Leaderboard

So, I went back to a club claim that had been pounded for years with virtually all detectors imaginable, including countless times with the GPZ 7000, and that was essentially left for dead. It was a beautiful day, around 60 degrees but with fairly strong winds. There was not a soul out there, something that made the majestic landscape even more impressive. I decided to use my GPX 6000 with the NF 12 x 7 and to do some slow scanning of an area where I recovered quite some gold over the years (mostly by using the GPZ). My settings were: Auto +, normal, threshold on, with ML headset. I was pleasantly surprised how stable the machine was with these settings, something I would not have expected in this area. I should mention that I did the audio fix as well, which I now believe contributes for sure to the overall improved stability of the detector, even when just using BT. One of my first targets was a thin flat piece that was obviously pounded by the force of moving mass including lava rocks. Always nice to see it at first all dirty in the scoop, a feeling of joy that never seems to go away, doesn’t matter how many nuggets you have found before, small or large. After some "spit cleaning", the shiny yellow came out. I am actually surprised that this nugget was not picked up previously. I would certainly expect that most detectors would have been able to see it, also considering that it was fairly shallow, about 2-3 inch deep. So, the day started good, and I continued to scan the close vicinity around my initial find. One thing that I noticed was how incredible sensitive the machine is, something that I was of course aware of having used the 6000 quite a bit, but that again came to my attention. One challenge is that the whole area is littered with bird shots, and I must have recovered at least 20-30 within just a few hours. This is clearly less of a problem with the GPZ 7000, even when run at full bore. I then decided to change tactics and once a target was heard to remove about 1 inch of surface material with my Hermit pick (one end with wide blade), and to only recover if the target would then still be there. This actually worked quite well, and my next “piece” was a super small, tiny flake at about 2-3-inch depth. The flake was so tiny that it was almost impossible to pick it up with the fingers, and of course it did not register on the scale. But the fact that the 6000/NF12 x7 picked it up with a clear high/low signal at about 2-3-inch depth is truly remarkable, and shows once more the power of the 6000, combined with the excellent performance of the NF 12x7 coil. Would the 11-inch stock or the Coiltek 9-round have picked it up, perhaps. But I did not make a cross comparison of all three coils, as I wanted to focus on detecting. But I really have to say I am super impressed by the NF12x7. It is highly sensitive, not a bit less than the 11 stock, but with a more balanced response signal, smoother and it also appears more stable. All targets that I recovered that day were high/low signals, with only some hot rocks or areas of high mineralization giving a low/hi response. I picked up two more pieces, always by using the “1-inch scrape/discard technique”, something that really worked well for me and that I can recommend using for bird shot infested areas. Can you see the one in the next pic? 😊 I picked up four in total that afternoon, and I am sure there is more on this claim, considering that I only focused on a small area around my initial nugget and thoroughly scanned only in the close vicinity. Overall, a great day in the desert. There is something magic about being out there, and every time I come back from it I feel I have been on a meditative retreat. Finding gold is an added bonus to me, and even without any I enjoy my trips every time! Here is the general area where I hang out. Go get some. 😉 So long, guys! GC

Recovering from a record breaking Winter of Snow, now we are suffering from near daily Rains. My Theory is there is so much moisture in the Sierra’s coupled with warm Spring days turns it into afternoon Thunder Storms. Anyway a person addicted to our hobby has to get out and search for their fix. This story is about my 3rd trip and just like the first two trips knowing that the ground was subpar for detecting…but, it’s the hunt and hunt we must! Met my Pard Lucky Larry out of Elko, NV we quickly hoped into my RZR and hit the trail. Notice I didn’t say Dusty Trail. We hit several old haunts with limited results at each. We ended up hunting some new ground, I dropped Larry off on one side of the hill and I drove over it to hunt the other side. Hour later, I went back to my RZR to pick up Larry and my trusty machine would not start! During the over a mile hike back to my truck, I figured it was my Fuel Pump…of course no Shade Trees out in the high Desert to confirm my diagnosis. Lucky I have a winch on my RZR as we would have never got her loaded up, didn’t bother trying to crank it before loading as I knew I’d need every bit of my battery to load it. It rained on and off as we drove back to camp and continued thru the night. Next morning we drove to a nearby patch and pulled a few more dinks before I loaded up and left with rain drops just starting to fall. Back home with my newly Amazon delivered fuel pump, I hoped in the bed of my truck where I left my RZR. Let’s see if the battery recharged itself, the sucker cranks up! I unload it and take it for a ride in the back 40. Cranked every time I turned it off too! Still no shade trees, but in my garage I thought maybe it was Vapor Locked? I read up on it and it’s not uncommon…so if you see my little Red RZR way out in no-man’s land laying in a puddle of oil, know I shed a tear! It’s Memorial Day and according to Weather report 3 more days of afternoon thunder storms. Rye Patch area will need a few dry days to get the ground settled down to hear them dinks, but there is always some shallow ducks to get your coil over until better conditions arrive! Here’s our loot for the day and a half trip…yes, my poke is on the left. Both Larry and I used the 10x5 Coiltek on our 6000’s…great coil. Until the next hunt! LuckyLundy

I've been busy with some other detecting lately out in the deserts. I like those nuggets and meteorites. You can kind of target those and know what you'll get. When you go to the beach (just like a park) you can get coins, relics and jewelry. Today's best finds were a couple of rings. The first was a stainless steel ring found after a couple of hours of mostly nothing except those tent stakes. My beaches have been very stingy the last few weeks so I was glad to get it. I slowed down with the 11/800 and began to find 'patch' stuff. I like patches. I grid them and just enjoy having a few targets together rather than long walks always. My clues were that I was out on a pretty low tide and things were seemingly deep for the 11. I'm normally a 15 user but the 11 was on and I didn't expect much and was back to where I started when I got the stainless steel ring. It says 316L and weighs 6.7g. I continued on just above the black sand line and found other coins and stakes and then I heard a faint 'penny' or it could have been. I made it down a full scoop (6") and it was still in the bottom of the hole. A couple of more scoops, around 10" I got it out. It was a nice shine for the early morning. This is a 10K with lots of little diamonds. It weighs 7.8 grams. My first gold ring in quite a while and first one with the 11" in even longer. I'm ready to take the 3030 out this week with the 17" and see if I can renew a liking for it and look at some of my old find points.

