Search the Community

Took a trip to Nevada last week and met up with Steve and Steve. While I waited for them to show up at our meeting place I got out a few VLF metal detectors to try on some gold nuggets. Nothing conclusive here just though people would like to see how they perform. One difference between the Nevada soil and what I'm used to hunting is all the salt. All the detectors were subject to coil knock and really took some fine tuning to get them to run stable. Steve F later found that on the Deus 2 sensitive would probably be the best mode to run as it eliminates coil knock issues and is still pretty sensitive to small targets.

I'm definitely getting a DEUS II. I need the lightest machine available because of a worn out shoulder being replaced soon. Should I wait until the supposed bugs are addressed like lower shaft flex and other issues? Maybe other coil options I don't know.

I have the 3/8/22 version and I noticed they have a 3/11/22 version. Anyone updated to the 3/11 version? What changes did they make?

In an earlier post I addressed the issue of my remote control locking up but I thought I’d expand on it and provide a video link that talks about this frustrating event. Causes: There have now been multiple reports of the remotes locking up after at least one of two actions were taken which caused the malfunction. 1) Taking the remote beyond the range of the coil and then doing a frequency scan (noise cancel). 2) Pressing one of the buttons on the remote while the unit is actually in the scanning process. There may be other actions that cause this lock up situation but those two in particular have been directly linked to this malfunction. Prevention: Do not take your remote beyond coil range and try to do a frequency scan. However, I have taken a remote beyond coil range and conducted other actions without any adverse effects such as adjusting settings or creating a custom program. Secondly, DO NOT press any other button on the remote while the unit is actively engaged in the scanning process. This button pushing action seems to disrupt or “confuse” the software. Fix: In the event you experience a lock up you won’t be able to shut the unit down or activate any action at all. Your remote will be totally frozen. Since I always prefer the simplest fix, just allow the unit to completely run down the battery until it shuts itself off--mine took around 20 hours to shut down. After it shuts down, plug it into the charger and it will return to normal operation...at least mine did. Now I’ve read about another approach wherein the user took it upon himself to remove the back of the remote, disconnect and then reconnect the battery. He reported that this also served to return the unit to normal operation. However, following Dirty Harry’s sage advice, “A man has to know his limitations” I never considered doing this myself because I’m fully aware of my technical limitations! A Word of Caution: I've heard that disconnecting and then reconnecting the battery may cause or did cause the loss of custom programs. I didn't lose anything by just letting the battery run down on its own then connecting it back to the charger. Now the ultimate fix is for XP to address this in a future update. I have reported this to the right folks at XP and I’m sure they’ll analyze it and take the appropriate action.

I have an Equinox 800 with 4 coils. I am able to pull a silver dime from 16" with the 15" coil when the soil is moist. The 5x10 is excellent at separation, but it obviously is not as deep as the 15". Having never had a Deus I, I'm looking for advice from others whether or not to pull the trigger on a Deus II with our extremely mild soil in FL (0 ground balance on the Equinox).

Toddy detects and grids a small Mediterranean volcanic/black sand beach with his new Deus 2. He has trouble ground balancing.......maybe he does not know how to use the Magnetic Ground-Beach part of the ground balance menu???? He uses Beach and Beach Sensitive anyway. There is some falsing during wave action and at the ends of swings that aren't level....but no real issues. Seems to work just fine. Extremely long, boring, lots of broken up signals on steel core European Union coins and a stainless steel ring from the wash at the end. He does switch to the external speaker after about 5 minutes. I speak English with a North Georgia accent and I'm Scotch Irish. Todd speaks English too but holy cow.......his Scotch English accent is off the charts.

Took the Deus ll to Riverfront Park here in Corvallis, OR. It is a popular place where people like to eat lunch, hang out, lay on the grass, play catch and take their pets. There is a large grassy area that I have detected before, but never actually covered it thoroughly. I just had a feeling that there could be a ring in there. This time I started at one end and started working my across back and forth, moving over a few steps each time across, working towards the other end. I had covered about 3/4 of the area when I got a 67 signal on the Deus ll. About 4 inches down was this man's wedding ring. It is marked "Benchmark 10k", and weighs 6.9 grams. It looks more gold colored in the picture because of the lighting, but it is actually 10K white gold.

