abenson

At this point I've decided to wait on getting a Legend. I'm going to use the money I had available for it to get a 9" coil for a different machine I already have. I am looking forward seeing others reviews on the Legend though.

I've been experimenting by changing the stock Deus 2 programs on targets I'm locating in the wild. I've got to say that at least at that particular site, XP did a pretty dang good job. With the exception of changing the tone breaks/Hz, volume, sensitivity and audio type to suit you personal preferences. There isn't much I can do to any of the stock program to get any extra depth. Now Reactivity is one you can play with and do a little better depending on your site. But changing the Disc. ground stabilizer, or silencer settings appear to make little to no difference. I think a new user can choose a program for their site, noise cancel, ground balance, set the sensitivity and go without worrying about whether or not they have the optimal settings. Obviously all this is going to depend on how polluted your site is. I played around with what turned out to be an 11" .58 cal. Civil War bullet for about 45 minutes yesterday. I went through some stock programs and then changed them up to see if I could squeeze more out of the Deus 2. Really didn't do any better than the stock programs. I've did video the target and maybe I'll post it if enough people are interested.

Wow what a haul. Nice job!

I think the most obvious strong points of the Deus 2 at the moment are beach and diving. I know they had been working on a beach machine for quite some time at least 4 years maybe more. That's for sure a hole they needed to fill. Looks like they have successfully done that. Anything else the Deus 2 can do well is just icing on the cake.

On the Deus I have been for the most part ground balancing every time I change programs but the numbers never seem to change. On the Equinox they change with every program. Whether or not it carries over on Deus I have no idea.

Yes I have read the manual and explanation. However just watch Gary's latest video and you'll see why it would be nice to have manual adjust. Yes it's the relic mode he's using but it could apply to any program. He uses the grab and it grabs a value much lower than the actual ground as a result He digs a hot rock. Yea it could have been that small rivet, most likely not though. Manual works on the Equinox, why wouldn't it work with the Deus 2?

I wish they would have left manual ground balance as an option in all programs. It's only available in mono. I'm already finding myself needing the fine adjustments of manual ground balance the Deus 1 offered. I guess they figured it wasn't needed with the multi programs. Being able to adjust GB manually allows you to squeeze a little more depth out a machine in bad dirt. It can also be used to tune out small pockets of mineralization that may have not been present at the site you GB'd on. One reason ground notch would have also been nice. Probably not a big issue for most and I can live without it. But I really wish they would have left manual GB as an option.

I've been to Montes hunt as well. There's one rail stop there that has ground you can't hear a IHP at 3 inches. Kickindirt can attest to that. Full of waste from the steam locomotives. No I've never been to Cherry Creek.

No Joel unfortunately came up empty handed.

I'm in Utah and the dirt is even worse here. I'll use the Equinox, Deus and a PI for the deep stuff.

Thanks! The dimes were clad.

Wow Jeff. Thanks for the kind words and everyone else that has done so in the past. You evaluated that video more than I ever thought possible. I know you made a comment that you might cancel your Deus 2 order but I hope that's not the case. I'd really like to share notes with you about your experiences with it if you do get one. Nice to have someone who has the same dirt issues and be able to toss ideas back and forth.

What other machine are you referring to, the Equinox?

Really nice finds. Congratulations. That's for sharing your finds and knowledge.

Just to put this in perspective. The Equinox was at volume level 19 (i know this because I never change it) it goes to 25 that's 76% of full volume. No where near maxed out. Let's just say the Deus was at 7 may have even been 8 I don't recall. it goes to 9 that's 77% of full volume. How close do they have to be to each other to be acceptable? Volume was no problem on the other 2 bigger nuggets with the Deus 2. Yes headphones help but anyway you look at it the Equinox had better ID and audio on the two smaller nuggets in this case. I know many people that hunt without headphones when gold hunting for various reasons, snakes being one. I do personally use them most of the time unless it's real hot.

Jeff volume was on 7 or 8 I don't recall which. It will go to 9 so I could have probably gotten a little more out of it. Audio response up to 6 may have helped as well I had it at 4. All stuff you don't think about at the time. On small gold the Equinox is the clear winner IMO and I kind of thought it was going to be just knowing how it has done in the past. You have to remember Minelab pretty much has gold prospecting detectors market wrapped up and this is just further proof of that.

Here is the video I did comparing various metal detectors on the buried gold nuggets. You can see in this video which ones do better on various size nuggets. Take this test with a grain of salt. Mineralization, nugget shape, target depth and site conditions will all effect detector performance. This is just a test I did in Arizona so your area could be much different and the nuggets were freshly buried.

Joel-What's the expected time frame for accessory availability? Headphones, coils ,etc.

I couldn't agree with you more on what you've just said. I'm certainly not going to defend the Deus 2 in this case. It's has acceptable performance and will do better than some gold detectors. But small gold certainly isn't it's strong point.

IMO the Deus has never been known as a small nugget detector. Me and most of the people I know that used the ORX and Deus 1 for nugget hunting considered it about a .25 or .30 gram and bigger nugget hunter. It never did that well on the really small stuff and looks like that has carried over to the Deus 2. That may change with a 9" coil but I can't imagine it making a huge difference. So I guess there are 2 trains of thought on what I said above. Do you want to skip the small stuff and go for the bigger nuggets as they add up faster. Or do you want to dig everything? For me it depends on the time I have available and whether or not I'm finding bigger nuggets at the site. Sometimes I'm happy just finding anything. Like this last trip, I would have been happy with small specs since it was so tough to find anything at all.

Here is a video testing the XP Deus 2 on various size gold nuggets. Keep in mind this is an 11" coil so it could do better with the 9" but I don't have one yet, I used the Gold field program and sensitive for those that wanted to see it. I'll post another video on the comparisons forum with the Deus 2 up against the Deus 1 and Equinox 800 when I get it finished up.

If you were coin hunting in that dirt you could benefit by using the notch feature and probably get rid of the hot rocks. It does make for choppy audio just as the video showed on the pottery.

Yes I had them all set up f2 0 recovery 4. The number of tones varied in the programs though some were 5 tones some were 50 tones. I did mess around with some of the settings on the Deus 2 after I filmed the video and I will say XP did a pretty good job on the stock programs. I do think some things can be changed to get more out of it but it's going to take some thought and experimenting due to the different KHz weighted ratios on each of those programs.

Here is Montes Nail Board Test I did with the 11" coils. It's indoors probably not the best of EMI conditions. But it's the best I could do for now.

it really depends on your conditions and what you are looking for. If you're after small gold then having the threshold at it's most stable point is more important than getting depth. If you're looking for bigger targets like rings or relics then you can stand to have some threshold noise as most bigger targets will still be heard. I've run my stabilizer as low as 2 before to get it perfectly quiet. Yea I'm probably still missing the small stuff. But it's better than trying to sort out small targets from the threshold noise IMO. I'm going to add something. When I get to a new site I'll usually select the timing I want to use. ground balance, turn the RX gain up until the threshold starts to break and then use the stabilizer to smooth out the threshold. I'll usually ground balance again just to make sure.