Jeff McClendon

Hi Simon, that is a real bummer. Like JP said, you are the last person that I would want to sell a defective product to. That is not a shot at you. Just the opposite. I know you will get to the bottom of whatever is wrong and make sure it is fixed and you will also not hold back. Listening to your present GPX 6000, the threshold was fairly steady compared to what mine sounds like with the 11” coil at times when it is anywhere near power lines or other EMI sources. The anaemic performance of the 11” coil on that .03 bit was definitely not what I would expect with settings of Mono/Normal using manual 10 and auto+. My GPX 6000 in my house with plenty of EMI using the 14” DD with settings of DD Cancel/Normal on manual 6 will hit chunkier .03, .04 and .05 bits out to 1” easily. The response isn’t loud but it is clear and consistent. Looks to me that there is more than just a loose connection going on inside your GPX 6000. good luck, Jeff

Buy a nice production and finishing gold pan set like the one from Garrett and save $2450 for the moment. Learn how to pan and test those gravel bars. If there is any flood gold you won’t have to dig very deep to find it. Small flood gold flakes in the right places might indicate deeper larger gold. I said might however. A $2500 budget might get you a used SDC 2300. However, any good VLF with high enough frequency operation and waterproof coils will do just about as well if it can ground balance effectively on those gravel bars, but that is another substantial IF as pointed out earlier by Steve even if the VLF has simultaneous multi frequency tech.

Being a long time Deus owner, I have absolutely everything I need to make a Deus 2 Lite except for a standalone 9" coil.............. When using the WS6 in a stem mount I will use the Detech headphones with 2.4 gHz wireless transmitter (the Detech headphones look just like the ones for the Deus without the horseshoe audio adapter) of a pair of Garret Z-Lynk headphones with transmitter. Most of the time I will use a Deus/Deus 2 Lite for gold prospecting/relic hunting and keep the WS4/WS6 with horseshoe adapter in my front pocket with wired earbuds or headphones plugged in especially in rugged terrain.

I agree with JCR, you may have to really do some creative tone break/pitch adjustments and testing to set the Legend up for modern Canadian steel core clad. Also, with the tone-pitch feature and adjustable iron bias that are being added soon, you may have even more alternatives. When I get my new system control box, I will do some modern Canadian coin testing too.

If you are a full time water hunter........absolutely would not try that. However, otherwise it is a good "fix". Now XP need to fix this issue on their end.

Simon, I can’t think I of a single reason why you need a Legend other than you just want one. It is not going to significantly outperform your Equinox 800 at this time or at least until its iron bias settings are added. It is not going to hit deeper silver coins than your CTX 3030 in your hunting conditions either with the Legend’s 11” coil.

Yep. Legend has a lot more other features than the Equinox 600. It has been easy for me to switch from Legend to Equinox and back. They are really similar in so many ways. These are just my opinions. I am not recommending anyone else make the same choice I did.

I have almost 100 hours using the Legend mostly on coin and jewelry turf sites. All I can say is I am very impressed with the Legend as far as its ability to detect at a high level, its outstanding features, its SMF technology and its ergonomics/build quality. That doesn't mean my experience has been all positive and blissful. Definitely not. I have been using my Equinox 800 for the past three days since my Legend control unit is over the Atlantic Ocean right about now headed to Istanbul and a replacement is on its way to me. More on that in the future. So, I have not used my Equinox 800 since I got the Legend except for two hunts where I ran them side by side. All I can say is: the Equinox 800 is an amazing detector. Putting the Legend in the same sentence as the Equinox 800 is paying both of them a big compliment. I bought a Legend because I was a bit "detector bored", it was my birthday, I was helping my mother recover from surgery and I thought I might get a couple of hours of testing/hunting in dirt that is not nearly as nasty as where I often detect. The main reason however was that I wanted a freshwater detector that could run at high enough frequencies to gold prospect in streams, that I could trust for submerged coin/jewelry/relic detecting, that wouldn't need an antenna (I would be using it in fast moving boulder strewn water), it has a vibration feature that eliminates the need for headphones when submerged or near noisy water, no need for extra elaborate waterproofing of components and it very likely wouldn't leak and since both of my Equinox 800s were out of warranty. For my budget ($600) that meant a choice between the Legend and the Equinox 600. The choice on paper and from the Equinox leak history and lack of a vibration feature for target alerting was obvious. So after almost 100 hours, I believe I made the right choice between the Legend and the Equinox 600.

I saw your other post too. Thanks for providing your settings. All I can say is this, I often hunt areas that have been sodded and they have also had steel sod staples installed in the nylon mesh under the sod. Those staples when they start to rust sound like a bed of nails and chirp with mid and high tones. Sometimes those tones are accompanied by target IDs that flash up for a second and sometimes no ID but still a high tone chirp or false. I can turn up F2 all the way to maximum and I will still get some falsing chirping on those rotting staples. I can usually turn 90 degrees and get iron responses or very fractured audio. Setting the recovery speed too high just makes every target sound like a iron falsing chirps unless there is a non-ferrous target on or near the surface. Just my two cents. In no way am I diagnosing your hunting scenario's characteristics.