The great debate of DISCRIMINATION, Iron ID and Target #'s when detecting for Gold. The war of words is about to begin. So lets try to stay on point and be courteous of others ways/ideas or skill levels for those who are newer to the game. This is an open end post and all who respond, reply, ask questions, disagree and or partially agree is 100% totally fine and discussion desired. So many times I’ve heard from the Experts who detect for gold, they say “Dig It All” and to never used Discrimination. So I guess there really is no debate? Just do what the Experts do and live with the results. Is that such like good advice from so called Experts. So if this is the case, then why do the detector manufactures offer it (discrimination or ID) on their machines? VLF Gold type detectors have had Iron Identification on some models since the 1980’s and I also know earlier General Purpose detectors offered DISC as far back to the early 70s. I imagine those of you who have been around for longer than I could even know of detectors with such capabilities go back before the dates I mentioned? Heck, even Minelab Pulse Induction detectors in the 1990’s provided Iron DISC feature. So are all those manufactures and variety of detector models, just selling us bells and whistles? Remember what so called Expert says, “dig it all”. The manufactures have to know something? Maybe there are times and or locations that Discrimination and or Iron ID is indeed a needed feature? Maybe the models with such are for dummies who know nothing as they have never spoken with an Expert? Could said Expert who does this for a living be wrong? Well most certainly not in his mind anyway. I’m going to give you my reasons why I end using detectors with the Iron ID or Discrimination features and I’ll even go into detail of using both the traditional VLF’s and the more robust Pulse Induction power detectors. I’m not an Expert and I do not do this for a living (well I do not hunt gold for a living), but I do sell detectors as my full time job. So since I’m not an Official Full Time Prospecting Expert, does that mean the knowledge I have of various detectors not count? That is to be debated down the road. I will say this though and those who know me for many years know I can back up my words with the amount of gold and the sizes of gold I have recovered. 1st off, when you are out there detecting, I want you to do what you are most comfortable with and what has provided you success on previous trips. I’m not here to make you change your ways. In fact, those of you who are just as happy with your results and not using DISC., I totally understand you are not about to change your ways. That’s totally fine with me…I’m happy for you. It’s the rest of the folks who are newer to the game of Electronic Prospecting for gold and or even those who are experienced hunters that have decent success…but you are wise enough to realize at times ..just maybe there is a better way at doing it? This article is for those folks. The average guy who goes detecting a few times at the same locations with a little jingle in the pouch. Your success at those sites tell, you’re doing it correctly so you’re quite pleased, happy and not willing to change your ways of thinking or doing things. I’m fine and happy for you. But, sorry that is not me. I’m all about Adventure and Travel with detectors in hand. I enjoy new detector technologies and trying to find ways to make them perform better for the task. I like gold and the varieties of gold I pursue is quite varied when compared to many other folks who chase it. I don’t know if it’s because of my knowledge and skill level of gold detecting or just that others are stuck in a pattern and don’t know any difference? My travels in pursuit of gold have guided me to more states than most (NV, OR, ID, MT, SD, WY, AZ, AK) 8 to be exact and 2 different countries (Australia and Mexico). I’m not counting gold jewelry and coins/artifacts (my list would be much larger), just natural Au gold in it’s raw form. All the states and countries I mentioned, I have had success with my metal detectors. In fact, I have yet to hunt a state and not find gold with a detector. CA, CO and UT will eventually get checked off my list. OK, back to the Discrimination/Iron ID discussion and why I want it on my detector tools. Why I feel DISC and Iron ID are of desired features on a metal detector and there are many times when they need to be used. Those features save me time and energy. Both Time and Energy are something I desire more and more each year and seem to get less and less of. A detector with the features of DISC and Iron ID can save me Time and Energy when digging. When I use a detector with such features, I get to SELECT the amount of targets I want to dig. Here is a typical situation I experience many times in my hunts. I hunt gold where gold has been found and I like to detect in such sites. Here are the main sites I prefer to hunt and use DISC and or ID machine. Old hand placer workings, Ore dump piles, and Dredge Trailing Piles. These golden grounds were proven producers at one time and they leave plenty of targets for us. Old hand placer workings (6 pics below of Au digs using PI DD coils with DISC or VLF's with VDI Readout) In OR, NV, ID, MT, and SD. The problem is most of the targets are trash and many of the trash items are man made iron. My DISC and Iron ID capable detectors save me time/energy in these gold rich locations. Using common math to show. How many times will that person dig in an hour? How many hours a day will that person hunt? How many days on that trip will they swing the detector and dig targets? Let’s say a person can dig 10 targets an hour and 6 hrs a day = 60 targets for the day. On average, average site produces 15 non ferrous targets and 45 iron targets. So of the 15 non ferrous targets, lets say 20% are gold (3 pieces of gold) of the 15 nonferrous targets and of the total 60 digs. In Eastern Oregon those numbers are pretty close. Here is where I like the ID. I can save Time and Energy by not having to dig 45 iron targets. I now am digging more non ferrous targets than the average guy so my gold count goes up. Say I saved T&E on those 45 iron targets so I still get the 15 Nonferrous, but the extra T&E allows me to dig 15 to 25 (not 45) more targets that are Nonferrous. I’ll be extremely on the cautionary side and say I only dug 15 more NF targets. That ends up 2X my gold count for the day and also still saved me T&E. Plus as well all know, the extra boost of finding more gold seems to earn me a little more Energy. Ore Dump/Hardrock Piles- (5 pics of success using VLF's & their Identification systems) Many areas I hunt in NV, ID, MT, OR and I’ve seen many in AZ have such hard rock ore dumps. Do you know the preferred detector for this kind of gold? Do you know if you take a target identification VLF and use it at such sites, you can recover more desired nonferrous targets. I select only certain VLF type detectors for these sites. Iron ID is nice and if that is all I have then most certainly, I use it. But I know (from previous testing) that certainly VLF gold capable detectors can go a step farther and provide me with even greater odds of Success at gold and saving me T & E. Dredge Tailing Piles – (8 pics of gold using VLF's & their ID features) Love hunting these locations and my success in Tailing Piles of ID, OR, AK, NV is golden. Some of my largest gold recoveries are from such piles and the funny part is most all of them were recovered with VLF detectors using Iron Discrimination. Why you ask? Because in dredge tailing piles, even a VLF detector can pick up a rail tie spike at 12” down. Even a VLF can hear a rusty prospectors tobacco tin or smashed sardine can at near a foot and a half deep. Even a VLF detector can hear at depths of 2 feet down for a rusty grease bucket or lid to a 55 gallon drum. How about the 55 gal drum itself…well I know for a fact some VLF detectors will respond pushing near 4 feet down. Are you man enough to dig those monster holes in loose rocks and gravel? If you have never attempted it, good luck. The material you are digging keeps caving in as you go down and the next thing you know…after 45 minutes, you have a 4 foot wide and 3 foot deep hole. Only another foot more to go. Oh those days…can kill an old mans ego for the whole trips…I’ve seen it happen. As you can see from the Success pictures, the ability to use Iron ID on Pulse Induction & VLF detectors has proved golden. Now, taking today's newer Identification ID machines a step further saves me much time on pursuing only the best and most probably signals to dig. No, there’s no magic to it, but I’ve learned a lot more than most about different kinds of gold and how it reads on these ID machines. So many of the sites I currently hunt, the bigger solid nuggets are gone and have been for 10+ yrs. But there’s still some of that specimen stuff the older technologies missed. Sites I enjoy detecting are the trash areas most others try for an hour or 2 and then they walk away is discuss. They’re tired of digging holes and finding iron nails, boot tacks and shovel heads. Sure, I dig a few of those shovel heads, but not as many as most others do. I’ve spent the time in the field and learned. I’ve purchased most of the newer technologies and tested/compared each to see how they stand. No one detector does it all, but I know this. I quality PI and a new technology VLF sure does cover most bases. After all, I can tell you with fact, that the last 5 yrs, my gold finds are better than most and the majority were recovered using my techniques in the locations I mentioned. It’s hard to beat what works and puts the gold in the safe. Knowing where and how varying gold finds register on your VLF detector is crucial. Here’s an example of what most folks encounter when in the field at an old gold producing site. Ore dump piles, are full of rail tie spikes and blasting caps. Also seems to be a beacon for lead bullets of a variety, but usually .22 and 9MM slugs. Many of my gold recoveries from these sites, the newest of VLF gold detectors can ID the difference between such targets. Also, the majority of gold specimens in a certain pile, seems to ID the same #’s or very close to it. Yes it does take practice and time to learn, but in the end, you have knowledge to be selective and save time/energy. Hand working placer digs has a bigger variety of trash items and one some of my locations, the gold is thicker, more dense and reads different. I usually use VLF ID’s to help identify and ignore the high conductor targets while concentrating on the lower ones. Most gold (not all) will read in the low to possibly medium range. Even using a Pulse Induction detector with Iron DISC is possible and quite rewarding. Dredge Tailing piles are a lot like hand placer workings, but they provide even a bigger variety of trash. These piles are the hardest to learn and use a PI detector. I prefer a VLF for most of the tailing pile hunts I do, as the machine itself is much lighter and easier to swing on side hills all day. Besides I don’t want to dig 2’ or 3’ deep holes and those occasional 4’ ones will practically kill you. On the rare occasion there is big thicker gold (Ganes Creek, AK). I recommend if you swing a PI, you better have a quality VLF detector handy to help ID as you dig. So many varieties of gold and the areas, terrains and methods they were minded in the US. Australia and other countries of the gold bearing regions are different and those of you from there may not see any use in my techniques and style of hunting or the detectors I use. That’s totally understandable and I have no issues. But if you do have hard rock ore dumps and hand placer workings with trash, it might be worth the time to swing PI and DD coil or a VLF with good target identification. I look forward to hearing from those who use my techniques and I also want to hear from others who might have things to add. What is most important about this post and discussion is the actual discussion and sharing of knowledge. After all, that’s why were on here right? Thanks for your input and reading.

Spent 16 days in Rye Patch area in Nevada recently using the 6000 for the first time in gold country. Found 3 small nugets the first day, one the second and one the third, this is going to be good! Ha, went dry for the next 10 days and finaly found 2 more day 14 then 1 more on day 15 for a total of 6.8 grams. Not a large amount but found nothing last year in 10 days so I at least beat the skunk. Had 2 days of beat-down rain and one day of un-bearable wind, several days of cold weather but the last 2 days were beautiful. Met a few good folks also prospecting, alwasys fun to talk with them about finding gold. Good luck to all in your search.

