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Last fall, I sold my E-trac to a gentleman who comes down to FL for 6 months and returns north for the next 6. He had never done any detecting and was interested to see what he could find on his land in NY. I asked if he wanted to buy a pinpointer as well. He agreed, and I threw in a Lesche digger as well. He mentioned that he owns some property in upstate NY and that I should come and stay in one of his cabins in spring or summer and detect in the area which is rich in history from the French and Indian War. I didn't think much of it, but this year my wife and I were going to celebrate our 25th. The dates happened to work for all of us, so off we went to NY in June for a week. We detected his property, but found only modern coins and lots of bottle caps. He took us to a number of places around the area at which we found just a wheat penny and a silver Roosevelt dime. I was really hoping for some colonial coins, but that was not to be. He had work to do while we were on vacation enjoying the surrounding Adirondack Mountains. When he was able to get away, we went to another property that he knows well. He detected with my wife and me for a while, but he had to get back to work. We didn't find anything of immense value, but the Deus II was great picking through the iron-littered soil. We found some interesting items, but there was one that made the entire trip worth it. The signal was strong and the TID was 85. I dug down for a while on the hillside close to a river, and about 12-15" down was a heavy object that last saw daylight over 250 years ago. The best part about pulling the cannonball from the ground was that my wife was right by side when it came out of the ground, one day before our anniversary. It was a special time that we will remember for many years to come. Upon getting back to our cabin, I arranged the finds on a table and called the other gentleman to come and take a look at what we had found. He was excited for us, but when he saw the cannonball, he had a smile from ear to ear. He knew that find had made the trip worth it. The following day (our anniversary) was rainy, so when we went back to the same spot with him, I offered that he use my Equinox as his E-trac was not waterproof. He hunted with the 10x5 in all metal and dug some amazingly deep iron nails. He had probably detected a total of 2 hours in his lifetime at this point. He dug a hole and was working it for about 20 minutes when we came over by him because we needed to leave so we could go out to eat on our anniversary. I told him that it might be okay to just fill the hole back up at this point. He said there was still something down there. As we were just about ready to leave, he pulled up something that put an instant smile on his face...a cannonball! We had each found one of the same size on the same property a day apart and about 20 feet away from the other. I believe he is now hooked on detecting for life. After researching if a cannonball could be taken on a plane, we decided it was best if we didn't find out that it wasn't. A Google search result mentioned a diver in FL attempting to take one on as a carry-on after he had found it while diving. I think his was 12 pounds and still live, however. That didn't end well for him. I believe the one we found, with 99.9% certainty, is a solid iron cannonball The gentleman agreed to bring the 3-pounder down when he drives to FL in the fall. The picks show the relics that were worth showing. Two of the pics show a lead bar that was folded and an ingot that looks like it was melted in a shovel. Not sure if those may have been used for making musket balls.

I hit the wet sand for 4 1/2 hours with the Excal today hoping to find some goodies during low tide. Targets were few and far between but I did manage a couple dozen coins and about half that number pieces of jewelry although most of it was the cheap stuff. Exceptions were 2 silver religious medals and a silver ring but the find of the day was an eyeball find. As I was nearing the end of the hunt I spied a pair of sunglasses in the surf under a few inches of water. They had the "Ray Ban" logo on the lens but I know that there are fakes out there. When I got home I took a closer look at the sunglasses and I could see that they were of good quality. Not only that but I couldn't find any scratches or blemishes whatsoever. No doubt the most pristine pair of sunglasses I have ever found. I will be putting these babies to good use!

