Day One with the XP Deus.

As I stated in another post in another thread, the XP Deus was easily able to acquire all the targets in my very unelaborate test garden. My garden consist of several silver dimes and quarters, and a few Minie balls, buried at varied depths. The deepest bullet being 11.5 inches. So far my favorite factory program is #2 (GM Max???). The 11.5 inch bullet gets a clear and repeatable hi tone but no TDI number which doesn't bother me in the least. If it's a hi-tone, and repeatable, especially from several angles, it is getting dug.
I went to my favorite square nail site that I am always yakking about and pulled out a pocketful of nonferrous keepable relics. I'll post pics soon. I am tired. As soon as I learned that I could raise the volumn of the tones with the headphone buttons (duh) I was much better off. It's hard to hear those tones in town when the volumn is at 1. I am going to stick with the factory programs a while since the fellows who designed this thing knows alot more than me about how to set it up. I am very impressed with the real world depth. I found a very old and very small Presbyterian Sunday School pin at around 8 inches among the square nails. I found several targets in spots that I KNOW that I have been over many times from many angles!!! So far, this little machine is everything it's touted to be. Also found a 1964 penny anong the nails and several other cool items that my other detectors didn't see. Right now, my confidence level in the Deus is high. Tomorrow, I'll bury a bullet and a coin at a foot deep and see if it sees it good enough although it saw the 11.5 inch bullet in my test garden very good.

Glad to hear you are liking the Deus. Mine came yesterday as well. I charged it a few hrs last night and played with it in the yard. Sticking with one program or two seems to be the recommendations of long time users. On a little side note I will say that I usually leave my detector in a corner of the bedroom after I clean it up. That flashing LED made me get up and cover it last night.

I'm not one to say this detector or that detector is deeper. I really don't like the argument myself. But my first impression when I was playing in the yard is this detector has some nice power.
I look forward to reading about your hunts. I'll be taking mine out for the first time later this week. Right now PA seems to be going through quite a dry spell. I think I'll stick to the woods.

Yes the dry spell is here as well. The ground in the fields are as hard as asphalt!!! Cold asphalt! The woods are much better to dig in. In fact, I much prefer the woods (more shade, better ground ususally). Yes, I am impressed with the power although mosts stuff that I fis 3 to 5 inches. As in, true inches. Ya know, 5 inches in the ground is pretty deep when ya look at the hole.

Man this unit is awesome. At first I was intimidated by the menu, I still am about the expert settings, but I read the menu settings portion of the manual. I already see one mistake I was making. I would power up the unit next to the car or anywhere without being mindful of the instructions to power it up with the coil AWAY from metal so that it would calibrate during those twenty blips of the coil light. I then went to preset #2 and hit the menu button. I see now that I can tweak it and how to do it. I found an 1887 Indian Head in an old roadbed (full of horseshoe and muleshoe nails) that was close to 7 inches down. It didn't come up with my first main plug. & inches is a conservative guess. More later for those of you who read my posts.
I will take a pic of the last three days finds after tommorows hunt. Just old relics that ya find at old homesites. And a few coins. No silver yet. But this is from sites that I have hit hard for a year. This detector really does bring those old sites back to life. Having this unit makes me want to hunt everyday...all day. I was talkimg of selling it back before I even got it. But I truly thought that it would not make it through my test garden. When it hit every target, it earned the right to stay a while longer.

My first real hunt is tomorrow. I know what you mean about the menu system. It will take time remember stuff. I have an idea of how I want to run the Deus. I did play with a few settings. But until I get out there I just don't have a clue of how hot to run it. The Deus can be set very hot if you want to do it. The thing lit up my yard with targets I never heard before. I know some were junk. But it lit em up.

goodmore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My first real hunt is tomorrow. I know what you
> mean about the menu system. It will take time
> remember stuff. I have an idea of how I want to
> run the Deus. I did play with a few settings. But
> until I get out there I just don't have a clue of
> how hot to run it. The Deus can be set very hot if
> you want to do it. The thing lit up my yard with
> targets I never heard before. I know some were
> junk. But it lit em up.
Good luck tomorrow, Goodmore!!! Let us know how it works out. Be prepared to be happy.

