First Hunts With The Legend 2

[JCR]

 After receiving my Legend 2, I spent the first few days getting familiar with its UI & testing it's responses & performance. I won't go into a lot of detail other than to say I fell right in with it.   It is The Legend DNA, but not the same unit in new form.  It is more refined, more precise & focused. It reacts to certain settings & combinations slightly differently than the original Legend. Yes, it is slightly deeper, handles my mineral soil a little better, noticeably better EMI handling and better/ more accurate TID lock on/stability at fringe depth & on co located targets. Relic mode has also been noticeable improved.  Nothing earth moving, but for those of us working in difficult conditions for those last targets on past good sites, the Legend 2 is a winner. It won't replace my other top units. Each has their own place in the way that I hunt, but I don't think there is a better all around, do it all, and do it all very well unit out there today.  I use the Legend for sites that have non ferrous trash. It's capability to fine tune the Tones, especially the tone volume is key. The Custom Disc works just fine, but I often want to hear what I don't want to dig. A good target is very often crossing back & forth with the trash. Digging Nickels(and gold jewelry) is a challenge I enjoy on my non relic sites. It's not easy. I can work iron much better than aluminum. Legend 2 has upper my game. My first 4 hunts proved this to me.

Hunt #1 was at my local, main public park. It, and the still standing 3 story brick school date from 1913. It was originally the High School, then the Junior High after 1936, then an Elementary School in the early 1970s where I attended 3rd & 4th grade. So, plenty of opportunity for Silver coins to have been lost here.  I wonder how many I walked over just a few inches down when I was a kid!  The ground is hard packed red dirt(5bar on the L2 scale), with a shallow covering of sod. Nothing sinks too deep. This site is probably the hardest hit by past detectorists, including me, I can think of. There is not much "old" left to find, though I have had success here in the past. Every good find has been one that was severely compromised by trash.  I set up the L2 with the 11" LD 28 coil in Park mode using a custom 6 tone profile that puts Nickels in a loud, medium high tone bin and coins above Zincs in a loud, high tone bin. Bins below Nickels are set to zero volume, except Iron which is low volume. The bins between catch what I do not want to dig, but still want to hear at a very low volume. Testing showed Recovery speed of 6 to be the best for unmasking & still get the 8"depth I wanted. The unit was very stable in M3 or M1 at Sensitivity up to 27. I ran it at 22 knowing that would still give me my desired depth.  I ran Audio Gain at 3, then 6 with no instability. Iron Filter at 1, Bottle Cap at 0(the Ferro Check tells on any rusty iron). Deep Target set at max 3 as it helps with iron unmasking. This function has been improved over Legend 1, in that it does not now distort the audio response.    I hunted most of what was the front lawn area, sidewalks & congregation areas.  I dug 6 older Copper Cents, mid 1950s to late 70s & a few junk non ferrous items including a decent size Half Hoop ear ring.  I can guarantee, I have been over these targets several times before. None of these found targets sounded clean. All where compromised by trash or on their edge.  I would never have been able to hear that little bit of solid goodness in each degraded response running stock audio profiles. While I can tune up the Legend 1 as above, Legend 2 has enhanced the ability to not only better catch the target, but latch on to it and process it up above the bad around it.  Hunt #2 further confirmed this.

Hunt #2 was at another school site. This one dates back to the late 1870s. I went to Jr. High here. The buildings are all gone now. The area I hunted was the front lawn. It is the same thin layer of sod over hard packed red dirt(same 5 bar).  I have dug hundreds of the thousands of pull/square tabs that were thrown down by students.  I have also dug quite a few Silver Dimes and older Copper Cents here. Nickels have been hard to come by. This site has also been heavily detected by others.   I used pretty much the same settings here as on site #1.  I dug another 6 older Cents and a 1961D Silver Dime in excellent condition. That may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but for this site it is very good.  I also dug just a few older style pull tabs that up averaged into the IHP range. This is an improvement over Legend 1. The 99 TID of Legend 2 really helps spread out the trash from desirable targets.