Certainly nothing wrong with doing that strategy especially if the area you are hunting is likely to have gold jewelry. For me, the two gold rings I found with the Legend made an unmistakeable round sound which caught my ear. Nickels have sounded really strong too. I have not done any notching yet. I will soon.

I didn't think for one second that you did anything wrong with the update procedure especially use a computer with USB 1.0 ports. My apologies if you thought I did... I hope you get it straightened out. I only have the WS6 since I don't really need the bigger remote. I was going to update my WS6 to .71 so I could use the live threshold in Relic and Gold Field. I think I better wait........

Yes, at least for the US nickel, there is not as much trash target overlapping competition for it using the Legend with its 10 extra target IDs in that conductivity range. I am not trying to mislead anyone here. I just used common re-occurring aluminum trash items. Bits of foil and aluminum can slaw can appear absolutely anywhere in the range shown in the photos.

I am old, and I have some old computers sitting in a closet that still have parallel serial ports and may have a USB 1.0 port…….. Is anyone really trying to do a Deus 2 update on a Windows based computer using USB 1.0 ports made before 2004?????? The XP Deus 2 update instructions clearly say to not use USB 1.0 Ports for these updates.

Dirt Fish Mish tries out the Deus 2 in the Aussie gold fields along with Detect-ED friends using the Legend and Gold Kruzer. She finds her first nuggie........

These are just a few Legend gold jewelry and aluminum trash VDIs (one rusty steel crown bottle cap also) for reference and for creating possible detecting strategies. The photo below is by no means definitive or meant to be accurate for your soil/sand conditions. It just shows where these targets have been consistently showing up on the Legend's target ID scale for me in moderate to high iron mineralization. I have never hunted with a Legend in mild soil/sand conditions so your target IDs may vary. What I notice from the photo is the group of earring stud, earring back, hollow hoop earring and tiny gold chains at 11/12, the large clump of small women's 10 and 14K gold rings that weight under 2 grams in the 16 to 19 range and the other big clump of gold and aluminum items in the 23 to 26 range which is also where US nickels live 25/26. The two big mens rings that are 34 and 39/40 are each over 8 grams. Three of these gold items were recovered with the Legend. Luckily, the Legend has good, consistent target IDs that stay quite accurate down to 7" depth on these targets in my bad dirt (aside from the tiny gold stuff at 11/12). That may also be the same or even better in your soil/sand conditions. Just click on the photo if it appears to be not fully displayed. Just for comparison here are the same items with their Equinox target IDs. I added the US nickel and US zinc penny. Legend reads a good condition zinc penny as 41/42 most of the time. Legend using Park M1....Equinox 800 using Park 1 Multi. Not drawing any conclusions here just showing the tendencies of these two excellent detectors on gold range targets.

Sorry Joe L. I am not going into it any further right now.

I think the next batch of updates that are being proposed sound very good. I also think it is very smart of Nokta Makro to take their time with the development and testing of the proposed adjustable iron bias settings. Hopefully, they will be able to get settings that won't need much tweaking and will even get certain YouTube creators to offer some encouragement and praise to Nokta Makro for making a really good, affordable, SMF detector and leave it at that.......

See below.

Carolyn and I actually know how to operate computers and can handle the Legend update process just fine. There is another problem besides just possibly not following instructions......... Nokta Makro is helping us get it resolved.

So this hunt was all about getting good solid IDs and consistent audio on US zinc pennies and higher conductive US coins. I kind of left finding nickels up to chance since I knew that the vast majority of the target responses were going to be from 11 to 36 which is the 1/8" sized aluminum foil/canslaw up to 3" or so sized aluminum canslaw, big pull tab range. So, I wanted to really test the recovery speed capabilities and target separation of the Legend while basically accepting its iron bias "as is" instead of trying to force it do things it can't handle yet. Contrary to what some test videos using iron targets are showing, the Legend has excellent recovery speed and target separation on non-ferrous targets especially for an SMF detector. So, I could have notched out everything up to zincs or up to 38 or so and just hunted good sounding targets. However, I did not want to adversely effect the audio itself by doing that. So I had an iron bin from 1 to 10 with volume on 3, a small aluminum/small gold ring bin from 11 to 23 with volume on 10, a nickel/medium size gold ring bin from 24 to 37 with volume on 10, a zinc penny/large gold ring bin from 38 to 43 with volume on 10, a clad dime/copper penny/smaller silver ring bin from 44 to 48 with volume on 10 and a quarter/larger coin/larger silver bin from 49 to 60 with volume on 10. Pick your favorite tones. That is just what I chose. I could have just had a nickel/10 to 14K mens ring bin from 24 to 26 and had a pull tab/zinc penny/larger gold ring bin instead to concentrate more on nickels. This is what really separates the Legend from the Equinox 600 and for less money. Those audio features and the expanded low to mid conductor target ID range are incredible.