OK I had my first hunt with the Deus. I went to two locations. The first was a church picnic grove that I hunted for the first time. The second was at an old mill that I have pulled some nice coins from in the past. The first site turned out to be a total bust. The second site I pulled some clad and a 1952 Canadian penny.

So let me share my thoughts on the Deus:

I am very new to this detector and I freely admit that I barely understand most of the settings.

I basically hunted in the Basic 1 12Khz program with some modifications.I turned the iron level to 2. I increased Sensitivity to 95 and I lowered discrimination to 8.
The second site is loaded in different parts of the field with iron. The closer you get to the mill the more iron you encounter. My goal was to see how the Deus picked its way through the iron.
I have been over this site with the E Trac w/ stock coil and NEL Sharpshooter coil. But this site is big and I in no way have hit it all. My hunts usually turn into random wandering.

The first thing I noticed about the Deus was the VDI numbers do not lock on. I found three nickels that all started with a VDI of 55 before I dug. After digging they scanned about 45. And they were not that deep. I love my Buffs and V nickels, but I really don't know how I am going to find them with inaccurate VDI numbers. The only reason I found these was because I was in a dig all testing mode. I need too tell nickels from beaver tails and other tabs. With what I saw today that is highly unlikely.

The Pinpointing of the Deus is very good. Dead on center hole most of the time. What I did not like was the pinpoint button. I would push it once to go to pinpoint and push it again to exit pinpoint. Pushing it again is wrong. You need to push the back arrow button. I kept on doing this the wrong way. Maybe it is just me on this one.

With the VDI numbers not being accurate I basically just started going by tones. I was hunting three tone. For the most part this worked fine. Looking down at the dust and dirt on my new detector (very dry here in PA) I realized that I could basically choose my program and then put the contoller away. The only other thing I was using the contoller for is the pinpoint feature. If I get good at xing the target the controller will not be needed until I want to change something in the menu. No way do I want to access the menu with the headphones. I purchased an arm band for the controller. A good place to keep it safe and clean and let it on.

My very basic impressions of the Deus are as follows:

Let me state again that I know I am very very new to this detector so this is a rookie report.
The Deus in my opinion is not as deep as the Etrac. I know I can gain depth by using settings like no discrimiation and this on and that off. I use discrimination on the Etrac too, and I feel it is just deeper.
I pumped for ground balance. But after a little while I felt the Deus was getting chatty. So I put in in tracking. It seemed to settle down after that.
The VDI numbers being inaccurate and not even showing up on deep targets is frustrating to me. I expected more to be honest.
The Deus cuts through iron and seperates targets better than any detector I have ever used. Better than my Etrac with a small coil. Better than my Etrac with a small coil in TTF. The only other detector that I have used and might be close is the F75 LTD. And the Deus beats that one plus it is very much quieter.

I'll work on the settings. Customizing the tones and things like that. I purchased the Deus to add something to my arsenal that I did not have. Everyone wants to compare the E Trac and Deus and decide a winner. I did compare them to some extent in my rookie report. But I wanted to say that these are two different detectors in my mind. They both do things the other can not do. The E Trac with it's depth and target ID. The Deus with it's speed and target seperation. The Deus is no slouch on depth. It does a very nice job in that department. I would say the 52 canadian penny was 6 inches. The Deus hit it very well. Of course the target ID bounced around.

Yes, I have lost my " I just got a new detector" giddyness. I am going to try it with two tones at site where fired bullets and buttons have been found. I made a new test garden. You are so right on the VDI numbers. I will go one farther: It shows bullets, and a buried Eagle I button, and silver dimes and quarters at 98. Everything seems to be 98 in the ground if its a hi tone. But a button reads 70 and bullets at 81 or so (I forgot) but in the ground at 7,8, and 9 inches, they are 98!!! It up averages everything. But my findings are from very limited testing. I'm a rookie myself. It DOES hit better on all my test garden items than my AT Pro. I CAN say that with certainty. It's gonna take some time for me to develop an opinion. After it's said and done, how much stuff it finds me is the ultimate test. But right now I am learning what it is telling me.

The 'up-averaging' is very common with any detector....... if oxidized iron, dirt mineralization and/or flecks/flakes of tiny rust are under the coil. It does seem like the DEUS 'up-averages' a little bit more than the 'norm'. This is better than 'down-averaging' into the iron range.