Deus 2 Prospecting Mode

[Chase Goldman]

9 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Hi Hugh,

thanks for the almost clarification on Gold Field and Relic being FMF only on Deus 2. I am not 100% sure either but honestly it doesn't really matter since I would try to always use FMF. I rarely use my Equinox in its Gold modes in single frequency unless EMI is just awful. 

As far as Disc. IAR, a serious Covid brain fog moment happened while I was editing that paragraph. What I meant to say was iron reject can be Off=0 or On set to 1 through 5. Again, I rarely use it gold prospecting. Just like you said, in magnetite, using it just confuses things and shallow to surface, tiny gold can get swallowed up by masking using the single frequency Deus 1 and ORX. Maybe........FMF will help that situation?????

Yeah until we get it into our hands on the D2 ourselves some of these "settings" questions are a little down in the weeds and there are small ambiguities in the manual wrt to these settings despite it being a pretty well put together user guide overall.   The folks who are doing and documenting the testing are not bothering to delve into that level of minutiae either because they are trying to maximize the range of conditions under test or because of a lack of experience in certain areas such as prospecting or salt water hunting.  If there is anything to be disappointed about wrt to the D2 at this point whether it is prospecting, coin shooting, or relic hunting, is no compatible small elliptical coil as of yet.

[Steve Herschbach]

On 1/4/2022 at 5:39 PM, Chase Goldman said:

Correct, no notching in the Gold/Goldfield modes but nothing says you are limited solely to using the Goldfield modes for prospecting.   Even though not truly all metal you can still use the mono mode at 45 khz high frequency or any of the high frequency weighted FMF modes such as Sensitive, Sensitive FT (full tones) or Fast with minimal disc dialed in for prospecting while utilizing the ability to notch out hot rocks, if necessary.

People overlook relic mode as a nugget hunting mode on Equinox, but if set up similar to gold mode it’s neck and neck. Really just the difference between “beep mode” and a highly digitized version of VCO, not the actual capability. I found Deus to be similar in that the “non-nugget” modes were very viable for nugget hunting, perhaps better under some circumstances, I have no worries about the basic prospecting capability of the D2 outside of the lack of small coil. Coils do matter on the tiniest stuff in the worst ground, as seeing less ground, and accentuating the transmitted field. There is just no way a D2 can go head to head with something like a Gold Bug 2 with a 3x6 concentric. But there is also the fact that you tend to find what you look for, and concentrating on 1/10th grain specks may not be the best way to go if weight in pouch at end of week matters. I like hunting dinks, enjoy it actually, but I have to focus on being optimized on half gram to gram targets if I want to do well nugget detecting. The 9’’ round should do just fine for that, and better as the gold gets larger than the small coils.

Everything is a trade. Number one consideration should be knowing what gold size to expect. If all you have is grain type gold or very finely dispersed specimen gold, using a D2 with 9” coil would be foolish. If you do have potential for gold with size, going to too small a coil is also foolish, as you not only lose depth, but ground coverage. I actually tend to pick a VLF less for the machine itself, as so many are quite good, but for the specific coils they can run. I’ll grab the D2 with 9” for larger bits, but 24K with 6” concentric for tiny bits. It’s more like I’m running coils, and I just use whatever detector it takes to run the proper coil. Good subject for one of my all to rare deep dive articles soon. 

I love this chart as it says it all. Small coils go deeper on small gold, big coils go deeper on big gold, and mediums are just a compromise, though there are nuggets where medium also gets the best depth, like grammers. It’s why I tend to bounce back and forth between small and large a lot, with mediums often getting the least use. You won’t get these kind of difference changing from one VLF for another VLF with the same size coil. Look at those numbers again. It’s way more about the coils than most people think, and why coil selection is near top, if not at top, for why I own the detectors I own.

Coil Size vs Depth Fisher Gold Bug 2
Source - Field Testing the Gold Bug 2 by Gordon Zahara

[Jeff McClendon]

I have zero published proof of this next statement. However, I believe there are some ground/hot rock handling things going on in the background when using the Equinox Gold modes that are not happening in Park 2 and Field 2. Also, contrary to what I used to think, the threshold in the Gold modes may actually be more than a reference threshold like it is in Park 2 and Field 2.

