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Steve Herschbach

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  1. No worries, Andy is the smart one, I’m the pretty one! I will leave the deep dive into frequency tech to others. I have a good layman’s grasp of it all, but I’m no wizard. I do know there is way more to things than just frequency, and focusing too much on it now does not necessarily serve anyone but engineers all that well. For example, you can study specs all day long on, for instance, Apex vs Vanquish or Legend, or even my old DFX. Yet it is only actually using the detectors side by side that tells you anything real, and what you learn fast is that what looks perfect on paper, may not be so in actual use. Apex is a good example of a detector that was created just to say “we have a multi”, but which in actual use will not have many people ditching their Garrett AT models. Other than possibly saltwater, it would be a step down, not up, as is evidenced by Garrett placing it as an Ace, rather than at a higher price than the AT models. Long story short, for regular folks like me, things under the hood are getting way more complicated than appears on the surface, with hybrid processes moving us past the world of simple explanations. And at the end of the day, while I told myself I needed those single frequency options on Equinox to get best performance options under all conditions, reality is I am in multi 99% of the time. Single frequency is only rarely helpful, maybe for a certain hot rock or target, or an EMI situation. Anyway, I did my best to put some basic information out there for the lay people amongst us, but from my perspective I have little interest in delving into the subject any deeper, and will leave it to brighter minds than mine. I’m pretty satisfied right now to just grab what we have got and go use it, and trust that the squirrel running on the wheel under the hood is doing it’s job.
  2. To leave wiggle room? Question for the lawyers, not me. It's complicated, because you also have implied warranties for stated use. And it actually varies by state in the U.S. Point being, it is their reputation on the line. That is your insurance, not some warranty. I've seen major companies flat out deny valid warranty just to boost the numbers for the quarter. It's as much about the quality of the company as the product, maybe more so. I've never seen anything to make me think XP is anything but a class act.
  3. It's a very good sign for XP that the forum went from being a relatively quiet backwater, to on fire about D2. I have no issues with creating more forums, as this software is immensely flexible when it comes to moving stuff around. I mainly just want forums to be active. So my main consideration is not to move active content to a new forum, and then leave the old one to die. But I think there is enough ongoing interest in Deus 1 and ORX for that not to happen. And if it did, well, I can always just roll it all back together later. I spend a lot of time tagging every thread, and this is where that pays off. Otherwise it really would be a huge effort to sort out which is which, but all I will do is basically take everything tagged as Deus 2, and move it to a separate forum. Kind of makes the tag redundant at that point, but you never know down the road when it might be handy, so I am glad I have put the effort into the tag system over time. I think we can all agree Equinox has been the number one machine in our circles for several years. It looks like XP came up with a formula to challenge that perch. I do not think it replaces Equinox due to the price, but it sure gives people waiting for Equinox II a good reason to leap to XP instead. Minelab has not even a wisp of a good rumor going, so there is little standing in the way of XP grabbing a little market and mindshare from Minelab right now. I really think healthy competition is good for all of us, and whatever heat this puts under Minelab can only make whatever they are working on better in the end. Win win for all involved, so thanks XP!
  4. If the Deus 2 leaks like the Equinox, and XP does not back it without question, as Minelab has done, then you can kiss XPs reputation and D2 water sales goodbye. It’s really that simple, and XP knows it. All warranties have exclusions, and cover manufacturer defects in manufacturing, not wear and tear, or abuse. Anyone with doubts, sit it out. Wait a year for the dust to settle. Nobody here cares if you buy a Deus 2 now, or ever. At least I don’t.
  5. OK, new forum is done, threads moved. https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/forum/61-xp-deus-ii-forum/ I normally keep detector comparison stuff in a separate forum to stop detector wars. But the Deus II versus whatever videos have been pretty favorable, and not much dissension, so I have moved them all here also. Just seemed like one stop shopping is best. As long as people keep acting like adults it will work. Thanks in advance for that. 1700 posts on day one - that's cheating! By another measure, main Deus/Orx forum is 13 pages of threads, Dues II already at 6 pages; very impressive start for XP on this one.
