Leaderboard

Took the EQ800 to a spot that petered out long ago, and had a pretty good hunt. HH, Cal

I went to a pounded desert site today near where I live. I ran field 2 with no changes. 2 Buffs, thats it for coins. They bounced consistenly between 12-13.The other targets sounded good but....... I must have dug 20 brass rivets, I would have sworn they were a penny! Dug my share of BENT rusty nails today also, the horseshoe button did not always clue me in but they were very deep. I am finding I like both park and field 2 better than their 1 counterparts.

Last Saturday I had an hour or so to burn. So, what better to do than to take the brand new Equinox 800 out of the house for its maiden voyage (ordered back in Sept.). I had not paired the headphones yet, so it was truly a learning outing. I was unable to ground balance as I did not read well enough at home. I was in Park 1 with almost stock settings as I can remember. The sensitivity might have been up a bit, but otherwise it was as it came. I had hunted the park a couple times in the past, but there was never more than clad, and not much of that. About 45 minutes in to the hunt, I was working alongside a sidewalk that enters the park. There was a lot of trash and plenty of pull tabs. I got a solid 15 ID and dug what I thought was a titanium or cobalt ring because the number in the inside said 417. I recall that some stainless rings have had numbers, so I really thought it was a junk ring. Well, today I was counting my change from the last three hunts (7 hours total) and thought I would look up the numbers in the ring. To my pleasant surprise, it means 41.7% (10k). The total change for 7 hours is $18.89, all clad. Today's hunt was 4 hours and I found 30 quarters at a high school that I have hunted hard in the past. I was in Park 1, 21 sensitivity, speed 7, 50 tones, and tracking was on. This thing loves quarters! When going over junk and coin, the coins certainly stand out. After checking the Chinese coin, it was made in the late 1700's. I found it at an elementary school. Must have been brought by a child from home.

Here is tonight's hunt. I go out to my beach and I head in the opposite direction of last night. The tide is a little lower when I get there and I start searching there. Straight off I'm getting bottle caps. They had all kinds of different numbers. They would jump the 13, 10, negs ... I stopped digging bottle caps years ago with the CTX. It was at a location at the top of my screen (I don't care about numbers on the CTX because I look at the screen) so I don't dig. Similar thing with bobby pins. I stopped digging those when I stopped using my 5000 on the beach! So, rant over ... I said I'm not going to hunt in a patch of caps, time to get to my other beach about 2 miles away. I turned off the all metal, went to 8 on recovery and 6 on bias and started 'Fast and Furious!' Not quite so furious but quick and I didn't find anything walking the wave/tide line for a long time then I got a solid 17. It was locked. No penny warble, scratch or jump. I put my scoop in and I felt something so I was careful and pulled out the copper bracelet from about 6 inches in the wet sand. Ok, solid signals can be had on this beach. All the while I'm walking I'm thinking about a couple of years ago when targets were dense. How much fun would it have been with the Nox then? Well, that is not now so onward to my beach. When I got there it was dark but I have my light. It didn't look like it had been hit today but there weren't many waves either. I walked all the way to the end of where I was going to go with a nickel or penny here and there and I said it was time to get back the 2.5 miles. Meanwhile I've gone to 6 on Recovery and put Bias at 2 and turned OFF all metal. About 200 yards after I turned in an area where I've found several rings I got another 13. Ok, I'll dig this because of where it is and that is the 2.7g/14k ring! Those might be 3 little diamonds but I haven't tested them. There is a bit of solder repair for resizing so I don't know other than that why the number is so high. That was a one off so back to my car following the now higher tide line. Ok, I'll dig that beeping target and it's a cheap ring! A two ring night isn't bad. Fast and Furious works on a mostly targetless beach to cover more ground. I consider this like patch hunting for nuggets in the desert. Some of the targets in the picture were down to 10 inches again. I can't think of more. All for now. Mitchel

Hit a yard this afternoon. Still pk1

8PM U.S. Eastern Time Monday March 19 or catch the recorded podcast later. https://www.spreaker.com/show/all-metal-modes-show Talking detecting with host Mike Haer. Listen to "Steve Hershbach" on Spreaker.