At least for smaller gold less that .5 grams, I have experienced a noticeable difference in sensitivity between the Gold modes and Park 2 and Field 2 setup similar to the Gold modes.

Deus 1 and the ORX using either HF coil in 31 kHz (similar frequency to Deus 2's 40 kHz) were much more sensitive to .5 gram and smaller gold than the other Deus 1 version 5.2 software modes by an inch or more.

Deus 2 with its FMF technology along with its new discrimination search modes may change all of that. So we'll know soon.

[Zord]

There is hot rocks notch in Goldfield of Deus1.

This setting is Ground Notch existing in expert settings of GB menu.

I'm using Ground Notch of 84-90 range and hot rocks are gone.

https://www.metaldetectingworld.com/xp_deus_manual_ground_balance.shtml

 

 

 

[Jeff McClendon]

18 minutes ago, Zord said:

There is hot rocks notch in Goldfield of Deus1.

This setting is Ground Notch existing in expert settings of GB menu.

I'm using Ground Notch of 84-90 range and hot rocks are gone.

https://www.metaldetectingworld.com/xp_deus_manual_ground_balance.shtml

 

 

 

I tried to use the Ground Notch feature.  It works but for me the notch window was too wide... and the ground handling ability of the single frequency Goldfield mode made the boundaries of the notch window very unstable meaning their values could be up or down averaged depending on mineralization and mask targets near the notch window.  The Equinox single digit notching is far superior and using Multi IQ it is very exact unless the ground is just terrible. Hopefully Deus 2 with FMF will have much better ground handling capabilities.

[Steve Herschbach]

39 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I have zero published proof of this next statement. However, I believe there are some ground/hot rock handling things going on in the background when using the Equinox Gold modes that are not happening in Park 2 and Field 2. Also, contrary to what I used to think, the threshold in the Gold modes may actually be more than a reference threshold like it is in Park 2 and Field 2.

At least for smaller gold less that .5 grams, I have experienced a noticeable difference in sensitivity between the Gold modes and Park 2 and Field 2 setup similar to the Gold modes.

Deus 1 and the ORX using either HF coil in 31 kHz (similar frequency to Deus 2's 40 kHz) were much more sensitive to .5 gram and smaller gold than the other Deus 1 version 5.2 software modes by an inch or more.

Deus 2 with its FMF technology along with its new discrimination search modes may change all of that. So we'll know soon.

I'm not saying Gold Mode is not better. I'm saying Relic mode is better than many think, and is not worth discarding out of hand as an option. In some areas wide open ferrous/non-ferrous tones can be nice, for instance. That's all.

Gold Mode threshold is a reference threshold, but will come very close to mimicking a genuine ground coupled threshold if sensitivity is pushed high enough. But we need to stop talking Equinox now, wrong venue.

[Zord]

16 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I tried to use the Ground Notch feature.  It works but for me the notch window was too wide... and the ground handling ability of the single frequency Goldfield mode made the boundaries of the notch window very unstable meaning their values could be up or down averaged depending on mineralization and mask targets near the notch window.  The Equinox single digit notching is far superior and using Multi IQ it is very exact unless the ground is just terrible. Hopefully Deus 2 with FMF will have much better ground handling capabilities.

If understand correctly, are You afraid of masking targets?

GB values and Ground Notch values (digits on screen) have nothing to do with targets id numbers (and audio).

There is no bond between them.

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

9 minutes ago, Zord said:

If understand correctly, are You afraid of masking targets?

GB values and Ground Notch values (digits on screen) have nothing to do with targets id numbers (and audio).

There is no bond between them.

Blocking ground signals can block gold nuggets, which read well into the ground range, as do many small targets in bad ground. So yes, blocking hot rocks and blocking certain ground readings can and will mask targets. This is common knowledge with gold prospectors, not up for debate.

[Zord]

Ok.

I didn't notice any problems with low conductors in bad ground, but i'm not a native gold prospector.

There is one major problem with Ground Notch: big massive high conductors tending to fall in iron range.

I'm relic hunter, chasing gold micro jewelry sometimes in really nasty soil and never had problems with using ground notch in deus1.

 

 

 

[Guest]

I am not yet an XP user, but has anyone here tried the XY screen on gold nuggets?  If so if so, can it be useful in delineating ground, mineral, gold, hot rock, ect.