Not all inclusive and just done in air to try to identify the range of gold items. I didn't test all on hand just enough to realize how big of a range gold does fall in on this machine. I used Beach Sensitive for the test....11" coil...your results could vary! Notice how the square tab falls right in the middle of the test pieces range. But you knew that I'm sure..... Cliff

I am trying to get a good answer on what waterproof plug to use on the Deus II. I have used the Excalibur II for years and now have the Deus II. The Excal can go from dry to wet sand to water and back. The manual for the Deus II states that the black plug is used for terrain and can be submerged to 1 meter When you use the Deus II for diving you use the red plug. My question is the black plug enough at 1 meter not to flood,? Do I have to use the red plug each time I take it into the water. I hunt in the water up to my neck and also do wet sand here in Florida. I want to get a good answer before I submerge it for the first time with the black plug only to find out I should have used the red. Any advice from anyone who has submerged the detector and works the beach like I do would be greatly appreciated. Best regards. Happy Hunting

I finally got the chance to hit an old permission and get my D2 in the dirt for the first time after only hunting the wet sand. For reference it's a "company park" for a farm labor rancho about 2 acres in size. I've hunted here for years with an MXT, ATpro, D1, V3, and Nox 800. I wasn't expecting much but that wasn't the point, I wanted to get 2-3 hours on grass and learn a new mode. I chose Park, switched to 4 tones instead of 3, lowered my reactivity to 1.5 (from 2.5) did a frequency scan and ground balanced and off I went. It took all of about 3 minutes for my ears to adjust and I started digging nearly everything that was solid, sweet sounding and repeatable. The D2 is like a hot knife through butter. It was so easy to isolate targets and zero in on them even though there were other targets all over. This place has seen a ton of beer related parties over the past 60 years so there is a ton of beaver tails, pop tops and can slaw in the ground amongst the coins and you could still separate easily. I can't get over how solid the TID is at depth. I got a deeper (fainter) signal that was a solid 90. By the time I finally got the penny out of the hole the depth was an inch beyond my MI6 resting in the hole. The other thing is the tonal nuance. I get it now. You can hear the target and tell if you want to dig it or not. An example is the nickel. I dug my first one today that rang up as a 62. The tone was just so sweet sounding. It never deviated from 62. I then hit a 62 that moved to a 63 and back to a 62. Dug it and it was a pop top. Hit a 61 that bumped to a 62 and back and it was a 1927 buffalo nickel. I hunt for nickels because I hunt for gold and I dig all nickel signals. I ended up digging 8 more nickels today and all were 62. Every 62 was a nickel. Every time I got a 62-63 I dug those too just to see. Every 62-63 was a crap aluminum pop top. I'm convinced that if you take the time to learn each program that is specific to what you do hunt and want to hunt you will clean up. I only used Park today because I want to know it thoroughly before I move to Deep HC. The 27 Buff shows me that a site is never hunted out and you just need to slow down and take your time. The D2 is not a complex detector to use. Your job is take the time to understand what each option is and what it does and if you get lost just turn it off, take a deep breath and turn it back on. The other thing I would caution folks against is testing it against your other detectors or spending hours in your test garden. Get out there and dig every signal for a couple of hours and see what everything is in it's natural state, make mental notes (or keep a little notebook in your pocket and record the finds) and enjoy detecting. Stop worrying about whether or not its better than the other detector you had and get out there. You don't go around comparing your wife to your old girlfriends so it should be the same with your new detector. Read the forums to learn something and remember if you don't dig it you won't find it. Stop looking for perfection and EMI problems. I found no gold today but that only means I have a better chance of finding it tomorrow. The D2 puts a smile on my face. I hope you have as much fun using yours as I am mine.

