My Expectations Of The Deus II As A Scuba Detector..

[Erik Oostra]

Hopefully the Deus II arrives today.. These are my expectations:  

I’ve been using a PulseDive with a 8” coil for deeper dives but searching long stretches of seafloor is very time consuming, especially with a ‘dig it all’ detector which doesn’t punch very deep.. The 11” coil on the Deus II will be a bonus in deep water but I’m going to miss the Equinox with its larger coils in shallow water.. I’m sweeping the seafloor, not creek beds.. XP shows a 11x13’’ coil in the manual but I don’t think it’s on the market yet.. This coil will fill the gap a bit, but not by much.. I hope XP will make larger coils for the Deus II.. No need to go too wild (over 20’’) but a 15’’ coil would be a welcome addition.. A fully submersible coil similar to the Equinox’s 13x15’’ will also sway other sea hunters towards XP over Minelab..  

Going by the manual and test reports by Calabash, the Deus II will stay waterproof deeper and longer than the Equinox.. I’m not saying I never expect it to leak (even with its whopping 20 metre depth rating), rather the likelihood of it leaking is far less.. This also reduces the worry about taking the detector deeper than its limit.. Right now I’ve got a depth gauge tied to the control box of the Equinox to make sure I don’t drop below 3 metres.. I’m sure it can go a bit deeper but I’ve never taken the risk.. I hope the Deus II takes away the ‘pain in the arse’ factor of forever worrying about leaks.. Having said that, I never treat the Equinox with kit gloves.. It works hard underwater and never leaked (even since I ‘broke the seal’ to replace the battery).. It’s just that I won’t have to worry about the Deus II leaking at 12 to 18 metres, the deepest parts of my search areas in bays or around old ship wrecks.. The manual says the screen can crack at 35 metres, so beyond that depth I’ll whip out the mighty PulseDive.. 

With the Equinox, I have to use sensitivity settings below 20 to stabilise it in seawater, otherwise it buzzes like mad and the target ID constantly jumps between 2-3-4-5 (especially with big coils).. I’ve used the 11” inch coil which is a bit more stable with the sensitivity on 18 or even 19.. But I hate lowering the sensitivity, when I get down to 15-16-17 to stabilise the Equinox underwater I start to worry about all the gold rings I’m missing, especially the small stuff.. At these lower sensitivity settings it’s also harder to get a solid hit on small targets - the target IDs become erratic or are drowned out by seawater static.. This is where the Deus II’s salt sensitivity settings (adjustable from 1 to 9) can make a difference.. I hope that by adjusting the salt sensitivity settings (only available in the diving and beach programs), the Deus II will be better than the Equinox at removing the false signals caused by seawater.. If the Deus II also runs more stable and hits hard on targets without jumping about too wildly, I’ll be a very happy diver!  

I also want to see if the multi-frequency ranges in program 11 - Beach work as good as promised in seawater.. From what I can make out, in this program the range of available frequencies are 4.08 to 4.76 kHz - 6.94 to 8.08 kHz - 10.39 to 15.15 kHz - 15.62 to 20.75 kHz - 22.06 to 28.57 kHz (topping out at 24 kHz) compared to the Equinox’s multi-frequency beach modes using 5, 10 and 15 kHz.. According to the manual, program 11 - Beach can also be used for diving.. If the detector is hard to stabilise or becomes less sensitive to small deep targets, I can switch to program 10 - Diving (with multi-frequency ranges up to 14 kHz).. The manual says that ‘’unlike some multi-frequency detectors that offer fixed multi-frequencies, the Deus II uses different high and low frequency combinations depending on the programs… These frequencies can then be subtracted to remove electrically-conductive soils or added together to help locate a wider range of targets’’.. I hope that the ‘Conductive Soil Subtraction’ in the diving and beach programs will give the Deus II another edge over the Equinox in seawater..      

From what I can gather so far, the Deus II is not just a good all-rounder.. XP also has its multi-frequency in mind for the ocean, more so than Minelab throwing divers a bone with the Equinox.. Minelab did a great job with its PI scuba detector, the Excalibur, but I’ve got a feeling the Deus II will finally wipe out its already small share of the pie - especially with accurate target IDs and comparable coil depths.. Maybe the Equinox 1000 will be waterproof to 80 metres and feature salt settings or remove false seawater signals, but until it’s released I’m more than willing to jump ship to XP for a detector that’ll get the job done around the island..     

And if it also turns out to be a capable nugget hunter, I’ll be doing even more back-flips with joy!