Myers Depot Metal Detectors

Should I buy a Deus II?

Diga

Diga

Elite Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2022
Messages
2,597
Hello.


As some of you know already, I’ve been considering purchasing a D2. Yes, the warranty is concerning, but I’ve already got a thread going about that.


I have owned and used various detectors, and am currently using a Legend. I have a good amount of detecting experience, but hours in the field doesn’t make someone a good detectorist. To me, something far more important, is knowing how detectors work, and getting to know your detector.



Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the D2, and I have a few questions:


1) Can the X/Y screen distinguish between most pull tabs and a gold ring? That’s about the only thing that is important to me about the X/Y screen, unless you know of some other advantage of the X/Y screen.


2) Does the D2 detect significantly deeper than any other decent detector? I seriously doubt it does, just due to the general physics of how detectors work. You can only transmit so much electromagnetic energy into the ground, before the disadvantages of doing so, begin to outweigh the advantages. I’m thinking that power limit has already been met many years ago. Granted, depth is actually the least of my concerns. My main concern is separation and unmasking ability, which of course are related, and leads me to my next question.


3) Does the D2 separate and unmask significantly better than detectors like the Legend or the Nox? For example, I’m currently hunting an old exhibition grounds, that is loaded with rusted nails. Yet, I’ve learned how to use my Legend to the point that I’m able to isolate the coins among the rusted nails. It's common for me to sniff out a coin in which there are 1, 2, or 3 rusted nails in the same plug/hole…and that’s even with the Legend having a high iron bias preset. I can see how other detectors can do the same, but I can’t see them doing it significantly better.


4) Does the D2 handle ground mineralization better than any other SMF detector? I can’t see how it could, because SMF filtering ground mineralization doesn’t require complex hardware or software. As such, it seems to me that most, if not all SMF detectors should be able to filter out ground mineralization fairly equally.

5) With the Legend’s Ferrocheck, I can correctly identify most ferrous objects (especially steel bottle caps) up to about 6 or 7 inches. Is the X/Y screen similar to Ferrocheck in that regard? Note: I would never use the D2’s bottle cap reject, because it is a ferrous filter that will cause me to miss good targets. I run all my detectors as wide open as possible. I need to hear everything when I’m picking out coins amongst the trash. Especially ferrous trash.


6) I’m getting old, weak, and even grumpier than I normally am lol. Is the D2 much more comfortable to use than than the Legend or other detectors?




So with all that said, do you think I would be able to find more goodies with a D2?



Thank you in advance for reading and/or replying to this long post
 
Last edited:
I am good at generic answers.
Can you afford it?
Do you make enough finds to pay for your detectors?
Do you have new.places to hunt?

Here is the deal. If you can afford it without upsetting the budget then sure take the plunge.

If you are going to take it to the same old happy hunting grounds hoping to pull a few more silvers then it will be a waste of money. A few more finds mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

It sounds like a good detector. The amount of hunting you do is a large factor. It won't be top dog for long.
 
If you can afford it I would say yes, if you feel it will help. We only live once, new toys are always welcome. If I was not so well equipped I would buy one.
 
I think after reading all of what you said about it , you already know the answer: No ! A few thoughts though. Putting hours in the field does make one a better hunter. You eventually get to know the machine better. Research is more important now than ever before. And as Tom would say it's location, location , location ! I personally like the idea of its lightweight. But that's all. There are too many other red flags for a machine that will take my beatings. I ask myself this : Am I going to find considerably more gold to justify the purchase price on my beaches than what I already have ?.....NO.
 
No, I don't think I'll find any more goodies than what I'm currently finding. However, I wrote the detailed post to see if anyone could point out something that I may have missed.
 
I've been getting older and weaker for some time now.:yes: Smaller coils are
now pretty much my favorites. Do you have the smaller coil for your Legend ?
Can't help you on the Grumpy part I'm still working on that .
 
Soil Surgeon said:
I've been getting older and weaker for some time now.:yes: Smaller coils are
now pretty much my favorites. Do you have the smaller coil for your Legend ?
Can't help you on the Grumpy part I'm still working on that .
Click to expand...

I'm learning to embrace my new "Old man yells at clouds" persona:laughing:

I use both the stock coil and the 6".

I started alternating arms. It was really awkward at first. I stuck with it, and after a few hours, I was comfortable with it.
 
Can only give opinion on salt beach hunting. If you water hunt a D2 may be for you. Supposedly you got 5 years of worry free water hunting. If you wet sand hunt or dry sand hunt where i am you won't scare anyone using a Nox, excalibur, or CTX with a D2. I know nothing about the legend. Beach hunting sometimes depth may be important. But not most of the time. D2 finds bottlecaps it gets fooled by just like other detectors. A lot you can tell just like experience with other detectors. Pulltabs get weird bends and get broke. So if you don't see someone digging pulltabs they probably aren't good at finding gold. Antenna is still the mystery. Don't know if it is stainless or clad copper. Gets a doo doo brown look pretty quick in salt water. Thinking about dyeing it blue so it looks purty!
 
