying close by for dump digging since swinging a full size detector from a sitting or kneeling position is cumbersome.

Video of the conversion: