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I had some fun hunting a couple of 17th century English home sites, that were located on an earlier Native American site. 2 days hunting, with the first day working with field school students teaching them how to detect and the use of metal detectors for their Archaeology work. I was a bit surprised since all we could find that was relevant were 3 pieces of lead. All the detectors had issues and the GPX had weird spike sounds sporadically killing the threshold. 🤔 I thought it may be the storm that was coming in later in the day. Day 2, the noise remained, so talking with the owner of the property, I asked him where the nearest electric fence is, and his reply was …. right over there! 😡 He was gracious enough to turn off the fence and the GPX worked better than ever. I did not take photos of everything found, but some of the finds included 4 musket balls, 2 scrap pieces of brass, some eyeballed pieces of early pottery, a silver decorative buckle and these 3 items…. cylindrical lead shot (no it’s not a sinker 🙄), an early 1-piece brass button (cat on it?), and a surface find quartz point. (maybe Levana – around 1400 years old. 🥰) I planned on doing a bit of water hunting, but I never got around to it. I may head back there one more time next week to finish off areas I wanted to do. It was fun just getting out. Finding the time lately to do anything other than home and work stuff is almost impossible, so I was grateful to get some time off.

The river I prospect was high today, and my usual spots were under water. So, my buddy and I shifted gears to another place, which is not as ripe as my usual spot, but, gold is gold. He used his La'Trap mini and I used my favorite river sluice, the "Itty-Bitty" sluice. Click on the photos to see today's hunt.

I bet to some it's golden.

Not the kind you want to find. Nowadays you can find anything and everything at the beach. I’m glad I wear gloves during my hunts. Stay safe and protected out there. HH

Hello everyone from Boise, Idaho. I was a member of this forum 9 or 10 years ago, hanging around in the dredging forum; but of course lost THAT username and password (maybe even the email too). About a year ago, I bought a GPX 6000 from Gerry. What a great guy! Met him at his house for the purchase, couldn’t have had a better experience and can’t say enough great things about the guy. I’ve “mostly” always been a dredger since my grandfather introduced me to mining forty five years ago – geez, longer now that I think about it lol. I did have a gold bug back in the 80’s and poked around a bit then got discouraged. All because I didn’t take the time to learn the machine properly: I want to emphasize, that was 100% on ME. I got a Whites GMT ten or fifteen years ago, love that machine, but failed to find any gold with it. Again, the reason for that is time behind the coil. I just couldn’t dedicate enough to get after it. Well, now I’m finding more time for detecting and oh my how I love the 6000. Haven’t found any gold yet with it, but that will change any day. I have a new puppy on the way, so it will be a few weeks before I can get back out there. I haven’t been able to get out at all this year yet, (I know, I know) I’ve been busy. Last year about this time I got up to the mountains for five days, then in august another 9 days straight. I tell you what, with the 6000 in hand over that 9 days I dug 204 targets: boot tack’s, buckles, fragments of wire I can barely see, a chisel, square nails, and then... “Story Time”. I heard the perfect “Zip Zip” way down inside a bedrock crevice. I’ve always found it a bit comical how the fever takes hold on a target like that! The new pick wasn’t going to cut it, I had my own heavy tools back at the truck, an 8 pound sledge and 3 foot pry bar. I had that bedrock so clean the crevice was screaming “HEY, I’M GOLD! CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!” “Oh, I’m coming little fella!” I kept zipping the coil over the target, “zip zip zip”! And the more bedrock I broke off THE LOUDER IT GOT! “This can only be one thing!” I became frantic, “Finally, after a lifetime of looking for gold, could this be my first nugget with a metal detector? It’s got to be a TOAD!” I broke away more bedrock, only to get louder and louder, “zip zip”. “This has to be it! Ahhhhh!” I’m shaking as I wave the coil over it one last time, “ZIP ZIP!” “Oh this is going to be ENORMOUS!” I finally popped it out of its hiding place, the end of an old timers pick stuck way down there in the bedrock. Hahaha! The hunt was just as fun. The enjoyment of the hunt will never end. Thanks for having me.