 Hunt #3 was at another in town site that dates back to mid 1870s activity. The area I hunted is what was the front lawn of a early 1950s IOOF Lodge hall. The building was demolished several years ago. This ground is also packed red dirt but it is a good bit heavier in minerals. It reads 8 bars on the L2 scale. You can tell by how detectors respond to it. Unless you set up just right, you are not going to be able to hit or hear any good targets that are not very near the surface.  There is some, but not a lot of modern trash. There is some deeper iron trash/cut nails that want to false on other detectors, but the L2 handles it extremely well even with Iron Filter at 1.  Legend 1 has also always handled iron false very well while still unmasking to an amazing degree.  Right across the street is a large Microwave communications tower. The EMI is bad enough that I normally have to turn a detector's Sensitivity down to almost 50% to get stable. This includes the original Legend with the same size coil. The Legend 2 deals with this particular EMI much better than any multifrequency detector I have run here. I set it on 22 of 30, noise cancelled, and was solid stable.  I had actually worked this same lawn area just a few weeks before and dug a few coins, but there were not a lot of, even close to "digger" signals in between those finds. The detector I was previously using is excellent and has no peer as a relic machine or in punching my minerals with good TID. What it can't do is adjust the volume on the non ferrous tone bins. This means a fairly noisy hunt here if you try for any mid conductors.  Again, the Legends' tone volume adjustment makes a world of difference in audio intelligence. The Legend 2's refinement in performance added 12 coins that I had missed from this site, including older Copper Cents & a 1942P Silver War Nickel. That one was a welcome surprise and one I had not found yet. It will fill a spot in my Whitman's book.  This was an impressive hunt in my experience.

 Hunt #4 was at a ball field that dates back to the first decades of the 20th Century. High School football games were played here until 1936 and Simi Pro baseball games even before then. Now it is actively used for Little League and soccer.  The is a ton of modern trash here and some deeper iron nails. Any deep targets are under this thick blanket of trash. Many of the best potential areas have been paved over. I have been able to pick some not too old coins out of this mess with the original Legend on past visits. This time I hunted the area where the upper levels of the wooden Grandstand stood and along the fence of the First base line.  I used the same basic settings as above using M3 but with the small LD 21 coil & Audio Gain at 1. There are a lot of older rusty bottle caps here so I activated the Bottle Cap reject setting to 1. That was enough to add the extra audio breakup that was needed to not have to visually analyze each one on the Ferro Check.  On Legend 1 it would have to be set at 3.  I only found 2 coins. One I had definitely missed before, and one recent drop.  I did dig a few junk non ferrous targets that could have been something good that I had missed before. I also dug a few of the more modern oval tabs that up average while in the ground.  Even though I did not find much, I felt the Legend 2 handled the task with improvement over my past use here of Legend 1. 

 Over all, in the limited time I have used the Legend 2, I am quite pleased with it's enhanced capability.  I think that in the big picture, for the foreseeable future, the Legend 2 is going to find it's place at the top of the VLF heap.  No matter what standard is used to measure by, it is a winner.

[Jeff McClendon]

Great write up JCR.

Thank you for very clearly and calmly describing your experiences and impressions. They correspond very well with what I have been experiencing especially after installing the latest  V1.02 public software.

[JCR]

Thankfully mine was sent out with the latest firmware. I'm sure Nokta has some further improvements already in mind. I have not noticed any "bugs" that need to be addressed other than the delay in the supplied HPs connecting.  I'm not sure how I feel about the new Pin Point set up. I'm used to the old style but I can get used to it. I rarely use it anyway.

[D&P-OR]

Thank you for your very detailed/excellent report JCR.---Myself & I know many others were eagerly awaiting it.-------Del

[Jeff McClendon]

24 minutes ago, JCR said:

Thankfully mine was sent out with the latest firmware. I'm sure Nokta has some further improvements already in mind. I have not noticed any "bugs" that need to be addressed other than the delay in the supplied HPs connecting.  I'm not sure how I feel about the new Pin Point set up. I'm used to the old style but I can get used to it. I rarely use it anyway.

Pinpoint could use some more perfecting too. Lag time between changing programs is also way too long.

All of this has been reported to Nokta.

If you or any other owners experience anything else questionable just let me know and I will email Dilek if it looks important and is repeatable on various Legend 2s.

[JCR]

For me, one thing that would really set the L2 at the absolute top is for the smaller LD 21 to punch minerals at least to 6 inches while giving accurate TID on coin size targets. That’s a tall order.

[Jeff McClendon]

There will be a 9” coil soon that should handle that really well.

[JCR]

Yes, I was forgetting the two extra coils. My Dealer has my name for both. The 9” may very well give me the combination I want. The small LD 21 almost gets there. In less mineralized soil it is surprisingly deep with excellent TID. It will touch on my 10” Dime!