First Equinox 800 Hunt And Beginners Luck Strikes Gold!

[Cal_Cobra]

The EQ800 I ordered in September finally landed!!  

I met up with a friend, he brought his Minelab SE Pro and we hunted a little area he discovered a while back.  It's been a while since I ran a Minelab detector (had an Etrac about 5-6 years ago, but didn't find it to be a good machine for iron infested relic sites, so sold it). Have a ton to learn on the EQ800, but right out of the gate it makes a nice find! I have a lot to learn about the EQ800, but I recorded my thoughts on the first hunt, good and bad.

Thanks for watching!

HH,
Cal

[Steve Herschbach]

First of all Cal I want to thank you for using default settings when starting out. Too many people are making a mess out of Equinox out the starting gate trying to outthink the designers. My settings vary very little from defaults, just tweaks really.

Random tips. People may be overly entranced with Field 2 as a “magic mode”. Park 2 and Field 2 are hotter on tiny stuff and weak conductors. So much so that Field 2 by default has target id 1 and 2 blocked to eliminate the tiniest non-ferrous targets, foil, and coke. In my opinion blocking this range takes some of the edge off that I seek. If tiny stuff or coke is not driving you crazy open it up. I open it up first and only block it if those items are creating problems for me. I don’t like blocking things by default. If tiny stuff is creating an actual problem it may be better instead to run Park 1 or Field 1 instead which are not as hot on these tiny objects in the first place, especially if hunting high conductors. No right or wrong here just food for thought.

For me the surface target indication is a triple hit as the coil edges and middle pass over the shallowest targets. Equinox by design will not overload in situations where other detectors go into continuous overload. It can run on magnetite black sand that will blow other VLF detectors off the air. I have had problems with Euro machines going into continuous overload in many places in the west. It is unlikely this will be an issue with Equinox, especially with Beach 2 as emergency fallback.

The sheer power of the machine does also make targets sound shallow for quite a few inches. Remember that depth meters are just signal strength calibrated to a known target like a dime. Modulation requires the signal strength to fade or that the machine have some other way to know the target is getting deeper. The problem? with Equinox is signal strength does not begin to drop off until you get fairly deep. If modulation started at the surface deep targets would get way too weak. I am not saying these things do not have possible fixes but there are reasons why it is the way it is, not just simple oversight on the part of the engineers. Multi-IQ really is different and everyone is having to learn new things about it, including the design team.

It is critical when dealing with ferrous to open the ferrous range up so you can hear the ferrous component of a signal. Many ferrous items give off both ferrous and non-ferrous signals, and by blocking non-ferrous audio all you hear is the non-ferrous component. Set tones and volumes such that you do not suffer from audio overload i.e. lower the ferrous volume. For me 50 tones wide open is the way I normally hunt, for all the reasons noted above but five tones offers more customization flexibility, especially on the 800.

Great video, great first hunt, that ring may be more valuable than you think! Thanks for posting.

P.S. I liked the ring for another reason - the recent debate on nickel signals and pull tabs. My take was you just never know what will pop up in that range and getting too fixated on one target id can miss some great finds. You just proved that!!

[Cal_Cobra]

Steve thanks for sharing your insight, and  tips, very helpful.

Later today I'll be meeting up with Tom to detect a relic site, it's a new site that I'm completely unfamiliar with, so it will make sense to open up the iron range and drop the iron audio volume, as for relic sites I definitely want to know where the iron is.  I'll check the manual for the differences between PARK1/2 and FIELD2, but you're correct, I've been noting people are gravitating towards FIELD2 and having success with it, so that's what I thought would be the best mode to start off with. 

I hear what your saying about modulation and surface targets.   I don't really use the depth meter, but would like better audio feedback on depth.  I could see leaving it as is for beach modes, but for park and field modes (particularly park) people tend to rely on modulation to cherry pick those deep conductors.  I know it's unlikely to happen, but perhaps ML could add some kind of adjustable modulation setting in the future, or on the next gen EQ machines.  It's definitely going to take some getting used to, as the surface targets were fairly confusing (I can only imagine how this will work in a ghost town environment where there's tons of targets, many are literally on the surface, only covered by a scattering of sand/soil).  Another item to master with experience.

So for going into a brand new ghost town/relic type site you've never detected before, and being a new EQ800 user, you would recommend I trying PARK1/2 over FIELD2 then right?

Thanks!
Brian

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

Nice hunt, nice video, nice commentary.

Just plum nice Cal.

Thanks for sharing,

[GB_Amateur]

Thanks for that video, Cal.  Very promising results in a place that has seen serious hunting.  For me it looks a lot like some of my sites so I'm stoked I'll do as well as you were doing.

Regarding others cherry-picking, that makes sense, but those non-ferrous (brass/copper) washers are a good sign, IMO.  Who knows how to discriminate those out?  I suspect others didn't see them (depth or masking) or got off-ID's.  I recall with at least one you were hitting up there with the high conductor coins.  I like seeing that!