Money talks. That is all Minelab cares about. They don't appear to care about people & us the consumer of "their" products. Their silence is deafening on product quality issues. They are bound by law on warranty replacement but when there are so many continued issues without a peep from minelab, that is a concern. Their PR sucks. D4G

Last night after work I went to the beach with my Terra Pro to search the dry beach. My beaches are fairly trashy and full of all types of metals and targets. The machine worked well and I don't have anything to report on water use. It found me as much as I think any other machine would have found me if i used another machine. I found its first Silver ring and a junk ring, 1 small foreign coin and £9.33p in spendable coins. If there is anything at all that i can criticize it would be the inability to knock out crown caps. (The one in the picture) They constantly come in at a high number and as the Terra and the 900 and the Manticore by the looks of it aren't the most stable on numbers , it would be an absolute dream come true if Minelab would just do something about that one thing. Then the new Terra will turn into a proper Terra'ist of beach detecting. My next hunt will be in the week if i can but not so sure which machine to use. 800 , Legend or the Terra again ? I think without looking the tides are a bit longer then. Could do with the sand showing.

Update: Hunt # 2 with V1.1 So rather than start a new thread I decided to just show the results from my short 2nd hunt with V1.1 yesterday. This was about a 2 1/2 hour hunt at an older park that one of my detecting buddies told me had been hammered hard since the 70s and lots of old silver coins came out of there. I was hoping there might still be one hidden there, so I made a quick run before the afternoon rainstorm came in. This very small park is well manicured and clean as a whistle. There was no surface trash and the daily rain has made the grass about 3-4 inches high and the ground is damp. I ran V1.1 in the same config as the first hunt a couple of days ago, Fast, Disc 6.8, Notch 7-30, Full Tones, High Sqr, Sensitivity 95, Reactivity 1.5, Silencer and B.Caps 0, Iron Vol 7, Audio Response 4, FE TID on, Audio Filter 0. There were almost no signals anywhere except for occasional deep iron grunts. I played with lowering my Reactivity to 0 but there just weren't any signals. I figure that place still gets detected pretty often. When I got near a grove of trees I started geting the familiar ring pulls and pull tabs, but I was able to call each one before I dug and also the few bits of canslaw I dug by also checking them with Deus Mono in the XY screen. That was dead on for every bit of trash with squiggly lines and wildly jumping numbers. The only bits that fooled me were the broken off beaver tails which rang up and sounded very much like nickels. However, one signal I thought was another beaver tail ended up being a 6 inch deep 1964 nickel. There was still minimal iron falsing and most was really easy to tell with a 90 degree turn on the signal and also by the iron tone being right with the false. I was also able to trace the end of the iron object with the pinpoint mode and if the high number was at the edge it was obviously iron. The big rusty nail I dug was about 7-8 inches deep, oriented with the head up, and threw an occasional 90-91. It was very iffy but I had to check it out. The iron washer was also deep and just gave an iron tone but sounded round so I dug it partly because there were so few good targets. As I was heading back across the open area to my car I got a solid 80 which I thought might be a bottle cap, but just sounded too good for that and it was a foreign coin of some type. I haven't figured out where it's from yet, so if anyone knows, please let me know. About 10 feet from there, I got pretty solid 76-78. It was just a little too solid sounding to be a ring pull so I popped it up and out comes a .925 silver cross pendant. Woohoo, silver # 11 for the year. I've found 6 pieces of silver since January before the update. I've found 5 pieces of silver since the V1.0 update (3 with V1.0 and 2 with V1.1) so far this month. I only found 15 pieces of silver last year with the D2. That may not mean anything, but then again, it might. 😏

With all of the new updates that keep coming and wiping out my previous settings for custom programs, I have generated a form to put all of the settings for each program. It's a Google document and hope it will help you because I think it's helping me! When you click on the link, it will automatically force a copy, so that you can edit it. Hope you're able to access it. Let me know what you think. Custom Program Deus II

Just come back from the high mineralized area, I wanted to show that audio filter feature is really important to go deeper and have a better signal also in mineralized soils. I had a weak one way signal with audio filter 0 and a 100% better signal with audio filter 5. Very low conductive target in the bottom of a 9” hole.. Here is the video. Sorry for the low quality, used again the mobile phone but I have to buy an action cam..