That’s a dam lie…they knew I wanted a beer 🍺

I finally had a chance to do wild target comparison testing in a Denver Colorado area public park using Deus 2 9" coil, Legend 11" coil and Equinox 800 11" coil. Absolutely nothing is implied by doing these tests. I don't work for these detector companies and I gain nothing from doing this testing except for the knowledge it gives me. I am sharing this experience here on this forum. I am not trying to prove anything whatsoever. I liked all three detectors before the test and I still like all three detectors very much. They have many similarities and just a few basic differences at least when it concerns this test, on this day, in these ground/target conditions. So, the ground was damp, temperature was 82 F with light breeze and partly cloudy. Deus 2's mineralization graph consistently displayed 10 out of 12 bars, so highly iron mineralized ground. I chose a 30 foot by 7 foot area and flagged six targets. Actually I only had six flags but there were seven targets. Target number 2 was actually two adjacent targets. I used Deus 2 to first locate and choose these targets. Target depths below include 1" of grass/ground clearance. I chose these targets to flag because: ---they were fairly obvious deeper targets, ---there seemed to be iron, low conductor, mid conductor and high conductor non-ferrous targets included in the target selection ---all of these targets had consistent enough target IDs and tones for me to make an educated guess about what they were before digging --- all of these targets were probably coin sized and at least 6" deep which was determined by audio response, displayed depth readings and they were all out of range of my Teknetics Tek Point pinpointer set to Max which usually means 4.5". You can stop reading right here if you want. All three detectors had very similar results on these seven targets and the information they gave was remarkably consistent and accurate considering the depth of these targets and the high iron mineralization. However, before digging the flagged targets I ran all three detectors over the grid area and counted the number of targets that I determined were solid 2 way response targets. They could be ferrous, mixed ferrous or non-ferrous but they had to have repeatable 2 way responses. Size was not considered. Most were shallower than the flagged targets by their audio responses and depth readings. After the test I recovered 15 of these targets that were in the surface to 4" depth range before stopping since the grid area was starting to look really bad from my recovering 22 targets including the flagged targets. I used the Legend to recover those 15 targets. Deus 2 detected 31 targets that matched that description in the 30' by 7' area. The Legend detected 43 and the Equinox detected 54. Those were detected 2 way repeatable targets. There were many more that weren't 2 way repeatable by the way. So, this was a small area with lots of targets that could cause masking, etc.!!!!!! Settings: Deus 2, 9" coil, Detech over the ear headphones with WS6 Puck installed.......Modified Program 2 Sensitive, 5 tones, disc. 10, sens. 95, Freq. shift 3, Iron Vol. 3, Reactivity 2, Audio response 4, Bottle cap reject 1, Notch OFF, Silencer 1, Ground Balance 86 (I chose the Sensitive program because it ground balances the best in the iron mineralization present here of all the higher weighted programs with very few spurious ground responses in the Coke 23 to 25 range) Legend, 11" coil, stock Bluetooth over the ear headphones.......Park Multi 1, 6 tones, disc. 0 to 3 rejected, sens. 26, freq. shift 10, recovery speed 5, iron filter (fixed) 8, iron volume 4, no notches, ground balance 9. The Legend ground balanced easily with no issues with spurious ground responses. Equinox 800, 11" coil, Avantree Studio Pro over the ear BT headphones, Park 1 Multi, 5 tones, disc -9 to -5 rejected, sens. 22, freq. shift 8, iron volume 4, recovery speed 5, F2 iron bias 2, no notches, ground balance 2. The Equinox ground balanced easily with no issues with spurious ground responses. Target 1 6.5" deep small aluminum ring pull with just the ring....no beaver tail All three detectors detected this target correctly. Deus 2 TID 62 Legend TID 25 Equinox 800 TID 12-13 Target 2A US Jefferson Nickel 2004 Lewis and Clark "Keel Boat" and Target 2B unidentified mixed aluminum/iron target Both targets were 7" deep and they were 3" apart. All three detectors detected both targets separately and correctly. Deus 2 target 2A TID 62, target 2B TID 83-85 with iron audio responses Legend target 2A TID 26, target 2B TID 40-41 with iron audio responses (targets were too deep for Ferro Check reliability) Equinox 800 target 2A TID 12-13, target 2B TID 22-23 with iron audio responses Target 3 7" deep 1977 Lincoln Memorial copper penny All three detectors detected this target correctly and easily. Deus 2 TID 89-90 Legend TID 47-48 Equinox 800 TID 27-28 Target 4 7"deep 1959 Lincoln Memorial copper penny All three detectors detected this target correctly even though there were iron targets/responses all around it which made the exact location of this penny tough to pinpoint. Deus 2 TID 89-99, Legend TID 48-60 Equinox 800 28 to 39 Target 5 9" deep 1965 Lincoln Memorial copper penny This target was detected correctly by all three detectors even though there were iron targets/responses all around it. By far the toughest target of the test. Deus 2 TID 91-99 Legend TID 50-60 Equinox 800 TID 30-39 Target 6 8" deep 3" long late 1800s to early 1900s square nail All three detectors detected this target with mid conductor falsing and with iron responses. I guessed a very corroded zinc penny, mangled aluminum screw cap or nail before digging. Deus 2 TID 81-88 with plenty of iron responses, Legend TID 38-44 with plenty of iron responses (too deep for Ferro Check reliability) Equinox 800 TID 21-25 with plenty of iron responses. This test did teach me one really important fact. Not on a soapbox here just stating the obvious. There were many people including me that doubted the ability of Nokta Makro and XP to come up with effective simultaneous multi frequency operation that could compete with the Equinox platform. We all experienced the release of Deus 2 and the Legend and all of the turmoil and vitriol that went with those releases and with the hype both positive and negative afterwards. I will just say that in particular.......the Legend is an outstanding metal detector. Its precursor, the Simplex (I detected this park with one) simply would not have hit these flagged targets in this dirt very well if at all and certainly with very poor target ID/tone accuracy. The same goes for the original Deus 1 (also detected this park with one). So both companies have released great SMF detectors no matter what anyone says to the contrary.