Drowned Iphone. It rang up a solid 32 in every direction about 8 inches down in semi-wet sand. The whole time I was digging it I had visions of Mr. T-sized sterling silver bling dancing in my head. Boy, was I disappointed!

Went down to local park today, across the street the city is clearing off a wooded lot to build a dog park, the park is old so i knew this property is to, its tough to detect because of equipment rutts and roots, so i get back in it and started seeing tell tell signs of old house site, plants blooming in the middle of the woods, broken glass, its beside a creek aswell. Only had bout an hour but its def a old 1800s homesite found very old brick also. Also i found a spoon that just seems to be very old, and what looks like melted lead. Also there is a good size deppression in the ground that i wonder maybe a cellar. Very rocky under the dirt but im gonna hit this place as much as i can before the dog park is built, best part is i work for the city so i will be on the property doing some work from time to time.

I took some time on Saturday to run my Equinox 600 through the paces again at the site above. Last week, as I mentioned in my note above, I focused around the areas I had previously found several wheats, and was able to squeak out two as I mentioned. Saturday, I decided to spend some time around the old footprint of the school and on the right sidewalk strip. I placed yellow boxes to show my areas that I spent most of the time. I wouldn't say I officially "gridded" the area, but I did make several passes back and forth. Along with the two wheats I found last week, I located two more on Saturday. I have shown the Equinox wheats as green dots on the pic. Another interesting thing is the area off the corner of the playground, to the left of the trees in the picture. On Saturday I recovered several coins, including two quarters, two dimes and 3 or 4 copper Lincoln memorials - kinda on the edges of the two yellow boxes... I will be spending some more time in that area around the trees on my next visit. But I found those coins by digging less than solid tones. These targets were between 3" and 5" max.. as I said the ground is gravel mixed with dirt, so the digging is tough.. but the tones and id gave me a peep, and enough consistency to stop me... but it wasn't a banging target. Along with tough digging, this is difficult soil to detect... lots of falsing, 3" coins giving iffy signals and id's. Even the quarters required small short passes to narrow down... The settings I used were: Park 1, Noise Cancel, Ground Balance (tracking off), 2 tone (break at 20), Max Recovery (3 on 600), Iron Bias 0. I also performed a test on my way back to the car on a clean patch of ground (which was difficult to find at this site). I pulled 2 nails out of my pouch and a clad dime. I placed them in the following orientation: I o I I started with about a 2 inch space between the nail and the dime on each side... and I only heard the null of the nail, no matter my sweep speed. I spread the nails out a bit more to about 3.5" on each side and was able to pick up the dime in the middle. I understand this isn't necessarily a scientific test, but I was expecting to be able to pick up the dime a little easier between two nails, especially after reading and watching some of the test results by others. Any thoughts would be very much appreciated. As I continue to learn the Equinox, I'm sure I will find ways to maximize it's abilities to help with this ground... because my Quest continues at this site. HH. Tim.

