Deus nabs me a mercury dime at 10"

toasted

Silver Member
Jun 1, 2015
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14,083
Maryland
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Detector(s) used
Minelab Equinox 600 XP Deus
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Ive been pulling some silvers and wheats from a park that was once a schoolyard. Most have been 7" down or more. Tonight I got a fresh drop 1945 Mercury dime that was at least as deep as my pinpointer(9"). Park has been pounded as I have found only a few clad coins. Guess no one has run a higher end machine through there though.

Settings were a custom cherrypicking program as the park is full of iron, pulltabs and slaw

8 or 12khz
2 reactivity
-1 silencer
O disc
0-75 notch
Full tones
 

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Just a couple of comments/questions on your settings?

First let me say that there are no sure things in detecting and fewer absolutes, rights and wrongs, so if you've found a custom set of Deus settings that make you happy and deliver the goods, that is the most important thing (i.e., if it ain't broke, don't fix it). I offer the following up only so I can learn why other users are doing what they are doing and perhaps can provide some tidbits that others might find useful. I am not here to judge or say what I do is better than what someone else does and if it comes across that way, please call me out on it. So getting that disclaimer out of the way, a few questions:

Why are you not using discrimination but notching so high? Discrimination up to about 8 or 10 should not affect depth. Or put another way, why notch over discrimination?

If you can get away with silencer -1 (effectively silencer off) without a lot of chatter, that's great, but I've found you can get away with silencer 0 without losing depth so I never run it at -1 especially if I am using discrimination or notching iron and if the machine is otherwise chatty. Running silencer above 0 will defintiely result in reduced detection depth but may be necessary if noise is an issue (I would probably go no higher than 1 though). That being said, my question is does -1 provide some sort of detection advantage that you have been able to validate in practice?

Thanks in advance for sharing any of your insights on your settings.
 

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In my test bed, I have found that any discrimination above 1 or 2 most certainly affects depth. You are losing at least an inch or two with disc at 8 or 10. I notch to avoid all the pull tab and can slaw sounds. A disc of 8 or 10 would do nothing for those signals. I dont think notch affects depth as much as disc if at all. Im running sensitivity at 94. I use -1 silencer because anything higher affects depth. It may not be much but it does

I have also hunted here with no notch but I prefer to give my ears a rest on trashy sites. Now if Im on a really old site without much modern trash were good finds have been made then I will run no notch with a disc at no more than five and dig it all
 

Way to go!

In my test bed, I have found that any discrimination above 1 or 2 most certainly affects depth. You are losing at least an inch or two with disc at 8 or 10. I notch to avoid all the pull tab and can slaw sounds. A disc of 8 or 10 would do nothing for those signals. I dont think notch affects depth as much as disc if at all. Im running sensitivity at 94. I use -1 silencer because anything higher affects depth. It may not be much but it does

I have also hunted here with no notch but I prefer to give my ears a rest on trashy sites. Now if Im on a really old site without much modern trash were good finds have been made then I will run no notch with a disc at no more than five and dig it all

Good score on that deep dime - using 0-75 notch will have you missing a few thin dimes, but at that depth the Deus shouldn't give any VDI...I've pulled a few pennies and dimes from 8-9" that gave a VDI of 89-91, and occasionally 97-98 - it really doesn't matter that the VDI isn't stable on these deep targets; rather, the audio is most telling Imho....Full Tones really helps with iffy deep targets too!

I have a park here that's littered with small foil that sometimes can sound like deep coins. Haven't found a good way to distinguish between the two yet, but tomorrow I'm trying an adjacent Goldfield program in an effort to further refine the deep coins vs shallow tiny foil (even 4kHz hits small foil!!!)

You should revisit that park and try Disc 0-70 - this way, you won't miss some Indians that like to ID on the low end, and who knows...you may be "discing" out a penny/nickel coin spill that sometimes like to average out - you would miss this combo target with those notch settings.

But you can't argue with success - any coin found at 9-10" down penny-sized or smaller is always a GREAT indication that you're on the right track! Keep it up! :hello2:
 

If you like running silencer then you do need a little disc. So set your disc to 2 then notch up from there. No loss in depth
 

Im running ID Norm. The deep silver quarters and dimes here give a vdi of 96-97. If I lower the notch Ill start digging too many tabs here for my taste. True that worn/corroded indians, trimes, half dimes may be missed. I dug a worn barber dime here that wasnt super deep but did id at 91. Wheats are usually 87-91. Dug a small sterling ring at 83 here.

I know what you mean about the deep foil. I had a signal that I was sure was silver but turned out to be foil. Good thing is most foil I think is more modern so not that deep.
 

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I am going to have to do some detailed testing to see how much disc affects depth. My previous statement regarding disc not affecting depth is that I have found small targets like coins and small brass relics at significant depths (8+") with disc set around 8 or 10, but perhaps I am blind to a 9 or 10" target like the merc you cherry picked above.

Also, can you elaborate on why any disc is needed if you are running silencer. I have not made that connection, but that is perhaps because I am always running disc. Are you saying silencer will not work unless some disc >0 is programmed in? Thanks.

I think CZ has recently debunked the claim that the horseshoe loses its ferrous/nonferrous indication at 0 disc, so there doesn't appear to be a real down side to running 0 disc if you want to go deep, but if I want to do that I switch from a disc program to AM via gold field (which is what CZ is going to experiment with next time and I encourage that experiment).

Thanks all for the benefit of your Deus experience and insight. I learn something new all the time.
 

Im running ID Norm. The deep silver quarters and dimes here give a vdi of 96-97. If I lower the notch Ill start digging too many tabs here for my taste. True that worn/corroded indians, trimes, half dimes may be missed. I dug a worn barber dime here that wasnt super deep but did id at 91. Wheats are usually 87-91. Dug a small sterling ring at 83 here.

I know what you mean about the deep foil. I had a signal that I was sure was silver but turned out to be foil. Good thing is most foil I think is more modern so not that deep.

I see where ID NORM keeps you from having to mentally adjust VDI depending on the frequency you are running, but I use the frequency change (not shift) as a way to id a potential trash target such as a rusted bottlecap since VDI should go up with an increased operating frequency and trash targets will likely exhibit just the opposite behavior. I have not tried that "trick" with ID NORM since my understanding is that you would not get the vdi shift at all, but could be mistaken. Another interesting test garden experiment I will have to run. I am more inclined to hit the field though than experiment in the test garden so a lot of these test that are on my wish list, stay on my wish list for awhile. ha.
 

The Deus still seems to be plenty deep even with high disc(8 or 10) but not if your running high reactivity(3+) and or silencer.

From what I understand you have to have some discrimination filtering active for the more advanced silencer filtering to take effect. I dont really know as I have done very little experimenting with silencer and have kept it at -1

As far as changing frequencies to id bottlecaps. I dont seem to hunt in areas with a lot of bottlecaps. You can also wiggle the coil off the target and listen for iron grunt.
 

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