Jeff McClendon

The equivalent would be another V/Sat. An updated version is the Garrett/Whites Goldmaster 24K. Outstanding detector. https://www.detectorprospector.com/metal-detector-database/garrett-goldmaster-24k-r155/

I just have the 9" and 13X11" so I can't compare the 13X11" to just the 11". I can say that the 13X11"at 668 grams (1.47 lbs) is much heavier than the 9" at 448 grams (0.99 lbs.) and it certainly feels heavier on the stock shaft. Coverage is fantastic using the 13X11" and so is its ability to get through taller grass just by its sheer mass. I haven't used the 13X11" at a beach yet. The 13X11" that I have been using has been finding deep US silver dimes and deep wheat pennies that were missed by me with the 9". No doubt about it. Whether the 11" would have missed those compared to the 13X11"......no idea. Separation is still excellent using the 13X11". The onboard pinpointer function is not as accurate when using the 13X11" compared to the 9" I am using version 2.0 software. The 13X11" has been a good purchase for me so far.

That’s the conundrum, if I use any Disc IAR I will miss small nonferrous targets like small gold since most gold at this location will initially have ferrous target IDs and ferrous tones if I have iron volume on. With Disc IAR off I hear absolutely everything. This area is best hunted with a pulse induction detector. Unfortunately there are large power lines in the area too so EMI is pretty bad. Using a DD coil with the GPX6000 would be ideal but the rugged terrain and the big 14” DD don’t get on too well.

The 600/800, Legend and Deus 2 really do have target ID stability that is on another level. So SLD, consider that when making a choice. Thanks for that story about your wife and daughter using your Nox 800 and the photo of their finds Simon! I wouldn't have dug all of these targets shown below with the Nox 700/900 or with single frequency detectors since most were deep enough to change the air test target IDs that Simon mentioned into target IDs that were not as reliable or trustworthy at least where I detect. This is a photo of US clad and copper coins recovered by Deus ll and the Legend since mid July 2023 after I took the previous batch to the bank after cleaning them. The Deus ll with the 13X11" coil is also absolutely killing it on deep US silver dimes and Wheat pennies in aluminum and iron trashed parks that I thought were done. The Legend with the 6" coil is doing really well in thick iron trash on US Seated and Barber dimes too. It's absolutely true that these advanced detectors can also be used in their default modes by new users. I have had the pleasure of helping several club members with Deus 2, Legend, Equinox 600/800, and Equinox 700/900 purchases in the past year. Most were already experienced detector users and picked them up easily. The people that had never detected before needed a lot more guidance on keeping it simple in the beginning and doing lots of target testing before hunting to learn the basic common target IDs and audio responses. A few dropped out but several have become really good in a short time. Luckily we have this excellent forum with tons of information to guide people who want to purchase a quality detector that can make this hobby both fun and productive for them.

I am going to try to stay out of the Equinox 600/800 versus 700/900 debate as much as possible since I have owned both and my experience has been documented on this forum. SLD appears to be fairly new to this hobby. As a newer detector user, the Legend, Equinox 600/800, Equinox 700/900, XP Deus 2 would be a handful for most who have not used such advanced detectors. In a dig it all situation like saltwater beach hunting and basic gold prospecting, the Legend, Nox 800, Nox 900 and Deus ll would be just fine as long as the Nox 800 didn’t have water ingress or coil ear problems at the beach. Sounds like SLD might do some beach hunting a some point while nugget hunting is a no at this point. However, for anyone needing accurate target IDs for whatever reason for their style of hunting, I absolutely would not recommend the Nox 700 or the Nox 900 unless their soil conditions are basically inert. The Legend, Nox 600, Nox 800 and Deus 2 have far superior target ID accuracy from my experience than the Nox 900 where I have detected with them which included mild to highly mineralized dirt and saltwater beach conditions.

Not crystals. Lichen/moss.

I would go with a hornblende type amphibolite or something similar. Lots of hornblende, amphibole glacier deposited rocks in the Lake Erie area especially with those being found unweathered in the Sudbury/Thetford Canada area north of Lake Erie.

