XP Orx, Garrett Apex, Nokta Legend Target ID Accuracy

[Jeff McClendon]

49 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Yea, the 39 hours is a bit like me really, if I don't find a detector works well out of the box in default settings only needing to change sensitivity and detect mode (park, field, beach, gold) on something as simple as a few coins in mild ground with no junk then it's not right for me.  I don't want to have to learn to get the best out of a detector when I can use another detector, turn it on and off I go finding stuff.  If I have to fiddle to get it to work as well or better than another detector I can just press the power button and start detecting then I don't really want to use it as I'd never be sure I'm in optimal settings for the place I'm hunting.

I can easily tell if I like a detector in 39 hours, a lot less than that.  He would have been comparing it to the Nox the entire time, probably had both with him, went over a few targets he was finding and decided he preferred the Nox, similar to what I do when a new toy comes to town.

I like the switch on and they just work detectors the best for my needs.  I've been able to fiddle with Jeff's great advice and get the Deus 1 performing a little bit better, but still lags a long way behind entry level machines like the Vanquish and even the good old Ace 300 when it comes to identifying deep coins with a stable Target ID in my soil.  That's why I'm a little interested in how the Apex would go, the Ace kills it on deep coins here with a big coil on it.

If I just detected turn on and go with the Equinox in many of my areas, I would encounter so much iron falsing and apparent target ID instability in the mid to upper conductivity range along with the digging of numerous iron/steel alloy targets along with plenty of ghost targets (magnetite mineralization) that I would be very discouraged and unimpressed with the Equinox after just a few hours. We heard that over and over again (and still do) from inexperienced/stubborn default only users and so did Minelab obviously since they came out with the F2 iron bias option soon after the release. 

The Legend is no different than the Equinox if a new user decides to not accept at least a portion of the iron range target IDs and also chooses to ignore/disregard its Ferro Check meter for shallower targets. The Legend having four preset ground/iron discrimination patterns instead of the Equinox iron On/Off option (if a new user even knows about that Horseshoe button option) makes a big difference in my opinion.

Any serious detector user that just wants to use default turn on and go settings......fine. Those settings may or may not really demonstrate the detector in question's real potential and scope. 

For more inexperienced users, they may get the completely wrong idea about a fairly complex detector by just sticking with defaults. 

On much less feature rich detectors, defaults may give a really good idea about how that detector will perform in ones ground conditions and on ones normal targets within minutes.

Then again, sometimes defaults work out just right depending on how a detector deals with iron using its default settings, in particular....XP Deus 1, ORX and Deus 2 defaults being good examples of that on much more feature rich detectors.

 

Simon, if you asked me the question "Should I buy an Ace Apex?" knowing what I know from experience......absolutely NOT in triplicate. Your Ace 300 or AT Gold would hands down out perform it, the exception being use on a low iron black sand, very mild saltwater beach.

[phrunt]

I think if I lived in your soils Jeff, I wouldn't be swinging a detector I would have given up early on, I'm just not the right sort of person to put up with it 🙂   I'm in a way lucky here a majority of detectors I can just turn on and start using and get good results, even looking for gold nuggets it's the same.  I just don't have the patience you do to learn to make a detector just run how it should, if it doesn't just work out of the box I get annoyed 🙂

I suspect a a bulk of people buying detectors are the same perhaps not on this forum as it tends to attract the skilled long term detector users which is likely the minority of detector buyers, and then there is those new to detecting buyers that would really be thrown off course by a difficult to get working well detector.  I really feel sorry for someone new to detecting starting off in your soils, it must drive them nuts and I'm sure many just give up.  Unless they had someone to guide them they probably give up in short order.

Detector manufacturers seem to be moving towards the more turn on and go thing especially Minelab with examples like the GM1000 and GPX 6000, although for me the GPZ 7000 was the same as the 6000, I just needed to make sure it was in HY (default) change Difficult to Normal and set sensitivity to my desired level and I'm off for the day not needing to do anything else.

I know you're not going to jump onto the Manticore straight away, probably wise there but it will be interesting to see how it goes in your soil when the time comes, if they've improved Multi-IQ even more to just turn on and go with good results like most can do in their soils.  I know here I'll be able to as I can with the Nox and Vanquish and that makes me prefer detectors like them over ones I have to fiddle around with settings to try and get them to perform even close to the Nox/Vanquish in defaults.

