Deus 2 - Gold On First Hunt..

[Sinclair]

Took the plunge and went Deus 2 - simply because I can use my favourite headphones.. Minelab lost me there. I'll keep the Nox, though - great machine which never let me down the past 5 years.

The Deus certainly is one quirky machine..!
A lot of small details could have been solved better imho.. Charging system, display, menu structure, stem, antenna cabling.. we'll see, how it works out.
CF lower shaft is on its way.

First outing I felt like a beginner.. dude.. have to get used to the tones and still can't decide, if I stick with PWM or sqaure.
Went to the beach ... second target sounded like crap.. 52-53 - I've dug it anyway 🤠
To my surprise a super thin 14k gold ring popped out of the hole - maybe 7-8 inches down. I could't believe it 😅

Additionally I've found 13€ of clad during the 2 hours hunt - not bad, considering a friend of mine found 6€ with his Deus 1 😁

 

[palzynski]

47 minutes ago, Sinclair said:

 have to get used to the tones and still can't decide, if I stick with PWM or square.

Personally I prefer the square tone , it is more "musical" and softer than PWM which is a little too agressive for me .  Anyway I appreciated to change my XP audio after having used PWM during hundreds ( thousand ? 🙂 ) hours since my Goldmaxx in 2007 and my Deus1 in 2013 ..

Congrats for your gold ring , its a good start with your new D2 ... 🙂

[Jeff McClendon]

If you are using software version 1.10, you have the option of High Square tones which is a much livelier and brighter version of Square tones at least for my hearing. 

Great finds.

The very quirky design decisions of Deus and Deus 2 fit some people and simply don't fit others. Deus 2's audio theme choices make it much easier and painless for me to deal with. Like palzynski, I suffered from listening to hours and hours of PWM audio for many years.

[Sinclair]

Yes, I think square sounds most "Minelabbisch".
High square adds some weird "honk" / overdriven sound, if the target is very close to the top - similar as with PWM imho.

And then you have the new Audio Filter and the endless combinations with 2-3-4-5 or fulltones / pitch with variable tonebreaks.. let alone the EQ 😄
My Minelab is fairly customized in that regard. On the Deus, I'll leave the tonebreaks etc. stock for the moment I think.

[midalake]

4 hours ago, Sinclair said:

The Deus certainly is one quirky machine..!
A lot of small details could have been solved better imho.. Charging system, display, menu structure, stem, antenna cabling.. we'll see, how it works out.
CF lower shaft is on its way.

Awesome first trip out. Good job on the gold. 

YES, to everything else you said, and it does not age like wine over time. 

[Chase Goldman]

The interoperability and reconfigurability of the modular wireless components (and weight savings) enables a lot of customization and is perhaps the biggest strength of the totally wireless ecosystem.  It does come with the obvious drawbacks associated with charging all the tinker toys (especially with the clunky coil clips and outdated usb connectors) and antenna claptrap for submerged operation and coil selection/price.  But the added customization/configurability of the audio and tone options (Hi-square was a great sonic compromise between Square and PCM)) and raw performance also make up for those downsides.  My only remaining "wants" from XP are a small elliptical coil for D2 (like the D1) and perhaps a high frequency (>40 khz) monofrequency capability on Goldfield/Relic modes.

Congrats on the gold.

[CPT_GhostLight]

Congrats on your gold ring, Sinclair, well done!

The D2 is a different critter for sure. I came from the Nox as well and it took me a while to learn its language, in fact I'm still learning, but in High Sqr audio, it is the most expresive detector I've owned and when you get used to the sounds, it will tell you much more about what is hidden in the ground. Get out with the D2 alot and listen to eveything you dig and learn its sounds. Dig things that think are bad signals at first to learn what trash sounds like too. Then dig iffy signals and sometimes you'll be surprised with gold, as you have already seen. A crappy signal can be a good signal influenced by other crap near it in the ground. Turn and sweep on crappy signals and if the ID stays the same, dig it!

Happy Hunting! 😎

[Chase Goldman]

Oh, and as far as the saltwater beach/dive modes go.  I recommend turning off Magnetic Rejection and using the maximum salt sensitivity setting that does not result in salt noise at your desired main sensitivity setting.  Reduce salt sensitivity before you consider reducing main sensitivity if you are getting salt-based noise, so you don't take a hit on overall target sensitivity (reducing salt sensitivity will reduce sensitivity to micro-gold targets, however - which is the classic tradeoff).  Regarding Magnetic Rejection - Unless you have a lot of ground noise being generated by black sand, magnetic rejection can cancel borderline target signals at the limits of ultimate D2 detection depth (in other words you lose some depth if you invoke it), so use it only if needed.  Note that the Magnetic Rejection default setting is "Reject" for the three salt water beach/dive modes.

[midalake]

4 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

I recommend turning off Magnetic Rejection and using the maximum salt sensitivity setting that does not result in salt noise at your desired main sensitivity setting.

Yes X-2

Also, after much testing> I recommend keeping Audio Response at 6 and adjust detectability with sensitivity! 

[Sinclair]

Thanks, Chase - I'll try that out when I get in the wet in wintertime.

Went out yesterday again, found ~12€ - not bad. One observation: The Nox does better next to big iron like on playgrounds, beach chairs or iron inforced walls.

I had some problems with EMI on my main beach. To be fair, the Nox has problems there, too - but only next to the street lights. I think since they're LED fitted, they produce a lot of EMI. How ever, the Deus still had slight problems faily far away down the beach. Frequency scan didn't seem to do the trick. In Mono 17kHz the EMI nearly disappeared completely. Any other tips on mitigating EMI in MF other then lowering the sense?