I don't usually go relic hunting in the late spring to fall, but an opportunity presented itself right outside my house. 12 acres of the farm is up for sale, it hasn't sold in 15 years but the owner decided to get a new agent, clear some of the woods to show the potential water view, and lower the price a bit. He gave me permission to hunt all his land so I have access to everything around me that the farmers don't own, and all that too. The field is the first field outside my house I ever hunted, got a lot of buttons and old relics, some cut pistareens and a half cent. In the back of this field they cut a path through the jungle to the river, there is a marsh at the end. The hill doesn't look steep but the angle is around 70 degrees or more. The realtor put a guide rope on the trees. Yesterday I updated all my Deus 2 gear to V1, what a coincidence 😏 I decided to pack up my WS6 Master rig with the 9" coil and went over there on my golf cart to take advantage of hunting it before the jungle takes it back. It will be impassable by fall. It was only a 3 hour hunt, that ravine is a killer 😅 hunting on what is the equivalent angle of a 12-12 pitch roof is difficult, the ground is full of roots, and it's deer fly season so they are everywhere. 🤬 Here's the trash, I didn't get much, dug the nails to prove to myself iron was iron, and some were in the same hole as my finds. I was using Relic Reaper and messing with some of the new features. One thing I noticed was no "Profile" option, it may have never existed but I am not a fan of the large number screen. I also want to put Silver Slayer on this machine now that there are a couple notches available, and a beach program from a forum user I want to try. First good find was a button, a 75 that ended up being under a root. Very crisp signal, gotta say V1 is an improvement. It had no backmarks and part of the shank crumbled away. I got to about 10 feet from the top and got a solid 58. Most of the buck balls were 57-63 depending on size, but this just sounded different. Out popped the surprise of the day: A gold watch fob, i believe it's Victorian era from my search, 1837-1901. It could even be from the 20s. The initials of the owner are in the bottom plate: The cleaner it gets the "golderer" it gets, nothing flaking off. It doesn't weigh a lot and appears to be hollow. My guess is 10k Gold Filled, like the one I found doing research below: It's pretty similar. Gold is gold tho... 🥳 Cannot believe the Deus 2 hit gold already! The initials are those of the owner of the whole farm a long time ago, I may give it to the family. 🙂

A friend took me to one of his spots in NJ he’s been finding seated silver dimes and quarters at. I dug my first gold coin an 1876 young head shield back 1/2 sovereign in excellent condition and 1854 1877 seated quarters the 77 is cc. Still learning the manticore but it’s starting to click. Good luck everyone. Thanks John

A good start to the week with a few bits of gold at my usual hunting grounds and an old Queensland Boy Scouts button along Endeavour Creek.. This is my first old looking button.. I know it doesn't compare to a Civil War or Gallipoli button but no one can accuse it of being a modern marvel.. I did first think it was military but then recognized the Boy Scout symbol.. This find was the result of following an impulse to have a looksee in a grassy patch amongst the foreshore scrub.. I also found another silver florin (1943) and two pennies in the same spot..

The relic and coin forum has been pretty quiet the last couple of days other than the recent comments on Geologyhounds interesting topic so I decided to post this..Certainly not anything even remotely close to writing home about here but I got around to crawling under a house in my hometown anticipating finding some embossed local saloon and or pharmacy bottles but no luck there.The long and short of it though is that there was plenty of room to detect under the front porch and around the crawl hole. So anyway I lucked onto a little spill of Liberty tickles and a trashed IHP and a few other goodies. The Dates On The Nickels 1886 1902 1904 And 1905 Not Sure About The IHP? Coat Hook? The Lucky Pack Is Pretty Cool.

I got all my D2 gear updated yesterday and it went very smoothly. I was anxious to try it so I got out for a couple of hours today. Originally I was going to try and test everything I could, but I didn't have that kind of time, so I just loaded up the Silver Slayer program and made a few adjustments for the V1.0 software and hit a yard and curb strip in front of an old house permission. I ran the Discrim at 6.8, Notch at 7-40, Iron Volume at 7, Silencer at 2, B-Caps at 0, Sensitivity 95, and Reactivity at 1.5. I also set the Max Frequency at 14 KHz and ran the new High Square audio. Man I really like that sound! I literally took three steps into the yard filled with modern trash and and nails and hit a loud 88 and dug out what I thought was a smashed gold ring or pendant. It turned out to be a gold plated 925 silver & Topaz ring that weighed 7.16 grams, but I was more than happy with that! What a good start with the new update I thought. There was a lot of iron in the ground and with the Pitch tones of the SS program, I was getting the typical high falsing on the nails, so I bumped the Silencer and B-Caps to 3 and man, what a difference! I still got some falsing on bigger iron but it was easy to tell with a 90 degree rotation on the target. I dug a bit of iron at first to verify and much of the iron in my trash photo was just stuff that was in the hole when I dug the good targets. When I moved out to the curb strip which was loaded with pull tabs, ring pulls, and bottle caps, I hit a very convincing sounding 51-52 and out popped a junk ring, but it was ring #2! A few feet from there, I got a great sounding 96 which I thought was going to be a quarter, but it was an 8 gram 925 silver ring with 6 large stones and a bunch of smaller stones, ring #3! Finally it came time to leave and on the way back to the car I snagged one last small silver ring that had a broken shank that still rang up a solid 82, ring #4! I was speechless! Needless to say, I'm sold on the new update and can't wait to explore more of the new features and settings. XP, it was well worth the wait and you knocked it out of the park! Well done! 😎

I managed to get in a short coin and relic hunt today with the Equinox 900. I was at a high altitude 1880s site in the Colorado Central Rockies. I really wasn't expecting much but I will definitely be returning to this site again. It was a site with a clearly marked stone foundation. The ground was loaded with both iron trash and extreme iron mineralization. The harmonica reeds and the 45-90 Winchester Repeating Arms WCF shell casing were near the surface and were easy pickings. The other targets were deep enough to have extremely jumpy target IDs. This was not the Equinox 900's fault. I blame it on extreme mineralization and tons of iron trash. The 1876 seated silver dime was barely giving a non-ferrous response 5" deep but it gave enough for me to go after it. The 1886 V nickel did not give a nickel ID until I had removed about 4 inches of dirt. I dug plenty of other 1880s trash. If you see something you recognize in this photo besides the things I mentioned, don't hesitate to chime in. I am not much of a relic person. I was using the Equinox 900 with 6" coil in Park 2 Multi, with -9 to 99 accepted, DP tones, sensitivity 20, iron bias 0, recovery speed 5.

Well, two of my claim partners and I headed up to obe if our claims to see how close we could get to it with the UTV's. We made it all the way in to it. We had to hike about a quarter mile of the last stretch as we always have to but we made it. Still a lot of snow in our dig area but the four of us made it work. I picked up in the spot I stopped last fall and since I could start at the face of the bank, I decided to move rocks on the surface and cut and dig straight down through the grass. I worked my way towards the bedrock and my hard work was rewarded with five nuggets. My hole was about four feet by three feet and right around three feet deep. It is very hard to see the accurate depth in the pictures. It was very muddy at first but then I broke through the wet layer and it became a little dryer. Three pieces of iron and five nuggets. Not bad. The first nugget weighed 1.39 g and all total 2.35 g. Not a bad day as this gold is selling for $100 a gram. Video will be coming very soon.

In the same spirit as CPT_Ghostlight's posts, I have had two hunts this week with Deus 2 version 1.0. These were coin and jewelry hunts so nothing special, just getting used to a few of the differences between 0.71 and 1.0 during hunts. I have usually used silencer on 0, bottle cap 1 and iron volume on 3 in my Square Wave custom 5 tone USA coin program based on Sensitive. In version 1.0 the changes XP made have made it necessary for me to run silencer 1 or 2, bottle cap 1 and iron volume on default 7. I also have been trying out Hi Square Wave audio since is seems to be more reactive and modulated than Square Wave. Today I had a hunt at a public school scrape off that also shared a public park. All of it is being sold for new housing. There was aluminum trash, nails, bolts, nuts, and all of the other stuff one finds at a scrape off. So tons of aluminum and iron trash. On top of that, this iron rich dirt was damp and was maxing out the iron mineralization meter.. I had never hunted this site. I did not know what to expect. I just wanted to see if Deus 2 with 9" coil and version 1.0 software running Sensitive 5 tone Hi Square audio with disc 10, bottle cap 1, notch OFF, silencer 1, sensitivity 95, frequency max 40 kHz, iron volume 7, reactivity 2 to 2.5, audio response 4, audio filter 0, Fe TID ON could find some decent mid and high conductors without too much iron falsing. In these kind of dirt conditions running silencer too high is a bad idea and so is running bottle cap reject set too high. Ground mineralization masking becomes an issue. So I was willing to deal with some iron falsing in the hope of getting enough accurate audio and target ID information to make a dig/no dig decision on mid and high conductors. I dug 5 deep rusty nails, 2 big deep rusty bolts and couple of golf ball sized deep rusty iron blobs. By deep, I mean these targets were at least 8" deep and they had iron and mid to high tone audio responses and accompanying numbers. I also dug about 25 pull tabs on purpose hoping for gold!!!!! The rest of the targets are in the photo. Many of these targets had nails and aluminum trash very close by or in the hole with them. The oldest wheat penny was a 1917. There is also a 1935 New Mexico copper 5 mill tax token, a silver/turquoise ring, titanium ring and a hammered copper ring. The only shallow targets were the crusty zinc pennies. The rest of these targets were in the 4" to 8" deep range. Basically, I had no problems distinguishing ferrous from non ferrous and aluminum trash from good non-ferrous targets during this hunt. I really like Hi Square tones so far.

