Avoid Relying On Absolutes . . . . Ground Balance

[relicmeister]

Under what circumstances does it make sense to use GB tracking? 

[Chase Goldman]

If you are constantly having to rebalance the machine to restore detection depth or eliminate ground noise then tracking makes sense.  Simply listen to what the machine is telling you.  If it is becoming unstable then it is either EMI (noise cancel/reduce sensitivity) or ground noise.  If the latter, rebalance or shift to tracking.  I have found tracking works well whenever there is enough mineralization in the ground to cause variations in ground phase and there is no appreciable downside.  The tracking is not so overly responsive to in ground targets that it will distort the settings or null out targets (however, see below regarding gold prospecting and tracking). 

Otherwise just do an initial auto or manual GB for each mode you are using at a site and swing away.  Low mineralized sites or dry white sand or sandy soil, you can get away with the default of 0 but make sure GB is actually set to 0 because Equinox will retain the last used GB setting.

Thing is, you won't know what the ground phase is unless you have been there before or attempt a GB in the first place so I just auto pump GB and swing away as a matter of routine regardless of the site.  Shift to tracking as necessary based on how the machine is behaving.  Prospectors tend to keep tracking off even in gold mode because they say it can null out micro gold.  I have no experience to refute that claim as the smallest targets I recover are percussion caps and button shanks.