Jeff McClendon

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.

I sent you a private message.

The Legend can already do that in its one tone Park, Field and Beach modes. It even has a changeable tone/threshold pitch and volume level in Gold Prospecting mode. As the pitch of the threshold tone is raised or lowered, the target tone also raises and lowers concurrently. Since its target tone is based on square wave VCO, it will raise and lower in pitch according to target proximity while the threshold stays on the same pitch. Very much like the Equinox 800.

I am on that limb with you. A square wave type VCO option especially in Park and Field modes would be awesome. So would at least a 2 tone option in Gold Field.

Wonder if the new M3 setting will be even more sensitive than M2 on smaller targets and if it will be included in Beach Mode……..? I also hope the next software version will be easier to update. I still haven’t been able to update to 1.07 from 1.05…….and mostly silence from Nokta Makro support even though I email them each week🤨.

It definitely is harder to maneuver in tighter areas and takes away from the GPX 6000's excellent ergonomics some. For EMI mitigation however, it is the only alternative at the moment and does surprisingly well with that. Minelab or somebody....please at least make an 11" or smaller DD coil for the GPX6000.

Have you tried using the 14” DD for making the 6000 less sensitive to tiny trash?

Are XP and Nokta Makro using the same engineers? Just kidding of course. Maybe there is another similarity (similar micro chips or other components) since both companies detectors are doing some really weird stuff. I was charging my Legend a couple of days ago and it just decided to turn itself on which scared the crap out of me. I shut it off and then 15 minutes later it did it again……….

Definitely thinking of you and your wife. I am glad you can come on here and share your situation with us too. I hope you can keep detecting more and more and that your wife will be able to go with you. The Legend is a very good, pleasant to use detector as you have found out. You made a good choice getter her one too. I hope you get to have some fun hunts soon.

Here is the active link.

I don't have any of the detectors you listed at the moment so I can't say. Also, none of those detectors is using quality SMF technology so I don't know if it would be a fair comparison. I will say that the Legend's abilities to identify ferrous/non-ferrous is far better than any Nokta Makro detector I have ever used (Gold Racer, Racer 2, Kruzer, Multi Kruzer, Gold Kruzer, Anfibio and Simplex) as far as clearly indicating a ferrous, mixed ferrous or non-ferrous signature for coin sized targets that are not at the edge of detection from my experience so far. All FerroCheck does is give a visual of the ferrous/non-ferrous signal strength and it is really just an adjunct to the outstanding target IDs and tone qualities of the Legend. On a single frequency detector with single VCO audio, and no target IDs like the ones you listed, (Gold Bug Pro in all metal) I would depend on those detector's iron probability visuals much more as a tool for identifying targets than I probably should......

I couldn’t agree more. I also don’t understand the negativity aimed at the FerroCheck feature by some unless it is coming from a lack of time using the Legend. It works very well within the limits that Nokta Makro set for it. Is it perfect…of course not. Is it reliable contrary to what a very famous YouTuber is claiming? It has been very reliable for me on iron targets, steel alloy targets and non-ferrous targets that are giving strong enough signals to be in range of this feature’s capabilities. I have hunted trashy parks on purpose with the Legend for the past 3 weeks. My non-ferrous to mixed alloy/ferrous ratio of recovered targets per hunt is around 60 non-ferrous to 1 or 2 ferrous and those are usually deeper iffy targets that turn out to be rusted iron nails that were out of range anyway. I have dug 4 rusted bottle caps in 3 weeks of almost daily hunts that fooled me. That is out of more than 800 targets recovered with the Legend during that time in thick bottle cap/pull tab trashed areas. Where I detect, that effective range is between 4 and 5” depth on coin sized objects which is plenty for the average steel crown bottle cap trashed sites around here. I have used several other detectors that cost up to double the price of the Legend that are not nearly as reliable for distinguishing shallower steel alloy trash…. I have not been able to use it yet for gold prospecting or large iron relic hunting. I expect FerroCheck will be even better with the user adjustable iron bias settings coming soon. Well done Nokta Makro.

Personally, I don't look at the buttons when I am detecting. I just need to learn the pattern layout or sequence. My pushing the wrong buttons comes from just using a different layout, not because I can't see them. Hope that makes sense. When I am detecting for coins and jewelry with the Legend, I press the ground balance button a few times during a hunt and the pinpoint button fifty or more times. I have accidentally hit and held the power button instead of the ground balance button a couple of times and I have hit and held the power button instead of the pinpoint button several times, so I would prefer the power button not be a long press for a full reset so my right thumb's lack of dexterity won't cost me my saved settings!!!

They are interchangeable between the WS4 and WS6.

Great report CPT-GhostLight. I will keep checking on your progress and hope you continue to enjoy Deus 2.