My XP Deus story

Metaldetecting Belgian coast with my XP Deus

I had gone through these, starting around 2009:

1 Ace 250 – Really hard to understand for the beginner that I was. Sold it right away.

2 White’s Amphibian II- great for pinpointing, something I really couldn’t with the ace. Did take it to BRazil and even found a thin low karat gold ring with it. Was too amateuristic to really hunt a lot there, and now i regret it. But it was also very hot. It was Summer there.

White’s amphibian II metaldetector


3 Fisher F70– I thought this was quite a decent detector. A bit heavy but found some cool stuff with it, like a small silver medieval coin. The best I have so far.

Fisher F70


Then some other detectorist was boasting about this Deus that everyone had now, and I’m like ‘yeah yeah’ in my head because it was also very expensive. It was at least 900 euro while my Fisher had cost 500 secondhand. And I didn’t really go out detecting thàt much. THen some other guy offered me his used small unit with headphones, and I ordered a new small coil and shaft with it. I wasn’t still finding a lot but that changed after doing an update (the software was dodgy at that point and i don’t know whether that guy put in some bad settings). It took me YEARS – literally YEARS – to find a good soul to update my unit, so yeah, you wonder where my faith in humanity went ? I needed the update to use it with my newer 11″ coil..and from that point on I started finding a lot more, and subsequently, also going out more to detect. There was a series of hunts where I came home with something Roman every damn time !


Also found that gold Roman coin but that same day, my old secondhand Deus unit started acting weird. I did have it already for 5 yrs and it was already quite used by the looks of it when i bought it. I sent it off to the detector shop in my country, the one that sucks b*lls. There’s only one and everyone is so in awe for it. The guy is very nice but I have nothing but issues with stuff that i need to have repaired. He said to send it to him in several mails, almost begging me to give it to him so he could fix it. I never saw that unit again. Did write a mail after a month. No answer. Did buy a whole Deus on secondhand with unit so at least i had control over updates from then on. And I could hunt again on that gold field !! I mailed again to this detector shop after half a year and this time he said he sent it back to me ages ago. He just never let me know so i didn’t expect anything, and the thing got lost. He couldn’t track it so he just offered to send me a whole new unit ! I’m like ‘OK’.. lol. I couldn’t be more surprised when i got the parcel and it contained a new FULL deus unit !! THe fun was a bit less when I took it out to hunt for the first time and the battery went dead in an hour, but I had recently bought a spare battery so i fixed that. THe screen also had a big dark spot over it, but lowering the contrast also fixed that. So yeah, I don’t know..

I was actually set back for quite some quid with that new detector, and it took me ages to sell the parts again that I didn’t need, and I sold them with a loss. Plus, I had TWO big units now. I could also only sell the second one after a long period of offering it for sale. But ok, I finally have all the parts again, and a big unit for the updates. I did run for years with just the small unit with less functions, but nevertheless can’t really say that having the big unit makes a world of difference.

playground with xp deus HF coil

I bought the round HF coil for my XP Deus a while ago. I was hoping I would find the small (GOLD ! Silver !) things that other detectorists would have missed in these godforsaken hunted-down fields around my Roman city..

I DID find an amazing Silver Roman denarius of 81BC on my first hunt on an emptied field. Second trip I found 4 pieces of very small Roman follis and an old silver earring. So that started great! But then the success started to fade and I couldn’t get used to the difference in feeling so I mostly would hunt with my 11 or 13″” coil again on the fields. I once did a whole track in a field with the bigger coil, and then followed with the small white one. I only found a few very small pieces of crap. OF course, the items have to be there. I know that. But I don’t want to dig up tiny things that are even impossible to find with a pinpointer.

Back to the white coil and my first trip with it in the playground: now that was fun. I dug up all 1-2 cents that I would otherwise miss. THey have an iron core and I think the higher freq do love iron. I dug up a load of big iron in the fields.. it’s like you never walked with a detector before. Impossible. But I also found a thin silver bracelet and that’s a first in this playground setting. I did find a few bigger ones on beaches in Montenegro and also a very thin baby bracelet that i found by accident when i was using my pinpointer. I think i have about 5 silver bracelets now, so that’s a nice collection.