[Calmark]

Thank you for your reports, Jeff.  I too coin/jewelry hunt in difficult mineralized ground in California that sounds similar to your conditions.  Accurate visual ID and strong tones tend to drop off after just a few inches into the ground here.  I pretty much never dig an old coin past 5 inches as the ground just swallows up the detector response due to the highly mineralized ground.  

These newer generation SMF detectors like the Equinox, Deus 2, Legend and coming Manticore have really made a difference for me in my soil.  I can get relatively stable ID# and that really helps when deciding to dig or not.  I struggled initially too with the Equinox when I got it 4 years ago, but after getting past the 40-50 hour mark last year, I finally figured out how to get decent performance out of it.  Going to the XP Deus 2 this spring was fairly easy to do, and now with near 150 hours, I have a pretty good handle on settings that I like to use.

With the amazing prices from several of the competing detector companies offered lately, I ordered a Nokta Legend yesterday.  I sold my Equinox 800 3 months ago to a friend to get him into the hobby and knowing the next gen Minelab vlf was likely on its way.  I've missed having the option of a smaller or larger coil for the Deus 2, and at $400 for an 11in coil, I figured the money would be better spent on the Legend and get both 6in and 11in coils for not a lot more money.  I look forward to seeing how it does in my tough dirt, but I think it should do great, based on user reports like these from Jeff.  

[Jeff McClendon]

27 minutes ago, Calmark said:

Thank you for your reports, Jeff.  I too coin/jewelry hunt in difficult mineralized ground in California that sounds similar to your conditions.  Accurate visual ID and strong tones tend to drop off after just a few inches into the ground here.  I pretty much never dig an old coin past 5 inches as the ground just swallows up the detector response due to the highly mineralized ground.  

These newer generation SMF detectors like the Equinox, Deus 2, Legend and coming Manticore have really made a difference for me in my soil.  I can get relatively stable ID# and that really helps when deciding to dig or not.  I struggled initially too with the Equinox when I got it 4 years ago, but after getting past the 40-50 hour mark last year, I finally figured out how to get decent performance out of it.  Going to the XP Deus 2 this spring was fairly easy to do, and now with near 150 hours, I have a pretty good handle on settings that I like to use.

With the amazing prices from several of the competing detector companies offered lately, I ordered a Nokta Legend yesterday.  I sold my Equinox 800 3 months ago to a friend to get him into the hobby and knowing the next gen Minelab vlf was likely on its way.  I've missed having the option of a smaller or larger coil for the Deus 2, and at $400 for an 11in coil, I figured the money would be better spent on the Legend and get both 6in and 11in coils for not a lot more money.  I look forward to seeing how it does in my tough dirt, but I think it should do great, based on user reports like these from Jeff.  

The Legend is very similar to the Equinox as far a what settings to use in thick iron, thick aluminum etc. and most of the terminology is the same, unlike on Deus/Deus 2.

 The hardest part for me was and still is, navigating all of the hidden menus on the Legend. The Equinox has some hidden menus but the Legend user interface is a nerds dream....much like Deus 1 and Deus 2. I am not much of a nerd so I have had to work at it and still do.

The somewhat expanded low to mid conductor range of target IDs on the Legend is what I always wanted on the Equinox along with Pitch tones. For example, with that expanded ID range, single digit notching and Pitch tones, I have setup a user profile that almost exactly matches Rattlehead's Deus 2 Silver Slayer program for accuracy, depth and even speed on my Legend that works great. The Legend will absolutely scream on any good target in range that is not being notched out using that version of Rattlehead's program and it is super accurate even in higher mineralization just like Deus 2....... Can't do that on the Equinox except for a very noisy VCO tone with no iron tone possibility using NOX 800 Gold 1 or Gold 2......😪

Can't do that on the Apex or even the ORX either.

Hope you find the Legend very useful.

 

 

[JCR]

@Calmark I think you will find The Legend will do well in your high mineral soil. Like others, I have been impressed by what it can see & report on sites that have been gone over carefully by me with other units, including the Vista X & Tarsacci MDT 8000. That was this Spring running V1.05 & <12 hours time on it. I will hit those site again soon now that we have gotten some rain to soften the ground up.

 Let us know your impressions on how it performs for you.