  6. I think this is true, and also why it took three years for a 6x10 to appear.
  7. Well, for starters, 4kKz was added after all that. You are pulling up an old thread. And really it’s just a marketing tag, not an explanation of the facts of the tech at work. It was a simplistic was of counting frequencies and modes on 800 versus frequencies and modes on 600. That’s it, nothing more. And I’m not Andy.
  8. Depends why I want the detector. What I really want is to be able to buy the detector with any coil I want. You do pretty much get that option with XP, and even First Texas to some extent via some models being offered with different stock coil options. Other than that, the more coil options, the better I like detector.
  9. “An amateur metal detectorist who discovered what is thought to be one of England's first gold coins could soon see a payday of nearly half a million dollars. The "Henry III gold penny," which was unearthed on farmland in Devon, in the country's southwest, was minted in about 1257 and depicts the former English king sitting on an ornate throne, holding an orb and scepter. It is one of only eight such coins known to exist, many of which are in museums.” Rest of the story here
  10. Just a side note, but DFX was derived from a Minelab patent that has to be long expired. BBS has all got to be expired, maybe even FBS. To my knowledge V3i had no frequency patents. And even Equinox I think they relied more on encoding the software in a hard to break fashion than a patent, which by nature reveals processes. A lot if the stuff was blocked by patents for some time, but may be the case that firewall around Minelab is finally breaking. Or so it would appear.
  11. I’m not saying the MDT 8000 does not perform well on the beach, and it obviously makes some people very happy in that environment. I just think that it was a happy accident of design, kind of like Equinox and nugget detecting. Just my opinion. But not only does Tarsacci not sell waterproof headphones for the detector, they clearly state this on the website: “The MDT 8000 is IP68 rated. This means you can submerge the detector in the water up to 1.5m for up to 30 minutes.” If you are looking to actually submerge the detector, there is simply no comparison between 1.5 meters and 18 month warranty, or 60 meters and 5 years. I’ve long noted a reluctance in the part of those who sell the MDT to ever say why. People want to bend over backwards for the small guy putting out a detector as opposed to the big manufacturers. I get that. But I do think a lot of these machines get sold on the quiet with no explanation. It gives a false one sided view, and I’d feel like I’m being less than honest if I did not at least try and articulate what the other side is, since it's being asked for specifically on this thread. The MDT 8000 is very much a niche detector, that in my opinion will only truly suit small numbers of people. Somebody has to say it, and I guess I’m the guy. I’ll leave it there, take or leave it for what it’s worth.
  12. All I can say is after having a Tarsacci for two years I’d recommend getting the Deus II. While the Tarsacci can be made to perform, there are various things about it that make a lot of people just quietly let it go after giving it a spin. In my case I really did not like the tones, and the inability to adjust them at all. There is what I consider to be a poor menu structure, that makes adjusting the detector an exercise in frustration. In bad ground there is almost no way to quiet spurious high tone false signals without employing undocumented salt balance and notch tricks, which frankly are just workarounds. Getting it tuned properly in different locations requires different tricks, is not easy, and leaves one never 100% confident the detector is set up correctly. Despite being marketed as a beach detector, the MDT 8000 strikes me more as a ferrous/non-ferrous relic detector. The manufacturer does not even make or supply waterproof headphones for the machine. The 18 month warranty is kind of the nail in the coffin. There are some people who love the MDT 8000, and more power to them, but in my opinion, if given the opportunity to try both, most people would choose the Deus II as the one to keep. I say that having never laid hands on the Deus II, so that might indicate I’ve got pretty strong feelings on that.
