Hey George -

My summary comment about smaller not needed was mostly a tease directed at Gregg.

That said I really like the Deus and Deus 2 with the 9" and Joel, Brian and Roger are doing exceptional with theirs in the field. I know they don't post here on AHRPS anymore, but I get text messages from them when they go hunting. Their results suggest the 9" coil performs very well in the tight iron. Could it be better with a smaller coil? Yes.

Like you, I think a smaller 6" round coil or even an oval coil like their current HF option for the original Dues, on the D2 would be a benefit for getting into tight places and minimizing the number of targets under the coil at a given time. Like your response from XP suggested, I don't see that happening. Guts of the XP SMF coil are too big to fit into a housing smaller than the 9".

Does that force your hand to get a dedicated worst of the worst ghost town machine? You will have to answer that yourself. I have one. Mine is the CoRe with the OOR. I like using my 800 better, but, the 800 doesn't sort as well for me in the worst of the worst. Having used both the Deus 2 and my 800, I believe the Deus 2 with 9" does better than the 800 with 6". Just my experience. Since I sold my Deus 2, (it was a controller falling into the shallow water thing for me) I have both my 800 w/6" coil, and the CoRe with 5" OOR. I find stuff with both and i know how to use both well.

Eventually Minelab will get their small coil out for the Manticore. I believe they are sizing it 8x6 or 9x6, so it is likely that I'm going to need to keep my 800 with 6" for my alternate ghost town detector. I'm ok with that. Still I need to see how the oval coil does with the manticore once it's available. Maybe it will prove better than the 800/6" combo.

Good luck with your decision.

Rich -

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Zen and the Art of Metal Detecting . . . . .