[cdv]

Good video Cal and a real nice ring to start the Equinox off with!  Congrats...

Cliff

[George Kinsey]

Nice video Cobra. Be prepared for the small stuff we you hit the Spanish Trail. Loved the ring.

[Steve Herschbach]

I am still learning myself but I have a high confidence factor in the mode recommendations as outlined in the manual and so I take the recommendations literally - at least for a start. From the Equinox Instruction Manual page 22 (emphasis added):

Choosing the Right Detect Mode
Choosing the right Detect Mode is important to get the best performance for the environment you are detecting in. To easily get started, choose Park, Field, Beach or Gold* to suit your location. Search Profile 1 is suitable for general conditions. Search Profile 2 is optimised for more difficult conditions. Target sensitivity is enhanced, but extra noise may also result. Detailed descriptions of each Detect Mode are in the following pages.

*Equinox 800 only

When they say target sensitivity they are referring more to small target sensitivity than to depth, though the two are related.

 

The underlined portion above is further explained below in the portions detailing signal to noise ratios (click for larger version):

Be sure to note and be very cautious about what they are doing with target id 1 & 2 as regards either shifting it into the ferrous range or blocking it entirely. For me and what I am doing I reverse those settings and even have been opening 0 up as a possible non-ferrous target. Maybe -1 also. Equinox seems to have nailed the divide between ferrous and non-ferrous but simply put I don't trust it yet (nor any detector really in that regard) and for nugget hunting in particular I pay very close attention to that range and what is going on. Micro jewelry hunters, fine gold chain hunters, etc. want to do the same because target id 1 & 2 is where that stuff reads, and possibly lower in high mineral soils. People that don't understand the last paragraph should ignore it entirely for now unless you really like digging trash.

 

So for a new relic type area I would probably start in Field 1 myself and go from there. Field 2 is a "Pro Mode" requiring more skill because it will be noisier (the signal to noise thing). The first thing I like to do is get away from the target zone, go wide open, and run the coil over the ground. Ground signals tend to exhibit in the -9 to -7 range. If the ground balance is off or sensitivity too high there will be constant puttering in that range. This is what I refer to as ground masking. It will exhibit more in Park 2 and Field 2 than in Park 1 and Field 1 and may have some bearing on which profile works best. You can try and find a better ratio of ground balance and sensitivity to alleviate the ground masking OR you can go the other way and jack the sensitivity up and then block that range from signaling. There may be advantages to either method depending on the ground and targets sought. The more ground masking you observe, the more important it is you keep recovery speed high to enable the ability to peek into areas of lower mineralization and between hot rocks. This in my opinion is the number one reason why Equinox can outperform BBS/FBS in high mineral ground. It is also where Equinox can outperform simple gold nugget detectors that have nothing more than ground balance to work with. The easiest way to toss that advantage away is run recovery speed too low.

Once I get into the hunt area I am again going to tend towards listening for and accepting everything and then adjusting accordingly depending on the trash mix in the area. I prefer myself to sort it all out by ear but a person can also just notch out the peskiest stuff, whatever it may be. There is no point walking away from a site because of some horrible trash target that drives you crazy. Just notch it out, accept that maybe some goodie in that range will get missed, and get on with the hunt. Whatever. We all have different tolerances for this stuff and different ways of dealing with it. If tiny non-ferrous makes you crazy, just block it out, as has been done by default in Park 2 and Field 2. And remember that Park 1 and Field 1 are inherently less sensitive to the tiny bits in the first place.

Keep Beach modes in mind when experimenting. Yeah they tune out the salt range and therefore lose an edge on tiny non-ferrous but maybe that is what you want in some places. Beach 2 will handle mineralized ground that would shut down most VLF detectors. Single frequency modes also act to mellow the machine so give 20 kHz or lower a go if things are too sparky.

I am in no way trying to make any of this out to be anything but suggestions. I refuse to ever fall into thinking any one mode or search profile is the answer for everything and try to approach every new site as if I am starting all over to a certain degree. I find settings that work for me from all available and they by no means are "the best". They just work for me and I seem to be able to find stuff with detectors so I am happy. The point I again want to emphasize is that the default modes and their suggested uses really were well tested and thought out and are the best place to start. No matter how it sorts out or what others end up doing I am really clicking with Equinox and that's just the way it is. I am quite convinced right now that people who have used BBS/FBS in the past and found it wanting are the ones that will like Equinox. Those that really love BBS/FBS - not so much.

I hope this helps rather than confuses. Old timers will get what I am going on about. People new to detecting - stick to the suggested defaults!!! You can easily ruin a great detector not knowing what you are doing. Don't expect to get in a Formula 1 race car and win races on the first go. You need to learn high performance driving first. Start slow and take it easy - Equinox has plenty of power to spare.

[Cabin Fever]

Awesome bit of information there Steve H!  This is the kind of information I crave..

Thank you!

[Skate]

Beautiful ring. Stunner. You had a great hunt.