What's wrong with it running on 0.71?

Simon might be a buyer for one of your species?

Mike has been the AQ every hunt. I've only had the AQ out once this year. Pictured ... Last hunt out with the boys, Mike and Joe.. Mike and I had the AQ's and Joe had the CZ20 Thanks CS, I'm going to end up getting one of those D2's .. the excalibur with the juiced coil does great on the wetsand but in saltwater.. overloads. Been a fun project..

My XP Deus ll on a Andersons detector shaft and lower rod. I like it!! I had to modify the Andersons shaft a little bit. Even in the last button hole it was way to long for me. I am not a tall person. I almost sent it back because if you don't use the button holes the only thing holding the lower rod is the little thumb screw on the side and it is not strong enough to keep the coil from moving around. I happened to remember that I had a Pluggers shaft lock that I had purchased several years ago. So I removed the Andersons shaft lock and replaced it with the Pluggers. So now I can adjust it wherever I want without using the button holes. I also used a Dremel tool to make the end that attaches to the coil smaller so it doesn't rub on the top of the coil.

Another milestone today...I finally broke the gram mark with the 6000. Got a nice specie today, 77gm total weight, crushed up only 8.8gm of gold though. Was a positive channel 2 signal though, not dipping and over 10" deep. Sounded like a big lead shot from the top lol. I'm at over 50 grams now, definitely 'in the black'

KL, nah nah nah, don`t try and put some blame on OZ for The Outback Tanks foreign lingo, I got him straight off the plane from the US on his first downunder trip, well almost straight off the plane, the folks at the airport kindly fed him and tried to locate his chauffeur but they had no idea what he was on about..... Anyway only words it seems that he spoke we understood in FNQ was "burger with the lot" and "beer". Fortunately he writes English otherwise he`d be still at the the Cairns International Airport hands full of burger and beer.

Due to a late snow melt in the mountains and above average rain in Edmonton, my favorite spots on a local river are still under 3-4 feet of water. I went to another another nearby river not affected with mountainous spring runoff, did some sampling, only to find 3-4 specs of gold per pan. Somewhat disappointed, I grabbed some grass and pulled it out with the roots. A quick check showed about 30-40 specs per pan. Who knew? So, I spent the rest of the afternoon washing roots. I made a quick video showing my process.

