Deus, F75LTD2, and Racer head to head 10" in ground nickel

I did some more testing today over a 10" nickel in my back yard. F75LTD2 with stock coil, Deus with 11" coil, and Racer with stock coil. Ground conditions wet. All machines could be configured in normal hunting settings and acquire the nickel loud and clear between sweeps. EMI was mitigated as best as possible by using offset frequency option. A pumping/ground grab GB was used with exceptions noted below. Ground mineralization was 5 segments on Racer mineral graph (about the 7:30 position shaded in). All audio attained over nickel was using the external speakers with volume set a my general hunting levels.

First up Deus
Nickel could heard using basic 1 program.
Leaving basic 1 program settings intact I dialed disc from 10 down to 5.5. Signal became more obvious. Next I adjusted reactivity to 1 and put silencer to -1. Good strong signal. At 0 reactivity about the same signal as reactivity 1, sweep speed a little more critical. Reactivity level 3 nickel could be heard- a short signal. Reactivity 4, I could hear a very low short squeak (wouldn't dig what I heard) Leaving reactvity at `1 for the remainder of test, put freq at 18, good signal, then 8khz, signal a little choppy sounding but there (unmistakable). Sensitivity could be adjusted all the way down to 75 and a squeak was heard on the nickel. 80 was better, 85 the nickel seem to come into its own. Then 93 sens, nickel loud and clear. Sens left at 93 for the remainder of test.

At sensitivity 93 dead on ground balance in 12 khz reactivity 1 silencer -1. I played with my sweep speed. I could sweep a crawl and hear the high tone, I could sweep fast and hear the nickel. Very forgiving swing speed.

So with sens at 93, 12 khz, reactivity 1 silencer -1, I decided to play with the ground balance to see its effects on the quality of the nickel when sweeping. Pumping GB showed 77. I started dialing GB up in increments of 5 until I reached 90. At manual GB 90 nickel could be heard -scratchy. At 82 GB nickel sounded pretty good, At 87 nickel didn't sound as good but better than 90.
NOTE: The farther you got away from dead on GB the more sweep speed critical the nickel tone become.
I dialed down to 71, 6 points low, I could hear the nickel but the tone sounded a bit cramped coming in as opposed to a dead on GB.

Next up Racer:
3 tone, best achiveable tone was achieved at gain 98 id filter 05. Tone was achievable with gain level dialed all the way down to 80 (no TID). As gain level was raised tone got better and louder.
2 tone, best achievable tone was achieved at gain 95 id filter 05. Tone was achieved with gain dialed all the way down to 70 (no TID). I didn''t try any lower than 70.
Back to 3 tone gain at 98 id filter 05, with dead on GB. Sweep speed seemed noncritical, but a real slow sweep did negatively affect signal. A faster sweep seem to help the signal between sweeps. I could never go slow enough I couldn't get somewhat of a high tone. (something to investigate).
With the continued same settings I started dialing GB up. Dead on GB was 60. At 90 I was surprised I actually could still get a dig me signal. But swing speed was more critical. At 80 and 70 a btter signal than GB at 90. At 54, 6 points low of dead on GB, nickel was heard, sweep speed more critical than dead on GB, but less so than at 90 GB. Very little if any coil height above ground was achievable with the 6 points low GB setting.

Next up F75LTD2:
All testing done in 3h tones. disc setting 0.
Nickel was achievable in all processes with sensitivity at 99 except for FA.
JE process yielded the best repeatable high tone, next best was DE, Then PF, then BC. BP was hit and miss with the high tone. In Bp process coil position critical as well as sweep speed.
So staying in JE process, I could get the nickel all the way to 50 sensivity, 60 was better, 70 even better. So went to 99 sens a real good high tone, coil position much less critical than Bp process. In JE process I couldn;t sweep too slow and not get the nice high tone. And I couldn't sweep to fast within reason and not get a good solid dig me signal.
So then I started adjusting GB, dead on GB was 56. I went to 90, notta-nothing to alert me to the nickel, 80 GB I could hear the nickel sweep speed critical, 70 better overall than 80. So I dialed down to 50 GB setting. Nickel could be heard swing speed not very critical, one note- coil height above ground seemed to increase (moreso than Racer or Deus when dialing GB back negative 6 points)
I must say I was impressed with the JE process.
Ranking the detectors in order (best to worse) by overall qualilty of tone between sweeps and taking into consideration sweep speed being critical with a dead on GB with best achievable settings: #1 F75LTD2 #2 XP Deus #3 Racer
F75LTD2 users, you'd better not forget about both JE and DE processes especially if your soil is heating up with mineral.
Deus users, machine is very forgiving in the sweep speed department at reactivity levels 1,2, and 3.
Racer users, GB doesn't seem overly critical even on deeper targets---don't over think on your GB settings. Tracking GB should work in a lot of sites.

