My thoughts on the XP Deus 2 after 50 hours.

[Rattlehead]

would you please be more descriptive? jk very nice write-up

I’ll try. Thanks!

That's impressive Rattle! No offense to anybody else, but post like this in a place hunted to death with many detectors to me are the best test. Bad dirt, and you gave your settings. Bravo!

Thanks longbow.


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[Beachhunter]

Thank you for your review RH. Best I’ve read so far. Good luck!

 

[Rattlehead]

Thank you for your review RH. Best I’ve read so far. Good luck!

Thanks Beachhunter.

 

[DigDeepNow]

Found a few items today that have me pretty excited about the D2.

Yeah, I know it’s just a couple of wheats, a nickel, a key and some reeds.. It’s not so much what I found, but where I found it and how I found it.

These items were found in my own back yard. The house was built in 1880, has nasty orange clay and is absolutely LOADED with iron. It’s actually one of the worst places I’ve ever detected. You can literally dig a random plug anywhere in the yard and find between 10 to 15 nails and other bits of iron in the hole. I’m not exaggerating.. it’s THAT bad.

Anyway, the yard is small.. Roughly 25 ft X 60 ft. I’ve lived here since 2009 and have detected here with every machine I’ve owned for countless hours. I’ve covered it multiple times from every angle. Even though there’s still tons of ferrous targets and a lot of junk non-ferrous signals that read in the foil and can slaw range, there were no signals left in coin range.. or so I thought.

I got out the D2 today and tried using Fast mode with pitch tones. I love how pitch makes nonferrous jump out at you when hunting thick iron, but it can be overwhelming when there’s modern trash mixed in. As I expected, it was very noisy. So many hits on every swing that it was almost impossible to pick out any signals in the range I wanted to dig. Didn’t find anything worth mentioning. So I sat down to take a break. As I was sitting there I wondered what would happen if I set up a coin shooting program based off of fast, using pitch tones. I switched the remote back on and made some adjustments. By default it has discrimination set at 6.8. I bumped it up to 7 then created two notches. One from 7 to 57, then another from 65 to 80. This gets rid of everything but a nickel slot and targets that read from IHPs on up.
I also raised bottle cap rejection up to 4.

After my break, I continued hunting for another hour using my new pitch coin shooting program. Found all of the targets you see in the picture, and every single one of them hit in the coin range with a repeating signal. All in my own yard which I’ve been hunting relentlessly since 2009 with damn near every top detector on the market. That’s pretty impressive to me.

PS: Posting this here instead of creating a new thread so not to get anyone riled up about more Deus 2 content.


Rattlehead:

Really enjoyed your video “XPD2 Pitch Tones…” and your post about how to set up the program.
I’m a relative newbie and have used my XPD1 and Equinox in full tones without using a notch.
With your second notch’s upper end at 80 is there a danger of not hearing high conductors that are being averaged down due objects next to them.
In other words, could an adjacent nail or even a nickel drag the number down (on a silver coin) to well below 80 and cause it to be notched out?
Maybe this is just the cost of doing business in a super trashy area like you backyard.

Thanks

 

[Rattlehead]

Rattlehead:

Really enjoyed your video “XPD2 Pitch Tones…” and your post about how to set up the program.
I’m a relative newbie and have used my XPD1 and Equinox in full tones without using a notch.
With your second notch’s upper end at 80 is there a danger of not hearing high conductors that are being averaged down due objects next to them.
In other words, could an adjacent nail or even a nickel drag the number down (on a silver coin) to well below 80 and cause it to be notched out?
Maybe this is just the cost of doing business in a super trashy area like you backyard.

Thanks

DigDeepNow,
Yes, that is a possibility anytime you use discrimination. Even if you’re only rejecting targets below 50, you could still be missing a coin blended with an iron signal. It’s a trade off between how much junk you’re willing to dig vs good targets dug per time spent detecting. The good news is, the Deus is super fast and can often give a proper audio response on a coin that’s very close to junk targets.