First off. Welcome to the Forum, Andrew! You came to the perfect place to ask your question. Funny you say it is not cheap yet you mention Deus in the next breath which costs a cool $600 US more than the Equinox 800. Not cheap, yes (what metal detector worth its salt is) but it is a tremendous bang for your buck with Mult IQ. What is the advantage of that? Well different types of targets respond better (i.e., are easier to detect) at different frequencies. Silver and big targets tend to respond better at the lower frequencies. Gold and tiny objects tend to respond better at the higher frequencies. That is why the Multi- Kruzer and Deus have different frequencies you can select one at a time (hence the Multi in Multi Kruzer and the "us" in Deus, ok JK about that last one ). So you can focus on one type of target (e.g., silver coins) in one detecting session, then another type in a separate detecting session (e.g., gold jewelry) by individually selecting a different frequency. Now imagine being able to operate the Multi-Kruzer at all its available frequencies at once and then add two more frequencies, that is what the Equinox 600 can do. It enables you to focus on silver, gold, big, small and everything in between all at once. Marry the Multi Kruzer with the Gold Kruzer and you have the Equinox 800 and you can add gold nuggets to your detecting fun. Beside light weight and wireless technology, the Deus is known for its speed, i.e., ability to discern two targets lying next to each other (e.g., a nail and coin). Slower detectors might only "see" the much easier to detect but junk nail. Well in practice, both Equinox models have proven themselves to be about as fast as Deus with wireless audio and only weighing about a pound more than Deus. As a Deus user for several years without encountering a detector as fast during that time, the Equinox performance astounded me. So now if you can imagine the Equinox as taking the best of the Deus, Multi Kruzer and Gold Kruzer you can start to understand the power of the Equinox 800. Still think it's not cheap? Well they aren't cheap, but either the 600 or 800 are tremendous values. Read this comparison between the two to see which is right for you. Be warned, though. Thousands of experienced and inexperienced detectorists have already figured out the value of Equinox, so you will really have to shop around to find someone who has one in stock. Pic of my first keeper beach find below (third target ever detected on the beach) with the Equinox 800. Yeah, that's gold. Good luck in your metal detector quest whatever you decide. HTH.

I`ve been going back and re reading all the stuff I can find that JP has written about the 7000. One of his articles about going for bigger stuff he recommends General/ Difficult over High Yield/Difficult, and for the last few weeks that`s the setting I`ve been using. Still not setting the world on fire but got a funny one yesterday. This piece came through as that lovely electronic warbly signal I like and before I disturbed the ground I tried High Yield and could just barely hear it. Switched back to General and could hear it no probs. It only goes 0.35 g and it amazed me that General would get such a small piece better than High Yield. It was down about 8 or 9" range. This is one of the articles where JP mentions General over High Yield https://www.minelab.com/anz/go-minelabbing/treasure-talk/gpz-19-compared-to-gpz-14-nugget-dig

I have found that the alum screw caps tend to read just a bit higher than the zinc pennies at 20-21 . Alum caps .... 22-23. Some still get into the coin range though.

Thanks for running the contest RR. Very generous of you

Dig It I sent you a PM that your prize is in the mail. Thanks for playing. Chuck

Very Nice! I would have missed the ring too. I have dug 14s and 15s only to find pull tabs. I would have passed. I know a guy has to dig pull tabs if he wants to find gold...I'm just not that guy. I'm good for about two or three tabs per trip. I'll take my gold finds in nugget form! Dean

I spoke with Sarah last weekend they are still trying to acquire all the data they need to make registered claims available on OnXHunt. She will call me or email me when she has more info.

I have found a days worth of production of soda cans and beer cans. I did learn from it and learned to tell that's what it was. When I went back to factory settings in Park 1 I never dug another can and the detector was silent until I hit a signal worth digging. I had an ATPro, Whites V3i, and I have an E-Trac and CTX. The Equinox has the best factory settings out of the box of any of them. I am coming close to being convinced the Equinox is the best clad hog on the market. I have learned a lot from the 4-1/2 hours I have used it. My ears are becoming alert to signals I should dig. What I am learning most of all is how to separate good signals amongst trash. I am finding if there is a good digable signal the tones are very clear when I sweep it. I have dug many iffy signals and my gut was right there was nothing there but I kept digging them to prove it to myself, Four hours is very long to learn much but already knowing the different tones to be listening for helps. I feel confident that by the end of April I will be pretty darn proficient. I surely am not trying to tweak the settings before I am confident that's what I like. I tried that on V3i and didn't find a thing more than I would have in presets. The most I am likely to do is adjust the threshold some and tones some.

This is It.

The last place I looked for gold I found many missed shots that were 8's and smaller but no missed nuggets. I wanted one of those little things to be a nugget. Those targets are hard to pinpoint and get in the scoop and sometimes they roll out or get blown out by the wind and you have to hunt them again. Mitchel

Well done GB. The great thing about the Equinox is it gave you confidence to go back to this old site that you had hunted 7 times previously and pull stuff out of the ground. 90% of dirt hunting is getting permissions and having a machine that will allow you to go back to old permissions is awesome. Thanks for sharing and I look forward to your next hunt.

