Old guy with old Deus

squidboy1951

Greenie
May 31, 2013
13
33
N. Fork CA
Detector(s) used
fortunate enough to have several
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I have an XP Deus which I have been using on an off for several years, I share it with my wife and we have found many items, coins, bullets, silver ring, jewelry and some old iron tools.
My questions are probably very lame, I am 70+ years old, techno impaired, but we enjoy detecting and now have more time for our hobby. Our machine is probably a V3.0 and I was wondering if we need to update it to a V5.0. We have no problems or complaints with it, the coil, remote control and WS4 head phones charge up and work good. The new x35 and hf coils seem like something we may want or need, but don't know enough if they would even work with our detector.

We are thinking about getting an additional XP Deus detector so we would both have one, but don't know which one to get. We hunt on our own property a lot and are lucky to find items from early 1900s from a logging camp, old railroad and old homesite. Our location is in the Central Sierra foothills, and I believe our soil is mineralized to give you our search conditions. A new XP Deus would be nice, but they all have different coils and like I said the one we have works great, so I just don't know, the detector is very light and easy for old people to use with out tiring you out. So the 9 inch coils would probably be the best size, but the HF coil has a more user friendly battery, (original coil battery will probably need to be changed soon) I would like to have the same coil for both detectors, but don't know if the X35 coils can work with the old machine.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 

vferrari

Silver Member
Jul 19, 2015
4,910
8,377
Near Ground Zero for Insanity
Detector(s) used
XP Deus with HF/x35 Coils and Mi6 Pinpointer/ML Equinox 600/800/ML Tarsacci MDT 8000 GPX 4800/Garrett ATX/Fisher F75 DST/Tek G2+/Delta/Whites MXT/Nokta Simplex/Garrett Carrot
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
You do not need to upgrade the Deus if you are using the legacy coils. If you do upgrade, you get some new modes and new ground balance settings but mainly the upgrades accommodate the new hardware HF and X35 coils and the XP wireless pinpointer that allows you to hear the pinpointer tone through your headphones. If you get a second Deus, I would suggest the X35 9" coil. Your new Deus will likely come already updated to the latest software version to accommodate the new X35 coil. You still don't need to upgrade your old Deus unless you want to swap the X35 coil between the two Deus controllers. The X35 coil has some performance improvements compared to the legacy XP Deus coils including the addition of a new frequency 25 khz which is good for gold jewelry, relic hunting, and detecting in high density target situations. I recommend that you go ahead and to the new Deus or "alternatively" you could consider the XP Orx which uses the same X35 and HF coils as the Deus but a more simplified user interface and fewer settings. Unless you do a lot of fiddling with the settings, the XP ORX might make a great second XP detector and it is about $500 dollars cheaper than the Deus. You can also use the Orx coil on your existing Deus provided you upgrade the Deus to the latest firmware. HTH.
 

OP
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squidboy1951

Greenie
May 31, 2013
13
33
N. Fork CA
Detector(s) used
fortunate enough to have several
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Mr. vferrari,

Some sage wisdom in your reply, I don't do "a lot of fiddling" you must know me!!! I lack the knowledge and understanding to feel comfortable changing the stock settings. I have used the different pre-loaded programs and can see some of the benefits of those. I have read many of your posts, watched the training videos and set up a garden of targets to practice with, so many thanks to you and many others here for good advice.

I am going to research the Orx detector, but probably stick with the Deus as the new detector.

I am some what hesitant to upgrade the Deus, but as you indicated it is required to use the new coils. Can we still use the legacy coil after the upgrade?

I do want to go detecting more than ever, being on the forum again has really motivated us.

We have several Whites detectors and pin pointers, but the Deus has worked out better for us and we seldom use the detectors, but still use the pin pointers.
 

smokeythecat

Gold Member
Nov 22, 2012
20,714
40,795
Maryland
🥇 Banner finds
10
🏆 Honorable Mentions:
1
Detector(s) used
XP Deus II
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Yes, you can still use the legacy coils after the latest upgrade. I have the latest software and use the HF coil exclusively with great results.
 

OP
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squidboy1951

Greenie
May 31, 2013
13
33
N. Fork CA
Detector(s) used
fortunate enough to have several
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
We ended up ordering a new XP Deus with MI6 pinpointer for my wife and she is a real happy detectorist. We updated the older Deus to version 5 with no problems at all, now just waiting for the 9" X35 coil to be delivered for it. We detected around the property and found a few bullets and several Wheaties so far. I hope entering the new coil serial # goes as easy as the update.
Thanks for the good advice to our questions and hope your weather allows for some serious detecting and good finds.
 

OP
OP
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squidboy1951

Greenie
May 31, 2013
13
33
N. Fork CA
Detector(s) used
fortunate enough to have several
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
The new 9 inch X35 coil showed up yesterday, easy to enter the serial # and have it recognized by the remote and headphones. Being 70+ and techno impaired I am overly concerned with doing up-dates and turning my detector into an expensive paper weight. I tested it out in our target garden and it works perfectly.
Will get out and try our luck at some old mining and lumber camps in a few days.

Thanks for all of the good advice and encouragement from the experts here, hope you all can get out and find some good stuff.

Stay safe and healthy.
 

pepperj

Gold Member
Feb 3, 2009
37,499
139,012
🥇 Banner finds
1
Detector(s) used
Deus, Deus 2, Minelab 3030, E-Trac,
Primary Interest:
Relic Hunting
Just speaking with het repair centre yesterday and Jim informed me that my unit will have the 5.21 version installed when they check the issues over. Before they would give me a Ref: # They wanted the credit card #.
I have to see what they have done since the 4.1 version.
Still an awesome machine-Your Mrs is a lucky gal to have her own machine.

Great to have your property to play on also, I enjoy walking out the door and turning on the machine. Strangly enough I have never detected my front lawn-mid 80's home....30 second walk early 1800 stuff.
 

OP
OP
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squidboy1951

Greenie
May 31, 2013
13
33
N. Fork CA
Detector(s) used
fortunate enough to have several
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
pepperj,

It is great to have a place to detect just walking out the door. Only thing is there was very little to no activity in our area until the late 1800s and it was a few mines and logging. My wife found a 1906 Indian Head Penny, the oldest item for us. We do find Indian artifacts near the creek, pound holes, obsidian chips which may be much older than the metal detector finds.

You should detect your front yard, early 1800s, I am so envious. Colonial era finds and Canadian lands, you are very fortunate plus a feline helper.

Hope your detector is fully functional now, we sure enjoy ours and spend many memorable hours out in the fresh air together. I am not real experienced with electronics and we both find many items with the factory programs. I may try some of VFerrarri, Calabash and smokeythecat custom programs if I get real adventurous. The detector I use started out as a Ver 3.0 machine and now is a Ver 5.21 with a 9x35 coil, what a wonderful detector to be upgradeable that much. Never had any problems with it since it was new many years ago.

Good luck, stay healthy and safe.
 

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