  13. Except by yours truly, who was finding nuggets with it in the U.S. before anyone else in the country so much as laid hands on one, and wrote articles trying to get the word out. I can’t help it if people don’t listen. Here are the first gold nuggets below ever found in the U.S. with Equinox in January 2018. Equinox 800, Gold Mode, MF, relatively mild ground and so I was pushing sensitivity levels high, 22 - 25. Three nuggets, two only 0.6 grain each (480 grains per ounce) and one 9.8 grains (0.6 gram). The 0.6 grain nuggets are one smaller, fatter one plus one thin flake. The kicker? I found these with the 11” DD coil!! The Equinox did not even start shipping until February of that year, and I had yet to lay hands on the 6” coil. So yeah, I knew this dog could hunt on my first nugget outing with it. I also knew it was different, and prospectors don’t like different, so I expected an uphill battle. The lack of 6” coil caused me to soft pedal my report at the time, but I ramped it up after running the 6” coil finally. All while screaming bloody murder for the 6x10 that would end up taking 3 years more appear, and still was not the Monster coil clone I craved. The thing is, nugget detecting was last on the priority list in Equinox design. Imagine a multi-iq detector designed with only nugget prospecting in mind, with coils made just for that task. That will be a detector worth having, and will probably put the last of the single frequency designs in their graves. Just so people know, the article I wrote for Minelab was updated with new experiences on my part, and better advice, in the version posted on this website.
  14. This does actually help with hot rocks. If you have a normal ground tracking system, it is balanced at one number at any one point in time. The number moves around as the unit tracks, but it is this narrow window that is the issue when it comes to hot rocks. If the unit is tracking the ground, any rock just slightly off the ground setting is going to react. It stands to reason that due to normal variability, lots of rocks will be close to, but not quite at the same setting. The XGB system combines a wider ground balance window with the tracking system, and attempts to mold itself to a small range so as to reduce or eliminate this issue. Like Simon, I found it to be very effective in some locations, almost magical. However, if you are in a spot where the rocks are well outside where the window can “stretch” then you will still have some rocks that signal. Being able to lock the tracking allows a person to try and balance to ground, and these “out of range” hot rocks, to find a setting that averages both. Then lock the setting in place. It’s not perfect, but better than systems that chase themselves all over the place, with no way to put it to a stop.
  15. Kind of cool Tom for you to have taken a big part in the last good Whites detector made. Something real you can point at and say “I helped make that happen.” When Garrett queried me on other White’s models that might be worth continuing, I came up totally dry except for the TM808. The market has totally moved past everything else White’s made, despite what a few fans of certain models think. The 24K though, has a decent claim to being the best single frequency nugget detector on the market today, and I’m really glad it did not die with White’s. 24K Specs and More GOLDMASTER 24K WHITE'S PAPER XGB - A New Way To Ground Balance The biggest challenge we face as electronic prospectors is highly mineralized ground. Simply increasing the gain on the current VLF platforms might help prospectors in very mild ground conditions, but what about more difficult areas with concentrations of black sand, maghemite, serpentine, or alkali salts? On a trip to Brazil we witnessed a combination of these conditions, with soil that ranged from red to black to purple, and exhibited a combination of ferrous and alkali properties within a 4 ft square section. We saw first-hand VLFs from each manufacturer fail to balance out the combination of minerals. Even the top-of-the-line pulse induction machines struggled in this area - machines which cost the garimpeiros (the local term for gold miners) several years’ wages. Our goal was simple: a nice even threshold in challenging ground conditions without giving up sensitivity. The theory is that the main battle most electronic prospectors fight is being able to discern a potential gold signal from ground noise. A smooth threshold would allow users to use more gain and increase their odds of finding small gold where it likes to hide - in mineralized ground. The issue with other VLF detectors on the market is that they were tracking a single ground balance point. When the ground type changes quickly, the machine gives off a false signal. For a user the result is ear fatigue, frustration, and less positive signals dug. One easy way to mask variable ground is implementing an auto-gain feature that automatically numbs the detector. This does not solve the issue, only hides it. The Goldmaster 24k’s XGB is a new automatic ground tracking system that works by tracking multiple ground points simultaneously and quickly. Where other VLF’s track one ground balance point, the Goldmaster 24k tracks several, and can determine an optimal “ground window” based on ground history and strength. This is very useful in rapidly changing ground conditions, where other VLF machines may struggle to track the mineralization changes. Combine this with the speed at which the Goldmaster 24k is able to grab ground samples, and you have a superior ground balance system for a