I was able to test and hunt with Deus 2 with 9" coil using FMF Goldfield V2.0 software for about an hour at a Colorado location with very tough magnetite and hot rock mineralization where I have found very small gold nuggets with the ORX in the past. Deus 2's mineralization meter was full at the testing and hunting site. I also took a photo nearby showing some marble sized pieces of magnetite as found on the surface which continue under the surface too. I dug a shallow 6" deep trench, cut a slit into the sidewall of the trench at 2.5" depth and inserted a plastic strip with a 0.1 gram piece of lead glued on it for a test target. V2.0 FMF Goldfield High Square VCO audio with Disc IAR 0, sensitivity 95, reactivity 2.5, audio response 4, threshold 5 hit the target very well and even displayed a target ID of 26 to 30 which is right on the ferrous/nonferrous borderline. I also tested this test target with Deus 2's Fast40 mono 40kHz program in Hi Square Pitch tones with Disc. on -6.4, Silencer 0, sensitivity 95, frequency 39.5 kHz, reactivity 2.5, audio response 4, threshold 5. Fast 40 also hit this target but with no ID and with slightly weaker responses. Those FMF Goldfield settings were actually a little too hot for this location so I increased reactivity to 3 and lowered audio response to 3 which helped a lot. I had to do some fairly frequent ground balancing since there were changing ground conditions with differing levels of soil moisture and magnetite sizes ranging from specs to golf ball sized. I did not find any gold during this short 1 hour hunt with Deus 2 FMF Goldfield V2.0. I did find three very indicative lead fragment targets however. All three were easily detected and had proper low conductor target IDs after a bit of a boot scrape. All were found at around 3" depth. Deus 2's V2.0 Goldfield sensitivity is much improved from previous software versions. Like I said, it was almost too hot for this location. I had my Nokta Legend with 6" coil along with my GPX 6000 with me for the hunt. I didn't even fire up the GPX 6000 due to time constraints and a sore right shoulder. The Legend hit all of the targets that Deus 2 hit but ran a little quieter probably due to its smaller coil. The Legend and Deus 2 have so much information available on the display even in their gold modes. They both have a ferrous/nonferrous probability meter which is all you get on some gold prospecting specific VLF detectors, a mineralization meter, numerical target IDs, depth meter, single digit level notching, onboard pinpointing along with other great features like SMF operation which gives good IDs and no nonsense ground balancing, iron filter settings, audio response settings, reactivity/recovery speed settings, fully adjustable threshold volume and pitch settings, and various audio options. All Deus 2 needs now for high quality gold prospecting is a smaller coil. Thanks again XP for making FMF Goldfield V2.0 a very viable small gold prospecting option!

This characteristic is not limited to the Legend, like I said, Deus 2 and my Equinox 800 also will respond with intermittent iron tones of deeper coin sized objects along with giving ground noise feedback at target ID 11 Legend, 23 Deus 2 and +1 Equinox 800. Switching to a "ground subtraction mode" or adjusting the Legend ground suppression setting off of zero does not help. So this is related to high concentrations of magnetite plus volcanic material in the soil and not a flaw of some kind with these detectors that really do" see" just about everything really well. I have dug enough steel alloy bottle caps to be able to call them before digging with the Legend, Deus 2 and Equinox 800 except when the have been smashed completely flat or a about halfway rusted out.

I only run the Legend bottle cap rejection when I have to. Bottle caps are not a predominant target at the test location. Due to the high iron mineralization in the area, the Legend, Equinox 800 and Deus 2 all detect deeper non-ferrous targets with some intermittent ferrous responses. Running the Legend with the F discrimination pattern would cause broken up, sporadic responses on those nonferrous targets.

I am aware of the announced version 2.0 software update which includes an M4 Beast or boost mode. Whether that has anything to do with some of these current complaints is doubtful. Several previous Nokta Makro detectors had “Boost” modes. In general they were effective in certain circumstances that were not hindered by high EMI or high mineralization. I did not get to use them much.

I was able to do a second quick hunt today. I was willing to dig absolutely anything with a decent repeatable signal and with stable target IDs. I was at an elementary school that has thick sod with sod staples about 4" below the surface that are in various states of rust. Makes for a very noisy, iron false filled hunt but at least the staples are spaced regularly so I basically know when I am over one. Some of these targets were in the sod thatch so around 3 to 4" from the bottom of the coil. Others were well below the sod in the original soil. The grass was about 4" long and very thick so some of these targets were detected about 8" deep. None had weak audio responses or unstable target IDs once I had the coil properly centered over them. Like I said, I was searching for low, mid and high conductors including gold jewerly (skunked) and silver jewerly (got one .925 ring) and silver coins (skunked but I did get a Wheat penny). I was running the same settings as in the previous post. The Legend's iron mineralization meter showed 7 or 10 bars filled. Ground balance stabilized at 5.