I've had a known gold-bearing patch stare me in the face for over 35 years, denying me any semblance of gold under my coil. I've tried my luck there dozens of times, with almost every new detector or coil combo, all to no avail. The place just thumbed its nose at me..... until Monday. I used my 6000 with the 10x5 Goldhawk mono, wound up to Auto 1 in difficult (my 'go-to' setting if soil conditions allow) and I found 2 small bits weighing just .3gm. Then yesterday I went back....just to prove it wasn't a 'fluke'. The result was the nugget in the attached pic.... 3.1gm. Another 2 small bits followed. My Nemesis is now conquered! Anyone else have a 'Nemesis' patch that defies all efforts to pluck gold from? Of all the places here in Victoria that I've tried, this one was the only patch that defied me....but no longer! Sorry but I had to tell someone....just to celebrate

The first day that I hunted the old hop pickers camp was back in the late 70's with a Whites Coinmaster. Thats the day that I dug the coat button? missing it's eyelet and the nicest and most interesting Oriental coin that I have ever found.I pounded the place pretty hard for a couple of years with the Whites and later a Garrett Groundhog and found a fair amount of decent stuff. I then moved on and left the place that has been hiding in plain site on the back burner so to speak.Fast forward forty three years later and I thought why not once again try to acquire permission which was granted and see what the Deus 1 and 2 and maybe NOX 800 can sniff out? So far the second identical button and the little pendant have made the effort well worth it.

This is an excerpt from the old Gold Fields TV show, now being posted on YouTube over six years later by the GPAA. Fun little gig. I have not seen Kevin in years, guess he has a new show chasing Aztec Gold. Geez, I look like a fresh faced youngster - gained a few pounds, wrinkles, and gray hairs since then! “GPAA's Kevin Hoagland meets up with detectorists Steve Herschbach and Chris Ralph at Rye Patch, Nevada searching for gold nuggets with their Minelab metal detectors.” Here is the full episode which actually features Chris Ralph a lot more than me:

Today was the last day I could get out before a week long relic hunting and possibly water hunting trip. It's been raining since Saturday night on and off, windy and in the 60s so I didn't expect to find much at the beach I went to. I recently updated the D2 to V1.1, did some air tests to create a new beach program. Used Beach Sensitive, disc at 10, no notch, no Silencer, Bottle Caps ended up at 5. High Square Full Tones audio. Gotta say I really thought XP had got the iron falsing under control with my air tests, even aluminum makes a distinct "brassy" sound with this program. However, all that glitters is not gold. 🤣 This beach is rough, at one end there is a motel and the beach is almost all pebbles, you cannot go barefoot or wear sandals if you have old feet. 😀 In the middle it's a mix of sand and pebbles in bands, and the other end it's a mix of sand and red clay. Ground balance varies from 79 to 95 depending on where you are. Got here early hoping at least someone braved the weather and came to the beach, it looks like some did and I was the first to hit it. 3 other people showed up later and complained they weren't finding anything, I sort of had to bite my tongue. 😏 Iron did false until I changed bottle caps a bit, there is quite a bit of junk in the sand. Pushing disc to 10 helped a little, I'm glad they fixed the audio. With disc at 10 most iron will disappear. (Thanks Andy!) Most pull tabs have that brassy sound, I dug a few to prove it. I think one was in the 70s so I dug it anyway. That one fooled me. I was getting coins here and there, they jumped out sharply with very close IDs. Managed to get at least one of every US denomination, and a nice 1945 wheat. That was a great sign. On the pebble beach I got a 47 and found this tiny ring, I doubt it's anything good but it was a solid tone and ID. It was just in the surf, and pretty deep. Next one was this bling ring, a hard 85. Looks like it's been there a while. My best ring today was this tungsten carbide and malachite ring that my wife took immediately, it was a 54: About $15-$30 on Amazon. 3 Keys Jewelry. Here's the total take: And the trash: The doll swims if you tighten the innerspring by spinning the arms. 😀 Second small doll I've found there and second pair of tweezers. 😵 It was interesting to see the difference between air testing and real world, never done it before. Think I'll stick with real world.

I'll be at Alaska Mining & Diving Supply all day next Wednesday thru Friday as part of the Grand Opening of the new Mining Superstore. I'll also be doing some free seminars with question and answer session each afternoon (details below). I'll probably step out one day for lunch with my sister so if you want to catch me morning or afternoon are best. If you know anyone in Alaska who might be interested, please let them know. I hope I might see a few of you there Here are a bunch of photos of the new store location on a previous thread The AMDS Story Grand Opening Celebration! May 17-19th 10am - 7pm daily FREE Seminars and daily prizes! Prizes May 17th - Garrett Ace Metal Detector May 18th - Garrett Apex Metal Detector May 19th - Garrett AT Max Metal Detector (No purchase necessary, winners will be selected and notified the next business day, limit one entry per person per day) Steve Herschbach, AMDS Co-Founder and World-Renowned Metal Detector Expert will be on hand daily sharing his expertise and wisdom with FREE seminars. May 17th @530pm Metal Detecting for Gold Nuggets May 18th @530pm The New Garrett Axiom May 19th @530pm Gold Dredging Basics Special Guest Kayla Johanson from "Gold Rush: White Water" on Discovery Channel Friday May 19th 11am-3pm

Hi all - ive been hitting the beach hard over the past 5 days and have some great finds to share. All with the Deus 2 with the standard beach sensetive settings. The finds: One 1945 wheatie One 1945 silver quarter Two silver dimes One 1950 german coin One buffalo nickel with no date One silver bracelet One junker-ish earring Three beat up junker rings Two fidget spinner rings (fresh drops) One Stainless ring w some sort of opal One 14k - 1/20 ring w 3 fake diamonds (fooled me!) One 14k gold ring w 10 small diamonds One 10k black hills gold ring one 10k baby's ring (my favorite) Definitely one of my most exciting few days yet!

And all I got was this buckle! Okay there's other finds, mostly rim-fires and the usual common relicky finds. Interesting site, unfortunately a couple of our hunts where shorter than anticipated due to equipment issues or other desert challenges haha Hopefully @Tom_in_CA will share his finds too, he made some epic token finds 🐍

I ordered an Equinox 900 from Gerry a couple of weeks ago and took it out for the first time today. Although I’ve never done it before, I decided to try my hand at nugget hunting. This will be a bit of a travelogue of the trip. I live in NE Nevada close to some old gold mines. I headed to Osceola this morning. Gold was found there in 1872. There is a great story of a laborer working in one of the washes one night who found 20+ lb. Nugget. He initially wanted to steal it, and rode some 30 miles that night to Ward, NV and had it melted down. He had a change of heart and confessed to the mine owners what had done and returned the gold to them, and they forgave him. The cemetery gives you a good idea of how picturesque the view is of the valley below. Most of the gold in Osceola was placer, and the banks of the creeks were really hit hard, as well as the underlying gravel beds. There were, however, several holes dug. Since this was my first time out with 900, my expectations were low, and I met those expectations. I didn’t find anything, but was up and down hills and creek beds, and swung the Nox for some four hours. I’m quite sore, but loved every minute of the outing. As you can see, this corner of Nevada is very pretty.

I was just about to pack it in tonight and was making a pass through my ring honey hole for the 2nd or 3rd time and this beauty popped up. A LOUD solid 62 on the deus 2. It was 2 or 3 inches down but sounded like a nickel right on the surface. This is the highest ive had gold ring up on the d2 so far. 14k with 10 little tiny diamonds. If i can't find the owner it will make a nice christmas present for my mom who tolerates all of my non stop babble about this hobby! i think this is my 6th or 7th gold ring since february. Inside is stamped "cas" if anyone knows what maker that is...

Nothing all that spectacular here just some more of the stuff that often turns up at these early western sites that unlike the gold camps were inhabited by folks that did not have a whole lot of money. Mostly I just wanted to show another piece of millitaria that was found that I am not completely sure about.I'm thinking that it was either a very large two piece general service type coat button missing its back portion or perhaps part of a stamped two piece buckle although there is no signs of it being attached to a frame. I have had to resort to using primairily the deus 1 with the elliptical coil due to the unbelievable density of the weeds and native grasses which are the direct result of the very wet winter.Relic site detecting in my area is going to be real tough until the fall die off. A few eyeballed items Some of the more interesting trash.

Well sorry haven’t been on the board for awhile been busy with doctors and just came back from a long detecting trip. Here are some of the picts from lots and lots of digging. The pictures do not do it justice and all the finds are not in there. Several large cents drape busted, coronet’s, and one 1787 Connecticut Copper. As well as rings, jewelry, toys, wheats, silver, colonial buckles, musket balls, lead wax stamp, gold gilt buttons, list goes on. Even threw in a pict of some of the iron. Friend of mine new to detecting got the Connecticut Copper, the engraved Tombac button, and lead wax stamp. This was his first real time diggin so it was great he ended up with some of the best pieces. Large coppers were pretty obliterated not surprising.. Property span was from colonial/revolutionary to civil and modern times. Wife’s Manticore did very well it was very impressive. She scored several large coppers. Her expression on her first large copper was priceless. She was jumping around, excited, and we have it on video but she doesn’t want it posted. 😆 The D2 held its own when I wasn’t helping others lots of gold gilted and silver buttons. Only used my V3i with the 4x6 coil for a short time when I got into a super super trashy area. Come on XP/Deus need a smaller coil hint hint. 😂. All good I was glad to see everyone digging stuff and was happy to help everyone with their machines. Good times with wife and friends. Thanks to Joe D for keeping me posted on conditions back home and doin the favor for me in my absence at the detecting club. Soon for me and him to go out and find some reales or high dollar rings. Plus the funny texts. Thanks to F350 for sending me Reaper program for D2 — don’t fear the Reaper! It performed very well. Tore the wheats up — well when my wife wasn’t trying to snake them from my grid. Plus the funny texts. Still going through picts and do have some close up ones. Too many to post do not want to eat up SteveH drive (so if it is too many Steve just delete what you need to). I did find a treble guilt button that has stars on that I think was cool since the stars still have the gold on it. Wife got a nice button too.