prospector’s VLF. XGB Ground Balance versus legacy methods With any automatic process, there are some concessions. Take vehicles for example - manual gearboxes are still preferred by car enthusiasts. That’s why we felt strongly about including a TracLock® ground option. When used with the Ground Grab, a locked ground balance setting allows users to set the ground balance in an area and lock it until they need to re-ground balance. For users after the tiniest bits of gold, this option allows for the maximum sensitivity to small signals. One technique we observed from field testers was allowing the XGB to automatically track, and then after getting a solid hit or finding a patch, locking the ground balance for target location and retrieval. For many users this combination will be the best of both worlds - the strength of XGB, but only when you need or want it. The net result of an overhauled automatic ground balance system is a VLF gold nugget detector that can be used in wider variety of ground conditions with a nice stable threshold. Operating a machine with a smooth threshold allows for a user’s ears to tune into those slight variations that just might be the next nugget. Our goal is that our customers are able to have success with the Goldmaster 24k in areas that other VLF’s struggle, and at a price that allows more people to get a taste of electronic prospecting. Tom Boykin White's Project Manager
  16. If you were to take opinions from people like Gerry McMullen and I at face value, one might think the Equinox has got it all over the Gold Monster as a general prospecting device. I don’t waste time on depth comparison quotes as they as context sensitive. Like I said before, the machine has to be learned, and those looking for pickup and go are better off with the Monster. I personally find the Monster to be very limited, and constraining, due to the lack of tuning and coil options available. But as far as depth, just think about how a Monster with its largest 6x10 coil might compare for depth with an Equinox running a 12x15 coil on a half ounce nugget. Which would you bet on? Tips On Nugget Detecting With The Minelab Equinox
  17. I think normally that niche is filled more by university libraries that lean into the subjects, like at the Colorado School of Mines, for instance.
  18. Anything built and in the pipeline will need updates. Just treat new detectors these days like a new computer. Unbox and update. Just assume it for almost any modern new detectors going forward. Updates are the norm now, not the exception.
  19. Welcome to the forum Gary. Although you’ve been a member for many years, I never really clued in it was you. I really do think your videos are great, and I’m a harsh critic of most videos. Very much looking forward to my Deus 2 also. I have to admit my first two Deus never were a real fit for me, but looks like a good chance I’ll finally be permanently on board with XP due to Deus 2. What a nice surprise for 2022. Any chance of a 6x10 coil someday? Or 11x13?
  20. Single frequency VLF is tapped out. Anything “new” is just old tech in a new box. In some ways nothing much has changed since the 71 kHz Gold Bug 2 and 50 kHz Goldmaster II came out. Either of those old models can generally keep up with the latest and greatest in capable hands. It’s really just been new decals and paint jobs for almost 30 years. My 24K is probably the last single frequency nugget detector I’ll ever get. The future for VLF is multi, and I’m quite curious to see how the Legend ends up doing on nuggets.
  21. It’s version 0.6 which simply tells me they have a plan for a lot more updates, shooting for a full version 1.0. This is not unusual these days. You can only do so much with a handful of testers. So get it out there, and listen to your customers, and finish it up. Think getting a new cell phone, and the constant updates. I actually like this. Many people complained about some Minelab detectors making them think they would see lots of updates and improvements, then just one or two happened, and then nothing. CTX comes specifically to mind. In this case it really does seem to be more a promise of lots of updates to comes, and due to the display being fully programmable (most detectors have custom displays that can’t change) they could completely revamp the screen based on feedback. I’d love a mode where the screen I’d filled with the target id number and nothing else. It’s possible if enough people ask for it.
  22. I use the default, but reduce the ferrous volume by about half. It’s hard for any normal person to easily understand what they are explaining, and I don’t even try. But I do always run 50 tones (is it really 50?) for nearly all my detecting, and like it very much.
  23. Good place to start are these 26 Threads About Scoops. Focus on the ones with the most replies as having the most discussion and information. Lots of photos there you can look at. Aluminum can work if used with care in soft sands, but for almost anything else, you need stainless. Even soft sand creates a suction effect, and if you just want to pry sand fast as opposed to working the scoop, you need stainless scoops and a robust handle. It can be a tough balance getting hole size right. Too small and they sift too slowly. Too large, and you end up chasing small items that drop through the hole - really fun if you think you are glimpsing an ear ring. Finally, always put a strong magnet in the inner rear of the scoop to help capture hair pins and wire wraps, which do have a tendency otherwise to get chased around.
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