Chase Goldman

To be a game changer, breakout player at this point in the technical evolution of this hobby Cygnus or any other detector newcomer needs to bring more to the table than just state of the art signal processing. It needs to have a fundamentally different detection principle under the hood than either induction balance or pulse induction. Simultaneous multifrequency (ML FBS+/Equinox Multi IQ/Garrett Apex Multiflex), multi channel ferrous cancellation PI (FT mpulse AQ), Zero Voltage Transmission (ML GPZ), and hybrid time/frequency domain processing (Tarsacci MDT) and the associated user interface improvements (visual and audible target ID and sophisticated junk discrimination) are all simply incremental and limited or niche, though welcome, improvements on a relatively crude and fully mature metal detection principle. Cygnus needs to bring a fundamentally different detection principle to the table combined with state of the art tech, (e.g., a compact, rugged, affordable hybrid induction detection and signal processing/GPR imaging tool) to really make people sit up and take notice. Otherwise, we are just ordering a different brand of ice cream. I sincerely hope Doc is working on a completely different dessert than ice cream because the hobby has plenty of ice cream brands right now and just lost one. BTW this in no way means that I think established MD manufacturers shouldn't continue to innovate with products like the Impulse, Apex, Equinox, GPZ, MDT, and Simplex (full featured affordability). Keep 'em coming. I'm just saying to make a splash and significantly change the game, a newcomer is going to have to really break some new ground (pun intended). I now return this thread to the regularly scheduled program, Impulse AQ, already in progress.

It is the new kid on the block by an extremely popular US detector company so it is naturally going to garner more excitement and a hype-like tone vs. Equinox which was at this same pre-release state nearly 3 years ago. There were some ultra-hype moments during that “craze” including skydiving promotions at international detecting festivals and mile-long pre-sale waiting lists at various dealers. Just the nature of the biz to talk up the new toy. The Apex comparisons to EQ are expected. Apex nicely fills the capability and value gap between the Vanquish and the Equinox 600. Way too early to tell for sure. I will say that the stock Apex coil is preferable to the EQ stock coil for those situations and will re-state my long-standing disappointment in ML ignoring detectorists’ requests to see elliptical coil offerings for EQ similar to what were provided with Vanquish.

No one has really forgotten about the Equinox - it is simply a fact that those who know detectors well and who are open minded enough to keep from being handcuffed by brand loyalty, probably already own one. The people who are talking about the Apex never heard of the EQ because it was not manufactured by Garrett. I am interested in Garrett's FIRST GEN multi rig and glad they have jumped into the race with a competitive machine that they can build upon - I plan to get one to see how they did. But it will not replace the EQ 800 by a long shot - heck it isn't even in the same league as the EQ 600 (see my comparison chart here) even if you consider price vs. performance/features. The Equinox represent's ML's FOURTH generation multi-frequency iteration. Garret is back in the game but they have been lapped a couple of times already and have a lot of catching up to do.