I'm sure AI or even someones pet donkey could write a better top 10 best detector list than most of the ones I've seen on the Internet.

I use the stock coil, it's perfectly fine and works great, very sensitive too but the little 6" is just more sensitive and for me that's a big deal because I primarily live in an area with very small gold.

And then the damn thing wouldn't let you hold the nugget...

If it's weight you're concerned with, the Deus 2 is the lightest detector out there. With the 13" coil on a carbon fiber shaft (SteveG) the Deus only weighs 2.7 pounds. That is lighter than the Equinox on a carbon fiber shaft with a 10x5 coil. The 11" is a tad front heavy but you will get used to even the 13" in no time. Look at the long haul for what you want rather than short term gratification. Additionally the WS6 Master you can put together by getting an extra shaft and using the 9" is so light it's barely noticeable. Don't forget you can also put the remotes on a wrist or arm band and only swing the coil. No other system is this variable. I have all 3 coils and prefer the 9" and the 13" elliptical. I do most of my hunting with the 13". The 11" goes along in the 280 backpack if something goes wrong.

I find the audio filter should be used with caution. Higher levels 3-5 take the iron buzz out of the deep targets, let's say ground saturation at depth. Also I have been told higher levels can offer advantages when hunting in the surf. The downside is higher levels can soften iron signals and you may be fooled into thinking they are good targets. Also shallow targets can sound a little wooly. Lower levels 0-2 can give better iron identification, as they are "pure" unfiltered signals. Lower levels are best for iron contaminated sites, I find my go-to settings are mostly 0-1 for UK inland. But I have some deep pasture and will be testing higher levels once the grass is cut. I would love to hear your thoughts. Hope this helps Gary

Sales in Africa down, up in other places. Remember as the report notes these numbers are 52% metal detecting, 48% communications. https://codan.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Codan-Limited-Annual-Report-2022.pdf

I basically do the same. Every time I have dug a signal that is fairly solid one way, then turn 90 degrees and I start getting a red line under the numbers it has been iron. I was basically wondering if that had been everyone's experience.

It was coated with something resembling silver. Makes you sort of wonder if all the wear on it is from the tumbling on beach or the crappy craftsmanship 🤔🙃

Or you have also this custom program form at the end of this XP document : https://www.xpmetaldetectors.com/documents/0/gb_rc_deusii_v1.0_changes.pdf 😁 Have a great day !

Thank you! Machine was obviously ground balanced but when I’m on the field I always forget to do things...like to test the other program I had set for myself and audio filter vs iron. Next time I’ll do other tests but I hope I’ll use an action cam, not the mobile phone. Anyway I’m still happy with the result..

I think it's great, one of my first college projects in the 70s was determining what kind of computer a local business needed. I gave them a note pad and pencil and told them why, Computers were too expensive and unreliable back then, it was a small business. It has also proven to be true that computers did not lessen the need for paper backup, I proved that again and again until I retired a couple of years ago. I believe paper consumption about tripled with the advent of computers. 🤣 At this point keeping a spreadsheet of your favorite flavor on your cellphone is pretty reliable, and changing it is easy.

Very nice days reward on the gold, and I am glad that you had another place to sluice. Good luck on your next hunt. Grandfather used to use a couple of burlap sacks with some weights to catch some gold when the water was to high. He said that the water moved faster and would also move some of the gold when things got high. When the water went down some we could pull the sacks out of the water and sure enough there was some gold in them. We kept the sacks close to the banks and held in a position with some nylon cords. I would like to know if you had ever tried that method and if so did you catch anything.