Nice,thorough test dude. Good job,good write up! Ray

Good write up..

You must not work LOL!!


Yes the F75 Je mode is very very good at what it does..its my favorite mode....

Off setting ground bal on the Racer or CoRe does not work like it does on the GMP DEUS DTVG TEJON AT-PRO ...the ground system is more like a GB pro.. I think for stable I.D. ability..

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Thanks - interesting how sweep speed became more critical in BP. I assume you needed to go slower (not slow) in BP then JE or DE. I have wondered on T2 what mode it would be closest to when just using tones. I assumed DE mode. The Deus seemed to do pretty well. Read many posts concerned about Deus Depth - this kind of points that depth may not really be an issue.

My ground I get GB around 68 would point to need to use DE or JE vs BP a on F75 for cleaner signal.

Again - Thanks

Bryanna - Nebraska

Current - New to me but not new MXT Pro and T2 SE2 - Previous Minelab Sovereign GT, Minelab Safari, Whites DFX, Whites Eagle Spectrum
Smile its a good for you!

I'm retired USAF. So as long as you all pay your taxes, I'll get paid. LOL
It didn't take me but about an hour and a half to do the test, kept the info in my noggin, and 10 minutes to type while thinking about what I saw.

The F75LTD- Folks it's a real good detector. With some of these newer releases, the F75 upgraded units probably aint getting the respect/attention it deserves. If I would have ranked it based on what I saw and heard while in BP process it would have finished #3-last. For open field relic hunting in med to low mineral I consider it for the $$$$ tops right now. Don't know enough about the new G2 so it's not in the running as far as my statement goes.

The Deus- very forgiving. I feel in reactivity 1, silencer -1, 11" coil. When open field relic hunting if you pass your coil over nonferrous at detectable depths you'll hear it if you're not asleep. Hard to sweep too slow or fast.

The Racer- Open field relic hunters who prefer 3 tone, you better jack your gain to at least 90 and maybe consider lowering your ID filter to 5. I say this because on the 10" nickel at 0,1,2,3,4,5 ID filter
settings the tone was smoother (longer) than at 10 setting. 0 may be too low, but I feel 5 is very doable and not let minerals start creeping into your audio unless maybe you have some real hot ground.

Bryanna,
This BP process sweep speed becoming more critical I believe is a by product of the upgrade. I think the slower sweep speed requirement helped gain some of the lost depth when they throttle the detector back with DST upgrade. NASA Tom I think has commented on this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2015 02:28AM by tnsharpshooter.

I work 12-15 hour days...Sleep 4- 5 hours a day..try to test machines on off time and give condenesed versions of what I find..

I type on my phone when I can ..hence alot of weird misspelled words...No Im not drunk when I type LOL...And middle of the night videos in the dark...LOL!!

Good for you being retired!!! and thanks for serving !!!

Yes the BP mode requries slower sweeps...just as the slower reactivity on a DEUS requires slower sweeps..

The effects wiht the BP mode is at times it allows to much ground signal in with the sweep and is detrimental if the ground is challenging...while the JE mode is more along the lines of the GB Pro line .. quick snap shots less depth but less non ferrous reading ferrous if the gorund is bad...

This is one reason a DEUS can do so well in mineral dirt...set silencer to off-1...it allows signal of ground and disc'd targets to bleed through,,,Use a reactivity of 3 or 4 for quick peeks...use 18khz to adhere to the faster sweeps and short snapshots... offset the Ground bal for opening the dirt window up some and there you have some setting's that allow for peeking in bad dirt very very well for a VlF unit..one pof the betetr units made for 5 F.e bar dirt for usable obtainable depth which is not great but its better than everything sounding like iron..