Rob - I've been using a Deus for over 5 years. 2 years ago I got the Equinox. They are a killer combo. Picked up a used Orx control pod/headphones last year and really like the Orx despite its limitations and have made some great relic finds over the last several months with it. Regarding ORX vs. Deus, under most conditions the ORX and Deus will give equivalent raw performance. That being said, the Deus' primary advantages over Orx are as follows: You already pointed this out, but it is to me basically the #1 shortcoming of the Orx and that is that you are locked into 3 tones. Furthermore, you are locked into fixed tone breakpoints. Deus allows you have basically 6 tone options - 2, 3, 4, and 5 tones, plus "Full" tones, and finally pitch audio. Plus you can vary the tone breakpoints as you see fit. My favorite relic hunting setup is using Pitch tone combined with iron audio. That basically gives me a two-tone setup - ferrous grunt and variable intensity pitch so that I can quickly pick non-ferrous out of bed of nails type iron junk situations. Great for cellar holes and other iron infested site situations. Also, underneath all of that, you are locked into target ID normalization across all frequencies. ID normalization has its advantages - it prevents high conductor target IDs from getting all bunched up into the 90's at high frequencies. But being able to switch off ID normalization, like you can do with Deus allows you to see how ID changes with frequency during target interrogation and that can clue you in to whether you might be swinging over a falsing/wraparound ferrous target. A ferrous target ID will change little with frequency manipulation whereas a high conductors, especially, will change ID signIficantly with frequency. You have a wider range of recovery speed settings (0 to 5) on Deus vs. Orx (1 - 3) and access to the silencer setting and can set it independent of or in conjunction with the reactivity setting. You have no direct control over silencer on the Orx - it is baked-in "under the hood" depending on which coin mode you are using. You can also vary the volume of iron audio on Deus whereas on Orx, it is fixed. You have 8 custom program slots available to you on Deus vs. just 2 on the Orx and the Deus allows you to scroll forwards and backwards through the various custom programs using the +/- keys. This enables you to set up similar programs adjacent to each other with slightly different key settings (such as frequency or tone) to enable you to quickly and easily interrogate a target. All that being said there are three things that I really like about Orx vs. Deus - the grab and go simplicity of the setup - sometimes it is good that you are constrained from overtweaking your machine. The ground grab feature for setting GB is superior on the Orx even though Orx lacks the automatic ground tracking ability of the Deus, the ground grab feature makes resetting your GB easy. I also like the display layout of the Orx better than Deus with the pop-up target ID window and iron probability graph. The big question is whether the above "advantages" of Deus over Orx are worth the present new price delta between Orx and Deus, which is around $700. I say nope! But if you can find someone trying to dump a Deus, with either the HF or the x35 9" or 11" coil, for cheap (i.e., for around $600 to $750 and I have seen these show up on various forum classified ads) then I say grab one. Especially since you have no fear doing battery surgery on the coils and on the control unit /headphones (which is relatively easy compared to the coil), if necessary. I would avoid getting one with an old LF coil. HTH Never owned a V3i - tried one out working as a metal detector tech advisor at an archeological site and the menus drove me nuts. Love my MXT and will keep that permanently in my collection as my homage to Whites demise - I have an affinity for analog knobs and switches and loved how you could manipulate the MXT to make it sing. It was and is a classic.

Mark - glad you're here and looking forward to your take on the Impulse and any other detector. I have always been generally aligned with your advice and general detecting philosophies on other forums, especially regarding beach hunting and respect your opinions and have often picked up valuable nuggets of advice from your postings. Welcome to DP.

You're right, he self-generates plenty of pressure and all the missed milestones must be disappointing, though not surprising as the schedule was impossibly aggressive from the get go under the most favorable of conditions. Better late than never - just hope it is as compelling as he has claimed because credibility erodes with every missed deadline. With FT and Garrett introducing some exciting new product entries into the hobby this summer and with White's biting the dust, coupled with the economic and supply line challenges of the pandemic, really is one of the worst times to attempt to break into the biz. Anyway, looking forward to your reports on the Impulse, the irony being Impulse has been 3+ agonizing years in the making by a team of experienced detector designers and an established detector manufacturer. So imagine the hill Doc has to climb...I do not envy that one bit. Anyway, enough Cygnus talk from me, we're here to find out more about Impulse and hope you have a great time putting it through its paces.

Well dontcha know - Cuda - glad to see you over here. Now that both you AND Joe have Impulses you can put even more pressure on Doc and his Cygnus project. Enjoy your new toy.

Are you talking MDT or Apex? if you are talking APEX, the Equinox already has the ability to GB and selectable frequency and I have used it to advantage in Culpeper (using gold mode) but have actually had more success with the Deus in hot dirt. Of course, when my arm and shoulder are up to it, my GPX is the best tool in that dirt.

Probably not. Steve racked out all the Tarsacci MDT specs here. Including: Looks like a wading machine that can take an occasional spill or dunking, but that's it. Wish the Garrett Apex was spec'd like this rather than just rainproof.

The safety hazard probably has little to do with electrical safety but the fact that lithium ion cell batteries are inherently thermally unstable and if the packaging is breached as a result of corrosive intrusion of say, salt water, into the battery compartment or mechanical damage to the battery pack (say from a poorly placed cutting blade) a thermal runaway fire could result. So while the risk is low, the consequence could be high. Whether XP Is overstating the risk, who knows. If you know what you are doing, great. If you don't, it is no laughing matter.

