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36 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

This used to be the conventional wisdom.  The Minelab Equinox  800 (and maybe even the Makro Gold Racer and its offspring) has changed that.

Maybe.  I know Simon (Phrunt) has done well with his.  You might want to ask his opinion.  My thing is that most gold is in areas with high mineralization that is really rough on VLF machines.  (remember, Simon is in the easiest ground possible)  If you are in high mineralization areas, I would suggest pulse induction machines or similar.  Personally, I wish I started with the SDC2300 and worked my way up from there.   Yes it is more expensive, but waiting and studying and saving more money, may be the way to go.  Either way, see if you can buy used.

Everyone has an opinion and really I don't think anybody is wrong.  It is what works for their ground, with their knowledge.  Good luck!

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I use both and I honestly can’t split them much on performance , although on the hot ground I work in the monster seems to balance and track a bit quicker and has a boosted audio that’s noticeable alongside the equinox .apart from the gold monster being a bit more adaptable and more robust in the Aussie bush its 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

Paul??

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For me Equinox vs Monster is simply a versatility thing. The Gold Monster is a dedicated nugget detector with a very limited control set. That’s great for lots of people. But a nerdy tech type like me can make an Equinox do things you can’t do with a Gold Monster. Like block specific hot rock or trash signals, just for starters. It’s more for somebody who wants to deep dive into knowing the machine intimately, as there are many controls that interact. As far as which gets gold better... it depends on the operator skill set. Consider however the possibilities of the Equinox 15” coil in open ground versus the Monster with its 10” max coil size. Sometimes simply covering more ground it the ticket to success. And I’d sure bet on that larger coil and Multi-IQ punching deeper on larger gold in milder ground.

That said I am not really pitching the Equinox as a nugget detector. Old timers used to others machines especially are likely to either love it or hate it. The coil can be knock sensitive if pushed hard and since it never was made specifically for nugget detecting the coil set is just ok. Why no 6” x 10” coil with solid skid plate yet... another mystery in the Minelab universe. Maybe they are afraid of undermining Gold Monster sales.

I can also do about as well with a Fisher Gold Bug 2 made in 1995 as any of these new kids on the block. For me it very much gets down to an exact location, the nature of the ground and hot rocks, and the amount of trash as to which might be declared the “best” for that exact scenario. I think simply saying any one unit is “the best” is deceptive and that’s why I won’t do it. What’s best for me is very possibly not what’s best for you.

White’s 24K is a nice machine. If money was not an issue though I am an SDC 2300 fan for beginners in bad ground. Any VLF struggles in really mineralized soil and you need to be on top of you game to deal with it. The 2300 is as simple as it gets. Only a couple settings really and just “beep, dig”. That detector in a Eureka box with a useful coil set at half the price would kill the VLF sales off for all but the most budget minded.

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1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

(SDC 2300) in a Eureka box with a useful coil set at half the price would kill the VLF sales off for all but the most budget minded.

So let's see:  1) Eureka box, 2) useful coil set, 3) half the price.  Are we still talking about Minelab?

 

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Steve, I hadn't experienced the knock sensitivity problem,  but today I took it up around Silver City. It was pretty ridiculous how knock sensitive it was. I knew you had written how to tame it down some but couldn't remember (and no internet up there) so j just lived with it. I got pretty good at ignoring signals where I bumped anything, but I do mean anything. Were talking twigs and grass, not hitting rocks. It was still detecting targets fine, so just annoying really.

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Yeah, I did the auto pumping ground balance and started lowering sensitivity,  but got down to 14 and the knock signals were still there so I just put it back to 20 and ignored them. Park 1, park 2, and gold 1 didn't make any difference either. My ground balance numbers were really high though, and like a said I'd never had any before, so I assume I was just in really bad ground.

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3 hours ago, Lacky said:

Yeah, I did the auto pumping ground balance and started lowering sensitivity,  but got down to 14 and the knock signals were still there so I just put it back to 20 and ignored them. Park 1, park 2, and gold 1 didn't make any difference either. My ground balance numbers were really high though, and like a said I'd never had any before, so I assume I was just in really bad ground.

I've found coil bump/knock sensitivity increases if the GB setting is in the high numbers on the Equinox regardless of mode.

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Yeah staying with the pre-set ground balance settings with Equinox will help reduce knocks. Staying at higher recovery speed settings is probably the largest impact as lower recover speeds really enhance the knock effect. Multi-IQ has built in ground canceling and so the ground balance setting is more forgiving than on traditional VLF nugget machines, which must be spot on.

The 6” coil is much better in that regard. I thought we would have a 6” x 10” coil by now but like with GPZ I’ve given up hope on Minelab and coils. I look at companies like Makro/Nokta rapidly populate new models with full suites of coils and by comparison Minelab basically does the least possible. I’ll bet the new Makro/Nokta Simplex has more coil options the day it gets introduced than we have with Equinox after two years.

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