High Mineral And Equinox Tip

[Daniel Tn]

Thus far I have been highly impressed with the Equinox ability to handle high mineral.  But...up until Tuesday, the most severe I had hunted in thus far would be 3 to 4 bar Fe meter type clay (on F75).  There, the machine runs stable and can achieve good tones and numbers for most items down to 10 inches for high conductors and slightly deeper for low conductors.  Very good considering most other machines drop off at about the 6 inch range.  

Tuesday I went to my bullet range...which is 4 and 5 bar soil.  It will be the toughest I run the machine in.  This place requires pulse machines to be efficient to be honest with you. I've never had a machine to do well there in discriminate mode.  The Equinox also struggled there but I did land on a few tweaks that may help you guys should you encounter harsh soil. 

1. Recovery speed.  Go faster.  If you think slower = deeper, forget it.  Play around til you find the one that gives you decent depth...ride the line.  6 is default for most modes, and of course 8 is max.  7 is the compromise I think.  You do lose some depth but it's nothing compared to what you lose in harsh soil with a slower recovery.

2. Coil position is CRITICAL.  I dug some decently deep 3 ringers Tuesday....12 to 13 inch range.  The only way I got them was to first run all metal.  When you come up on a signal, you will hear iron mostly.  Until you pinpoint the target to the exact center of the coil.  If it is non ferrous and deep, you will be able to start getting positive numbers and tones JUST directly center of the coil/target. Move a little left/right or forward/back off center, and it's iron.  If all you hear is iron with it centered....its iron.  I dug some bullets that were 7 to 9 inches that came through loud and clear with iron disc on...but the deeper ones would be easily missed with iron disc on.  I'm not use to seeing that kind of depth out of a vlf machine in soil that bad...much less one doing it in disc mode.  If this machine had a true motion all metal mode on it, I feel it would have been legendary relic hunting status.  It is good the way it is now...but wow.  I can't wait to see how it handles with the larger coil when it arrrives.  Most people are anxious for the small 6"....I'm more interested in the bigger one.  I ended up with 13 minie balls Tueaday in a place in which the last few trips there, I hadn't dug but 1 or 2. I honestly left early and could have dug more but I had saw what I needed to see to know "this dawg will hunt in bad soil.  

[Steve Herschbach]

Thnks Daniel, great report and a mirror of my findings. I have been repeating over and over that reducing recovery speed in high mineral ground will lose depth, not gain it, but skeptics abound. Further, in any situation where good targets reside next to bad targets lower recovery speeds induce masking. Lightning fast speed is one of Equinox major advantages and many people are tossing it away without a thought. I am not saying lower recovery speeds do not apply in some situations, but most places have been pounded for years by slower machines so why go there? Even where people think trash is sparse that trash still hides targets.

In my opinion high mineral ground acts like ground made up of just another type of dense ferrous targets, with weaker and stronger areas. Faster recovery speeds act to reduce "ground masking" letting Equinox peek into small areas of weaker mineralization or between hot rocks that mask targets from other machines. Another way to look at recovery speed is as a type of ground filter. Recovery speed on the Equinox is roughly analogous to V/SAT on White's prospecting detectors. There is no denying that ground noise (ground masking) increases with lower recovery speeds in mineralized ground. 

I also have seen my best deepest targets reveal as a small non-ferrous spot in the middle of a larger ferrous "donut" in bad ground. In fact, if I find a nice round ferrous target (why I hunt with ferrous accepted) I work it extra hard trying to get that nice non-ferrous spot to open up in the middle. 39 is high ferrous wrap but a hit in the mid to higher 20s in the middle of a ferrous donut is usually a deep non-ferrous target. Again, we are talking severe ground conditions. Mentioned here in November and here in December with later mentions. As you note being dead center on target and with proper sweep speed is critical to getting these right. And listen for the overall "roundness" of the combined ferrous/non-ferrous target - oddball ferrous will not exhibit the roundness factor as much if at all.

[Mtwolf2270]

Excellent report Daniel this is where I had hoped to here the nox would perform better then older vlfs. Do u run any iron bias at all? What tones  and mode were u using ? 

[Tiftaaft]

This is great information.  My ground is difficult here in the northwest... maybe not as difficult as you are describing, but there is an invisible 6" floor (or less) on detection in some areas.  I have found similar results with the faster recovery in my area, I just wasn't as scientific about my conclusions around them.  Definitely an AHA moment.  Thank you!  Tim

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

I have seen the same behavior even is slightly less mineralized soil.

On things thin, smaller, and on edge.

And these nonferrous relics sure didn't get sniffed by me before using other detectors.

Mineralization is somewhat relative how it affects, depending on target's size, conductive level, shape and orientation in the ground.

 

 

[Chase Goldman]

Dan,

Great tips!  Mode information would be really useful too.  Also, did you recover any mid conductors (buttons, knapsack parts)?  Thanks.

[Daniel Tn]

18 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Dan,

Great tips!  Mode information would be really useful too.  Also, did you recover any mid conductors (buttons, knapsack parts)?  Thanks.

I've been digging brass on every trip and I don't mean super small junk brass like .22 casings, and that sort of thing.  This machine does like buttons.  I dug a really deep Spencer casing the other day, a brass saddle shield, a heart shaped brass hat pin or broach, and Friday evening, I dug the face to a small lock that went to a diary or something similar. 

On the hunting modes, I did not find any change between the modes for better or worse.  The recovery speed setting seemed to be the one that gave the bigger changes.  I spent a lot of time doing just that over signals that I felt were bullets.  One thing I did not think to play around with was the iron bias setting.  I left that on factory default.  I'm like everyone else; just learning as I go.  I wanted to go do some hunting tomorrow but don't believe the weather is gonna cooperate.  

[Chase Goldman]

Dan,  thanks.  You told me what I wanted to know regarding whether the underlying mode makes a significant difference.  Really excited about trying it out at multiple relic hunts next week.

[dr_maddog]

Thanks for the detailed report Daniel.  Did you attempt running the Equinox 600 in the bullet field?  

[cjc]

It's great to see others at the exact same stage of testing this machine--and reaching the same conclusions. For sure A/M is the way to go--in Park 2, 50 tones has a nice fluid transition that tells you a lot--more than disc actually in that you already have the (A/M) bad news (corrosion,  no symmetry, doesn't stand out against the background) right there.  Very nice way to run the Eq.  Really alerts to the deep low conductors well that way--gotta experiment with the speed and "gap" next.  Hope to hell it does that in salt although those modes  with the low weighting seem kind of muted by comparison to P2.  Anything with rust is much more obvious this way.  cjc