Yeah, those extended warranty companies are great until you actually try to collect on the warranty, then every obstacle and fine print clause against your ability to actually invoke it comes out of the woodwork. Never again... They make a guaranteed $45 or $75 or whatever you paid for it and you typically get a guaranteed runaround.

In general, I agree with you - take control of your own destiny - especially if you are confident and proud of your skill set and competency to do this on your own. It also appears that XP endorses these DIY kits for out of warranty repair. However, some folks don't have the skill to do this properly and to retain watertight integrity of the coil. I certainly would not do it while the battery warranty is still in effect since you are cutting into the coil. I understand your point that service quality varies across the board, but folks need to be careful about lumping all repair sites into blanket assertions of competency - though I know this is influenced by personal experiences. Believe me, I have experienced my share of service fails on detectors and just about everything else. That being said, the US XP repair center in particular (there is only one and the repair team is trained by XP) stands behind their work. I personally know many people who have used them without complaint or issue and Deus Handbook author and Deus expert, Andy Sabisch who I work with personally gives them high marks too. This post provides approximate repair costs in the USA for various XP Deus/Orx components and although a couple years old, the repair costs have pretty much been stagnant for the last several years. Finally, it is worth noting that white HF coils use an external battery pod that resides in the lower stem attached to the coil and is easily user replaceable without any watertight barriers needing to be breached for replacement. Regardless of the approach you take, simply do your due diligence and homework and make an informed decision. HTH

USA XP repair center will do this replacement for about the same cost as the kit if you are not an adept DIYer. If I were planning to use the coil in the water, I sure as heck would not trust myself to do that repair and be assured of a fully watertight coil on the back end of that surgery. I would pay to have it professionally repaced. I have owned my Deus for over 5 years and the batteries are still going strong, but I know I will have to bite the bullet now sooner rather than later. Not something a new Deus/Orx owner has to worry about for at least 4 to 6 years.

Clive, thanks for the writeup. I have not had much chance to use my Simplex much outside of my test garden. One thing I noticed there is that AM mode seemed to significantly lack depth and definition on target audio, while the same targets ring out great on Field, Park 1, and Beach modes. Have you noticed that? I actually find the "fast but shallow" Park 2 mode (which used to be the "old" Park mode pror to the last update) to be almost as bad as AM. The "new" Park 1 mode is pretty deep although with a slower recovery speed vs, Park 2. BTW in the above quote, did you really mean to say the "new Park 1"...mode as Park 2 is just the old Park mode from the original firmware.

Yep George just beat me to that fella who was selling his on Tom D's site. Missed it by that much. Dang. Enjoy it, George. If things don't quite work out with it, send me a PM.

It dissipates pretty quickly within 10 or so feet distant, anyway it is a good way to force social distancing. Frankly, if someone is within the interference zone that means to me they are too close anyway. Equinoxes will interfere with each other too but the fix is easy, one of the dete torists just need to run a noise cancel and the problem is solved. So I agree with Steve's advice to shift channels on either the Orx (via frequency shift) and/or the Equinox (via noise cancel).

Nope it sure doesn't. My hunting buddy who exclusively uses the Deus, won't let me fire up the Equinox nearby. In fact, I have been to contest hunts where the organizers ban use of the Equinox in multi mode. Go figure. I does spew some nasty harmonics out there.