Hey fellas, Laugh,poke,snarl,all takes welcome, i think serious questions must be asked and understood imho. My experience to this post 4hrs hunting/similar testing. I did find 6-10 non ferrous items in a very nail polluted site,small site that I've used atpro/multi kruzer/equinox 800 on tens of hours to long (no non ferrous in a long time) until d2. That's a big $1600 I'm ok with. In my small town I can crank gain to 100 in gen,relic,fast (all I've used) and it's super quite running feet from nox also. I'm certain when I figure the unit out I will love it and my finds in trash will go up as I told it above I've already seen it! My issues I need more understanding of may or may not be issues of others. When testing 7,8 inch dime and 3 ringer (I think 8" but for complete honesty maybe it was 7".) In stock settings the sound was so faint I could easily see myself or others not realizing that whisper was a hit!? Coming from nox and testing nox on same targets its loud/clear and I'm used to the tone so it's way different. I was worried about the loosing nuance turning up audio output so did not change from stock settings. My observations are changing reactivity from 3 to 2 gains significant depth and so on with each move as in alot bigger difference from changing it on the nox(folks coming over with no deus experience take note). Changing audio output from 4 to 5 and 6 in my testing today made 9"quarter go from a sound easily passed up to loud and clear which is to me pretty big also everyone should know just how big of a difference it seems to make. More on that even to 6 it didnt seem to greatly affect the depth nuance as I was initially worried about atleast not relative to difference in tonal hit. My initial observation is the audio notched up 1 or 2 gains 1-3 in depth (not gain but makes you hear it when you could otherwise not or think the whisper is emi/ground!?) This is a very big thing to me, if what I think happened actually happened its huge and everyone should know. To a lesser degree the difference in reactivity coming from a 8 digit scale (nox) to 5 the deus2 is very different to me anyway. I've never noticed a big difference in reactivity changes affecting the nox like d2 when a 3 getting a faint passable hit to 2.5,2 smacking it hard. The $1600 price tag should rule out what happened today and seems to be affecting many more people!? I initially wrote this complaint off to just bias but found out that can vary greatly. At home very quiet smooth operation but fast forward to 7hr drive south to mid georgia testing at hotel emi was unfixable and terrible! Checked every freq,freq scan many times none of this helped the slightest and btw I tried greatly to find a excuse or legit reason to help swallow this huge issue for $1600 could not come up with anything. Although I could hear a 9" quarter every few sweeps the emi would cover or crackle the hit up and make it very likely one would miss good signals! It was as bad as equinox first fired up high gain no noise cancel held out in air! Couldn't be helped in any way besides gain on 80 and then it was just quieter from decibel not issue better. This issue,silent emi, I havent seen, but fo me very big things considering they cause the unit to fail at the very thing it's not supposed to fail on DETECTING METAL!? Many things or opinions on how important these few things are and I'm certain many will try rationalizing to the point of dismissal. These things can't be dismissed on a $1600 unit!!?? Although I'm lukewarm on it atm I do see myself being in love(heavily biased) if theses seemingly small but with logical thought(if silent emi and loud ass emi are causing non hits/crackled out audio=non hits) they not only can't be dismissed they are plain dissapointment for a purchase this big!? Imagine buying a arsenal sam7k-44 krink and it only going bang most of the time!? We wouldn't except it so it's kinda same. Once more the audio,reactivity not issues but greatly affect signal much more than anything I've used or to my experience it seems!? Like myself any fellas not on the deus commanding officer list this observation especially the audio output can be the difference of hating this rackety unit and loving/excepting performance to price point!? I know I should have paid more attention in english years back but I didn't,I ramble,I run on,I structure poorly please look over and hope you all can get the jist of it and leave feedback. Even if its hateback bring it on in and don't hold back,I'm just attempting to understand this thing to the point of comfort so I can confidently beep things! Easily dismissed but huge difference in faintest squeak to unmissable hard smacking squak imo(cant be undersold if were actually here to help one another)?

As the title says 20hrs of the Deus 2 after hammering the yard for nearly 20 years. Before the Deus 2 I ran the 13” ultimate coil on the V3i for 4 years in this yard and every other coil as well. I would often go an hour without digging a non ferrous target. The pictures shows my results of the Deus 2. 20 minutes after finding the 1864 2 cent I found the gold pen quill👏

I took about a half hour with the D2 on visible schist bedrock that was loaded with trash and steel bits from the original blade that pushed this gully. I tested the D2 with a .3 gram nugget. It hit 33 to 36 TID in the Goldfield program. The machine ran quiet and separated the trash from nonferrous quite well with the 11" coil. It locked on 2 small lead fragments that ID'd at 40. Close enough that that I was pretty confident if any half grammars were present it would have sniffed them out. Naturally, it would not be my go to gold detector, especially in this configuration with the 11" coil. But, I was impressed with its ability to run in heavy ferrous trash and convincingly hit on the nonferrous lead.