I didn't know what it was made out of and that scraps both of my thoughts on it. Being on the Gulf working I don't have my grandfathers old books to look things up.

No, it would stick it in its mouth and take a selfie with it!

My first run with 1.1 got me a nice ornate silver and a plai looking small gold ring that were less than a foot apart. Also the usual amount of coins etc. The thing that I'm finding with the deus II while trying to test these updates, is that I really can't expect it to behave the same way in the same soil day to day or, Daytime vs night-time. The signals that I expext to hear just keep changing. Maybe it's just that time of year where the soil is really dry, especially during the day. I wish I could manually adjust the ground balance. (JUST TO SEE). But for now, I find that testing a few targets from my test pack in the soil really goes a long way to helping. So far, I'm just putting in the time...

Is it silver at least? 🤣

My Manticore had a blue film over the screen, this made it more obvious it needs removed, I can see how people may think the clear film is part of the screen itself. The blue was obvious it needed removed as it tinted the screen blue 🙂

I think it's fair to say that changing the LiPo battery in the WSA headphones, the WS6 and the D2 Remote is quite a lot easier than changing the battery in a cell phone. Changing the battery in an XP coil is slightly less easy, but perfectly do-able (there are YT videos out there). I would not let LiPo-phobia hold you back! 😀

That's the great thing about the GPZ 19" coil, most hold no value in it and sell them very cheap and you can buy it to make adapters out of 🙂 I have two 19" coils, although both have had the snip. I kept my 14" coil original in case I wanted to get rid of my GPZ someday, in hindsight I should have cut it and not bothered with the 19" coils as I'm never getting rid of my GPZ, it's my favourite detector.

You make me want a Deus 2, although my Deus 1 experience wasn't all it was cracked up to be, a year or so ago it was the greatest thing since sliced bread to some people... so I got one, and well, big disappointment..... I'm tempted by the Deus 2... but also after my Deus 1 a bit iffy on it for my needs. All I want is deep with reliable target ID's in mild soils and my Ace 300 towers over the Deus 1 for this.....

Jeff, My guess is a powder measurer for filling cartridges

June 12 2002 The night had remained quiet and we got to work shoveling gravel into the tom. When we broke for lunch Jacob had the concentrates all cleaned up and there were 6 ounces of gold in the pan. He grinned and told us to shovel like hell because we were in a sweet spot. If only we had our trommel we could make a real killing I figured. But we went back to work and did the best we could. The heat was relentless. By the end of the day we had processed 35 yards. I figured that to be a very good days work in the heat. We were all worn out. Jacob took a few scoops of the concentrates and told us they were loaded with gold. He said maybe we didn’t need any trommel and had himself a good laugh. The rest of us looked at him and I thought he had gone mad the way he was laughing so hard. Jacob stopped and told us we didn’t seem to understand and that we had hit a jackpot. An area of concentrated gold deposit. Sizeable tonnage. Whatever you want to call it he said. Then he began to laugh some more. He said he’d seen this kind of thing several times on these claims. We might just have ourselves a gold strike. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