Ok Captain, You have a lot of stuff going on here and I will try to address it individually. Why did you do that in the first place? As far as disc is concerned, just leave it at the mode default of 0, 1 or 2 as applicable, for now. Nothing is gained by cranking on disc, as you found out. BTW - how many tones are you typically running? I never buy the argument that you can't find a place to GB. Just turn the pinpoint mode on, swing the coil to a point where pinpoint is silent and pump the coil to GB there. Regardless, even if there is a huge variation in ground phase, it really should not result in a dramatic reduction in depth if not perfectly balanced. The main effect of improper GB on Equinox is just more ground noise (iron range grunts with TIDs of -9 to -7). In fact, people often mistake this ground noise for multiple ferrous targets (believe me, it's not). So the best method to determine if you have a target under the coil is to go to pinpoint mode. BTW - just as GB asked, what kind of trash are you encountering - ferrous or non-ferrous or both. Makes a difference in how you attack the site. If you are getting a lot of ferrous junk, then you will want to lower sensitivity and possibly increase recovery speed to enable you to "sift" through the ferrous. Lowering sensitivity lowers the propensity of the ferrous targets to overload the coil. Increasing the recovery speed setting enables you to unmask non-ferrous targets in the vicinity of ferrous targets. Using a 6-inch coil under those conditions helps you to fare even better. The deal hear is no at all about getting depth, but being able to hear those shallow keeper targets that have been masked and are invisible to detectors with slower recovery speeds. Coil control is also important - if you get a sweet, but intermittent, high tone. See if you can wiggle the coil across the target to lock into that tone repeatedly. If you can do that, then dig that keeper. I have no idea because I don't crank disk up that high, I seldom even use notch. In fact, I really prefer hunting with no disc using the horseshoe button as long as the iron is not too crazy. Otherwise, I just leave it at the mode default. If you want to disc out iron, don't set disc any higher than 2 and don't use disc to block out non-ferrous junk unless you are using basically a precision notch (e.g., 14 to 19 to knock of pull tabs an zincolns) and even in that case, I won't do it for fear of knocking out a gold target which can show up anywhere from 2 to 20+. I mostly hunt relics, so they usually fall right in the aluminum trash range. Try to hit sites without a lot of aluminum trash, but sometimes it just can't be avoided so you have to dig it unless you are experienced enough (which is a nice way of saying you have already dug a ton of aluminum) to know the tonal nuances associated with can slaw and bent tabs. You also said: How were you determining in the field which was the "better choice" between multi and 5 khz? Were you interrogating targets with multi and 5 khz or where you switching back and forth as you started getting less finds? Also, here is a little primer mode optimization for specific targets - Best general purpose mode is Park 1, it is also good for high conductors and larger targets. Field 1 is a great two-tone mode that also favors larger or more conductive targets. Park 2 and Field 2 are geared towards small targets, gold, and other primarily mid-conductive targets like nickels and brass/lead relics. Another variable is your iron bias setting. Too high and it can mask non-ferrous targets. Too low and you might be subject to more iron falsing. Note that iron bias is disabled while in single frequency. HTH.

Recognize also that unlike other detectors, Noise Cancel and GB settings are not universal to each multifrequency mode or even each frequency. To run an apples to apples test you should noise cancel and GB each mode and single Freq. separately and you may even find that the GB reading on the same patch of ground will be different for different modes. Also, I would suggest that you do your depth comparisons with discrimination removed (i.e., use the horseshoe button). Your observations seem atypical, so if these recommended normalizations and adjustments continue to show a huge disparity on depth performance, I would recommend contacting the service center. Good luck.

Wondered when this day was going to come. COVID just accelerated the inevitable.

Yes, it has a mini-plug for headphones. My only knock against the 340 is that it doesn't have a pinpoint feature. A skilled detectorist can get away without one, but I do like to see that feature available for new detectorists to limit plug size. Good beginning detector value, nevertheless.

Agree. Modern blazer button.

Looks like a face plate for a small padlock.

