Interesting Beach Test, D2 Failing On A Broken Gold Ring

[Steve Herschbach]

Broken rings are a classic problematic item for any detector, not a situation to panic over. An intact ring is a circuit, a near perfect target. A broken ring breaks the circuit, and the very same ring can become near invisible. If the disc is set right, breaking the ring can drop it below the disc setting, eliminating the ring entirely. This is widely reported and known in jewelry hunting circles, with all detectors.

If you want to get deeper into it, gold targets overlap the ground balance range, and eliminating either salt or any ground, eliminates a certain class of gold target. In PI nugget hunting circles this is known as “the hole”, when nuggets get eliminated by a certain ground balance setting. This happens with low end targets like a broken gold ring, and it depends on the ground balance or salt elimination settings (when available). You can air test for this by using a single digit target id item, and testing with salt balance on or off. Also test same item, running ground balance to both extremes. Note that at certain ground balance settings the item will get weaker, or disappear entirely.

What this means is a person on a low mineral locations will see different results that people in high mineral locations, not just because of the mineralization, but because the more aggressive ground cancellation settings may be affecting the target. Most metal detector testing and reporting is inherently flawed, because people do not report Fe3O4 results, and use ground balance settings as a flawed methodology for determine how bad the ground is. Comparing detector results without knowing the exact ground composition is a crap shoot at best, and can be a waste of time in many cases.

As a rule I tend to favor tests with U.S. nickels, as being a decent substitute for a medium size gold ring or gold nugget. It is a standard widely available to most people, and eliminates these types of problematic items for comparative purposes. Anyone not having the specific ring used in this test, is simply guessing about how well it might do on any other detector.

Some of the weird extremes in Deus 2 reporting make me wonder if there is a bad coil issue, or some other bug, in play here. People under similar situations are at times reporting complete opposites in performance.

[mcjtom]

32 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

gold targets overlap the ground balance range, and eliminating either salt or any ground, eliminates a certain class of gold target

What would be the range of possible GB type signal elimination on Nox ID scale? Somewhere within low negative to slightly positive IDs?

[Jeff McClendon]

Steve described the difficulty of detecting broken jewelry and open hoops earrings very well

Savannah Harps is an experienced Deus 1, Orx and Equinox user/beach hunter and YouTube videographer with a good reputation (Comments ON) and 3.7K subscribers.

That being said, he is still learning Deus 2 and its brand new beach programs.

Looking at his settings that he described and one could easily see on the Equinox when he showed the actual video segments depicting his finding of those two targets, he was hunting in 2 tone Beach 2 with nothing rejected and sensitivity above 20. Both targets were found in wet sand/shallow surf. The broken ring responded with solid audio and target ID of 3 and the open hoop responded with solid audio and target ID of 1. Depth was approximately 1/2 of a full scoop so less than 4".

Target IDs of 1 to 3 on the Equinox corresponds to a target ID in the upper 20s to upper 30s on a Deus. Like the Equinox, those are borderline ferrous/non-ferrous targets on a good day and well within the window where any kind of ground/salt/iron filtering can have an effect on target response.

He was keeping his iron volume level on Deus 2 at 1 which is the minimum volume level and set iron tone pitch at a very low 100 Hz (for a noisy beach) with tone break at 9.5, I think he also stated that his second tone bin tone was also set at 100 Hz with low volume and with tone break at 10, bottle cap rejection on 4, salt sensitivity from 7 to 9. Basically he was running Deus 2 Beach Sensitive which is default 3 tones with the 2 lowest tones set at 100 Hz with very low volume levels for a noisy beach and discrimination set at 10. 3rd tone should have sounded high on anything above 10 in theory.

Anyway, I don't think some of his settings for his custom program built on Deus 2 Beach Sensitive were helping him with those two very borderline targets very much.

[Steve Herschbach]

24 minutes ago, mcjtom said:

What would be the range of possible GB type signal elimination on Nox ID scale? Somewhere within low negative to slightly positive IDs?

There is a gold target that mimics every ground balance setting possible, and in nugget hunting it is an endless variety of size, shape, matrix mix, and most importantly, varying alloy compositions due to naturally occurring mixed metals. All filters, disc filters, ground balance filters, salt filters, come at a cost. Which is a nice way to say I don’t know, and am not going to take the time to test a thousand gold nuggets from locations all over the world to find out. Somebody with a jewelry store could test every ear ring, thin chain, and oddball small pendants, and get an idea. I just know it’s true, and as a result in my gold detecting, I tend to run with as few filters engaged as is absolutely possible, and hate a quiet detector, because that means over filtering at work. People saying the D2 runs super quiet is actually a red flag for me, but presumably I can make it noisier. 

[Jayhop]

I just saw Calabash rebuttal. He said he could hear the Deus II sounding off on the targets. 

So I watched the video again and turned the volume way up on my TV. The Deus was slamming the broken ring. I have really bad hearing but I could hear that. I wonder what his volume was set at?

I think I heard the open hoop also. 

[Gwcracker]

I watched the video as well. What I did notice is Savannah Harps found the targets he used for testing previously. Calabash bought his test targets from a pawnshop. Hello?

[GhostLands]

My point of view👍

[Mick93]

Had to check this out myself,  small hoop gold.    Stock settings,,,,,,, Closed D2 would hit it in all modes, open it couldnt see it at all without rubbing on it Except in gold mode and the new program 14,,,, vdi 28-31,,, .  Same with 11 inch and 9 inch coil.   So took nox800 same way stock settings. 800 hit well closed in all modes vdi 1,,,,,, open hoop and no see ems ,nothing in any mode except gold and park 2...     hmmmmmmmmm.

[Skull diver]

Unluckily I think everyone will do at his own expense a personal test and related conclusions.

Too much variables, starting from ground, settings, volumes, tones and kind of tones...The list is longer, You know what I mean.

I also remember on the Nox, as well on other machines, that discrimination under the 0 level can help in some occasions.

Salt sensitivity still is a doubt filter, considering that days ago someone said the manual reports slightly less foil/gold/low conductors detection with higher level at 9...

I think the opposite thing and I might be wrong.

(I still have the manual, not the machine)

F..K😑

[Skull diver]

9 minutes ago, Skullgolddiver said:

Unluckily I think everyone will do at his own expense a personal test and related conclusions.

Too much variables, starting from ground, settings, volumes, tones and kind of tones...The list is longer, You know what I mean.

I also remember on the Nox, as well on other machines, that discrimination under the 0 level can help in some occasions.

Salt sensitivity still is a doubt filter, considering that days ago someone said the manual reports slightly less foil/gold/low conductors detection with higher level at 9...

I think the opposite thing and I might be wrong.

(I still have the manual, not the machine)

F..K😑

Ok...I'm editing myself what I stated and I want to add something on it...

The only way to explain this filter in my mind is this:

considering low frequency, susceptible to emi and high frequency susceptible to ground, the salt sensitivity matches a lower frequency bias on 9 and an higher frequency bias on 1...

A crossed filter...

Feel free to throw rocks on me, but I swear this is the only reasonable way I have to figure it out.😂