I detected an old house in a thickly settled are in Eastern Mass. yesterday and experienced an unbelievable amount of EMI (9" coil). The Deep HC program was unusable, as were pretty much all the other programs (even mono). I did automatic and manual frequency adjustments, turned down the sensitivity, ground balanced. Nothing made a difference. Curiously, the Park program worked mostly fine. The houses are very packed together, 30-50 feet apart. Power lines ran on the far side of the street, and there was a drop line running above the front yard. I noticed similar behavior on the green strip in front of my house. Do power lines across the street have that much of an effect on the Deus II? That would cut out a whole bunch of my usual sites. Else, does anyone have any suggestions?

Just tested Deus 2 on a little and thin piece of foil..I’ve used as usual my hematite stone which is extremely mineralized. So, I’ve a new program for mineralized soils: its name is Focus 1. It’s based on prog. 2 but with Pitch, disc 6, iron volume 4, audio response 6, recovery 3 and ground stabilizer 1. Ground Stabilizer is very important to reach depth...on mineralized soils for sure. And here is a little video. Sorry for the very low quality..

I sometimes think we or at least I don't give metal detector manufacturers enough credit for how much work actually goes into making our metal detectors, I think this is partially because they seem to make mistakes with the most simple of things like shafts twisting on brand new detectors when doing nothing out of the ordinary or coil ears breaking because they're made of the worlds thinnest plastic for no real reason, really stupid things that gives the impression there must be some foolish people involved with development. I've experienced it myself with my Equinox shaft being wobbly, my CTX ears breaking on a few month old 17" coil, a Pro Sonic with an upside down decal, a Simplex with a wobbly shaft that I had to buy a replacement carbon fiber shaft to fix, a Gold Monster that's shaft kept coming unscrewed when using it since day 1, a GPZ that sometimes completely loses audio changing from normal to difficult or back, and when I contact Minelab about it they say yes it's a bug in the software, I asked if it's going to be fixed, and I get told it's not, the list goes on and on and I could keep going. Then there is the other side of it, the electronics involved and that's where the magic to me happens and perhaps its where the manufacturers put in a majority of the effort, well I sure hope it is as the other side of the products can be quite dismal. Most brands seem to suffer from similar traits, weak or poorly designed housings and leaks with dodgy shafts being the most common, which pass all tests from by the manufacturer with flying colours only to demonstrate their weakness in the first few weeks once they're in users’ hands, sometimes its software issues with firmware updates being rush out only days or weeks after a detectors release. It's lucky they use crash test dummies and thoroughly test cars differently to how they test metal detectors or we'd be driving cars that's chassis buckles going over a speed bump leaving the car sales yard or the speedometer is too small for many to see and stereo systems where the backlight turns off 1 second after you press a button so you can't see what you're trying to do 🙂 Or perhaps self-driving cars that have software glitches causing them to crash, oh, wait.... Jokes over, I quite like XP's style, they don't flood the market with a lot of the same detector under various names with a different blast of paint and some slight modifications, new detectors are few and far between but when one does come out it's vastly different than the previous model. Such is the case with the Deus 2 over the first implementation. I was stumbling around doing my research as I'm looking for a reason to buy a Deus 2, so far, I've not found one but at least I'm trying 🙂 I found just how long the Deus 2 has been in development, or at least an indication of how long, back in April 2016 XP (Sarl Xplorer) as they seem to be called according to the box of my MI-4 Pinpointer and their trademark applications they filed for a Trademark on the name "FMF FAST MULTI FREQUENCY". This means they were likely already making and testing a "Fast" multi frequency detector back in 2016, and it was finally released as we know in 2022. That is at least a 6-year development cycle, I would guess quite a bit longer seeing they already had the foresight to call it Fast multi frequency. Here is their FMF trademark information You can see the full thing here: https://uspto.report/TM/79189696 It makes a little more sense now that when Nokta first announced they were making the Legend way back a few years ago with a naming contest it was quite premature doing so when detectors like this obviously take years in development, at least to make a good one as we found out by the years of waiting for the Legend to come to market after its announcement, likely some bizarre marketing decision to start the hype building long before its release I guess, my brain doesn't work as a marketing person, their decisions never make much sense to me. I guess I'm being a bit premature being excited about Nokta's Gold PI too, as we've seen with the First Texas attempt at a PI water machine and gold machine years in development before release seems a normal practice, it's just with companies like XP and Minelab we don't really hear about it until it's near ready, I think that is the best approach in the end as both the Legend and First Texas PI release methods have caused quite a lot of frustration with it seems to be a large part of their potential customer base, often it's forgiven quickly when the final product comes out but it's best not to cause the ruckus in the first place. Nokta's rightly checking what prospectors want in a PI, and market research is a wise thing to do for a brand that's not currently in that market space and I'm very pleased they're doing that, and hopefully lessons have been learnt from the Legend release. Minelab seem to keep their releases quite secretive, at least from me, First Texas releases just breeze past me as they're been so regular, they're probably up to the F75 Version 15 Update 2 Boost enhanced version 3.6 by now, I wonder how many F75 fans have 15 F75's if they upgrade to each new version. Their product line is a bit of an overload so nobody cares anymore. Garrett's due for a high end SMF, not a peep out of them but it just has to be coming, hopefully soon but better not rushed, and judging by how long XP worked on theirs, it may be a while yet, hopefully the adage good things come to those who wait applies here as I'd like Garrett to have a successful SMF, I really like the look of the Apex.