This is what the finish product looks like. Chuck

Yes Paul but you didn’t get up early enough to fool me being I made a point to post C S T not P S T. The best of luck next time. Chuck PS That was a good guess. Haha

Most target id charts are constructed with Park 1 default settings. Be aware that while Minelab has done their best to "normalize" target ids across all Search Profiles and settings the fact is they can vary. Usually by only a single digit, but perhaps more. Ferrous can show large shifts when toggling to 5 kHz mode, which can help with identifying bottle caps, for instance. Examples This is not a problem for people who generally recover all non-ferrous (U.K. hunters, jewelry hunters) but for people intent on "cherry picking" certain coins, like U.S. nickels, you need to be aware of this. In the link above for instance the classic 13 reading on most nickels is more like 12 in some other profiles. In general Park 1 and Field 1 will have the most stable target id on coin size targets. Also, be aware that Equinox is very sensitive to surface changes in targets, and so corroded pennies, for example, will vary from cleaner examples. Here is my classic U.S. coin chart for Park 1 followed by an enhanced version of the Equinox Manual ID Chart from the Instruction Manual, page 31. The location of the modern U.S. dollar (Sacawagea, Susan Anthony) has been noted on the Minelab chart and older silver dollars added, since this was causing confusion. The modern dollar reads near to quarters. I also added medium and small rings to the chart, since their exclusion had people thinking all rings read high. People are reading way too much into what is missing from these simple guides, or even simple general statements in the manual. Just because they left out small and medium rings does not mean all rings read like pennies! Anyway, I hope this helps clarify things a little. Click for larger versions...

I pulled a Steve tonight and sold my CTX....I've found so much with this machine that it's paid for itself easily..I still have a 5 gallon bucket full of coins that I need to cash in...not to mention all the gold and silver jewelry that it found for me. In the end it was an easy decision...because I have a new CTX that has barely been used At any rate I made a deal with myself a while ago that I was not going to buy any new detectors unless I got rid of a few..... (Merton are you listening).....Hopefully the 800 will be here before our Pismo trip next month. Also on the chopping block was the AT Gold I bought for Lisa several years ago. She proclaimed that she no longer wanted to use it after a short stint on the beach with the CTX...I'm thinking she will like the light weight of the Equinox and may want to use it also. The 800 is going to be good for my relic spots thats for sure.. strick

What the heck does that mean??? Well, what I mean by that is even though you may be finding mundane targets like nickels and the tiniest of aluminum pieces or even a deep penny. Be aware of what these recoveries are telling you. Once again I hit the deserted, pounded, hunted out, beach park. Not much in the way of replenishment with 40F temps, snow flurries and sleet, and 15 knot winds again. I wanted to give the area where I found my gold Jesus a thorough search just to make sure I did not miss any other pieces of the pendant, necklace, or whatever it was attached to. No luck on that, but I did learn or confirm a lot about the Equinox as the day went on. I then hit the shoreline/tide line again but the tide was coming in and high so the wet sand margin was small and high on the beach. Nevertheless I did find two, deep slimy nickels. This is telling me that I will eventually hit deep gold in the wet sand as the EQX is hitting the deep nickel mid conductors HARD with a clearly dig me signal. If I keep hitting that area, there will be deep gold jewelry that has not yet been recovered, I am sure of it, and the EQX will let me know the second I pass my coil over it. It also tells me that I basically have a new beach to hit since I can now hit the tide line at low tide with confidence that I will be able to pull some deep keeper targets. I kept finding the tiniest pieces of lead, aluminum, and steel. The would just bang out of the headphones. Small gold cannot be far behind. Keep swinging. Finally, I hit a strong ferrous tone with just a hint of a high tone. But the high tone was not ferrous wraparound (too low on the VDI and not quite in sync with the ferrous tone). I decided to dig it. I pulled out a steel wire about 4 inches long...and a penny from a bout 10" down. Yeah it was just a penny, but the EQX said dig me even with the super strong ferrous grunt. In other words, it was not a bottlecap or other junk target with a ferrous and non-ferrous signal component. I know that one of these days the EQX will be fast enough to unmask a military button or a silver for me in the thick iron. Pay attention to what your mundane targets are telling you about your detector's capabilities. That is why you should be digging just about every repeatable target indication you come across during the first several hours that you are learning the machine. HTH.