Digalicious said:
Hello.


As some of you know already, I’ve been considering purchasing a D2. Yes, the warranty is concerning, but I’ve already got a thread going about that.


I have owned and used various detectors, and am currently using a Legend. I have a good amount of detecting experience, but hours in the field doesn’t make someone a good detectorist. To me, something far more important, is knowing how detectors work, and getting to know your detector.



Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the D2, and I have a few questions:


1) Can the X/Y screen distinguish between most pull tabs and a gold ring? That’s about the only thing that is important to me about the X/Y screen, unless you know of some other advantage of the X/Y screen.


2) Does the D2 detect significantly deeper than any other decent detector? I seriously doubt it does, just due to the general physics of how detectors work. You can only transmit so much electromagnetic energy into the ground, before the disadvantages of doing so, begin to outweigh the advantages. I’m thinking that power limit has already been met many years ago. Granted, depth is actually the least of my concerns. My main concern is separation and unmasking ability, which of course are related, and leads me to my next question.


3) Does the D2 separate and unmask significantly better than detectors like the Legend or the Nox? For example, I’m currently hunting an old exhibition grounds, that is loaded with rusted nails. Yet, I’ve learned how to use my Legend to the point that I’m able to isolate the silver coins among the rusted nails. It isn’t uncommon for me to sniff out a silver coin in which there are 1, 2, or 3 nails in the same plug/hole…and that’s even with the Legend having a high iron bias preset. I can see how other detectors can do the same, but I can’t see them doing it significantly better.


4) Does the D2 handle ground mineralization better than any other SMF detector? I can’t see how it could, because SMF filtering ground mineralization doesn’t require complex hardware or software. As such, it seems to me that most, if not all SMF detectors should be able to filter out ground mineralization fairly equally.

5) With the Legend’s Ferrocheck, I can correctly identify most ferrous objects (especially steel bottle caps) up to about 6 or 7 inches. Is the X/Y screen similar to Ferrocheck in that regard? Note: I would never use the D2’s bottle cap reject, because it is a ferrous filter that will cause me to miss good targets. I run all my detectors as wide open as possible. I need to hear everything when I’m picking out coins amongst the trash. Especially ferrous trash.


6) I’m getting old, weak, and even grumpier than I normally am lol. Is the D2 much more comfortable to use than than the Legend or other detectors?




So with all that said, do you think I would be able to find more goodies with a D2?



Thank you in advance for reading and/or replying to this long post
Click to expand...

Unable to advise! What and where do you plan on hunting? Land, Beach, gold nuggets? Let us know!
 
Beachhunt1 said:
Unable to advise! What and where do you plan on hunting? Land, Beach, gold nuggets? Let us know!
Click to expand...

I mainly hunt on land for silver coins. I'm not interested in modern clad coins at all. I don't hunt for gold rings on land, because they are very rare to find on land. I don't have the desire nor patience to dig small mountains of trash on the rare chance of finding a gold ring on land. That would likely change if a detector existed that could distinguish between the various gold rings and the various pull tabs.

No gold nugget hunting.

Some freshwater hunting for gold rings. No saltwater hunting.
 
goodmore said:
I am good at generic answers.
Can you afford it?
Do you make enough finds to pay for your detectors?
Do you have new.places to hunt?

Here is the deal. If you can afford it without upsetting the budget then sure take the plunge.

If you are going to take it to the same old happy hunting grounds hoping to pull a few more silvers then it will be a waste of money. A few more finds mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

It sounds like a good detector. The amount of hunting you do is a large factor. It won't be top dog for long.
Click to expand...

OBN said:
If you can afford it I would say yes, if you feel it will help. We only live once, new toys are always welcome. If I was not so well equipped I would buy one.
Click to expand...

^Well said.

It’s hard to predict whether or not someone will “click” with any new detector. I absolutely love my D2 and am very happy with my purchase, but we’re all different so you may get one and hate it. Do you know anyone nearby who may let you try theirs before you buy?

I don’t have a Legend and I sold my Nox before my D2 arrived, so I can’t really give any direct comparisons, but I can tell you that it’s plenty deep in my soil, it separates really well, and is the most comfortable, easy to swing detector I’ve used. I don’t use the XY screen. Never been too impressed with it, especially on deeper targets. The horseshoe is probably the equivalent of the Legend’s ferro check. It works well IMHO. Even on deeper targets.
 
I still believe that the E-Trac is a better pure silver coin detector than the D II, but, as Rattlehead said, sometimes you click with one machine and not another.