Keeping with the theme of having a looksee at spots that I never seem to get around to hunting, I thought I’d hit my own backyard.. I’ve always had a feeling that it would be a good spot as I’ve found a few pennies and old bottles in the little creek which runs through it.. My backyard has an old house slab which is made of beer bottles with concrete over the top.. The house that stood there was built at the end of the 1940s and blew down during cyclone Althea in 1971.. Needless to say there’s a whole load of junk everywhere and I ended up with a small coil on the Equinox to cherry pick amongst it all.. Because I’d found some pennies here before I ignored the more obvious junk on the first sweep around and just honed in on old copper and silver coins.. This strategy worked and within an hour I’d picked up 2 pennies (one is dated 1912), 3 silver three-pence (all before 1946), 3 two cents, 4 one cents and some modern coins.. The picture below shows the best of the old junk.. I’d normally toss this stuff aside but since it was a relic hunt I thought I'd better keep it.. Maybe diehard relic hunters can pick a keeper.. For me the find of the day was a tiny little pendant.. It’s a touristy trinket which has ‘Magnetic Island’ written on one side and ‘Made in Czechoslovakia’ on the other.. I had a good chuckle when I figured out what it said.. Although I didn’t find a hoard of gold sovereigns, this hunt was another great reminder of this island’s diverse history.. I really would’ve liked to use the Deus II for this hunt but unfortunately the manual tells me not to use the detector in my own backyard.. This is a bit of a shame because its Relic Program would’ve excelled in this spot.. But since I’m a ‘manual man’ I’m gonna stick by the book and heed its wise advice.. 😁

Think he'd prefer to find one himself lol

I prospect to supplement my income so unless its an amazing looking specie, in the crusher it goes! Ive found thousands of species better looking than this one, so it wasn't an issue for me.

That’s a great reference, Good photos too. Death Valley has so many great examples of this stuff to see, every geology class I’ve taken have always included field trips there and I recognize some of the stops there. If one really wants to delve into this, there’s a great Geomorphology book available on the web in PDF version. New editions of the book are available to buy but the 2nd and 3rd editions are available from several links online. Just search for “Fundamentals of Geomorphology by Richard John Huggett PDF”

Yep disregarding all the marketing hype, it's really all about what works best for you in your conditions. It's too bad you can't test drive new detectors before buying, but that would require at least a 100 hour test drive for each one. 🤣 That's why I appreciate the reliable and useful unbiased information from those that can aquire new machines and give honest opinions and testing in their conditions on this forum.

Don't confuse size sorting with density sorting though. For example: the larger rocks may go to the top of the pan, but the denser nuggets stay at the bottom. Unless you really shake the pan hard, and oscillate it up and down to bring the nuggets to the top. It requires both a high energy input plus a turbulent impulse to do such a thing. If the energy isn't both high plus chaotic, it's unlikely to overcome the natural tendency for gravity to sort things by density. But even if that succeeds to overcome gravity and bring nuggets to the top and then suddenly stop the agitation, if you leave that pan sitting in the open for a long time - geologically speaking like a million years - those nuggets will still end up sinking right back down to the bottom of the pan again because gravity never stops working and every tiny vibration will move the nugget slightly further down until it hits the bottom of the pan (bedrock) and stops. At least, assuming the wind doesn't blow all the lighter gravel off the top of the pan and expose the nuggets (soil deflation). That's why gravity and wind are the principal erosional forces that create nugget concentrations in dry, alluvial fans over time (ignoring for now the wash bottoms). They act upon the gravel daily. That isn't to say there aren't exceptions, especially in cases where landslides and floods have happened relatively recently geologically speaking and are still the dominant sorting factor involved. Rich Hill is one such place that seems to have both a massive landslide as well as potentially massive flooding. But even there, it's already clearly visible that bedrock concentration is starting to occur in some areas, and many of the surficial nugget patches appear to be the result of soil deflation. This is because over enough time, gravity and wind become the dominant erosional forces ahead of intermittent chaotic, rare events like landslides. The amount of density sorting by the gentler, but ever present erosional forces can be used to gauge the age of catastrophic events like landslides and floods, for this reason.