I'm a detector geek's geek, but I really can't get into this level of analysis on a feature we don't know much about on a tool that is inherently a crude instrument that is just measuring phase change and reactance vs. resistance based on induction balance for some metallic target that is obscured by the properties of the matrix of everything that is between the target and the coil. The best you can do is "infer" what the target is and let the programmers decide how they are going to process and interpret the target which is always going to be subject to human error because it is based on imperfect modelling of very complex, multi-variable physical parameters and principles. So, Chuck, I have no answers for you on why mixed metal coins ring up the way they do. I guess I would have to understand the models that formed the basis for the signal processing algorithms in Equinox and examine the source code. You think that is going to happen? We can't even get a straight forward layman's explanation of what Equinox is doing. When it comes down to it, metal detecting is more about feel than anything else. A metal detector, despite the technology (electronics, microprocessors, digital signal processing, etc.) is an inherently crude instrument. I detect mainly by feel, informed by a fundamental level of knowledge about what the settings roughly do in an ideal sense and then stick with what works for me. When I do get the chance to actually detect, which is not as frequently as I would like as I am still working and trying to put kids through college, I am really going for it and swinging the coil continuously for the few hours of bliss that I do have and that leaves little room for experimentation and rolling the dice on settings. I don't really have an ideal, tweaked machine philosophy. What I like to do is go with a nice, wide field general search program, detect a target and then quickly interrogate it using the versatility inherent in the machine I am using. That is why I prefer selectable multiple single frequency machines or multi-mode multi frequency machines like Deus and Equinox. Punch a button and illuminate the target with a completely different mode/frequency and see how the target responds and make a dig decision. Move around the target and try to lock in on the sweet signal if possible. Listen for tonal stability and distortion, iron buzz, determine the target footprint. I can do all that within about 10 to 30 seconds. I dig or move on at that point. As far as Iron Bias is concerned. I like F2 at the default. I know it might give me an edge off iron buzz, so I switch frequencies/mode to see what else happens to the target signal. All iron bias is there to do is to process what it interprets as a mixed ferrous/non-ferrous signal based on Multi F interpolation and cheat the tone over to ferrous. The degree to which it does that is determined by the IB setting. FE is limited to the middle of the range so it has a more subtle change in response over it's range. Whereas F2 has a wider dynamic range and is therefore more pronounced with each step change. In multi, I think there is always going to be some level of iron bias processing applied to the target even at the "0" settings. FE probably more so than F2. Bottom line, I prefer F2 but keep it near the default (4 to 6) and can't go much lower in my hot dirt and get any useful information when running in horseshoe mode. This is similar to Jeff's experience. Yes I am primarily a relic hunter but my best silver has come out of relic sites including several seated coins and a Mexican 1/2 reale. The silver targets were unmistakable. To be fair, however, I have not had as much F2 run time and most of my latest silver finds were with Deus/Orx. I probably have not found a silver (though plenty of clad) since the version 2.0 SW has come out. If you have multiple targets under the coil detection field including ferrous/non-ferrous, it can mask the non-ferrous which can work opposite to the recovery speed setting. Coil control and interrogation with multiple modes can help you make the decision or avoid a masked target. Simple as that. I can't describe coil control and feel because it has become second nature to me. I don't like to talk settings because, other than setting up a newbie, I basically dial in based on the site conditions and what is working and not working and go from there. If someone wants to nerd out in their test garden (Chuck I am talking to you and your 3-4-5 right triangle tubes), I think we have an opportunity to determine something a lot of us have just taken as gospel but have not actually tested for ourselves. Is F2 = 4 actually equivalent to FE = 0 as we have been preaching since last summer/fall or whenever Equinox 2.X software was released. Chuck you mentioned that at F2 = 6 you got an edge of iron buzz and decided to dial F2 all the way down to 0. If F2 = 4 is equivalent to FE=0 then you must have been getting an edge of iron buzz in FE =0 off deep coins for the entire time until Version 2 came out. But I can't believe that was really the case. Perhaps you can test FE vs. F2 settings on some deep silver in your test bed and see what the "false iron buzz" response on non-ferrous actually turns out to be. I know that at the beach deep quarters will give me an iron buzz but the ID is fairly stable and that is how I can tell them apart quite easily from high ringing but unstable bottle caps. Anyway, give it a shot. Meanwhile, I will hopefully get a chance to do some detecting this week and I plan on just going with the F2 defaults for now. HH everybody.

Just leave it at the default, if you don't have iron, it is not going to mask anything. You can give it a try, but F2 = 0 is just very chatty on land for me. I will not go below F2 = 4 which is equivalent to FE = 0. Have not had a lot of opportunity to beach hunt with F2 as it just came out at the end of last year's beach season for me and haven't been to the beach since. Don't over think it and if you have are curious, just set it to the setting you want and see what happens. If you are finding stuff, avoid the urge to tweak. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Nice ring.