I don't see any advantage of the D II over the E-Trac for depth or separation, except the following. To get that separation on the E-Trac, you must swing very slow at heavy ferrous sites. I believe you can swing the D II a bit faster at these sites, and thus gain an efficiency advantage.

As others have said, the D II is a nicely built, ergonomic machine. It blows away the Nox and the E-Trac on these scores, IMHO, for land hunting. Haven't used a Legend and don't hunt in water, so I don't know. I know the water ingress issues have been discussed in another thread, but I would feel comfortable hunting with the D II in the rain. With the E-Trac, I have to call it a day when it starts to rain, as my machine starts to fail. So that is an advantage of the D II if you hunt in all weather. I do not trust the Nox in the rain, tho I have no specific experience in this regard. I just see it as not a rugged machine.

Other negatives of the D II that I have personally experienced is that the coil battery life is too short, especially in the High Conductor program. If you hunt fields for 8-12 hours, you may need a backup coil or remote charging solution. Also, in the High Conductor program, I have found that pull tabs ring higher than wheaties. While I don't personally like digging wheaties, they are an excellent tell for a silver site, and efficiently identifying their presence is important. I find that this TID problem is less pronounced in other programs, but pull tabs sound so good on the D II that they are annoying for a silver coinshooter. On Minelab machines, they seem to ring where they are supposed to. Perhaps I am just used to Minelab machines, or perhaps my D II has a bug or something.

I agree with you that it seems VLF technology has hit a wall. I think advances, if any, over older machines in the VLF space will come thru software, but not thru mixing frequencies around and coming up with yet another acronym (and on that score, FBS still wins for silver, IMHO, because, IIRC, there is always a 1K frequency in there, not true on the D II I believe, but check my math on this). So, an advantage of the D II could be their software people come up with something really cool. That said, I've heard many reports on each upgrade of loss of depth, but also heard reports denying this. Something to research if you can.

Regarding the XY screen, I have seen a video that claims to show the difference between a pull tab and a ring. I don't have a link handy, so google it if you want. I take it with a grain of salt, because if this holy grail has been found, we'd be hearing more about it. Besides, silver coinshooters can tell silver coins by ear. If your machine can't do that, you have the wrong machine. And on that score, the E-Trac can tell clad from silver if you know what you are doing. I am unaware of any other machine that can do that as reliably (perhaps the 3030 tho I have never used one), but the D II seems to have the best chance in that regard, given its relatively wide TID spread, but I have not played with this or its tone breakdown enough to be sure one way or the other. Avoiding clad is the real key to finding silver efficiency.

So, I look at it this way. A new D II can be bought for $1600 and sold for $1300 used. That is my latest memory of market prices, tho I could be wrong. So you would be risking $300 to see if you click with the machine. If you bought used, and sold used, you would be risking even less.

If this amount of risk is in your budget, I'd say go for it. Many good detectorists are doing quite well with the machine. Me, it didn't click for me, but maybe it will someday. For now, I ride the E-Trac war horse, and wait for the next Minelab machine before investing more time and money into the D II.

Good luck and HTH
 
Yes, I can afford to buy a D2, but I'm quite frugal with my money as well. I sure would like to try one out, but at the same time, I'm not going to spend any amount of money on anything that isn't going to perform any better than what I have.

So far, no one has been able to counter the points that I made about performance in my original post. Nor has anyone been able to provide any difference in performance that I may have missed.

I will however, go over the manual more thoroughly, and do more research on the X/Y screen and the horseshoe.
 
Last edited:
Randy, you posted while I was typing my last post. I'll give some thought to all you have said. Thanks.
 
I love my D2. Like you, I’m mostly a turf silver coin hunter. For that the D2 works really, really well. Before I got my D2,I’ve been using my nox exclusively since it came out on the market. I have both the 6” and 11” coils for it. From my experience thus far, the D2 has the edge in separation. You’re not going to be pulling lots of coins out of areas that you covered well with the nox (especially if you know your nox well and are good with it), but you will most likely pull a coin or two with the deus and wonder how you missed it with the nox. In raw depth in my mild soil, my seat of the pants feeling (since I do very little testing, but mostly hunting), is that the nox with 11” coil may have a slight advantage over the D2 with the 9” coil, but that’s pretty subjective and in all reality they’re probably pretty darn close on depth.
Where the D2 has a huge advantage is ergonomics and weight. My D2 (9” coil) with the remote attached to the stem is lighter than my nox with the 6” coil. Another nice advantage of the D2 because of it’s wireless design is that if you’re ever in a situation where you have to detect on your hands and knees, like in a crawl space under a house, you can just remove the lower stem and coil and swing it with the remote in your pocket or in your other hand. I will mention a disadvantage of the wireless design and that is if say, you’re hunting in the woods and come up on a spring or small stream where you would like to dunk your coil and detect in the water, the D2 won’t work UNLESS you thought ahead and had hooked up the antenna or at least brought it with you and hooked it up on the spot. Other than that I love the portability of the wireless design.