I've been hearing about the D2 coils having a considerably shorter run time per charge than the remote and headhones, depending on the programs used, in some cases only lasting 4 hours or so. If that is the case, will the XP Emergency Charger work on the D2 coils and can you still detect while charging the coil (in a dry environment only, of course)? XP Emergency Charger

hi guys, speaking of deus 2,if we are in a field full of Roman brick and iron looking exclusively for silver coins, there could be settings to cancel the audio tone of the Roman brick and discriminate iron targets with the grave tone of iron, leaving all the other targets free to be detected correctly with sound and ID the roman brick which ID has on the deus 2? can you cancel without disturbing the good targets?

This morning have been in the little wood where I want to organize my test bed. During the last depth test I dug a 18 inches hole while this one is a 20 inches hole, a really extreme depth test. Same coin, 50 euro cent. Weak signal, very difficult test but Deus 2 managed to detect the coin. The signal on the 18” hole was much stronger and I think that, covering the hole, coin was no longer perfectly flat. Settings were extreme: prog 6 with sensitivity 98, reactivity 0. But I stupidly didn’t lower ground stabilizer that on program 6 is set to 3 by default. I think the result would certainly have been better. I’ll try again in the near future..

Just recently received Deus 2, noticed Manual shows factory settings for Program 1 (General) Discrimination 7 and remote shows 10. Haven't done any updates yet. Anyone have latest update and what does it show?

Has anyone had problem, albeit small one, with getting remote out of the case? Mine fits rather tight and gets hung up in the cutout on the back where the recharging cap protrudes past the case.