I loaded up V1.1 this morning, and took it outside to check it out. Loaded up Relic Reaper, threw a board on the ground and did all sorts of air tests with nails, coins, and other junk I've found including the trusty beer can bottom. The D2 has the 13" elliptical on it. First thing I noticed with the update is that I didn't have to update the WSA II headphones. 🥳 Updating to V1 was all they needed. Observations: I did not have to back off to 24 kHz to mitigate iron falsing. 🥳 Iron is iron is iron now, almost scary for me. Used all sorts of forged, hammered, square, bent nails from the 1600s to the 1800s. I'm using square high tones now for that PWM brassy tone on aluminum. They cleaned full tones up too much. 😭 Some aluminum did an up/down tone passing left to right then right to left in V.71, that's gone. Oh well. Put a silver dime down, got its VDI, and then put a hammered nail on top of it. I'll be darned if it didn't hit cleanly on the coin sweeping over the width of the nail, and even along the length it blipped 91. Disc and notch independently to 10 had no effect other than to quiet the nail. I'll have to try both. I run Relic Reaper at 0 disc and no notch. Want to hear it all. Put a pull tab down, and got a handful of nickels, the pull tab was 62 and the nickels 60. Slightly different less brassy sound with the nickels, lifting didn't have much effect unfortunately. I was glad to see nickels ID'ing differently. Beer can bottom was way brassier sounding, and lifting helped. It also drew a square on the XY screen. Tried a nickel next to the pull tab and was shocked to see both VDI's even with Reactivity at 0. 👍 Wow. I didn't find a huge amount of difference adjusting audio response, but the tones were more defined the higher it went. For some reason Silencer does nothing for me. 🤔 Didn't help with iron at all. Iron was iron. I run bottle caps at 3. Conclusion: Definite improvement over V1, I'm happy to have my Relic program back, real ground experience will sharpen me up. The deer flies got bad so I quit.

It’s only an air test did at home, I have taken advantage from the fact that wife isn’t here and my daughter doesn’t care! A low conductor below a high mineralized hematite stone to understand how and how much audio filter can improve detection on mineralized ground. Well, according to this test, audio filter works not only to amplify weaker deep signals and there is a big difference between audio filter 5 versus 1 and 2 but also 3-4 and obviously 0. Settings: prog.2 with disc 5, sensitivity 95, iron volume 5, audio response 5, 3 tones high square, square and PWM, silencer 2, no bottle cap and notch. In Pitch and with 2 only tones signal would have been stronger. 11”, 9” and 13” coils. Also big coil passed test with flying colors. I’m happy for the result . Look forward to go on the field!

I did this, and I stand corrected. Thanks Cap'n and Carolina, they wouldn't update and worked just fine after the update, so I made an incorrect assumption. 🙂

From Q&A from Rutus: Versa got built in transmitter and will cooperate with SR1 headphones and OS2 transmitter https://www.rutus.com.pl/en/page/70/versa-2.

I think it is similar to XP's X-Y screen. On the Atrex, the headphones are sold as an accessory along with a wireless transmitter. There is also a mated wireless receiver available for other HPs. This is very similar to Garrett's Z Lynk. Hopefully the Versa will have a built in transmitter like other waterproof detectors. Final specs are still to be announced.

And I thought I was bad chasing a target down. Welcome from East Texas.

Hi MSC. Dealers played a valuable role...before the internet. Information such as you described, is achieved in a far more unbiased, thorough, and varied manner, via internet metal detecting platforms. In todays internet world, manufacturer sales are obtained with free advertising and information from online users and metal detecting websites. Once the new or experienced potential purchaser gets that information from those sources, they find a dealer and place an order. In other words, it isn't the dealer that generates sales anymore. As such, it makes zero financial sense for a metal detecting company to keep giving a decent portion of their sales money to dealers. In regards to your comment of, "often manufacturers seem to be non-caring about individuals": That may be true, but it typically only occurs when one company has monopoly. There is no longer a monopoly in the metal detecting industry. More importantly however, and more specific to this discussion, is that whether or not a company has dealers, is irrelevant to how a company treats their customers.

I read somewhere that once one AI machine figures out a problem, all the others within its network instantly learn the same thing.. Like neural networks in our brains, learning and remembering.. This might not sound like a big deal but imagine a future where all metal detectors on the planet are linked by AI.. Every one of them constantly comparing and analysing each find, learning all the time.. Creating an unbelievably massive knowledge base.. If your detector instantly learned from all other detectors on the planet, then we'd quickly become obsolete.. An AI detector will know way more about a potential target than we ever could.. All we'd be good for is digging, once the detector gives us the go ahead.. It'd probably end up digging for us as well with some robotic probe, telling us to get out the way we're doing it all wrong.. ☹️

Good advice VL, but the 600 is just as waterproof as the 800 🙂 I've dunked mine a lot and had no problems.

