XP Deus 74 Khz Elliptical Coil - I'm Impressed!

[Steve Herschbach]

I finally went out and found my first gold nuggets with the new DEUS elliptical high frequency coil. I want to emphasize that I am a newbie on the XP Deus. Although I purchased an 11" Deus V3.2 model almost two years ago, it was with the express purpose of being able to test the V4 update with the new high frequency coil options for gold prospecting. I decided I was better off just starting fresh with version 4.0 before really digging in and learning the detector. I do get the hang of detectors quickly but this does show what can be done by somebody who went out barely knowing the machine.

The other catch is that I picked a location that favors the Deus with relatively mild soil for a gold location, so mild I could run the machine full out to get the maximum possible sensitivity with the machine. These results are not going to be as easy to obtain in extreme mineral ground. You have to start someplace however and being new to the machine I wanted to give myself someplace easy to start. Finally, the goal here was to find the smallest gold I could so for the purposes of this report - smaller is better.

These nuggets were recovered over the course of a day. Ten nuggets, 4.7 grains total weight. There are 480 grains per Troy ounce and with an average weight of less than half a grain I think you can agree this is some pretty small stuff. The smallest bits are probably near 1/10th grain or 1/4800th of a Troy ounce. Click picture for larger version.

Gold nuggets Steve found with XP Deus HF elliptical coil

The new HF elliptical coil running at 74 kHz is clearly in the same league as the 71 kHz Fisher Gold Bug 2,  45 kHz Minelab Gold Monster, 56 kHz Makro Gold Racer, and 48 kHz White's GMT. However, the devil is in the details and it will be some time before I sort out how the machines compare under more difficult and varied conditions.

Again, I am not an expert with the Deus and so the settings I mention are not to be taken as "the best" or anything like that. I was actually gold prospecting so the primary focus was to find gold, not to test every possible combination of settings on the Deus. With 10 program options and numerous settings that will be a longer term project. I obviously wanted to try the Gold Field program 10. After a little experimenting I settled on the GM Power program 2 as an alternate disc mode to try. Getting from program 10 to program 2 is only a couple button pushes, so I bounced back and forth between the two programs and tweaked settings higher as I found targets and could compare readings.

Gold Field is a threshold based all metal mode with what I find to be a rather pleasant digitized buzz. That's me of course, others may differ on that point. I was able to run sensitivity full out at 99. All my work was done at 74 khz, the default highest frequency setting without trying to push it higher via the offset. I figure the coil is tuned at 74 khz and so stuck with that for now. Manual ground balance about 84.

GM Power I got sensitivity to 94 with only minor falsing. I reduced reactivity (similar to SAT for you nugget hunters) to 0 from the default of 2 and ran the audio response (audio boost) up to 7 (max).

Both modes exhibit just a little touch sensitivity at these high gain levels. This might be tamed with the ground notch but I have not fooled with that yet and it did not bother me at all anyway.

What I found was Gold Field has a softer response in general but that my boosted version of GM Power banged hard on the little bits. Not unlike going from all metal mode on the Gold Bug 2 to the Iron Disc mode. Instead of faint threshold variations you get a strong "beep". The difference is that the Gold Bug 2 Iron Disc mode has an obvious loss in sensitivity. The Deus by comparison in this particular situation actually seemed to work better in GM Power mode, but that is mainly the boosted audio at work.

I left the disc settings at the defaults for GM Power which worked well - low tone iron, higher tones non-ferrous. I ran the IAR (iron reject) in Gold Field at 2. This was just enough to cause ferrous to break up. Higher settings would blank most ferrous completely but getting to aggressive can also eliminate weak gold signals. The ferrous discrimination worked very well in both programs. GM Power in particular was pretty awesome in the nail pits with iron tones firing off like a machine gun. I bumped reactivity back to 2 in the dense trash.

Anyway, this is a very preliminary report and so no point getting too deep into it as I will probably modify my opinions and settings as I get more time on the machine. Right now this is a high price option if all you need is a prospecting unit, but for a person wanting one machine to do everything XP just kicked it up a notch. If they introduce a dedicated gold unit at a lower price similar to the Depar DPR 600 it would be very competitive. For now this is an option for somebody that wants a detector for more than just gold prospecting since the Deus is a superb coin, relic, and jewelry detector.

The actual dimensions of the HF elliptical coil are 9.5" x 5". The elliptical coil and rod assembly is just 1 lb 13 oz (1.8 lbs) and so a true featherweight. At 5' 11" I have to run it fully extended and at that it does flex a bit, but I did not find that bothersome at all. A solid coil cover will be good as there are too many coil edges that want to hang up on rubble and sticks. A minor quibble however as the machine is a joy to handle, especially when reaching uphill waist high and higher. A great unit for poking in and around bushes and other obstructions. The coil is hotter at the tips which also helps in poking into tight locations.

Early days but the final word is that I am happy with how this coil performs on small gold nuggets after all the wait. Time will tell how it handles the really bad ground and how it fares directly against some of the competition as other people report in. As always giving it time and waiting for a consensus opinion from many users to develop is a wise policy with any new detector.

Steve Herschbach
DetectorProspector.com

September 2018 - New XP ORX announced.