The Deus II arrived this morning so I’ll give you a run down of the first testing day.. To be honest my first impression when I took the Deus II out of the box wasn’t good.. It looks like a kid’s toy.. I’m glad XP didn’t paint them red or yellow, I’d send it straight back.. Once I got over the shock of how light and toyish it feels I realised what a heavy beast the Equinox is, especially with a 13x15’’ or 15’’ coil.. The pistol grip is a winner, plus the Deus II is nicely balanced but that can’t be too hard if there’s hardly any weight to balance.. One initial thing that’s got me a bit spooked is the stand-by light on the coil.. It was already flashing when I opened the box and hasn’t turned off yet! Is this normal? I’d have thought it would turn off after a certain time to save the battery.. If this is not normal, how can I turn the bloody thing off? It keeps on blinking once every 4 seconds even when the control box (or Remote Control in XP speak) is turned off.. I’ve not tried smashing it against the wall yet, but I’m getting close.. Anyway, I worked out how to run it on program 11 Beach and headed down to (you guessed it) the beach.. I was keen to see how it compared to the Equinox so I whacked on an 11” coil for the occasion.. Whilst on the job, the first thing that struck me about the Deus II was that the display on the Remote Control is bullshit.. Far too much information for the beach (or anywhere else).. The target ID only flashes up when the detector has spotted something (it doesn't stay on the target display), the rest of the time it shows you a whole load of stuff which is not important.. I know it’s a different story for prospecting but do you really need to know that the coil is still attached? I do like the ferrous/non-ferrous indicators on the sides of the display, they seem to be pretty accurate.. I tend to listen to what the detector is telling me before checking the screen to confirm what I’m hearing.. With the Equinox the target ID is there for the world to see but with the Deus II the small numbers get lost amongst all the bullshit.. Even then, as soon as you’re not over the target anymore it jumps straight back to telling you what program you’re in (which you already know because you’ve just set it).. I’m also not too sure about the little white numbers on a black background, if XP had filled the whole screen with them it would’ve worked better.. I’m sure it’s a matter of getting used to it and blah, blah, blah but this stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.. I realise it’s only cosmetic and what really matters is under the hood, but I’d have thought this was pretty basic stuff to get right.. Anyway, back to the beach.. I did the usual scenario of burying different things (coins, gold rings and other small jewellery) at different depths in dry and wet sand.. My first impression is that the Deus II is NOT better than the Equinox on the beach.. it’s not worse but it certainly isn’t any better.. I could find every target no matter how small or deep with both the Equinox and the Deus II.. This was both a relief and disappointment.. Relief that my Foxy Noxy hadn’t been knocked off its perch and disappointment that the huge amount of cash I paid for the Deus II didn’t buy me a whole lot of difference.. I knew this would be likely (and in my defence I did buy it as a scuba detector) but I did live in hope.. I know it’s early days yet.. I’m still running the Deus with the speakers on the Remote Control and haven’t tried the headphones yet (they’re still in the box).. Also I’m not used to the tones and am still mucking around trying to get them right.. Are the tone settings universal like the Equinox or do you have to set them each time you turn it on? I’m trying to get out of the 3 tone setting the Deus uses in program 11 to get it to 5 tones.. Does it remember your settings? I’m still figuring stuff out by pushing buttons, guess I’ll have to read the manual.. But even if I get this all sorted, I don’t think that on my beaches the Deus II will outshine the Equinox.. Underwater is a different story.. I’ll be taking it for a dive tomorrow (I was going to take it today but old matey took so long to fill my tank, only just got it back).. So I’ll keep you posted on how my new Nox-Lite performs in the drink..

I want to do the V0.6 update now that it appears to be safe to do so. Now, I apologize for my utter lack of computer skills but I need some help. I don’t have a PC but can use a windows based laptop at work, or my wife’s laptop. I’ve updated my equinox a couple of times but when I go to XP update page and download I get a program updaterdeusIIupdate.zip and cannot open it. The video instruction by Gary says it will ask if you want to have it on your home screen but I don’t get that prompt. The zip file does not open. What am I doing wrong? Help would be appreciated. Thsnks

I used the Diving program today, but with: Discrim 0, Full Tones, Sensitivity 95, Reactivity 0, Audio type PWM A low frequency-weighted, deep, stable beach program which worked well on relics today.

I had a chance to observe a D2 with 11” coil recently, and overall was impressed by what I saw. Seemed just ok on mid to low conductors, but excellent to superior on high conductors. Decided to get back on the order list based on what I saw, thinking it may do better than I thought on silver in my parks. That in mind I switched from 9” to 11” coil, as I’ve decided other units will do better on gold, especially nugget detecting, and that was main reason I wanted the 9” coil, as alternative to 6x11 nugget coil. But for deep silver, I’m thinking the 11” has the edge. What I did not like was lower rod movement that seemed far in excess from what I remember on my two previous Deus 1 units. Less the rod itself, then slop in the cam lock mechanism. Not sure, but my previous impressions were the XP S shaft was the best of the best. This one… barely ok out of water, and I’d think a disaster swinging in water against resistance. Anyone else seeing this, or is it a problem isolated to my buddies detector?