[phrunt]

It's nice discussions like this can be had without people getting defensive or upset someone has a different opinion or view, and it's very clear soil conditions are a huge factor in peoples opinions of detector performance.  I find the CTX the best overall for ID at depth on coils unmatched by any other detector I've tried but I'd say in your soils Jeff it would probably be disappointing. 

Hopefully the Legend is good in my local conditions, while I'm going to pass on the Legend as I simply don't need one and it's not as cheap by comparison to other detectors like it is in the US It'd be nice to know it is a deep ID unit in my soils, judging by the very limited number of owners of it here and their response to it at this stage it doesn't appear to be as good as the Nox in my conditions.  That could well be wrong of course but I just can't let go of how utterly disappointing the Simplex is at the same task, it's likely the worst detector I own for Target ID at just the standard depth I find coins here.

I'm also going to pass on the Deus 2, although the few people that own one here are reporting it's doing very well, mostly water hunters too which is interesting seeing that's it's weak point in build design.

Thanks for doing these tests though Jeff, it's interesting to see which detectors handle your bad soils better than others, I'd still like to test out an Apex for a day with my very positive experience with the Ace series detectors as you can see if you review my old coin video the Ace 300 is one of the best detectors I test for ID on the coins, I just can't justifying paying the higher end Nox price it sells for here.  I went through a similar type of testing to yours in my yard with a couple of coins some time ago.

[Jeff McClendon]

Speaking of the Simplex, I found it to be a little more stable using 2 tone Field mode than the Park modes. I wish the Apex had the option of 1, 2 or 3 tone operation.........it might help its symphonic sound instability.......but, 5 tones is currently the only option.

Also, I believe the Simplex also has the backlight On/Off function when a target is detected....it think it has 4 settings=A1 to A4 which determine the length of time that the backlight stays lit.

The two Simplex I owned using the 3 tone Park modes would at least keep the mid tone in the correct audio bin for low to mid conductivity targets down to about 4" deep along with keeping the IDs there too. So I could predict the likelihood of a US nickel, gold jewelry, or pull tabs a little better than with any other single frequency detectors I have used. The difference was subtle but it was better than Deus 1, ORX, and even my former F19 but just barely as far as not up averaging those low/mid conductor coin sized targets into the high conductor tone and ID number range.

Deeper than that and the IDs and corresponding tones were all over the place just like any other single frequency detector I have tried here.

[Calmark]

Upon the news of the release of the Legend and for a while after it, I didn't think I'd ever really need/want one owning an Equinox 800 already.  But, that started to change by last summer when I was impressed by the speed of how Nokta fixed bugs and added a huge number of improvements to user options and some nice features in the last few patches.

The slightly expanded VDI range was a plus from the start over the Equinox, and later additions in features like an adjustable iron bias, pitch tones, mineralization meter, etc. made me realize the Legend was a top level SMF machine of a different flavor.  Since I no longer have an Equinox and the Manticore won't likely have a small coil for ages (though I pray it is released very soon), the Legend should tide me over for quite a while.  

JCR, I'll definitely give some reports on how the Legend does in my particularly nasty soil.  I can give some general ideas on how it works compared to my other recent detectors too.  I plan to go after the gold jewelry with this unit with the 6in coil, so that will be much of my focus.  Time to try to out dig all of the gophers crowding the grassy areas in my parks. 

I'll have to get your silver profile settings at some point Jeff.  I have a few spots where that might be productive.  I think learning the Legend interface might take a bit due to the hidden menus, but I'm sure I'll figure it out decently quickly.

I wish you could borrow a Legend for a day Simon.  Then with your experience, you'd know very quickly if it would work in your soil conditions and you could report back.  Its too bad soil conditions AND economic conditions around the world vary so much so that a Legend costs a lot in your area, unlike here in the USA. Maybe you'll even luck out someday and find a nice used Legend or Apex to test.  

[Jeff McClendon]

17 hours ago, Calmark said:

Upon the news of the release of the Legend and for a while after it, I didn't think I'd ever really need/want one owning an Equinox 800 already.  But, that started to change by last summer when I was impressed by the speed of how Nokta fixed bugs and added a huge number of improvements to user options and some nice features in the last few patches.