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[DigDeepNow]

DigDeepNow,
Yes, that is a possibility anytime you use discrimination. Even if you’re only rejecting targets below 50, you could still be missing a coin blended with an iron signal. It’s a trade off between how much junk you’re willing to dig vs good targets dug per time spent detecting. The good news is, the Deus is super fast and can often give a proper audio response on a coin that’s very close to junk targets.


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Perfect.
Thanks for the help.

 

[Rattlehead]

Perfect.
Thanks for the help.

You’re very welcome.


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[Rattlehead]

I originally said that the D2 doesn't seem to be up-averaging TID as much as the D1. I still think that's the case, but I've noticed it up-averaging on a few deep targets lately. Yesterday I dug a deeper signal reading 95-96. Thought I was about to pop out a silver quarter but it was just a wheat.

 

[Rattlehead]

Awesome write up and follow up. I have one delivering Thursday, first thing I’ll be doing is whipping out the calipers and designing an extended stand to snap on, that little stand would drive me nuts.

Thanks Chris. I ordered one of these off of eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/115312562978?hash=item1ad92a1322:g:l7AAAOSwpDxiAb9z

It showed up yesterday and seems to work well enough. I saw another type of stand availible too, but it looks kind of bulky. What would really be cool is if someone could come up with a small collapsible bipod type stand that folds up flush below the arm cuff when not in use, so that the compact form factor could be maintained.

I ordered one of those 3D printed coil centering blocks as well, but its shipping from Ukraine so it might take a while to arrive.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/264224697253?hash=item3d8504eba5:g:dqsAAOSwyutcfYYG

 

[MFF18B]

In my original post I said Pitch tones might not be good for hunting spots with modern trash mixed in due to sensory overload. I’m hereby retracting that statement. I’ve confirmed today that the opposite is true. You just need to use some notch to eliminate the modern trash.

Yesterday I was surprised to find some old coins and other targets in the coin range in my own back yard which I’ve been hunting since 2009. I was using a modified version of Fast with Pitch tones set up with notches for coin shooting.

Today I wanted to confirm this program was working as good as I thought it was, so I took it to a curb strip next to an old park where I’ve had good luck in the past. Ended up getting some clad, a wheat, a 45 Canadian cent and my 4th silver with the Deus 2. All from a 3ft wide curb strip that I’ve hunted countless times before. What I’ve noticed using this program is that just like the name says, it’s fast. It picks out coins near junk very well. Surprisingly, it’s also pretty deep. The wheat was easily 8”. But what I really like the most is how pitch tones makes the targets jump out at you. What I mean is a good target that may sound iffy in other audio modes sounds much better in pitch. As a side benefit, with pitch operating like VCO, it makes it really easy to spot the deeper coins.

D2 guys who like US coin shooting, try this:

Base program: Fast (with Pitch tones)
Disc: 7
Notch 1: 7-58
Notch 2: 65-80
Bottlecap reject 4 or 5

Go hunt your trashiest, iron infested site that has produced for you in the past. Let us know how it goes!


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Rattle, Do you know where Flying eagles, Trimes etc fit into your Fast coin program?

 

[Rattlehead]

Rattle, Do you know where Flying eagles, Trimes etc fit into your Fast coin program?

I don’t have either of those to test unfortunately, but I remember someone saying a Flying Eagle hits around 75 on the D2. You’d definitely need to open the disc pattern up a bit to make sure you’re getting those less common coins. Accepting 74+ would probably do the trick. Of course that’ll also open the door for a lot more targets in the trash range. It’s a trade off.


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[Rattlehead]

Chris, man that is awesome! PM inbound!

 

[Rattlehead]

Just updated to v0.7 and it still removes all of your custom programs. I appreciate the improvements, but to me, having to re-do all of your programs after every update is just plain ridiculous. This needs to be fixed ASAP.

 

[Rattlehead]

Got home from work and decided to try out the new update at a curb strip next to my house. Loaded up my pitch coin shooting program and had my first target right away. A faint “zip zip zip” 85 signal. About 6” down was a crusty 1898 IHP. Off to a good start with v0.7.