It was so odd this morning, as I was getting ready to duck out for a few hours to get some more trigger time on the D2 with V1.0 before the afternoon storm came in to see if I could tame this beast, when @abenson posted that XP had released V1.1. What?! I read my emails this morning and didn't see anything about an update from XP. So I logged on and sure enough, there it was. I updated my gear and reloaded a couple of my slightly modded programs and hit a nearby park as there was only an hour or two before a rainstorm was coming in. The two programs I loaded up are based on Fast with the following settings: (Note that these are based on settings that have worked well in my particular mineralized soil conditions) Both programs had Max Freq at 40 kHz, Disc= 6.8, Notch= 7-30, Sensitivity= 95, Reactivity= 1.5-2, Audio Response =4, Iron Vol= 7, FE TID= On, High Sqr Audio, but one program in Full Tones with Offset FT= 5, and the other in Pitch. I set Silencer and B.Caps at 0 because I wanted to see if I could. My part of the country (US Rocky Mountains) has a lot of iron and coal in the soil plus it been raining every day for over two weeks so the ground is saturated with water, and in V1.0, the machine ran too hot with Sensitivity in the 90s so I had to use some Silencer and B.Caps just to calm down all the iron noise, and of course there was a lot of falsing. One of the things that I was going to try was running the Audio Response lower than my usual 5 as suggested by Paystreak in a video. I had no idea that Audio Response was one of the things that was beefed up in V1.0 and it turned out that was one of the major contributors to my falsing problems. Instead I was bumping up the Silencer and B.Caps to quiet the machine down and it was just making things worse in my scenarios. When I hit the park today with V1.1, I was amazed how quiet the machine ran with no Silencer and no B.Caps with Audio Response only lowered to the stock 4 setting. Also, with AR at 4, target size and depth was much easier to gauge. Running in Full Tones was glorious again. I really liked Full Tones in V0.71, but it wasn't working well in V1.0 for me (probably because I was running too hot for my conditions), but in V1.1 it's even better! I was able to hear eveything well defined and was able to call almost all of the targets before I dug them. A couple of canslaw pieces fooled me and, to my surprise, a nickel fooled me. I thought it was going to be a pull tab. Speaking of pull tabs, I was able to call almost all of them by lifting the coil and hearing the squeaks in High Sqr Full Tones. Also, checking suspect targets in Deus Mono in 17 kHz with the XY screen correctly exposed all the tabs and iron I encountered today. The two rusty nails I dug were obvious to me so I used them to test out the Silencer and B.Caps functions while still in the ground. Silencer started to break them up at 2 and almost eliminated the falsing entirely at 4-5. B.Cap handled them well at 3, after testing I set them both back to 0 to continue hunting. I didn't find anything earth-shattering today, that wasn't the mission, but I did find a silver bracelet and my first gold coin! Well gold-colored coin anyway... I almost dropped a duece when I saw that in the hole! 🤣 But I will say I'm impressed that XP managed to get these fixes out in just 10 days after releasing V1.0 and I'm sure there's more to come, but now I feel like my D2 is even a better than before, so thank you, XP!

Yesterday I went for a nugget hunt and before I could get to my spot I saw this snake in the road. It wasn't moving in the early morning chill so I got closer to see if it had been hit by a car. No, it was just sunning itself but I didn't want to leave it there so I got a stick. It needed to be moved and I would pick it up if I had to. This is a harmless gopher snake I think. It had no rattles and is not poisonous from my experience. It moved on its own. I didn't know if it could make it up the side of the road but as you can see no problem! All that was left were the tracks.

Just received my Steve's Detector Rods Deus 2 shaft and all I can say is WOW, I love it! It's light and tight and even better than I imagined. Excellent work, @steveg ! This allowed me to complete my 2 from 1 conversion and now I have full D2 and WS6 Master rigs. The force is strong with SteveG! 😎

Today after having a Job interview, i did some metal detecting, and found a ring that has the Lords prayer on it , Hopfully I get the job and have my daily bread, Yes LORD Amen

I returned to a site that had yielded an 1886 US V nickel and an 1876 US Seated silver dime about a month ago when I was using the Equinox 900 with 6" coil. I had Deus 2 with version 1.0 software and 9" coil along with the Nokta Legend with 6" coil. The area I was hunting is full of magnetite, square nails, tin of all sizes, all sorts of other iron and sheet lead trash and some other junk within a clearly marked roughly 20'X20' hand stacked stone foundation that is level with the surrounding ground. I was using Deus 2 version 1.0 with a modified Sensitive #2 program set on Pitch tones/Hi Square audio with sensitivity 90, disc at 6.8, silencer 1, no notch, reactivity 2.5, iron volume 7, audio filter 0, bottle cap 0, audio response 3, threshold 4. I wanted to see if I had missed a lot of non-ferrous targets using the Equinox 900 due to having only one hour to hunt this site with it at the time. This time I had 4 hours to hunt. Let me put it this way. That was an extremely unpleasant 2 hours using Deus 2 version 1.0. I struggled to find any non-ferrous targets. I did manage an 1888 S Seated Liberty dime but that was basically by accident. There were so many nails in the area where the Seated dime was recovered that were fooling me, I would have probably missed it. The nails in the photo represent the ones that were in good shape. These were falsing with good non ferrous tones and IDs from the low 70s to high 80s. I left around 40 other nails/tin shards sitting behind a boulder at the site. I had some lunch and then gave the Nokta Legend a try. This was the first time I had used the Legend in this area. I hunted the exact same area. The 6" coil let me get into spots that Deus 2 with 9" coil could not reach so I was able to hunt more thoroughly. This site has boulders, sage and aspen saplings all over it. This difference in coil size did not result in any major finds but it could have. XP....please give us a land based small elliptical coil!!!!! I was using the Field program M2, Pitch tones, disc on G which rejects most ground noise, ferrous/non ferrous tone break 10, sensitivity 23, recovery speed 5, iron filter 1, iron stability 4, bottle cap 0, ground stability 0 using the 6" coil. To my surprise, falsing was minimal, and distinguishing iron targets versus non ferrous targets was not a problem. So when I found the 1891 Seated dime about 5" away from where I recovered the other Seated dime earlier, I knew exactly what I was about to dig since it had great non-ferrous audio and great ID even though it had plenty of man-made and natural iron surrounding it and it was 4" deep in a clay ball. The other non-ferrous targets on the plate were also no problem to distinguish from all of the iron and tin trash. I did not get fooled by any smaller iron targets using the Legend. Ferro-Check was spot on and so were the target IDs. I got home from the hunt and noticed XP had put out update 1.1 to help with the Silencer. Thank God!!!!

No it's not illegal to pan for gold or metal detect for gold in California unless you are doing it where you should not. I locked the thread temporarily as it was veering into politics. Open again now. Please people, remember the prime directive on these forums. Zero politics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And be decent to your fellow forum members. It does not seem like too much to ask. Thanks.