The slightly expanded VDI range was a plus from the start over the Equinox, and later additions in features like an adjustable iron bias, pitch tones, mineralization meter, etc. made me realize the Legend was a top level SMF machine of a different flavor.  Since I no longer have an Equinox and the Manticore won't likely have a small coil for ages (though I pray it is released very soon), the Legend should tide me over for quite a while.  

JCR, I'll definitely give some reports on how the Legend does in my particularly nasty soil.  I can give some general ideas on how it works compared to my other recent detectors too.  I plan to go after the gold jewelry with this unit with the 6in coil, so that will be much of my focus.  Time to try to out dig all of the gophers crowding the grassy areas in my parks. 

I'll have to get your silver profile settings at some point Jeff.  I have a few spots where that might be productive.  I think learning the Legend interface might take a bit due to the hidden menus, but I'm sure I'll figure it out decently quickly.

I wish you could borrow a Legend for a day Simon.  Then with your experience, you'd know very quickly if it would work in your soil conditions and you could report back.  Its too bad soil conditions AND economic conditions around the world vary so much so that a Legend costs a lot in your area, unlike here in the USA. Maybe you'll even luck out someday and find a nice used Legend or Apex to test.  

Setting up a Silver Slayer type pattern for US silver coins (just type in Silver Slayer in the Search Engine of this site) or a US coin/jewerly pattern (those jewelry items that also land near some US coins or clump together) is really easy to do on the Legend, Equinox and Deus 2. Since their SMF tech is really good, (the whole reason for this topic being target ID accuracy or not) there will be very little up or down averaging so notching for the most part can be trusted to a high degree even in poorer soil conditions and on most deeper coin sized targets.

The advantage that the Legend and Equinox have over Deus 2 is unlimited single digit notching as opposed to just three separate notches on Deus 2.

The advantage that the Legend and Deus 2 have over the Equinox if a non ferrous tone and ferrous tone are desired which is a good idea in thick trash whether iron or aluminum or worst case scenario....both, is that the Legend and Deus 2 have Pitch Tones which is a VCO type hybrid signal strength/proximity modulated tone that on the Legend and with Deus 2 Square Waves sounds quite pleasant as opposed to raw VCO or PWM Pitch tones.

There is also the option of having a similar type of iron tone that can be adjusted by notching, volume and by tone break.

On the Equinox, using 2 tones in a similar way results in using a ferrous and non-ferrous tone that is only very slightly modulated for signal strength/proximity.  Pitch tones are almost like boosted audio so they will hit more clearly on deeper targets than that basically unmodulated slightly dead high tone using Equinox 2 tones.

I often hunt with everything wide open (accepted) when hunting trashy park and relic areas. However, fatigue will eventually set in and I will give myself a break by hunting with a very notched out pattern in just 2 tones so if I get a pure high tone audio response in a sea of iron or broken up or silenced aluminum trash type audio, I investigate it, kind of like cherry picking just for silver.

Here are two basic patterns for US coins/jewelry that I sometimes use.....there are many other possibilities. Sure, the potential for missing some good targets is there....... Both patterns can easily be duplicated on the Legend and Equinox with their unlimited notching. That complicated looking one on the Legend with some iron, women's small gold rings, US nickels and medium sized gold rings,  a small 2 digit accepted range for some large gold rings and anything above zinc pennies.....Deus 2 simply can't do that kind of detailed notching due to its notch limitations.

 

[kac]

Here in New England and in particular the coastal areas we have quite a bit of magnetite and iron ore so pretty much all IB machines act very similar and id numbers are not very relevant unless your park hunting for coins and jewelry. Other than sanded beaches the real coast line looks like this:

Only machine I have that punches through this stuff is my PI if I don't mind digging the tons of iron trash which makes hunting very slow.

Depending on tone breaks for me has been a mixed bag in old grounds, running frequencies from 5khz to 56 khz and even SMF haven't had any earth shattering difference in id quality once you start going for deeper targets so what has worked is to keep my hunting at least in the older sites I hunt is to just kiss out the cut nails if the area has a lot of them and dig the softer deeper targets. Ironically I'm down to a few machines. My Tesoro's with concentric coils and the Gold Racer where I watch and listen for target id behavior rather than a particular number and only use the id's on that as a crude guesstimate of metal type. I think the fact that none of those particular machines lock onto targets helps me in many cases in as I can listen past the targets above but it can take some work to isolate a target.

Jeff ever think of using a dirt filled tube instead of foam to better represent the ground in your test?