An interesting aspect of alluvial fans is the often observed "reverse grading". This means that the heavier rocks (and gold) can often be found on the surface of the debris flow, not at the bottom like in water-only flows, such as rivers. This has to do with the density and strength of the flow material (matrix) which creates pressure gradients by which larger (and heavier) material are moved upwards, not downwards. This is why you don't have to look for bedrock in alluvial fans (good luck...), instead the heavy materials (including coarse gold) can be on the surface and within detector reach.🤠🤑 GC "Reverse grading often forms due to sieving and density differentials during transport, which forces large clasts to the top" https://sites.google.com/site/wvugeol616advancedsed/home/alluvial-fans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graded_bedding

I guess you'll have to stop by and detect here when you get back to get back on track financially. BUT you must promise to speak only when spoken to. That Tennessee-Australian accent just drives me nuts.

digging the aluminum again tody, and found a nice 14 k yellow gold ring I was using the XP-ORX and in the deep program 75gain, 2 recovery speed, 17.2khz and 7 disc the ring s VDI was 49,50 really getting in with the junk foils Its made by Aurelie GI and is solid 14 k they recycle old jewellery and make new rings with it this is now ring number 3 for 2022 made from gold , just amazing how the grass can conceal things

All our outback welcoming committee is ready n waiting for ya Paul

Sorry you are having problems updating. Dirtshark. I sent you a private message..... I just did the update 7/5/22 and so far everything seems to be working fine. I know Bill....Dirt Fishing put out a YouTube video today about an issue with nickel target IDs. Mine is not doing what his is in his video and I have my User Profile 4 setup similar to his. But mine was on default settings before I set it up for Bill's Trashy Park Goldfield program and his User Profile for the video he made may have had old settings in it that made something weird happen. I think he needs to reset his user profile #4 since doing the update did not seem to change any of my saved settings in my other user profiles

There is very little wrong with 0.71 unless you want to use it a lot for very small gold prospecting. Its Goldfield mode needs some work on sensitivity to small gold nuggets/pickers below .25 grams which is the size of lots of the remaining, easier to find, near the surface gold in many of the places in the Western USA which might indicate bigger, deeper gold nearby.

Good story. Good pix. Thanx for bringing us along.

Thanks! It was my first time in NY, so it was an adventure and not at all what I think of when I hear NY. It is certainly a history buff's place to go; Fort Ticonderoga was very insightful.

I didn't think XP or Nokta/Makro could make a multi-frequency detector as good as the Equinox on the first go around. I have been proved wrong. I have hunted with two guys using the Deus II comparing targets. As I've mentioned before I can't tell any strengths of one over the other in my ground using the multi-frequency programs on dry ground. One of the guys also has the Legend, but I have not got to see it in action yet. He says it's very good.

Great story, and cool finds. It's nice to go somewhere completely different and get an opportunity to explore its history. Also great your wife goes with you detecting. Happy Anniversary to you both, and good on the person for inviting you to his place. Upstate New York is really beautiful! 👍

Aye the 6Ks top response is a wee deceptive, gives one the mistaken idea it`s a shallow machine but it aint, love to see an Xcoil CC of about 17"plus on it ( if this bloody FNQ grass disappears). AU have you tried switching back to normal rather than difficult over one of those inverted signals? I have on a number of occasions and it mostly reverts to a normal signal (channel switch) if its non-ferrous, much the same as the Z and the other PIs.

Looks like you had a nice hunt with some great finds. Congrats to your wife for sticking with you for so long, and may many more years be in your future with her. Good luck on your next hunt.

Yes Jim, a toggle switch would do it.

I’m anxious to hear more about the Excal mods! What is an S-amp? Are you boosting the TX or RX? Is there more detail on another site or best to stay here?

I'm not sure if you have this setup, its a S-Amplifier for the coil which is 10 inch... Has a separate li-ion 12.6 volt battery for power. I get all done I'll post it up. It hits a few inches deeper than the D2, but the D2 has the 9 inch coil. Once it hits the salt water it goes nuts. Hits silver deeper than the "AQ" but not gold. "AQ" is HOT on gold. And hope your around a long time buddy, for it maybe a D3..

I can't speak to what coils might be available. The only ones mentioned so far are the 8" (stock, I assume) and a 12", both solid disc style. There is nothing to prevent aftermarket coils but they are difficult to make and with a much smaller market share we'll see if anyone jumps in. But right now we need to finish the design and then see if FTP can manufacture it.