I wonder the same thing. We have some mines in my area that prior to the war were gold but then switched to Chromite as they were on a Serpentine/Slate contact. Not a bad deal, the waste rock was now worth money and kept the mine running.

Damn! That means cherry pick and let the nickels lie in those curb strips. The engineer that comes up with the formula will gain sainthood!

The smashed aluminum caps ring up nice for sure.. I’m not sure there would ever be a way to weed them out since there is no iron in them. Sounds like you have a more then average amount of them in that location.. I probably average one or two per hunt so they really aren’t much of a problem for me.. The Equinox is an awesome curb strip detector even with the 11” coil on it.. The amount of aluminum in the average curb strip is so overwhelming that I usually only cherry pick silver and copper while hunting them.. Yesterday I set up a two tone program in Field 1 with my tone brake at 18, Recovery at 7 and pulled some silver dimes, IHs and wheats from a strip I had already hunted with my CTX.. Love this Detector! Bryan

If anyone knows how to get a replacement battery please post it here. We’re all about backups when in the field for days. Thanks. Chuck

Beauty! Nice save, Mitchel. I pretty much stopped ranting about bottle caps once I discovered the AM button and move on like you did if they’re thick (no digging required after the first couple get my ears tuned in). Now, about screw caps, don’t get me started...

haha. I've yet to find any yet although I pulled another fake gold ring today. FGD

Freaking awesome! The problem you're now going to encounter is PSD, Post silver depression. It's what happens after you get your first silver with an Equinox. It's a condition that is beginning to ravage the detecting industry. PSD starts out innocently only to hook you as you begin to expect silver with every swing. Seems like it's claimed another victim. Some folks go all year to find all the silver and gold you found in a week.

Nice finds...I still dig for the most part almost every repeatable target I come across with every machine I have..but maybe I'm being an extremist? strick

No worries JP. We just call them boss and employees now.?

The EQ loves nickels doesn't it. I noticed that crusty bent nails are more abound when using Field2 vs FIeld1. That said, I think I like FIeld2 better so far, just seems like I get better depth and make more finds using Field2, but I have a lot to learn.

I had a 38 this morning and my heart was pounding and all i got was a rusty piece of metal commingled with some lead.

Good Luck and happy hunting.?

Well, we finally got some decent beach conditions today so I could really try my 800 out on the sand. Five hours of pure beach detecting fun! And I feel like I have to say this, even if I get raked over the coals by my fellow PI Club members. My Equinox 800 goes practically as deep on the wet and dry sand as my Garrett Infinium. There, I said it. Shocked the hell outta me too. I say practically because I gave up digging stuff 2 feet down a while ago. It's almost always a big piece of crap anyway. That Equinox was locating stuff a foot down easily, with the added benefit of target ID. I started out digging everything so I could learn, but then found that I could eliminate some can slaw and bottle caps by using all metal mode. If I got an little iron grunt on the edge of the coil along with varying ID numbers and tones, it was trash every time. Every single time I got a 19 or 20, it was a rotten zincoln, so I started weeding those out too. I think when I start to really get to know my Equinox and learn it's quirks I'll be able to weed out lots more of the trash. The pull tabs are what they are and you just gotta dig 'em. I think that whoever invented those things should be tied to a chair and forced to watch every single "Oak Island" episode 10 times in a row. I had forgotten how fun it is to hunt the beach with a VLF! I just thought it was the price I had to pay to find anything on my barren beaches. I honestly think my Equinox got every good target that my Infinium would have gotten on depth, plus way more of the smaller shallow stuff the PI would have missed. I do have to crank the disc up to 2 to get it stable in salt water, so that might be the reason. Poor Infinium. I sure hope it finds some gold in Montana that its new sibling doesn't, 'cause Ammie has a new beach machine. I got about $2 in change, the "gold" pendant is plated crap, the token and the lighthouse thingy were junk too. It's always fun digging jewelry though. The marcasite ring is 925.

