Greenhorn on the loose

[stetsonhatman]

Greetings all,

I'm new to detecting. Middle-age guy looking for a long term intriguing hobby. I wanted a light-weight general purpose detector that could do just about everything (coin, jewelry, relic, gold, meteorite) other than underwater. I researched for a couple of months and bought a used Fisher F75 ltd that I had to immediately return due to mechanical fitting problems. Now prepared to pay retail for a new F75ltd, I decided to search for "new technology" and discovered Deus (thought it was called deuce). I knew from reading the forums and the video demonstrations that I would love this machine more than the ltd. Luckily, I found and just bought a Deus floor model that cost slightly more than a new F75 ltd but was much less than full retail. In a week, I will have a much better detector than I had anticipated when my journey began. /cheer

I have downloaded the Deus manual and began to read it. I found a good forum (you guys and gals) and noted the sticky FAQ and will go back to the older posts and read to the present. I find that some of the youtube videos are very educational.

My plan is to start training on the beach, dry sand at first, using standard settings. I need to learn the tones and observe the screen indications on known objects (penny, nickle, clad silver, pop top, bottle cap, tin-foil). I'll start shallow and repeat the tests at increasing depths. No one will care if I dig a hole to China on the beach! I hope to eventually find my own "silver" to include in my sample group. I already have a 10 gram chunk of meteorite iron and a .1 gram gold nugget for advanced testing later.

If anyone has recommendations to keep a greenhorn on the path to enlightenment, I welcome your advice. Thank you in advance and happy detecting.

Stets
Bay Area, Ca

 

[MHirschmann]

Hi Stets, firstly, welcome to the forum and secondly congrats on your new to you Deus. The Deus is a fantastic all-around machine and I am sure you will like it very much.

First things first, I would go into the menu and "Restore" all of the programs to their original state. You never know what might have been changed by the previous owner. Restoring everything to factory presets will give you a good platform to build on.

After you have restored all of the programs, I would not change a thing for your first 20 or so hours of hunting and just go out and have fun in the stock modes and see which one you like best. After 20 or so hours, you might be ready to start playing with things a bit. Be careful here. I have seen more than a few guys on here get frustrated with the Deus because they started changing things too quickly. You need to understand the effect that making a change has on all your other settings before you decide to change something. Learning the effect takes time, period.

So, my recommendation. Take it out for your next 20 hours in factory presets and just have fun. Learn the nuances. concentrate on the shape and texture of tones and take a mental note of what a tone sounds like before digging up your target. You will quickly learn the "sweet" and "round" sounds of good targets as opposed to the "scratchy" and "spitting" sounds of many bad targets.

I'll stop it there as you don't need too much info at this point but if you have any questions, feel free to ask away.

There are a lot of great people on this forum who are always happy to help. Another place to check for more info is here: http://www.xpmetaldetectorsamericas.com/faq

Good luck and let us know how you get along. -Marc

 

[stetsonhatman]

Marc,

Thank you for the very practical advice and another source of information.

 

[DrJoeprime]

Welcome to the forum.

I've had my Deus for just about 20 monhs now amd I really love it. After the first couple months I decided to also buy the larger coil. Iy's my main coil for the dry sand beach hunting I do the most with the Deus. The small coil I reserve for my landfill site as each swing gets me 5 or 6 signals and smaller is defintely better there.

A few of the things that made the transition to the Deus easier for me...

First ... keep the sensitivity at a reasonable level...not more than 90 ... and even 85 or 80 is alright.[ today I can routinely run it at 99]

Second ... up the discrimination to around 38 to 44...this will quiet the machine down to a comfortable level. [ today I especially like the zero discrimination program I have set up]

Third ... use Basic 1 ( or Basic 2) exclusively.until you feel comfortable. [today I like the Dry Sand program at 18K and discrim of 44]

The Deus tells us so much information by sound ... don't be discouraged...it does get better and amazingly so!

Regards, Joe (California)

 

[stetsonhatman]

Thanks for the advice DrJoe. It makes sense to stick with moderate numbers in the beginning although I am encouraged by the aggressive numbers that you've become comfortable with. Being a visual person, I know that I'll be tempted to stare at the control screen while passing back and forth over targets but I think this is a mistake. I should watch the ground/coil and listen to the tones for several passes first, then I can look at the screen and denote the VDI, depth etc.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

The best teacher is experience! We can all tell you what works for us but each situation is different. I have a few settings that really effect the machine in a positive way here in Oklahoma but that is not to say it will work for you in your situation.

Reactivity and discrimination have a huge impact on depth. The less the better.

Feel free to ask any specific questions. We are all here to help!

 

[stetsonhatman]

Thanks for the encouragement Bart. I was initially confused by the term reactivity. My first thoughts were chemical or nuclear? But once I understood that the sweep could be adjusted from wide to narrow I recognized what a powerful tool this offers to detectorists contending with masked targets. I am not aware of other brand detectors that offer this?

Discrimination makes me uncomfortable thinking that I'm going to tell the machine to ignore something I'll resent later but I'll trust the collective advice of those that been swinging long before me and stick with moderate discrim until I have more experience.