So like others have said, if you can afford it then buy one. If you don’t like it put it up for sale and you’ll probably be out a couple hundred bucks, but at least you’ll know it’s not for you. If you have to sell your nox (or other favorite detector) in order to have enough money to buy a D2, I’d say don’t do it. But that’s my opinion. I still have my nox although it rarely gets used, but I can see instances where it with the 6” coil would come in handy. It all comes down to what you want and what you can afford.
 
Only if you seek colonial nails, gold dollars, and 2x4s lined up on your back porch will you see much of a difference.. really depending on how them things is lined up, Dude.

I have the same EMI issues with mine that in the past have sent several detectors down the road. I hate a sparky detector. When the EMI is louder that your target signal it may be time to rethink your new toy.
 
GeoW said:
Only if you seek colonial nails, gold dollars, and 2x4s lined up on your back porch will you see much of a difference.. really depending on how them things is lined up, Dude.

I have the same EMI issues with mine that in the past have sent several detectors down the road. I hate a sparky detector. When the EMI is louder that your target signal it may be time to rethink your new toy.
Click to expand...

:laughing:

Before using my first SMF, I did read about how susceptible they are to EMI. Well, I've come to learn how easily detectorists exaggerate the performance of their particular detector, so I was wondering if this was some sort of exaggeration as well. I quickly found out that the SMF and EMI issue was no exaggeration. That's ok though, because selectable frequencies solve that, and I prefer SF over SMF...unless I'm going to be hunting in salt ground.
 
NCtoad;3398869 Where the D2 has a huge advantage is ergonomics and weight.[/QUOTE said:
So far, this is the only possible advantage I can see compared to what I'm using and finding now.
Click to expand...
 
NCtoad said:
I love my D2. Like you, I’m mostly a turf silver coin hunter. For that the D2 works really, really well. Before I got my D2,I’ve been using my nox exclusively since it came out on the market. I have both the 6” and 11” coils for it. From my experience thus far, the D2 has the edge in separation. You’re not going to be pulling lots of coins out of areas that you covered well with the nox (especially if you know your nox well and are good with it), but you will most likely pull a coin or two with the deus and wonder how you missed it with the nox. In raw depth in my mild soil, my seat of the pants feeling (since I do very little testing, but mostly hunting), is that the nox with 11” coil may have a slight advantage over the D2 with the 9” coil, but that’s pretty subjective and in all reality they’re probably pretty darn close on depth.
Where the D2 has a huge advantage is ergonomics and weight. My D2 (9” coil) with the remote attached to the stem is lighter than my nox with the 6” coil. Another nice advantage of the D2 because of it’s wireless design is that if you’re ever in a situation where you have to detect on your hands and knees, like in a crawl space under a house, you can just remove the lower stem and coil and swing it with the remote in your pocket or in your other hand. I will mention a disadvantage of the wireless design and that is if say, you’re hunting in the woods and come up on a spring or small stream where you would like to dunk your coil and detect in the water, the D2 won’t work UNLESS you thought ahead and had hooked up the antenna or at least brought it with you and hooked it up on the spot. Other than that I love the portability of the wireless design.

So like others have said, if you can afford it then buy one. If you don’t like it put it up for sale and you’ll probably be out a couple hundred bucks, but at least you’ll know it’s not for you. If you have to sell your nox (or other favorite detector) in order to have enough money to buy a D2, I’d say don’t do it. But that’s my opinion. I still have my nox although it rarely gets used, but I can see instances where it with the 6” coil would come in handy. It all comes down to what you want and what you can afford.
Click to expand...




Best answer yet
 
randy said:
Regarding the XY screen, I have seen a video that claims to show the difference between a pull tab and a ring. I take it with a grain of salt, because if this holy grail has been found, we'd be hearing more about it.
Click to expand...

Exactly. If that were true, it would be detecting "headline news", but it isn't.

It's similar to claims I've seen that the D2 "runs circles" around the Nox. Or, claims that the D2 can detect many inches deeper than a Nox or a Legend. Yet, when asked, the claimant is never able to provide any explanation, let alone video evidence. Sorry, but no detector can defy the laws of physics and electromagnetism. If someone believes those kinds of things, then I have a perpetual motion machine to sell them.

Also, this is a long story short, but due to a few factors, selling a used detector where I am without taking about a 50% hit is almost an impossibility. So unfortunately, that option is out of the question for me. That's why I wrote the original post...to make sure I was making the right decision to buy, or not buy, a D2.
 
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