On the Racer going below 10 I.D. filter.allows more mineral in like the F75 below 6 and the T2 below 10...And it does allow for a slight increase in depth I like to use zero on the Racer in the open..not as much for depth but gauging how to control sweep speeds and knowing that the more concentrated the mineral reports then I know what they are doing to the signal in a masking way....

the more audio info a person has the more they can effectively hunt....

head to head can be tricky and touchy....people want what THEY use to be the best....and to be truthful all of them are good its edgy things that set them apart...

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

I'm just getting out around my place with my spanking new F19 and F75 LTD2. My requirenents are for one all around VLF detector for low to medium mineralization ground, coins and relics, but also possible gold nuggets. for bad ground and gold, I have a PI machine. So far I am thinking the '75 is top of the heap. In discriminate DE I can hear very small gold as well as the '19 can hear it in all metal. This isn't quite apples for apples since I am using a small concentric elliptical coil on the F75 vs the std. 10" on the F19. More work to be done.

I had a Deus and could never get it to stop lying to me last summer about Danish steel beer bottle caps! I guess I lack the sonar ears which KEITH HAS!!!

Thanks for your tests Tnss. Keep the info flowing.

The Turkish lire being in the toilet vs. the $ is making it hard for US brands to compete with Nokta/Makro on value for money, but I think that they probably need to settle down and work the bugs out of their current products. When I heard that they were going to use Bluetooth for the wireless headphones, I emailed and asked why they thought that would work when the competition uses dedicated Wireless modules from TI and perhaps others. They answered that they had looked into the latency (delay) issues and it was no problem. I think I read here that there were in fact issues with that. They make a good product and are extermely customer focused, but maybe the current designs need time to stabilize a bit?

It's a fun time to be involved in this stuff, new models steadily appearing. We all seem to be focused on relics in bad ground and ferrous trash at the moment, I guess because coinshooting won't pay for batteries any more, much less gas money! Where are those $5 and $10 coins we need??? In Denmark I watched a guy set up his Deus to "notch in" the 10 and 20 Danish Kroner coins only and then pick up more than $50 worth in a half hour or so!!

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

Once again awesome info TNSS. I just made my yearly contribution to your retirement LOL. Thank you for your service :-)

I have been giving my LTD2 a pretty good work out trying to figure out what makes it happy. My soil is really tough (iron). I have pretty much came to the same conclusion as you regarding JE mode. Definitely seems to work the best in my ground. It has pretty much become my default setting.

I'm still learning the ins and out of the unit but overall really pleased. It's a freakin bullet magnet. I can be moving through the woods at a good clip and it just bangs them out. Haven't found any gold with it yet but it's only a matter of time. To be fair, it hasn't seen much time chasing nuggets. I have a hard time leaving the 5000 at home when I'm headed out for nuggets. I did use it once for nuggets recently and was pleasantly surprised at how it handled hot rocks. I was in a heavy basalt area and I couldn't even tune them out all the way with the 5000. The LTD2 in DE, JE, and BP......not a peep on the hot rocks. Dead quiet. They were loud and clear in all metal, but totally gone in disc. Pretty cool.

I bought the 5 x 10 DD for it and it is quickly becoming my default coil. Good seperation, depth and doesn't get hung up on everything like the open 11" coil.

Thanks again for your report.

Kenny

Re: this:"With the F75 I started adjusting GB, dead on GB was 56..... I dialed down to 50 GB setting. Nickel could be heard, swing speed not very critical, one note - coil height above ground seemed to increase"
This is normal behaviour. As you raise a search-coil away from the ground, not only does the level of the ground pickup drop ( kind of obvious, I guess), but the phase of the ground changes, too, moving to a lower "more-mineralised" number (on the F75). So GB=50 is the ideal value for the coil at 2 1/2 inches, say, compared to the 'close' value of 56.

A couple of related notes:
*When a coil is very close to the ground (less than 20mm / 0.75 inch) a coils' pick-up can be a bit odd, and the ground strength / phase may vary in a slightly opposite way, you can sometimes observe this when you manual-balance.
*If you're using BP/Boost mode, and searching with the coil several inches clear of the ground, you should GB with the coil at that height, where you will get a low GB number (40's, 50's).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2015 06:06PM by Pimento.