Jeff McClendon

Thank you. I will be doing something similar soon. I may report on it and I may not. Mostly I was waiting for the Legend's 1.08 update and was also hoping for another Deus 2 update before doing much of a head to head to head comparison between the three using very similar settings. Now that the Legend has its Pitch Tones option and adjustable iron bias in all modes a head to head between them on deep targets in iron mineralization should be very interesting and fun!

and please don't fail to read the instructions (especially that particular one) and then post videos about issues with the Legend 1.08 update within minutes of doing the update. I know Dirt Fishing (Bill) didn't mean to make the Legend and Nokta Makro look bad but this once again has really stirred up a hornet's nest on other forums, YouTube sites and Facebook, mostly from people that are not Legend owners and are Nokta Makro haters for lack of a better word.

I am not surprised. Me, Andy B. and Steve H. along with Chase and even TNSS in some of his YouTube videos have all noticed and reported that Deus 2 is just not really sensitive to extremely small targets either in air tests or especially in moderately to highly iron mineralized ground, that Equinox hits easily and that the Legend is really good at too. I dug enough of the obvious unflagged targets to get a good handle on what most were.....two shallow coin spills, several shallow pull-tabs, several crown bottle caps, etc. All three detectors were hitting those targets for sure. I did dig two really small targets....one was an incredibly small piece of foil and another was a tiny piece of iron. Both were under 2 mm and were just under the surface. Deus 2 hit them if they were almost touching the coil. Equinox and Legend (I used the Legend to recover those two tiny ones) hit them in the ground so roughly 2" deep accounting for the grass. For gold prospecting, this Deus 2 insensitivity kind of sucks. For coin, jewelry and relic hunting in trash of all sizes, this lack of sensitivity acts as a form of discrimination and is definitely a blessing in disguise and a good thing, compared to the Equinox which hits way too many smaller targets in that kind of situation. Digging 2mm and smaller bits of screen wire at relic sites all day with the Equinox is not fun. Deus 2 was running 0.71. I don't have any experience with any other software version. Legend was running 1.07. Just did the update to 1.08 last night and I haven't remotely begun to see what it is like......since it is truly a massive update. I tried to make this testing as fair as possible and well within the limits of what these detectors can do. I could have fabricated some extreme situation and made them all look bad........but I was not trying to make one detector look bad or another look incredible. I just wanted to give readers that are interested in these detectors, especially those that have similar ground mineralization, a good look at what they can do on normal depth (surface to 10") typical USA coin sized targets.

I don’t have an 11” coil. They are not available for sale separately until at least October…. I am not going to buy another Deus 2 with an 11” coil just so I can make this test or any other appear to be more equal. What aspect of this testing would have been improved if my Deus 2 was using an 11” coil? Maybe I missed something that you noticed. The only slight differences between the three detectors were Deus 2 was a little harder to ground balance and Deus 2 didn’t see as many targets as the other two detectors during the sweep of the gridded area. I stated in the write-up that most of the targets that made up that difference were shallower than the flagged targets. I don’t think the 11” coil would have made ground balancing any easier in that highly mineralized dirt and the 9” coil had ample depth. I thought the Deus 2 did great.

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

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

I don't know if I am unbiased........still trying to get the foul odor of the release of Deus 2 and the Legend out of my nose, but I wouldn't hesitate to use any of the three in 95% of the hunting scenarios out there. Great detectors that are super close in performance and lots of fun.

I still don't see a sensitivity issue with the Legend after more testing. It is quite sensitive in my opinion. So far, the most important settings using the Legend Gold mode are using the Multi setting if possible, ground balancing and choosing the right level of discrimination to handle hot rocks. Some places I have taken the Legend, I can get away with rejecting the first two target IDs and still not lose small nuggets that potentially could have their TIDs pulled down into the ground noise target IDs (1 and 2). Other places, any small nuggets are swallowed up by the mineralization so running with nothing rejected or maybe just target ID 1 rejected is the only way to be sure that detectable small gold is not missed. I have the same decision to make with the Equinox 800 at the same sites. Simon, if you are able to run your Equinox with part of the iron range rejected like -9 to -6 without losing borderline small nuggets you will probably be able to do the same with the Legend. Like Andy B. has said in his two Legend gold nugget videos, being able to run the iron bias at a less aggressive setting may also really help these small nuggets keep from being called iron/ground mineralization so easily..........or maybe it won't help. We'll see.

