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Real World Feedback For XP Deus 2 In Water


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Ps - am beginning to like the D2 - I am unsure about the depth, but sometimes just the ability to modify the sounds to make them easier to hear when diving is all you need.  There is a lot of noise, confusion and bubbles (and with the nemo, rattle of the compressor) so a decent ‘pitch tone’ makes me focus on targets I may have otherwise missed?

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6 hours ago, Dmnz said:

Ps - am beginning to like the D2 - I am unsure about the depth, but sometimes just the ability to modify the sounds to make them easier to hear when diving is all you need.  There is a lot of noise, confusion and bubbles (and with the nemo, rattle of the compressor) so a decent ‘pitch tone’ makes me focus on targets I may have otherwise missed?

Nice chunk of gold!

Also I will have to look thru my notes but I had a site you could buy the fitting and cable needed for the head phones, may take me a few days but I will post the link. Carolina made his own phones for the D2, maybe he will chime in...

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4 hours ago, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

Nice chunk of gold!

Also I will have to look thru my notes but I had a site you could buy the fitting and cable needed for the head phones, may take me a few days but I will post the link. Carolina made his own phones for the D2, maybe he will chime in...

thanks Joe

 

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On 6/17/2022 at 1:45 AM, Dmnz said:

There is a lot of noise, confusion and bubbles (and with the nemo, rattle of the compressor) so a decent ‘pitch tone’ makes me focus on targets I may have otherwise missed?

How do you like the Nemo? I’m about an inch away from getting one...

strick

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Joe, tried to help, got no response.

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, strick said:

How do you like the Nemo? I’m about an inch away from getting one...

strick

It’s great been using for a year now…happy to answer any questions 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/18/2022 at 10:56 AM, Carolina said:

Joe, tried to help, got no response.

thanks Carolina - much appreciated - I managed to find the connectors online and have wired an unused set of Koss yellows to the connector - epoxying as we type!   They seem plenty loud and you can drive them louder with the 'bone conductor setting' on the Deus 2 (probably also ok on the standard setting at v9).  Will post photos

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  • 2 weeks later...

Briefly about myself:

  • 38 years of metal detecting experience on dry land, however, very little for the past 20 years

  • 32 years scuba detecting experience (Fisher 1280x, avg over 300 hrs /year, exclusively European fresh water, 9hr scuba detecting days on a regular basis)

I got the Deus 2 a few weeks ago in order to use it while scuba diving in fresh water, have done 20 hrs so far. My settings:

Program 2

  • two tones, low for iron up to a conductivity level of 25, everything else high tone, no fooling around like bottle cap filter or notches, cos this all makes you miss goodies

Overall, the Deus 2 seems to be a good detector with the factory programs, which I feel I have to learn better. Therefore just a few observations about its performance:

  • very good sensitivity for small objects (ear pin, open loop ear ring, brass disc 5mm diam, thin and short copper wire pieces...)
  • very good depth

  • identifies coins on edge well

  • very good acoustic discrimination of ferrous/non ferrous in heavily nail infested ienvironments with multiply overlkapping signals

  • poor acoustic representation of object size and depth: as the Deus 2 apparently boosts deep signals even in basic settings, I am hardly able to estimate object depth, same for size.

  • Too many parameters to set, which makes repeated adjustments necessary to even maintain performance, which wastes a lot of time as the gain in performance is marginal

  • (Solution: trim it down as I did – set and forget: what you might lose in performance under lab conditions, you gain through experience with that one setting. Less is more!)

 

BUT: Ergonomy absolutely sucks!

When scuba diving, detector handling is vastly different than on dry land: you basically detect while lying on your stomach, the detector shortened to 2 ½ to 3 ft, the coil parallel to the shaft, the display is useless due to poor viz.

In short: every detail of the detector shows that it was designed by people without any scuba detecting experience – they didn´t even look at under water detectors whoch have been successful on the market for decades – but believe that a detector is diveable just because it doesn´t leak.

This results in the following problems, which could have been solved or avoided easily and from the start by XP:

  1. the shaft:

    Consisting of the parts (lower plastic tube from the coil up, aliminum tube, handle), you can shorten/extend it in two different ways: 1. push the plastic tube into or pull it out of the aluminum tube, and 2. by pushing the aluminum tube up through the handle. If you want to shorten the detector to a diveable size, you have to use both options – two problems arise: if you push the plastic tube all the way into the aluminum tube, the aluminum messes with the coil and reduces performance drastically, if you let it stick out about 6 inches, you have to push the aluminum tube to far up through the handel thatyou cannot use it with a dive suit cos you can barely fit your hand/arm in underneath.

    My solution: I cut the aluminum tube to about 8 inches and shortened teh plastic tube by about 5 – but now I cannot use the Deus2 on land any more as I am not a gnome.