I don't have a complete Deus 2 yet, just the WS6 and my Mi-6 (anyone who wants to loan or sell their 9" coil...I am all ears) so take the following with a big grain of whatever since I have only experienced this with Deus 1 both before and after the software update that added the sub zero range and on the ORX. In mineralized ground, some metal targets due to conductivity and depth....small bits of rusted mid 1800s to early 1900s "tin" alloy targets are a good example.....will have target IDs below zero. They can mask (unknown to the detector operator) other adjacent targets. So can naturally forming iron minerals like hematite and magnetite when big enough, which also may give no target ID but can be clearly heard if the sub-zero range is accepted........ Like I said, disregard this drivel if it no longer applies to Deus 2.

So, how many videos have there been lately by certain individuals about the Legend, its iron bias and FerroCheck features in the last month......got to be 20 or more and most of them are by the same person. Right now, in my opinion the Legend and its iron handling capabilities are on hold, they are incubating, they are about to come out of a plaster cast/cocoon. I wish those people would just wait. Hey I know Nokta Makro released the Legend before this feature was finished, its on them too. However, changing the subject, anyone that owns a Legend and has happened to hunt with it in areas like me=trashy parks, may have noticed something. I have hunted these places a lot since high gas prices, foot injury and not enough time have limited me to mostly hunting in nearby parks that I can get to in five minutes without using even a tenth of a gallon of gas. That "something" is how well the Legend in its Park M1 mode (still using v1.05) can separate and identify targets, and I mean aluminum, steel alloy and US coin targets. Today, I put this to the test by taking me, my dog (Mike Tyson) and my Legend to one of the trashiest parks I know of. This park is littered with steel crown bottle caps, aluminum screw on bottle caps, aluminum pull tabs and ring pulls, and any kind of trash that you can imagine for a park that is used by people from all walks of life including the homeless, drug addicts, alcoholics, hookers (male and female) and parties of all kinds. There are plenty of trash cans that are loaded with trash too so not everybody litters. Anyway, I gridded a 20 foot by 50 foot area today in 1.5 hours using the Legend in Park M1 using the Ground discrimination setting, sensitivity on 25, recovery speed 5. The discrimination techniques I used were 6 tone audio (four of those tones matched up to US nickel, zinc penny, clad dime/copper penny and quarter), the audio quality in general for size and depth of target, target IDs and of course the FerroCheck feature. I could have set up some very aggressive notches, but I chose not to. I wanted to leave the discrimination pattern basically wide open. The photos show the amount of litter........3 visible crown bottle caps, 8 visible pull tabs and ring pulls etc.... in a 4'X6' area which is fairly normal. That pattern of trash continues in layers underneath the surface. The photos also show the targets that I recovered. 58 non-ferrous and 2 steel alloy targets out of (I stopped counting at 500) who knows how many targets I heard in that 20' by 50' area. The steel crown bottle cap is a flattened, aluminum foil covered Modelo. I knew it was a bottle cap from the FerroCheck feature and its target responses but I wanted to absolutely make sure since I also suspected that my Equinox and Deus 1 would have completely botched this target. When it came out of the ground my suspicions were totally confirmed. It sounded just like a US quarter but the Legend also told me clearly that it was a steel alloy target from the FerroCheck responses. The construction screw sounded like a silver chain, zinc penny coin spill with a little ferrous response mixed it. The Legend was actually telling me through the audio quality that this target had multiple raised surfaces which the Equinox and Deus 1 can also do too. This hunt was not about iron bias. This hunt was all about a normal, middle of the road recovery speed setting, non-ferrous/mixed ferrous target separation and the quality of the recovery speed implemented on a simultaneous multi frequency detector. It was also about non-ferrous targets partially masking each other. There was no time when I had just one target under the Legend's 11" coil. Two to four targets were constantly under the coil. So I dug 60 targets that were surface to 6" deep with a screwdriver in 1.5 hours on a bum leg while constantly watching my six and every other direction for possible trouble from some of the park's inhabitants. Cherry picking those US coins including a 1941 wheat penny and even a nickel was super easy. Had I been using my Equinox, I would have definitely used a very aggressive discrimination pattern and I would have dug more steel and aluminum bottle caps for sure along with lots of pull tabs since the Equinox does not have a FerroCheck feature or the extra 10 target IDs in the low to mid conductor range. I could name several outstanding detectors (one which I still own) that I absolutely would not take too a site like this........ been there and am still scarred from doing that. Hopefully, Deus 2 will be able to handle sites like this like the Equinox can somewhat and like the Legend handles with ease.

I had a delightful video call today with Dilek, Burak and the Nokta Makro engineering team about my updating issues. They were great and are addressing my problem. More to come.