This post promoted to an article

[1515Art]

Steve, thank you for posting your early experience with this new hf elipitical, I've struggled with mine a little, but took the opposite approach and jumped right into some of our difficult ground. The flat pieces of rusted tin are bothersome, square nails and bits of square nail show numbers in the 98-05, but on the hot ground after gb if I throw a 1/2g nugget down it will sound off 4 to five inches, give iron numbers at around 3" and finally a nonferrous reading when the coil is right on the gold. A chunk of old lead (4g?) down in some river gravel sang out 4" deep with #'s in the 60's. I've been running pgm 10, sen 80-85, 54khz (29 is still very good, 14khz looses depth on the small gold a little as expected. Of course another huge difference is my results also exactly correlate to my experience level and are consistent with success ratios I'm accustomed to, so my results are based more on comparisons to typical targets found and one unscientific test of a couple of unburied nuggets. I've also hunted up there in the hot program, deep and Deus fast (v2, v3.2 and v4 filters) the discrimination cuts out the hot rocks and iron really well, I was still using similar settings as I used with pgm 10 (GF). Despite struggling in the early stages if feel (hope) with a lot of practice I'll get the hang of what the Deus is trying to tell me.

[LipCa]

Steve either that's an old knapsack or you found somewhere to buy a new one?

Had one like that but can't find a replacement.

I know... off topic.   Sorry

[Steve Herschbach]

I have had that REI rucksack for so long.... over 30 years, 40 maybe? The zipper in the lid flap pouch is broken. The knapsack is like an old pair of jeans I can't bear to throw away so I guess I need to sew in a new zipper.

1515Art, jumping right into bad ground definitely adds to the challenges and the worse the ground the less reliable any discrimination will be. That flat steel really bangs out hard as a non-ferrous target at 74 kHz. That stuff is a challenge for all VLF detectors.

Usually when using discrimination gold will run at the low end of the disc range whereas steel that "wraps high" will come in at much higher VDI readings. The problem is that the higher you go with the frequency, the more all targets shift to the high end of the VDI scale. I need to do some testing on larger nuggets but I bet they read quite high compared to what would be seen at lower frequencies. 

My gut feeling is that the Deus has a vast array of possible settings to deal with almost anything, but that this is a dual edged sword. For me it gives me a great deal of confidence that I can get this machine to perform well (for a VLF) under nearly any conditions. At the same time that complexity could make certain levels of nuance more inaccessible to some people and outright daunting for beginners. If the Gold Monster represents simplicity the Deus takes it to the far other end of the scale. Most VLF prospectors should feel at home in the Gold Field program however.

One issue there. Gold Field is a threshold based all metal program. The threshold is off by default and can only be adjusted with the main controller. If you are trying to operate via headphones only there is no way to adjust the threshold! This means Deus Lite owners or somebody like me that might want to leave the controller at home are out of luck. Attempting to use Gold Field without the controller means no threshold, at least as far as I can determine at the moment. If anyone knows different please let me know. Here is all that can be adjusted directly via either of the Deus smart headphone options:

• DISC ------------ Discrimination
• SENS ----------- Sensitivity
• GND ------------ Ground
• FREQ ----------- Frequency
• TONE ----------- Number of Tones
• VOL ------------- Audio volume
• COIL ------------ Selected coil or MI-6
• P1 to P10 ------- Factory programs

I have the WS5 headphones and I like them a lot. Comfortable over ear design like most good nugget headphones. I tried the small backphone version before and was not impressed. If I want lighter weight phones I will just use plug in types. Oddly enough the only Deus volume control is built into the headphones but that option is not available on the main controller, so if using plug in headphones look for ones with volume controls. I tried my ear bud style that does not have a volume control and got a nasty audio blast.

[Norvic]

Recently when I approach the treasurer for money for another detector buy, she mumbles incoherently all I get is something about that DP Steve again.

Crikey we wait ages from product announcement to availability, you`d think the manufactures would show a bit of compassion, get together and spread the availability a bit evenly through the year, no way do they care about the stress they put on our marriages...........

[strick]

5 hours ago, LipCa said:

Steve either that's an old knapsack or you found somewhere to buy a new one?

Had one like that but can't find a replacement.

I know... off topic.   Sorry

That REI Knapsack carried many of books during my college days. Some things you never seem to loose but that day pack as been long gone for many years.... thanks for jogging my memory.

Since I have a Gold Monster (Birthday gift from my wife) My Deus will remain a relic machine for now. 

strick 

[Ono]

Bravo Steve!

At what depth did you find these nuggets?

[Steve Herschbach]

A few inches at most. Simply finding tiny gold like this is an achievement for any detector, but depth will always be near surface. That is why good coil control keeping the coil on or as close to the ground as possible is so critical. If a tiny piece can only be detected an inch deep and you are a half inch off the ground you miss them.

[mn90403]

On 7/23/2017 at 1:53 PM, Norvic said:

Recently when I approach the treasurer for money for another detector buy, she mumbles incoherently all I get is something about that DP Steve again.

Crikey we wait ages from product announcement to availability, you`d think the manufactures would show a bit of compassion, get together and spread the availability a bit evenly through the year, no way do they care about the stress they put on our marriages...........

Norvic,

It is obvious you have not found the secrete to as many detectors as you want ...

The secret is:

Hi honey, I'm home ... ok ... come in here and let me see what you got.

That's WONDERFUL ... when are you going out again?  

If it's not too far from the car I'll go with you the next time!

Mitchel

 

[JAMES MC LERNON]

Hello Steve.

Just noticed you sold the new xp deus hf coil.

What happened, or what went wrong with experiment "XP DEUS V4 -HF ELIPTICLE" ???

Was kinda hoping you'd found the "do-it-all" holy grail you and others were looking for, including myself.

Any updated info, or maybe you have a write up in waiting.

jim