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Deus 2, Deus 1, Equinox 800 & GPX 5000 Compared On Various Size Gold Nuggets


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36 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Also, the volume level of Deus 2 seemed to be really quiet. Was it on its highest setting

Jeff volume was on 7 or 8 I don't recall which. It will go to 9 so I could have probably gotten a little more out of it. Audio response up to 6 may have helped as well I had it at 4. All stuff you don't think about at the time.

39 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

The real winner of this comparison as I and I am fairly certain Andy could have predicted was the Equinox 800 using an 11" coil in Gold 1 Multi. Gold 2 Multi would have been just the same. I know Steve H. has said that the Equinox 800 Gold modes were mostly an accident and kind of an afterthought. Somehow Steve and Minelab really nailed it however. I see this kind of raw power and finesse using the Equinox 800 gold prospecting and even relic hunting every time I use it.

On small gold the Equinox is the clear winner IMO and I kind of thought it was going to be just knowing how it has done in the past. You have to remember Minelab pretty much has gold prospecting detectors market wrapped up and this is just further proof of that.

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Well ... I don't normally watch comparison videos but that one was WELL WORTH THE WATCH!  It hit my sweet spot for sure.

I've said many times that I was probably the first one other than Steve to find some gold nuggets with the 11" 800.  It is on a thread here some place.  They were small nuggets.

We got to see different technology used on nuggets in the field.  Invaluable information and sounds for all of us.  Thank you.

I've been considering a small coil purchase for my 5000 and it shows that I either don't need one or it will ignore the tiny gold (and maybe the tiny bird shot) and be a form of discrimination.

What we didn't see in the video is a reaction to hot rocks.  This would be like many 'played out' gold patches where much of the trash and many of the hot rocks have been removed.  In those patches most of the surface gold and shallow gold has been removed too so those of us watching this 'test garden' we don't know how many detectors have been used on a spot before we get there.

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Deus 2 ID the smallest nugget once out of half a dozen 00s or no IDs. That tells me and anyone with experience using the Gold Field mode that it was having a really tough time with that target. Basically, the target was responding lower than -6.4 on most of those swings. I don’t care how loud the volume was or if headphones would have helped. That 11” coil was really struggling on that target, period.

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15 hours ago, abenson said:

Here is the video I did comparing various metal detectors on the buried gold nuggets. You can see in this video which ones do better on various size nuggets. Take this test with a grain of salt. Mineralization, nugget shape, target depth and site conditions will all effect detector performance. This is just a test I did in Arizona so your area could be much different and the nuggets were freshly buried.

 

Thanks for the comparison video abenson. I’m not an avid gold prospector like many of you here, but it is good to know that my Nox 800’s will be effective when I can eventually branch out a bit and do some gold specific hunting. It seems from other videos that the Deus II does well on the beach, surf, and diving. Other videos show that the EQX is great on silver and gold. As you stated, each detector has pros and cons, and that is the reason many of us own several detectors.

I still love my old Etrac on deep silver and my Nox 800’s as all around versatile machines. I use my gear pretty heavily, but I don’t abuse it so I haven’t had any issues with the Etrac or Nox (yet). I will most likely pick up a Deus II after the dust settles a bit and they are more readily available here in the states, primarily to use on the beach when I visit. I also suspect that we will start seeing quite a few Deus II’s on the used market as people receive them and either get frustrated with the learning curve (especially for non-Deus users) or because it doesn’t deliver what they expected. There are many newcomers to the hobby that don’t fully understand (yet) that detecting takes work- learning the machine modes, learning vdi’s and sounds of specific targets in different soils and situations, etc. 

Before anybody flames me, I’m in no way shape or form saying the Deus II is overhyped, just saying that everybody is different and what may seem the “silver bullet” machine for some might seem average to others. I will try any brand or model machine to find the good stuff. Again, thanks for the unbiased reviews of three great machines and your acknowledgement that no one machine is perfect- each can serve a unique purpose and performance in different situations. 

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Gold prospecting on tiny gold is all about getting a detector to respond to a small target usually in high mineralization. Sometimes it is just a blip, sometimes a break in the threshold. It depends on the detector and what kind of iron handling it has. 

In the video, the Deus 2 in wide open Gold Field with disc IAR on zero could not detect that smallest nugget well at all. If I had on headphones, just like Andy said, and was going by sound only, I might have walked right over it because the audio was so inconsistent and fractured. It tried to give an ID and mostly gave responses that mimic ground noise from passing over a really small hot rock or a slight change in ground phase. All of that, in spite of your insistence on volume levels not being equal, tells me how poorly Deus 2 in Gold Field with an 11” coil detected that target. No one is complaining about Deus 1s audio or especially the GPX 5000 volume levels which were also low, even though the GPX hit that second target with very faint BUT very consistent audio responses that would have pulled me up immediately.

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An absolute beginner at prospecting would have found the first tiny nugget with the Equinox, it could have been their first time detecting and you tell them that any Target with a 1 or 2 ID is possibly a small bit of gold, they would have found that nugget, no skill required.  A nice audio response and a very stable ID of 1, the number often associated with a tiny gold nugget, there was no contest, it performed much better.

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