I spend some time on other forums and some Legend Facebook forums too. I see many posters reporting excellent results with the Legend using V1.11 software. I see some posters reverting to V1.09 software or earlier because of reasons of their own. In general however, there is quite the buzz from some users from all over the world who claim that their Legend will not hit targets deeper than about 4". Some actually report that their Legend will hit iron targets but it won't hit high conductors and silver targets deeper than 4". Others report that their Legend simply won't go deep since they aren't finding deeper targets. Some people who I trust are really having an issue like one of our members whose iron and salt mineralization levels are much worse than those where I most often detect. I am not surprised that he is having some depth issues. Maybe you own a Legend or are thinking about buying one and don't know what to make of all this after reading some Facebook posts. All I can say is I posted the following little write-up on a Facebook Legend page. It has received many likes and judging from the names of those who like my post, they are from all over the world....amazing. Another poster posted a video showing his Legend completely missing what looks to be a UK large penny on the bottom of a freshly dug 6 to 8" hole. Basically after requesting some advice, he received several posts that explained his "issue" which was settings/iron masking related and was not an example of a Legend malfunction but was instead user error. He even admits that now but plenty of posters have reported "Me Too" type posts without even realizing that the poster screwed up. Oh well. D. Smith from our forum and a couple of guys over on Friendly have real issues from what I can tell from their descriptions. However, lots of posters from around the world are doing just fine with their Legends, even with the latest software V1.11 Anyway, I hate to be out detecting with my two Legends and wonder about all of this. So I did some testing to help settle my thoughts about my two Legends using my Deus 2 with 13X11" coil as the target finder and one of my Legends as the tested detector. Legend V1.11 Hunt, I've been enjoying the Legend a lot. I have been through software updates since V1.04. I have read all of the posts about this software version being better than that one, the Legend can't detect targets deeper than 4", the Legend chatters too much. Anyway, I flagged 4 deeper sounding targets on a hunt recently using my Deus 2 with 13X11" coil. I was hunting a park in Colorado that has moderately high iron mineralization (6 bars filled on the Legend's iron mineralization meter) and which is old enough to have silver coins from the 1880s to 1964. I have found older US coins in this park in the past with the Legend, Deus 2 and the Equinox 800. So I located 4 deeper than 4" deep high conductor targets with Deus 2. I checked them with my Teknetics Tek Point pinpointer to make sure. I have it set to detect 4" or shallower coin sized targets. My Tek Point did not detect the 4 targets that I chose. I put my Deus 2 in my car and I got out my Legend with version 1.11 software and LG28 stock coil. I removed each flag and swept the area of each target to see if the Legend would detect them and especially if the Legend would detect them while walking over the targets with a normal sweep speed. No problem whatsoever even though the first target sounded more like a mademade Iron target than a deep non-ferrous coin. I dug that first target that Deus 2 had liked a lot/Legend not so much.......it was a 9" deep bent nail in the side wall of the hole that I dug using the coin popping method with a flat bladed screwdriver with an 8" long shaft. Plug digging is illegal in my area as are shovels of any kind. Well done Legend with V1.11 software. The second target sounded very good with target IDs from 49 to 52. It turned out to be a 1966 copper Lincoln Memorial penny that was 7" deep. The third target was a 1946 copper Wheat penny that was also around 7" deep and had excellent audio and target IDs from 48 to 50. The fourth target had really strong audio responses and solid IDs from 49 to 51. It was a 6.5" deep 1959 silver Roosevelt Dime. None of these coin sized targets were super deep. They are much deeper than the 4" that is claimed by some to be the depth limit of the Legend. I have two Legends. One is an early version and one was made five months ago. Both will easily detect even small coin sized targets well past 4" even in moderate to high iron mineralization. As you can see from the photo below of the Legend's screen showing the Fe3O4 mineralization meter, I am using Park M1, with the G discrimination pattern, sensitivity 28 ground balanced at 6, my recovery speed was 5, iron filter 1, iron stability 4, bottle cap reject 0, audio gain 4, iron volume 7, with 6 tones. When I switched to the F (ferrous rejected) discrimination pattern along with having the iron filter setting on default 8, the 3 flagged targets that were copper and silver basically disappeared. That's the effect of moderate to high iron mineralization masking these deeper non-ferrous targets so that any response they might make would mimic iron responses due to the iron filter being set way too high for the ground conditions here and those audio responses would also be rejected by the F discrimination pattern.

Hopefully Nokta will choose prudent default settings on the Score (especially the iron bias setting) and make it adjustable on the Double Score so that Facebook won't be chocked full of complaints like it is on some of the Legend pages. Nokta might have to double up on internal EMI mitigation too. Reminds me of the first years of the Equinox where users had to really learn how to metal detect as in learn what the settings do in positive and negative ways or else that were clueless and unhappy. When you price high performance VLFs as low as the Legend, and price entry level but very capable detectors like the Vanquish, Double Score, Score and the X-Terra Pro/Simplex so low, people with very little experience will expect them to run perfectly even in tough ground conditions. Can Nokta make the Scores run as generally stable as the multi IQ Vanquish series??????

I got my wish but looks like Santa is leaving me a Nokta Score instead of a Multi IQ X-Terra Pro. Thanks Nokta!!!!