That worked out good ! Hope it has friends...😏

It took about four months for me to get over the bad taste with the Equinox release, from the slipping release dates, broken dealer promises on shipping, bad shaft fitup quality, lack of accessory coils. You get over it eventually...for me it was my first gold find w/ the Nox and then an amazing 1 day relic run. Yeah, I got over it.

With non low latency phones, as I would swing across a target it would look like two adjacent one way hit targets offset by the distance associated with my sweep speed and the delay of up to 1/4 sec (faster sweeps made the problem worse). It really wasn't about accurate pinpointing per se. As someone who uses coil motion and rotation vice the pinpoint function to line up targets, it literally drove me bonkers.

If only gold prospecting PI detectors had this same level of competition, sadly I don't see it ever happening although there are attempts in the works by a couple of manufacturers so fingers crossed things start to happen. For me a 4th contender is in the list of these 3 good VLF's for general use and that's the CTX, I've never found a better machine for silver coins in my soil, so perhaps a CTX 4040 might come in and take the shine away from some other detectors in the future if they can improve on the technology especially the recovery speed and ground handling I guess, two things I don't notice being a problem but others point out are its flaws.

It's a "Georgie".. I've just finished polishing the backyard pennies.. they came up nicely, as did the 'silver' heart..

That was indeed written with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek.. I just couldn't resist.. I had a feeling it would probably get lost in translation.. people often don't get my sense of humour (sarcasm).. Of course I'll be using the Deus II to hunt my own backyard and you're spot on, now the yard is cleared it's time to unleash the Relic Monster..

Pretty nice piece of 14k aluminum ! 😳

Beach Boy did good in his yahd !👍 Too bad about the manual directives........ I say let 'er rip and find yer gold hoard ! We don't need no stinkin' manuals anyway !🤪

Nice hunting even though it is your backyard. I always enjoy going around my grandmothers yard, because of the history in it, and because you never know what to expect when you get a signal. Good luck on your next hunt!

You have devices as good or better already. If you don't not like the screens, tape them over or put the controller in your pocket, and hunt by ear. Most XP users hunt by ear anyway. You can go down nostalgia road if you want, but personally I have done it many times, and reality never measures up to memory when it comes to comparing the old to the new.

out of an old farm field, today's great find , a silver ring marked 925 which stands for 92.5% pure silver the rest made up of copper for strength

They hate Yanks!!!!!!!-- that's why I have to stay way out in the desert miles away from civilization and the closest pub. It's a dreary... dreary life...... with nothing but the flies and snakes to keep oneself company. Gold nuggets come along once in a fortnight, and I cant even find any bigger than a sub-grammer because WA has been flogged to death by every dickhead from around the world. I dont even know why I am going back this year--- I guess for the chance to take another drive back east where all the real gold is in FNQ and down in Mexican country--That's where I heard they were picking up nuggets galore. It is a huge price for airline tickets and will take a lifetime of detecting just to recoup that investment. I guess someone has to go there... I've always been a Volunteer..

Englands Hstory You Tube channel has posted a good demo of the V1.08 Iron filter & stability.

Pity you could only get 10% of them in that photo, Aureous. 😞

You are a brave man. 😎 and don't forget your thongs and do I have to remind you to take your detectors. 😁

Hi all - second hunt, this time fully underwater, again in the hunted out beach. Just a few coins, pretty deep, and then out in around 3m of water I found two very old bottles / moved them as there was a faint target in dive mode (modded to pitch tones) and a very old 18ct popped out of a crevice! Nice ring and pretty old. I ran the aerial cable through the shaft to tidy that up. Hate the shaft - it’s horrible; so just need a nice mount for an excal straight shaft with some strength. I have the 11 inch coil, starting to think the 9 would be best for diving, but overall, a good day. Would love to find the connector so can repurpose my equinox grey ghosts….. Machine was quiet, stable in water. Bone phones really ‘dig in’ under the dive hood, so ended up wearing two hoods with the bone phones in between. more updates to come Dale