This is a semi in the ground test on a 0.1 gram gold nugget for anyone that would like to use one of the "do it all" simultaneous multi frequency VLFs for gold prospecting. For the "fairness" police, please don't complain about coil sizes. The smallest coil available for Deus 2 is the 9" coil. So blame XP not me. XP include a simultaneous multi frequency "Gold Prospecting" mode on Deus 2. I would like to use it. This video shows why currently I will not use it. Video starts with checking the test area ground for targets, ground balancing, showing the target and how it is placed in the ground and then the test begins. Deus 2 uses customized FMF Goldfield and customized single frequency Mono program both with sensitivity on 95. I wanted to use the Hi Square audio, Pitch tones and the absolute zero discrimination for both programs along with a slight threshold. That is why I did not use stock default programs. All settings are as identical as I can make them except for the new Audio Filter feature which is on setting 1 for FMF Goldfield custom program 16 and it is on 0 for 40 kHz Mono custom program 15 which was an oversight failure on my part. I did retry it after making the video with FMF Goldfield custom program having Audio filter on 0. It made zero difference. Legend starts at 3:25 of the video. It uses its 6" coil with sensitivity on 23 in Gold Multi and Gold 40 kHz. Equinox 900 starts at 6:00 of the video. It uses its 6" coil with sensitivity on 23 in Gold 1 Multi and Gold 1 40 kHz. All settings are clearly shown in the video for each program being used on each detector. The ruler sticking up out of the ground behind the target is 5 cm high and the target itself is 2" deep or roughly another 5 cm deep. Legend and Equinox in the Gold Multi modes can hit this target 5 cm above the ground. They can hit it at 4 cm above the ground using single frequency 40 kHz. Deus 2 using its 40 kHz Mono program also hit this target at 4 cm above the ground. We could debate about whether Deus 2 in FMF Goldfield is actually hitting the target even with the coil bumping into the target holder. Deus 2's mineralization meter is between half and 3/4th full so moderate to high mineralization which all three detectors struggle with when ground balancing in selectable single frequency 40 kHz. This video is being sent to XP. I sent XP an email and they replied within 24 hours which I really appreciate. Thank You XP!!!!! This is the email exchange between me and XP: HI Jeff Thanks for this feedback. Yes you have right the 40khz of the DEUS II would perform very well if available also in the gold Field Program, as the mono frequencies from the DEUS II are more powerfull than DEUS 1. We will think to make this availabe in the next version. Regards XP TEAM Message : XP, thank you very much for the Deus ll software update version 1.0 and for making it Mac compatible. I am a gold prospector. I use VLF and Pulse Induction detectors. I use a VLF detector for detecting the smallest bits of gold in the 0.5 gram and much smaller size range. I have used Deus 1 and ORX for this. They work very well in their Gold modes. I would like to use Deus 2 for gold prospecting. However, even after updating to version 1.0, Deus 2 FMF Goldfield sensitivity to very small gold nuggets 0.5 gram and smaller down to 0.01 grams is extremely poor. Deus 2 Mono or Fast 40 outperform Deus 2 FMF Goldfield on these types of targets by up to 5cm. One of my test nuggets is 0.08 grams. It can only be detected using FMF Goldfield at 3cm. Fast 40 and Deus 2 Mono will easily detect this same small nugget at 8cm. Being able to use FMF technology in highly mineralized gold prospecting areas would be really beneficial. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, FMF Goldfield's insensitivity on small to very small bits of easily detectable gold using Deus 2 Mono is still very disappointing.

I was starting to think about how the ability to adjust Max FMF for any Factory Program might affect our ability to better customize Deus II FMF for just about any situation and to better visualize the similarity between base Factory Program capabilities with the additional degree of freedom this new feature proivides. First I had to organize the programs into a specific hierarchy. It is a work in progress but it basically racks out as follows: FMF or Selectable Single Frequency (Under Single we only have Program 7 - Mono) Under FMF there are basically Three Groups Disc Process (e.g., all the non-salt, discrimination programs such as General, Sensitive, Park, Deep HC) IAR Process (i.e., Gold Field and Relic) Disc - Salt Process (i.e., Dive, Beach, and Beach Sensitive) Under 2 of the 3 base processes above you have two categories (Note: Disc - Salt only uses Conductive soil subtraction) Frequency Addition (Disc Example: Sensitive; IAR Example: Gold Field; Disc - Salt Example: None) or Conductive Soil Subtraction (Disc Example: General; IAR Example: Relic; Disc - Salt Example: Diving) Finally, under each of these processes you can select one of 3 Max FMF Frequencies: 14, 24, or 40 In tabular form it looks like this: MAX FMF FREQ (kHz) FAST MULTI-FREQUENCY (FMF) SEL SINGLE FREQ DISC IAR SALT MONO - 7 ADD SUB ADD SUB ADD SUB 14 DEEP HC - 6 X X X N/A DIVING - 10 24 PARK - 5 X X RELIC - 9 N/A BEACH - 11 40 SENSITIVE/FT/FAST - 2, 3, 4 GENERAL - 1 GOLD FIELD - 8 X N/A BEACH SENS - 12 Sorry about the clunky formatting, but just trying to do this fast on the fly. The X's mark areas that are not covered by a default Factory Program. So, for example, you can create a custom Silver Slayer variant that can perhaps deal better with wet soil (conductive soil subtraction) by using General and set MAX FMF to 14. Similarly, per this table it appears that Silver Slayer using FAST with MAX FMF changed to 14 as the base program or using DEEP HC with the same Reactivity Setting as Fast as the base program should behave identically. Similarly, you can perhaps better chase micro targets in wet soil by using Relic with FMF Max set to 40. Or maybe Gold Field set to 24 or 14 might do well better for relic hunting than relic under different soil moisture conditions or different iron pollution levels. Definitely, room for experimentation here. Also, notice, that none of the Dive/Beach programs have a frequency addition counterpart. This makes sense, because the whole point is to subtract out salt soil conductivity. So on dry sand, you might be better off using an inland program (just as is recommended in the Deus 2 User Guide). Finally, another thing to keep in mind, since you can now vary Max FMF Frequency is that battery drain will be mostly dependent on the FMF Max frequency you select, with the lower FMF Max frequencies (not just with Deep HC or Diving) causing higher battery drain. I noticed that the battery drain table in the User Guide was not updated to reflect this. FWIW. Welcome your comments and thoughts on this.

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!

1st silver of the year, and I have been detecting since the snow was on the ground, its marked 925 LATH , It has a bit of tarnish on it from being in the grass for a wile, its not plated, I was running the Gold -1 program on the ORX and i got a solid 83-82 VDI , well the drought is over , maybe some Gold will come along to . It says on the pendant the words, Faith, Hope ,& love, my setting in Gold 1 where 84 gain, 14 khz, 2,5 speed, 2 IAR,

Updated to Reflect the Ver 1.1 Update released on 25 May 2023. This thread is an attempt to consolidate dispassionate, factual, and unbiased (pro or con) observations and impressions on the XP Deus 2 Ver 1.1 Update. If you have been plugged into the posts here related to this update, it is obvious that it’s definitely a glass partially full, partially empty thing depending on your perspective and how the changes, for better or for worse, affect the way you each use your Deus 2. People who focus solely on specific types of detecting or specific site conditions with their Deus 2 (e.g., beach and water hunters vs. park coin shooters vs. hot dirt relic hunters vs. gold prospectors vs. those detecting in highly iron or aluminum polluted sites) will each have different reactions to this update be it elation to ho hum to bitter disappointment. And just to be clear, it’s apparent things have changed beyond the obvious added features touted by XP, no denying that. Also, it’s apparent that long time, identified issues that have existed before even ver 0.71 was released have still not been addressed (e.g., micro gold sensitivity, the clock, high target ID compression). What’s not clear at this stage is the impact (net positive or negative) of the “unexpected” changes and whether the omissions are intentional because XP hasn’t figured out the fix or have it prioritized for a subsequent update. My point is, the forum community is better served, at this point, by level headed assessments and exchanges of factual information and observations. Information that can be usefully disseminated amongst Deus 2 users, rather than knee jerk, emotional, and/or over the top proclamations (good or bad) that just stir the pot or satisfy people’s hidden agendas. That type of commentary does little to help Deus users nor does it help XP get the useful feedback needed to enable addressing improvements in a timely manner. So if you can’t help being significantly biased or hyperbolic in your commentary either because you are an unapologetic XP FanBoy or a perpetual XP basher, please just sit this one out. Also, this is a reminder that Gary Black @Gary XP is a member of DP and drops in to monitor and exchange information with existing and prospective Deus 2 users so if we can keep the discourse civil and to the point, Gary can be a useful resource to shed additional light on what changed with ver 1.0 and a direct conduit back to XP regarding our Ver 1.0 experiences, good and bad, and what else we might like to see that was perhaps broken by or not addressed in Ver 1.0. Have at it. Also, here are links to some useful official information and videos related to the update. V1.1 UPDATE XP would like to express its gratitude to all users for providing valuable feedback following the release of version 1.0. We appreciate your input, and based on your feedback, we are pleased to introduce version 1.1: Bug Fixes: We have successfully resolved the issue of remote control rebooting or WS6 freezing in very rare configurations. Other Improvements: The FE.TID (Ferrous Target display) setting is now enabled by default. If you prefer not to display ferrous target IDs, you can turn off the FE.TID setting. We have made corrections to the SILENCER function in programs P1, P2, P4, P5, and P6. Now, Silencer levels 0, 1, and 2 provide the same rejection as in V0.71, while higher levels from 3 offer better iron rejection. The program 3 SENSI FT uses different Silencer close to V1.0. Notes : - Previous versions 0.6, 0.71, and 1.0 are still available online and accessible thanks to the new updater. - All other new functions and improvements introduced in V1.0, such as Audio Filter, Freq Max, HiSquare audio, Fulltones Offset, fast TID, etc., remain unchanged in V1.1. We encourage you to read detailed information about these features in the documentation below and watch the video by Gary Blackwell. Additionally, we strongly recommend watching the tutorial video below titled "Update Procedure" to guide you through the update process. Thank you once again for your valuable feedback and continuous support! The XP team What's new in Version 1.0: FULL TONES (DISCRI > EXPERT) DISCRIMINATION=TONE BREAK Values below the discrimination level, such as the ground and iron, are now audible without having to lower the discrimination to -6.4. The discrimination setting acts as a "tone break," and the Iron Volume setting adjusts the volume of ground and iron below the discrimination level. OFFSET-FT (FULLTONES > EXPERT) Shifts the audio frequency to the high tone of the first targets with a signature just above the Discrimination level, in order to easily differentiate them audibly from iron: 0=disabled OFFSET. 5=default setting allowing a first level of offset to the high tone of the first non-ferrous targets. 10=more pronounced offset. 40 (max) = all targets above the discrimination level will produce the same high-pitched sound. Full Tones -TONE VOLUME (FULLTONES > EXPERT) Configures the tone breaks and volume levels of 5 conductivity ranges of the Full Tones in order to prioritize certain target ranges. TONE VOLUME (MENU > DISCRI > EXPERT > TONES > EXPERT) Adjusts the individual volume of each tone on 11 levels to attenuate certain target ranges and prioritize others. FREQUENCY MAX (MENU > FREQ MAX) Limits the maximum high frequency used in the multifrequency spectrum FMF to 40kHz, 24kHz or 14kHz for each program. Reducing the Max Frequency improves ground stability and iron discrimination. This also reduces sensitivity to weak conductors (T.ID 25-50) and the ability to accept coins mixed with nails or heavily mineralized soil. For example, program 1 GENERAL coupled with a Max Frequency of 14khz (4-14khz spectrum) is more suitable for locating high conductive targets (silver coins) through aluminum foil, compared to the default band up to 40khz. Note: The frequency shift and auto frequency scan have been moved to the Max Frequency sub-menu. AUDIO FILTER (OPTION > AUDIO) Cleans up the audio and sounds smoother, less instability, particularly at depth, choosing the correct Audio Filter for your search area can gain a few extra centimeters of performance. On clean beaches or clean open ground, higher levels from 2 to 5 will be interesting. In polluted iron environments, lower levels from 0 to 2 will retain enough nuances in the iron feedback to better recognize Ferrous and Non-Ferrous targets. At 0, this audio filter is disabled. HI-SQUARE AUDIO TYPE (OPTION > AUDIO > AUDIO TYPE) This new audio type has a richer and clearer harmonic content than the SQUARE Audio Type and can very often help identify deep quiet targets. In Pitch mode, strong targets close to the coil will be less sharp and softened compared to SQUARE, in order to better identify deep targets without saturating your hearing with close and strong signals. FASTER T.ID The target ID (T.ID) display now updates faster, so that the ID of a ferrous target does not linger on a non-ferrous target. Also, adjust the FE T.ID setting to OFF to favor the display of non-ferrous targets. FE T.ID (OPTION > CONFIG > ON/OFF) FE T.ID = ON: Displays the ID of ferrous targets. FE T.ID = OFF: Will not display the ID of ferrous targets but only targets with an ID value higher than the discrimination setting (even if you keep the Iron Volume). In iron-polluted environments, set FE T.ID to OFF to focus on the display of non-ferrous targets. SILENCER (DISCRI > EXPERT) Now more effective and staggered with 8 levels from 0 to 7. With the silencer set to levels 2-3, difficult ferrous targets displaying a high ID and generating high-pitched tones will be better eliminated. If you want to further improve the discrimination of ferrous targets, consider: - Increasing the Silencer to 3, 4, 5... - Increasing the discrimination level to 8-10. - Use the B.caps reject (rejecting ferrous and large iron capsules) - Reducing the Max Frequency to 24 or 14kHz OTHER Program 1-GENERAL Program 1-General now uses 2 tones and the Big T.ID display mode as default. Its reactivity is slightly reduced from 2.5 to 2 to offer you more performance in general use on less polluted ground. Multi Notch and Ground menu is now available on the WS6 The Multi-Notch as well as the Ground menu with its all-metal mode are now present on the WS6 Master.