IDs for common coins are ground balance and ground moisture level related where I detect. They can change by a number or two from day to day concurrently with a slight change in ground balance values. Sometimes I just don't ground balance if I am on dirt that I know is similar to the last hunt. So, I am still getting US nickels between 60 and 63, zincs between 82 and 87, clad dimes from 88 to 91, copper pennies from 89 to 92 and quarters anywhere from 92 to 97, all depending on slight changes in ground balance and moisture levels. So, I have not noticed a change after switching to 2.0. I am guessing that I have recovered around 200 modern US nickels, zincs, copper pennies, clad dimes and clad quarters total, since updating to 2.0 which gives me a pretty good idea.

XP's owner said that the pinpointing will be fixed on the WS6 with the next software update. Who knows when that will be????? Another 4 months like between 1.11 and 2.0 or next week. I did send a huge thank you note to XP customer service for making my day with the 2.0 improvements to FMF Goldfield. They thanked me for my reports of the issue and for my patience with the process. I figure either you F350 or Chase will eventually get their hands on the Xtrem Hunter so V2.0 will be a must anyway. I have used 2.0 land hunting in high iron mineralization/wet ground for the past 5 days. 5 silver dimes, lots of deep copper Memorial and wheat pennies and no issues whatsoever running Sensitive or Deep HC. Absolutely loving the 13X11" coil. I hope to get to a gold prospecting site either this Friday or next Wednesday to test the FMF Goldfield mode for real along with some extreme mineralization/square nail site relic hunting too.

Thank you Dilek!!!

I would give the same answer if you asked me to compare the Goldmonster 1000 to the Equinox 800. I can setup a Legend or an Equinox 800 and run it on highly iron mineralized ground very easily with just a few ground balances. I could take a Goldmonster 1000 with its automatic tracking on the same ground and I would be ground balancing constantly after every detected target if I could get it to ground balance at all. The simultaneous multi frequency setting for the Equinox 800, 900 and the Legend will handle more difficult ground conditions using their ground grab ground balancing way better than the GM 1000. A detector that ground balances easily, effectively and quickly will be much more likely to hear borderline/difficult targets. Plus, the Legend like the Equinox also has adjustable threshold tone, adjustable iron bias, adjustable recovery speed, adjustable discrimination settings, on screen target IDs, single digit notching, pinpointing, ergonomics, collapsible shafts, waterproof, wireless audio.......I could go on and on with the advantages of the Legend and Equinox 800/900 over the GM1000. And the most important of all, there is very little difference if any in the overall sensitivity to gold nuggets of many sizes between the GM 1000, the Legend and the Equinox 800/900. I like the GM 1000 and have owned more than one since it was released. It just isn't my first choice compared to the Equinox 800/900 or the Legend.

You will need to update the software to V2.0. XP really improved Goldfield with that update.

The Legend is a solid, excellent performing detector. For me, its only drawback is the convoluted menu navigation. It is crammed full of very important features and settings that make a difference. If you get one, be patient and start out in Park M1 and lower the iron filter down to around 2 to 4 and play around with the preset discrimination patterns using ferrous and non-ferrous targets for practice. Again, be very patient as a first detector owner and practice a lot on easy targets. The Legend can be a handful if you start digging into its menus and settings too quickly while trying to go really deep in trashed, mineralized ground. The gold prospecting multi mode is easy to setup. Use the A or G discrimination pattern and lower the iron filter to 0 or at most 1 with sensitivity around 18 to 20.

Loved the video Rattlehead. I enjoy hunting North Myrtle Beach and the beaches to the north of it too. You did great!!!

With the iron mineralization here the IDs on these three deep dimes were 88 to 96 with a bit of audio degradation running audio response at 4 and reactivity at 2. I had my Legend with me too and it had similar slightly spread out VDIs on two of the three with no response on the third one using its 11" coil probably because that third one was on edge. I did lots of testing with the Equinox 900 at these areas and by comparison it had target IDs of 68 to 99 on 4" deep dimes..........I can only imagine what its IDs would have been on these much deeper ones. Sorry to hijack this Deus 2 V2.0 update/WS6 Master pinpoint issue topic.

How long has the mighty XP been promising the Go Terrain phone app for Deus and Deus 2 ?????????????

I haven't used my Deus 2 with the WS6 as Master since v0.71 except for gold prospecting in the Mono mode so I am out of touch with some of it's quirks and bugs since V1.11. Thanks for adding that pinpoint wasn't working using some of the programs in V1.11 either. It took XP almost 2 years to straighten out some of the missing WS6 features and the lack of sensitivity in Goldfield. They definitely still have more work to do to improve Deus 2 apparently. By the way, I picked up a 13X11" coil based on your recommendations F350Platinum. I've been over small areas at two sites since getting it that I had hit hard with the 9" coil. Three 9+" deep silver US dimes already in two short hunts. It hasn't injured me yet!!!!! Thanks😃