    Why the heck didn´t they include an additional piece of short tube?! Would have cost them a few cents...

  2. The bone conducting head phones

    - I csan see the idea on land, that you want to hear environmental sounds – however, regular small one dollar shop headphones as we used them for the walkman in the 80s fulfill the same purpose just as well – if the plug...

    Under water, however, this purpose doesn´t exist, bone conducting headphones are simply useless:

    - in order to put these headphones on, you have to wear it under the hood. With regular headphones, the procedure would be: put dive suit on, put mask and hood on, don jacket (as a solo diver – as detectorists are – you do so in chest deep water, under water and over head), then put headphones on and off you go.

    With the bone conductor: ...hood on, jacket on, hood of, headphones on, hood on, adjust headphones and hood carefully (with 6mm neoprene gloves!), put mask on, re-adjust headphones udner the hood...

    and god forbid you have or want to lay down the detector under water: mask off, hood off, headphones off, hood on, mask on, clear mask, disentangle the reg, as the „technicians“ decided to have two wires... and if you are depper than 30ft, water temp usually is in the 40s! Have fun!

    - additional bonus of the bond conducting heap phones under the hood: with every breath you take, you get a gush of cold water on your ears, because the headphones keep the hood away from your skin.

    - bonus 2: after 2 or 3 hrs, the headphones really hurt your temples.

Worst of all, however: I am pretty certain the people at XP are well aware of this ludicrously faulty design – otherwise they would not try to justify it with the opportunity to wear ear plugs! (no diver whith a sane mind ever wears earplugs, they are plain dangerous under pressure! Plus the nonsense about bad sound conduction under water! Water is an excellent sound conductor!

(Solution: regular under waer head phones as every other manufacturer uses for a good reason: they perform flawlessly, they have done so for decades, additional bonus: they even keep your ears warm!)

- As if this were not enough, two more negative points about the headphones: 1. the cable is way too long, it drags on the floor and gets cought on rocks, branches, gets cut on broken glass. Why, do the people at XP think, do other manufacturers use spiral cables?! 2. far too fragile construction (it even need a protective bracket for storage, which is a clear giveaway that they are aware of that!)

Miscellaneous:

  • The buttons on the remote can hardly be pressed with thick gloves.

  • The headphone plug ist in the most inconvenient spot of the remote if mounted on the shaft, and is far too fragile.

  • The remote comes off the shaft mount several times per dive (no secure locking mechanism).

  • The antenna cable is at least 3-4 ft too long and the fragile o-ring to keep it on the coil has to be replaced with zip ties or will wear down on the first dive.

  • The slight negative bouyance is pleasant, but the detector tips over to the side if layed down and is hard to feel (no viz!)

  • when laying on the ground while you excavate, the detector will be „blown“ away.

    (I added 5 one ounce sinkers to the back side of the handle and a piece of styropfoam beside the remote so the detector sits solid and upright.)

  • Automatic deletion of all self-written programs when updating the software is a joke!

  • But the most absurd thing: two different plugs for diving and dry land: what the heck for? Just eliminate a msource for a fatal mistake and deliver it with the dive plug in place!

 

Conclusion:

At first glance, the Deus 2 is an excellent detector for land use, probably also for wading – but for scuba diving in other than tropical waters, it is absolutely useless until they replace those crappy headphones!

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3 hours ago, Scubapete said:

In short: every detail of the detector shows that it was designed by people without any scuba detecting experience

Good review, you put a lot of thought into it.  XP did not have any beach hunters input either................

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4 hours ago, Scubapete said:

if you push the plastic tube all the way into the aluminum tube, the aluminum messes with the coil and reduces performance drastically

I've noticed this a few times, and usually end up sliding the plastic shaft out just far enough to stop the problem.. Or else I keep the shaft from laying flat on the coil, which can be done even if you're down on your stomach.. I fully agree that it's a design problem, but it's hard to see how to fix it without making the whole shaft even more wobbly.. Its wobbly shaft also makes it a pretty poor choice as a wading detector..  

The aluminium of the shaft messing with the coil is also a problem when using the Equinox as a scuba detector, especially with large coils.. At least the Deus II shaft is not attached to the centre of the coil but a bit further back giving you a few more inches to shorten the plastic shaft.. This is one of the main reasons I'm diving again with a 11'' coil on the Equinox, I got sick off holding the shaft up and away from the back of the coil.. 

Great review by the way, although I dive in tropical seas and don't have to muck about with dry suits or hoods I agree with many things you say about the Deus II as a scuba detector.. I also agree that the bone-phone's stiff long plastic cable is a massive pain in the arse, it gets caught on everything when diving..

Many of your gripes were covered in one of my posts, where various other beach and scuba detectorists put in their thoughts as well.. 

 

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