Great report and great finds. You said you were digging AM mostly. Did you get the telltale iron tone along with the mid tone when digging those crown caps? Also, practically anything above 2 without any telltale iron tone is very likely non-ferrous, I've found. I have gotten high VDI wraparound on occasion but it is always accompanied by a an iron tone in AM. You may also be knocking down the nonferrous tone component of the iron because of the high default iron bias setting of 6 for the EQX 800 in Park 1.

The smaller the gold you are after the smaller the lead you can detect with Equinox. Birdshot is easily detectable if you set the machine up hot enough to detect it. You can also not detect it but give up gold that reads the same.

I want to thank the academy OH NO wrong speech. Like most I just guessed, I always say, Better To Be Lucky Than Good !!!!!!! THX !!!!!!!!

Dang fine print....

I was using Beach 2, I don't care for Beach 1 either. I left the recovery speed alone and had the sensitivity on 20-21 most of the time. I did experiment with different settings until I found the ones I liked best. I think having the all metal mode on made the most difference and I won't be hunting without it again. After I dug a few bottle caps it wasn't hard to weed them out. Today I worked on eliminating canslaw. And there was a ton of it at Canova! It seems like it's not so much the tone or the VDI number that matters so much, but the stability. If you get the same solid number in every direction with not even a hint of an iron grunt then most of the time it's either a coin or some little doo-dad like a snap or a button that's not really trash. It might be my imagination, but the Equinox seems to like roundness in a target and will tell you if something is circular if you learn what it's saying. Does that make sense?

For what it’s worth that is my wife’s Equinox car that I have my Equinox detector on. The only thing it can find is a gas station but it is good on gas. You can tell I’ve got a lot going for me sitting out here watching paint dry. Chuck

I would figure the narrowing down of target ID's is in it's infancy stages right now. At present there just isn't enough data available to argumentatively say what a particular target is going to come in at and that is A-OK with me. I've seen too many people rely solely on the VDI reading to did or not dig. I would rather dig every good sounding target with the thought I'd rather dig a piece of trash rather than miss out on a potential great find. I would imagine that VDI's are also more likely to be more regional based due to your particular soil conditions. As you hunt more and learn to read your soil the VDI picture for your hunting conditions should become clearer. This will all come with time on task with your machine. 100 hours is a pretty good starting point for really understanding a machine. Thankfully we don't have to wait that long to find good stuff.

I was pretty proud of noxy today. The second wheatie I found had a square nail in the hole with it(it actually came out first) one of my buddies was with me when I dug it and said" oh, it was just a square nail" I said no that nail didn't make that sound and a little further down out comes a nice green 1920 wheatie. The merc was what I was most proud of. I had just said I'm going to be happy if this is what I hope it is. There was iron around it and I couldn't get a solid signal but it sure acted like a good target and there were some 28's popping in consistently. I got the plug out and could see the silver edge. The dime was standing on edge straight up and down. It was only about 5" down but I was sure proud of my noxy for finding it. Pk1 mode.

Oh I do get out on occasion and when I do I hunt pretty hard. We are wintered up right now, so even if I were sent extras, it would not do me much good for a few more weeks. I'll try it on a beach hunt later this year and hopefully get something similar to what my CTX 3030 did (view photos).

Montammie, to reply to your post, that subject was not discussed and I don't want the ring back. It has no value for me. Mr Steve please delete that repeat post. Thanks, Keith

Equinox does not lend itself well to cute nicknames. Nox sounds like noxious! I am just going with E600 and E800. I hunt mineralized ground and everything in the post above is music to my ears. I have to admit that while I find “under the hood” discussions fascinating all that really matters is how the detector acts and performs in the field.

You don't open the file - you download it to your computer. Then you copy it (or move it) from your computer to the detector "hard drive".