Chris and I spent a few days poking around a portion of then perimeter of the second largest known US meteorite crater. (Beaverhead Impact Crater) On the way back to camp one afternoon, we saw a sign for Malm Gulch about 9 miles west of Challis, Idaho. Malm is famous among geos' for its ancient petrified Sequoia stumps, which can be as much as 8' in diameter. The elevation is about 5,600', and the temp was about 75, so I knew the snakes might be out. I was alittle worried about Heidi, but we hiked on in the 1 1/2 miles. As I turned into the4 final small dry gulch, there was a knee-high shelf in the wash, and as my eyes rose up there was a small pile of rattlesnakes, At first, I thought it was one really large snake, but as I looked, I realized it was two snakes. I assume they were mating, as there was one male and one female. The female got quickly hostile, and never did calm down. The male never budged, or rattle...maybe post-coital bliss, or fatigue...LOL. Thank God Heidi was not out in front as she usually is, and Chris was able to get her corraled. We decided to beat feet back to the rig. I could get by the snakes, but we were obviously near a den area, and I didn't want to risk Heidi being bitten by a snake we didn't see. You guys be careful out there. The male snake is on the right. Jim

Apologies for any spelling mistakes. The touch screen on this is a nightmare. STARTING OUT The thought of prospecting for natural gold had always appealed to me long before I actually went out into the field and did it. You want to get a quick buck, then go put a $ in a vegas slot machine, as you have more chance with that. On the other hand if you want to pull your hair out, then why not come to Bonny scotland for some prospecting. In truth, panning for gold really is nothing more than a hobby I’ve took up. Don’t get me wrong, there are still good nuggets to be found if one is prepared to put in the work, and of course, if the gods decide. Starting out with just a pan and digging tool, Just trying to find that one elusive speck of gold was a hair pulling time. I spent weeks and weeks without success. Don’t get wrong I had plenty of yellow stuff in my pans. I’m not sure what it was but it wasn’t gold. I went so long without finding any that I began to question wether there was even gold in the area. The day I finally found gold was a day on which I had zero expectations that I would find any. I stopped the van at a very popular car park not 6yds from the stream, an area that had obviously been panned out by the folk who didn’t want to put much effort into their hobby, and eureka! I found three tiny specks. I hadn’t gone into my new hobby totally blind, as i had watched enough videos and read up on the subject for a time before I actually went on that first session, so after trying to find gold in the areas I thought might produce some and failing, to find it virtually under my feet in a very very popular spot…….. well that’s just bloomin typical😂. To find those three little specks on that day was perfect timing, because I don’t know if I was on the verge of giving up because that’s just not in my genes, But I was certainly fed up to a serious point. BUILDING MY ARSENAL Ok I don’t have much money, the thought of being able to purchase a gold detector will probably remain a pipe dream forever, but there’s one thing I have in abundance, and that’s work ethic. This was instilled in me by my brother during my career in roofing. His motto was that it didn’t matter what tools one had if they didn’t gave the work ethic to use them. This attitude helped no end when it came to choosing the tools I needed, not the too,so I wanted. I wanted a high banker, I wanted a mechanical digger, hey! Let’s just open a quarry haha!. Well what I purchased was a gravel pump and a classifier, those were of utmost importance and allowed me to use muscle power more economically. I began finding gold with every session, and quickly realised that picking tiny specks, and the odd flake out the pan with tweezers and putting them in a vial just wasn’t good, so the next thing I bought was a snuffer bottle. I was learning and adapting as I went, until eventually I got a sluice box. The sluice was an obvious game changer, but I had my doubts that it would catch the gold. I settled my mind by chucking in the gold I had previously found. I admit this was taking a big chance, well it did at the time, but I needn’t have worried, as the gold sank quickly onto the top of the sluice, I don’t think it even travelled to the following ripple. My mind was put to rest and now I try to set the sluice to run as fast as possible. Maybe I have lost some specks, but as the age old saying goes “out of sight, out of mind. I now have what I deem necessary, including some crevicing tools. LEARNING THE AREA OF WANLOCKHEAD AND THE LEADHILLS There is just too much to remember, so instead I have put on the link below. This is an interesting read into the geology of the area i prospect in the lowther hills district. https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/Memoirs/docs/B06088.html WHAT IVE LEARNED ON A PERSONAL LEVEL Well first of all I have learned to put the work in if I want to find gold, and even then it isn’t much. To put things into perspective, in the 13 months I’ve been prospecting I have found just under one and a half grams. There is a plus side however. Firstly the gold is very pure, and secondly, and this seems to be running parallel to the experience I have in prospecting, the gold is getting bigger. Certain things have caught me out in the past that I have learned from, like there’s no gold under the false bedrock, something that took me ages to accept. I now look for where the bedrock reaches the surface of the streams, instead of trying to dig down to it, because sometimes the bedrock can’t be reached by this method. I have learned to spot the bedrock in the hills, and I can see where it is close to the surface. Something that I’ve also noticed is that most fellow panners concentrate on where the water enters the pools, totally ignoring the tails where the finer gold accumulates. I’ve also learned to stop looking at the streams as they are, and I now look at where they run during flood, even where they used to run but don’t anymore. Only one year in prospecting isn’t much experience, but putting my limited knowledge to work has even found me a couple of rare pickers, so I’m on the right track. I’m getting better and only the other day I reached the dizzy heights where I found 0.416g, and considering I only managed 1.082g up til then I would say that’s a considerable step up in my finds. below are three pickers I’ve found recently. I say three because the top and bottom pieces are one picker broke in half. looks just like a flower when pushed together. Thanks for taking the time to read about my early days in prospecting 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🥃 cheers ian.

