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Equinox Too Noisy?


Mike Buck

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Hey all. So I've had my 600 for a few days now and have gotten out 3 times. I've made some great finds so far in my yard which I previously hunted numerous times. 

I've noticed that this machine is very noisy and chatters a lot.  The machines I've used before were a lot older Whites machines and were nowhere near this noisy.  

I noise cancelled my machine, have the tracking ground balance on and even turned the sensitivity down to about 15 and this thing is very chattery still. I was mainly searching in Park 1 mode but switched to some other modes to see if it was the same... and it was. When I get over a good target, I know it.  It's just very noisy otherwise.  Not sure if this is something I just need to get used to or if I'm just doing something wrong.

Does anyone else have any input with how noisy their machine has been or what they have been seeing/hearing? 

Thanks guys! 

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You might want to make sure it is chattery at other sites too, you may just be picking up some local source of EMI the 600 cannot cancel out using auto NC.  Also, make sure you are letting the NC do its thing with the coil in the air and away from the ground.  Not sure it would make much difference, but the 800 has the option of manual NC which may be more effective under some situations.  One thing you could try is going into single frequency mode and try the various single frequencies to see if a certain frequency is more susceptible (not that you would want to hunt in single freq, but it might be enlightening to see if it has any positive effect).  Just a thought.

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I've had my 800 out three days and to about a half a dozen locations and noticed that it is indeed somewhat sensitive to EMI.  Also, the coil on the Equinox because of its double D design has extra signals at the edge of the coil, in fact much stronger "edge" signals than any other DD coil I've used, and this makes for a very chattery audio especially when sweeping over numerous shallow targets. 

At one location, a park near a federal building, the EMI was so bad that I had to switch out of Multi and go to 10 kHz to quiet the detector down.  The EMI seemed to be coming in through the 5 kHz channel, which was very noisy, but all the others were quiet.  This is a location I've hunted many times with other detectors and the only other detector besides the Equinox that was this sensitive to EMI was my V3i.  I guess that is the downside of a sparky detector running many frequencies simultaneously with a greater chance of picking up EMI.  But it's not un-tamable.  You just have to make sure you do a good noise cancel, drop the sensitivity, and switch to single frequency if absolutely necessary. 

This is a "hot" detector.  It's good that Minelab didn't dumb it down just to make it more stable.

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Hello Mike, any chance you or your neighbor has "invisible fence" (buried wire) for a dog ?  It made it nearly impossible to detect at one place I hunted, until they turned it off.

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29 minutes ago, Wayfarer said:

At one location, a park near a federal building, the EMI was so bad that I had to switch out of Multi and go to 10 kHz to quiet the detector down.  The EMI seemed to be coming in through the 5 kHz channel, which was very noisy, but all the others were quiet. 

This is one of the few real uses I have found for the single frequency modes.

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Any chance that Federal Building has a security system?  :ph34r:

I have tried my 800 in auto under a pier with rides above me and I had to turn down the sensitivity.  I didn't try the single frequency.  My 3030 will not tolerate that pier nearly as well as the SE Pro did.  

My first use of my 800 on the beach left me wanting because I didn't know enough about the adjustments to hear strong target signals.  I dug some deep pennies which sounded 'weak' but got them at about 12 inches.  They would sound better as I got closer and then out but without the lock I get on my 3030.

Tomorrow is a long session of test garden and a few waves are coming Monday so I need to know what I am doing.

Mitchel

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Really appreciate the responses guys. A lot of good feedback and info. I'll have to see if I can get a better noise cancel next time and maybe try switching through the single frequencies to see if that calms the chatter. 

It is a very hot detector but I've picked up 3 flat buttons and 4 wheats in the past 3 days in a yard I've pounded to death. I'm learning the language of the detector.  This is my first VLF machine and I still couldn't be happier. I'm just glad to see that others have been noticing the same as me. 

Thanks!

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6 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Any chance that Federal Building has a security system?  :ph34r:

I have tried my 800 in auto under a pier with rides above me and I had to turn down the sensitivity.  I didn't try the single frequency.  My 3030 will not tolerate that pier nearly as well as the SE Pro did.  

My first use of my 800 on the beach left me wanting because I didn't know enough about the adjustments to hear strong target signals.  I dug some deep pennies which sounded 'weak' but got them at about 12 inches.  They would sound better as I got closer and then out but without the lock I get on my 3030.

Tomorrow is a long session of test garden and a few waves are coming Monday so I need to know what I am doing.

Mitchel

Mitchel,

For the noisy pier, you might want practice with and then try the 800-unique manual noise cancel mode to see if that helps you manually find a less noisy channel so you don't have to suppress sensitivity.  Just a thought

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Is there more noise with the coil still or while you are sweeping?

 

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11 minutes ago, Mark Gillespie said:

Is there more noise with the coil still or while you are sweeping?

 

While I'm sweeping Mark. It's silent until I start swinging. Seems like it's 70% chatter and 30% signals if I had to guess. 

I can definitely tell when I'm over a good signal but it's just very noisy otherwise. I'm in Ohio and we just got some snow last evening. I still might try to get a video and out it up on here to show how hot it seems to be running. 

Thanks. 

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