Too true, I don't ever use my GPZ Minelab coils, both my 19" and 14" coils are basically new just used them to test if I wanted to use them, My GPX 4500/5000 Minelab coils are still basically brand new and as found out quickly I didn't want to use them 🙂 My 6000 coils are now closet queens, except the DD as I need it for it's EMI handling sometimes, If I had an option to buy my detectors with no coils I'd certainly do it.

Yep. I noted that in my post here that racks out known issues and observations on the ver 1.X updates. Jeff should be able to do a good A vs. B comparison between Programs 2 and 3 in ver 1.1 if he wants to.

In my initial park hunt with V1.1, I noticed a substantial reduction in iron falsing with Silencer and B.Caps at 0. I took the time to test Silencer and B.Caps responses individually on two big rusty nails before I dug them and they're both working better and less agressive in the low numbers. Of course I haven't had the chance to test it in a relic setting yet. That will tell the tale for sure.

Being someone that was not totally happy with version 0.71, I was excited to get version 1.0. After yesterday's hunt at a magnetite, tin, square nail laden late 1800s site I was no longer even remotely happy with 1.0. The falsing was out of this world....... I am glad that XP issued version 1.1 because I was about ready to sell Deus 2. The version 1.1 update for the remote and WS6 went smoothly and quickly and I am no computer whiz. I did not have to go through a pairing process with the remote and WS6. My WS6 as Slave was already paired with the remote after the update. Let's see what happens next.

Go to the Deus II subforum and you will see numerous reports from those who have downloaded 1.0 and 1.1.

I do not know if this is a separate issue from silencer, but I had custom program settings on a spreadsheet and plugged them into V1.0. The next hunt, the D2 was very silent – too silent. There was no iron to be heard. I had to increase the iron volume by several notches before I started hearing iron (which was everywhere). I haven’t had the opportunity to get back out and see if threshold would work properly. Ideally I would like to “hear“ iron as a drop off in the threshold rather than a separate positive tone. But the threshold used to operate as a series of beating tones rather than a continuous smooth hum. If they fixed that in V 1.0 I will be happier.

Out with the Geo Highbanker today. I hit a pay-streak.....got all this gold in only three hours. My riffles were bleeding with gold today!

Fresh picture 5 minutes ago>I know we got it covered here!! 😎

For me, when first learning the Tarsacci's audio it was very hard to pick up the Disc tones, especially in Mix mode. What helped me tremendously was to try different headphones. I settled on a pair of 150 ohm Killer B's with adjustable volume. This enables me to run the detector volume @ 13-15 and have a comfortable level in my ears. The tones are much more distinct also. I use the Garrett Z link & it works great. The 2nd thing that was most helpful was to realize that solid stability is crucial to understand the audio subtilties. This is achieved by running low to moderate Sensitivity levels. Testing showed me that Sens @1 or 2 will hit 8+" just fine. Quiet but solid. The higher the mineralization the lower the Sens needs to be. You will actually lose a deep target in high mineral ground @ 6 that 2 or 3 will hit just fine. I try to keep Threshold no lower than -2 & set the Sensitivity one notch below any chatter. On low mineral ground you can run 7,8 or even 9 Sens. Using Mix mode is what I prefer as I can monitor GB & mineral blowback. There is also a lot of intelligence in the AM channel. Strive for stability so you can listen & trust the machine to do it's part. Sweep speed is important. You will find the right groove naturally by paying attention. Very good in the Iron if not machine gun thick but does like very small thin rusty nails/wire. Disc +30 helped in the beginning with any falsing. It's not a problem now & I usually run Disc -30. I'm still learning every time I go out. It is fun to run & really surprises you on a regular basis.