In big business when beholden to shareholders, well, I think that anyone who thinks ethics and morality is job one has rose colored glasses. It's eat or be eaten, and if it's not outright illegal, it will generally get done if it means winning when others lose. Of course such things are not done in writing. They are done at night at a private dinner, or in other "he said she said" deniable ways. I've gone swimming with the sharks myself, and it is not pretty. People are best off not knowing sometimes how the sausage is made, or who is doing what to somebody else in the "boardroom bedroom." At the end of the day it is all just drama and will matter little in whether I find any gold nuggets next week or not.

I’ve been watching Paystreak’s videos lately and he’s been hitting the totlots. I’ll say this right off the bat, I’m not a big fan of hunting totlots, but I decided I would get up early this morning and hit the one at the local park. This park had an old house on it at one time and I’ve dug some nice relics here along with two standing liberty quarters. All I got from the totlot was a zincoln and a stainless watch band clasp. Since I was there early and there wasn’t many people there, I decided to hit an area near the office building where I had found other relics in past hunts. This time I slowed down and concentrated on a small area right next to the deck of the office building. I was using my D2 in sensitive full tones with reactivity at 2.5, silencer at 1 and sensitivity at 95. Wasn’t long before I got deep signal ringing up in the low 80s. About 7” down was the military button. Not long after that I got another deep signal ringing up in the 90s. I thought for sure it was going to be a silver dime, but it turned out to be an old wide band tiny ring…about the size of a dime. A little later I got the buckle which was the deepest find of the morning at around 8” or so.

I would normally post this in jewelry or coins and relics, but I think the D2 forum is best because I'm testing V1 and a program that I got from @ColonelDan. It's based on Beach Sensitive and it's really good but still in the testing stage due to the V1 update. I first tried it at my small beach but because it's not after Memorial Day I got totally skunked, just some junk. I felt as though I could rely on this program however. Today I went to a larger beach about an hour from my house eager to try the program. I had been fooling around with a Beach sensitive program of my own, but this one seemed better as it doesn't use any filters at all for the most part. This beach is in strong contrast to my little one, the little one has pure white sand with a little black sand mixed in, this one is pebbly and coarse in some places, and others it has red clay mixed in. Got out there pretty early, and my first target is possibly gold. It's a small bezel that was probably on a watch. Got some coins and Hot Wheels, the usual stuff, one of the big things this program does is to make coins stand out and skip many pull tabs. It did its job. I was poking around a palm tree, and got a really nice 93 ID and tone, and to my surprise dug this 1916 Mercury Dime! It's not a D or an S, I was shocked but really shouldn't be, I've found other really out of place coins here. It was probably brought in with the sand. It's all brown and trashed but still silver. Here's the total haul today, not bad, and thanks go to Colonel Dan for his program. I used it beside Relic Reaper even in the wet, and I was impressed at its solid coin IDs. I used the Reaper to check anything that "pipped" in the notches, and even scored 4 nickels. And here's the trash: A few bits of pull tabs that were outside the notch ranges, some whole ones that were also below, and lots of tiny metal bits. Otherwise the same old same old, just well... Better. 🙂 Nice beach day overall! I'm fine with the update, nothing degraded or incorrect in my opinion.

Well wife did great with the Manti today she found a nice Pandora silver bracelet. Me I was playing with the new D2 software and programs, but managed to get a couple bucks in change (still not as impressive as the bracelet). Yep I know it’s a shocker I am usually swinging my pulse machine at the beach. Just determined to figure the D2 out and been hunting high in lots of trash. Our beaches have an harsh slope right now. Doesn’t matter if it is low or high tide the waves hitting roughly in same area through tide cycle. Also glad that XP got the installer working on the Mac’s now as well as the new features they added to the machine. So the funny thing is I found a Pandora silver charm years ago at a park. Well it fits bracelet perfectly. Designed for it — imagine that. Back at it tomorrow! Maybe my turn for silver of course hoping for gold or platinum. I can dream!

Input welcome. Werid machine to make a cover for. Doc

Thanks for your thoughts guys, yes XP are aware some people are not comfortable with the new platform, and I get that. However it needs to be made clear that XP have also received overwhelming positive feedback. Recently I have seen videos where the D2 has clearly been set up to fail, sadly in this new world of social media negativity and drama will get more clicks than positivity. Some have limited knowledge having only used the update for a few days, Audio Response 7, Sensitivity 99, graphic equalizer not working (It is only activated with the headphones connected)......the list goes on. it's a new platform and will take a little time to master. I hope XP can find some middle ground with the next update to keep everyone happy. Once again thanks for your thoughts guys.

I took a minute to update @Brad Plohman's awesome D2 Program log to make it V1.0 friendly. The new features are added and you might want to punch in your custom user programs before you update. It will make life a little easier. 😏 Enjoy! DEUS II FACTORY and USER PROGRAMS-V1.0.xlsx.zip

I've been on a tear with the Manticore lately. 10 silver coins the last three weekends. This afternoon hunting at a school yard I got 6 silvers and a silver ring earlier this year it was tough to say the least. I thought I was going to get skunked. Mild sandy soil with a lot of clad deep enough to be silver. Also a lot of crazy deep Wheat Cents ringing up 76-78. Some times I pass them if I'm tired of digging, but today I was digging anything silver deep. Finally I got a pretty solid very deep beep ringing 88-94 depending on the angle I swung over it. When I removed the plug I my pin-pointer beeped in the bottom of the hole. I dug with my fingers, and I saw the Merc in the bottom of the hole. I thought dang that was ringing high. Stuck the pin-pointer back in and heard another target in the bottom side and flipped out a Walker half. It all made sense then. My second Walker from this school yard.

The battery for my WM12 stopped charging and was dead, zero volts with the multimeter so it was either buy a new WM12 for about $350 AUD or try and find a replacment battery. I ended up finding one online and it cost $25 AUD including postage so I ordered it and it arrived and I fitted it, it is just plug and play nothing to hard at all. The WM12 now charges and works perfectly again This is the replacement battery if anyone is interested or has a similar problem and this is the original battery cheers dave

My comments had nothing to do with how well Whites detectors work, and I could care less what you choose to own. I’m not selling you on anything. It’s like I insulted your wife or something - get a grip. They are inanimate objects. My comments were about the future of the industry, and detectors made by a company that went out of business because it lost the thread of what most customers are looking for are not relevant to that future. I worked with Whites in many ways for very many years, and tried my best to get them to see reality before it was too late. Arrogant mismanagement ran a once great company into the ground, and I’m more unhappy about that than most.

Thanks for your support guys, I will always try to help whenever possible.

Yep. Except for cost (because as a fairly recent release, you will unlikely find many on the used market like with a GPX). But, if a PI is needed, the Axiom would easily be my choice for trips involving air travel over the GPX 5000 or earlier for all the reasons mentioned above. Fantastic for deep relic, treasure, coin, jewelry, wet beach or prospecting in difficult soil or salt. It can be collapsed and disassebled down into it's included soft case/backpack which meets carry-on dimensions, with two coils in the case and can easily accommodate additional personal items you want to carry on board. The internal Li-Ion battery (no clunky cords or 3rd party compact batteries needed) is well below air travel capacity limits, yet will run the machine at 10 to 12 hours a clip and there is a removeable external AA backup battery compartment attachment included. My GPX 4800 has been sold and is now a distant memory after a very successful relic outing with the Axiom in April (see pics). Axiom made quite a splash at the last DIV and won over several ex-ML PI converts. The GPX 6000 would be another consideration, but it lacks iron check, has less manual control and is more expensive than Axiom. @abenson is a resident expert regarding successful relic detecting with the GPX 6000. Remove the coil and you can stow it in the case with room to spare. My Deus 2 (which would also be my vlf air travel detector of choice) lying beside for scale, below). Some of my Axiom finds shown below from the last DIV that was at a site that straddled a small engagement known as the Battle of Freeman's Ford that included many artillery fragments, large lead sabot, a Hotchkiss shell fuze, lead case shot, some miscellaneous brass including a brass thimble, an iron buckle, and a 1923 SLQ that must have been dropped in 1923 (exactly 100 years ago) based on its condition. (Yep, Chuck we're crazy but bet you'll get a kick out of this find). I'll tell the whole story of this hunt in a separate post. It was really fun and with Axiom, felt I was swinging a cordless vlf.

I dug this pendant yesterday May 4. My wife said that it was 10KB and I saw 14KB when I looked at it. I googled the KB to find out what the B stood for. What I found was that if it didn't come from Mexico, it meant "bonded" or plated. Well the 15 told me that it was a Quinceanera piece of jewelry, so the Mexico origin made sense. Today I tested it and it only tested 10K. I got out my 40x loupe and could clearly see that there was a 4 counter stamped inside the 0. So what I am thinking is that the B stands for bonding the Tri gold together. The main part is yellow gold, the center is Rose gold and the number is white gold. Can anyone confirm my hypothisis? Thanks, Joe