Thanks for the question. Those three copper Memorial pennies all have the same target IDs out of the hole. 2” air test Deus 2 TID 91-92. Legend TID 46-47. Equinox 800 TID 27-28 Any upaveraging seen on those targets was most likely due to the presence of natural and man-made iron in the ground near those targets along with depth. My Deus 1 will upaverage copper pennies that deep at that park up to 99 or just give — — for “don’t know” if it can hit them at all.

All three had similar discrimination settings meaning the lowest 1/3 of their iron target ID range was rejected to help deal with ground noise from the high mineralization. Personally, I think it has to do with an engineering/design choice. Deus 2 seems to have its overall gain or some other background setting (frequency weighting??) adjusted to ignore really small targets. The Legend is more middle of the road and the Equinox is adjusted to really hit hard on a more wide range of target sizes including really tiny ones. Just my opinion from really testing all three on tiny gold nuggets, micro jewelry, tiny lead targets and tiny aluminum.

Thanks. I did it for myself really. I am especially trying to find the roughly reliable depth limit in my dirt conditions for Deus 2 with the 9" coil. Just like anybody else with some experience, I want to choose the right detector for the site. I can't do that until I know what it can do. Hopefully, I can find a spot as trashed as this one but with even deeper targets in the future.

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

I enjoyed using my QED PL3 for the 9 months that I owned it. It was a decent PI detector. I did not enjoy its convoluted tuning/ground balance procedure in the dirt I often detect in or not knowing if it had been adjusted to deal with EMI from USA 60Hz electricity sources. I never got a straight answer from the QED owner/inventor/designer/production manager/main employee. For me that last little bit was the real problem. One guy basically doing it all (apart from his dealer network) who many found to be fairly inept when it comes to details, consistency and following through. To say he was/is burning the candle at both ends and overwhelmed without seemingly knowing it, is being polite. I, like others wish that the QED project could have been taken over by a professional production team with solid investors and managed under a solid business model. Didn't happen.

Simon, at this point I don't see anything lacking in the Gold Field program on the Legend aside from some tweaks to the threshold tone and the release of 1.08 which should give it the possibility of running it in the gold fields with the least amount of iron filtering possible. Even now, it is way better than Deus 2, easily equals Deus 1 and comes really close to the Equinox 800. I have been strenuously testing all three in terms of sensitivity using its M multi frequency mode and its selectable single frequencies where it is over an inch better than Deus 2 on the same .25 gram and smaller targets. It does well in ground balance ground handling and in its great feature set which includes Ferro-Check. Legend is about to get a mineralization graph too so at least among the gold prospecting capable or at least advertised as capable detectors I have, the only VLF that beats it soundly (it beats the rest of mine too) is the Garrett 24K. Compared to the Gold Kruzer ........I would pick the Legend everytime simply due to selectable single frequency or SMF operation, recovery speed adjustments, Ferro-Check, easy to use preset ground handling discrimination patterns and its single digit notching just to name a few. The Gold Kruzer may be operating at a slightly higher frequency but it does not compete with those features since it has no notching, no recovery speed adjustments, only 1 frequency, and no form of discrimination using its Gen mode. Fast and Boost will work in milder ground only. Micro is a great little 2 tone discrimination mode but it is no deeper than Gen. In the testing I have documented for the Gold Kruzer, it is no more sensitive or deeper than the Legend.......

At the moment (1.07) the Legend's Gold Field mode has only one audio option......single tone (no iron tone) highly modulated VCO audio that works very well. Whether it needs audio boost......I don't know. Right now and especially after the 1.08 update, I would mainly use 2 tone (after the update Pitch Tones) in Field mode for relic hunting with wide open, no discrimination Gold Field as a cross reference. But that is just me. In my dirt conditions I am not seeing a big difference depth wise on coin sized objects using Field or Gold Field with similar settings.