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[Coin-Saver]

Good job. You seem to be liking the Deus 2. Looks like it's treating you well also.

 

[Rattlehead]

Good job. You seem to be liking the Deus 2. Looks like it's treating you well also.

Thanks! So far so good. I was hoping to put some more hours on it this weekend but looks like rain.

I like the update. One thing I don’t like is the MI-6 is still having issues running through the control box. Every 2-4 times turning it on it doesn’t connect, and have to retry a couple times. I should have just went with the MI-4 and saved some money.

Hope they get it sorted for ya soon. I sold my MI6. Just couldn’t get used to it after using the carrot for so long.

BTW, the printer showed up today! Already started my first print. I left it running at my workplace. I’ll swing by there tomorrow to see how it turned out.

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[Rattlehead]

This is how it starts, I’m going to check in with you in a year when you have a whole fleet of printers [emoji1787][emoji1787][emoji1787]

Probably so. I hope it doesn’t become like metal detectors where I feel the need to buy every new high end machine that gets released. My wife will kill me.


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[Rattlehead]

Got a few hours on v0.7 today. It’s working pretty well other than a bug I noticed with the pinpoint function. Sometimes pressing the button doesn’t engage pinpoint mode. It shows the PP screen but no audio. Pressing the button again seemed to make it work most of the time, but the pinpoint volume seems lower than before. I’m not too concerned about it since I rarely use the pinpoint function anyway, but definitely something they need to fix.

Got my 5th or 6th silver with the D2 today. I honestly can’t remember. Anyway, it was a Merc.

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[Rattlehead]

After work yesterday I took the D2 out to a trashy park for about an hour. I loaded up my custom Fast program set up for coin shooting. With this program, shallow targets give a snappy "pop" on the audio and deeper ones give a faint "zip zip zip" sound as the coil crosses the target. With some notching in place to eliminate troublesome modern trash (foil & can slaw), its really easy to skip the surface clad/junk and only dig the deeper signals hitting in the coin range.

I scored another silver coin. Its either my 6th or 7th silver with the Deus 2. A 1919 Merc which was standing on edge in the plug.

Since posting this review I've put a lot more hours on the Deus 2. Here's a few performance related things that I can now confidently say are big improvements over the original Deus:

1) Stability. For me, the D2 is very stable in most of the places I hunt. Even with the sensitivity cranked all the way up to 97 or 98. I'm now able to hunt locations that would make the original Deus go nuts.

2) Target ID. This was a big weakness on the original Deus. On the Deus 2 the TID is actually very good. Even on deeper targets. It does still up average occasionally but not by much. The key takeaway is that it gives a consistent ID. What I mean by that is, it locks on to the number and doesn't bounce around by 10 digits with each pass of the coil.

3) Outstanding tone options. The tones on this machine are so customizable that you can really dial it in to sound exactly how you want it. This was another weakness with the original Deus IMHO. You were stuck with PWM whether you liked it or not. With the D2, you can use PWM or Square, then you can choose either pitch, full or tone breaks, and you can even fine tune it for your ears with the built in equalizer.

4) Better iron rejection, less falsing. With the original Deus, I was fooled by a lot of iron targets which sounded like non-ferrous. The D2 solves that by letting you break up those iron signals with the bottle cap rejection. The really neat thing is, it doesn't seem to have as much negative impact on separation as running a higher silencer setting would.

5) SMF. Obviously this is a big one. In "hunted out" spots, I like to run programs that use a higher frequency set because they separate and hit those coins on edge really well.

I only used my original Deus for hunting older sites or scouting in the woods because it was lacking the things listed above. Due to all of these improvements, I feel comfortable hunting pretty much anywhere with the D2.

 

[tnsharpshooter]

Good info.
Coin on edge I see.

I dug a 41 merc dime on Easter. Can’t say if it was on edge or not. Read 88 one way 50 when rotating. Consistent readings when sweeping both directions. Fast program used. Been in this area quite a bit too with other machines.
Soil was loose so when I dug plug dirt didn’t stay intact hence dime orientation uncertain.

Thank for sharing.