General Questions About The Nox And Setups

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, phrunt said:

I didn't realise the F2 setting would make me lose depth but it may explain my issue.  When I use F2 even at the default F2 setting I've noticed the deep little silver coins I find disappear completely... undetectable, switch back out of F2 and they return.  I thought F2 was maybe blocking them out somehow but maybe it's just the depth decreasing.  Thanks for that information.

I'll have to try that to see if depth is affected, but I think the default F2 setting of 6 is pretty aggressive in the absence of thick iron.  Dialing it back to 4 or below should restore those silver signals.

[Chase Goldman]

4 hours ago, coinhunterseth said:

I realized this recently, and it's super annoying. I have noticed that they tend to give a double tone, whereas good targets usually give a single tone.

Do they give a double tone regardless of depth?  I usually encounter these near the surface because they are not heavy targets and their shape usually means they grab on to the ground and stay put at shallow depths.  Most surface targets tend to give a double tone as they echo off the coil edge.  But it could also be caused by their shape and orientation in the ground.

[coinhunterseth]

I've only used F2 0, since I've read that that is the lowest possible setting. I don't like the idea of the detector doing something extra trying to exclude signals. I'd rather dig some large iron than potentially lose some deep or masked targets. 

[coinhunterseth]

3 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Do they give a double tone regardless of depth?  I usually encounter these near the surface because they are not heavy targets and their shape usually means they grab on to the ground and stay put at shallow depths.  Most surface targets tend to give a double tone as they echo off the coil edge.  But it could also be caused by their shape and orientation in the ground.

I'm not positive actually. I'll need to test that now.. The tone also is usually a bit more broken than conductive targets for me, I haven't been able to isolate a clean repeating tone on them.

[coinhunterseth]

46 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I'll have to try that but then would there be any benefit to using that? I prefer as little filtering as possible, I know it hinders me in some way... As soon as the ground clears up from junk enough I'm always in all metal horse shoe mode.  I guess primarily because I look for gold, coin hunting has just become a side effect of owning a metal detector and old habits die hard. 🙂

 

F2 at 0 is less filtering than FE at 0 I believe, hence it's the only setting I've used. I'm always in the horseshoe mode, I like hearing iron. Most of the time I dig everything nonferrous since I primarily relic hunt.

Edit: Found the source for the iron bias statement https://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,166825,page=6

[Chase Goldman]

21 hours ago, phrunt said:

I didn't realise the F2 setting would make me lose depth but it may explain my issue.  When I use F2 even at the default F2 setting I've noticed the deep little silver coins I find disappear completely... undetectable, switch back out of F2 and they return.  I thought F2 was maybe blocking them out somehow but maybe it's just the depth decreasing.  Thanks for that information.

 

21 hours ago, coinhunterseth said:

Do they disappear with F2 at 0?

 

18 hours ago, coinhunterseth said:

I've only used F2 0, since I've read that that is the lowest possible setting. I don't like the idea of the detector doing something extra trying to exclude signals. I'd rather dig some large iron than potentially lose some deep or masked targets. 

 

12 hours ago, phrunt said:

I'll have to try that but then would there be any benefit to using that? I prefer as little filtering as possible, I know it hinders me in some way... As soon as the ground clears up from junk enough I'm always in all metal horse shoe mode.  I guess primarily because I look for gold, coin hunting has just become a side effect of owning a metal detector and old habits die hard. 🙂

 

 

11 hours ago, coinhunterseth said:

F2 at 0 is less filtering than FE at 0 I believe, hence it's the only setting I've used. I'm always in the horseshoe mode, I like hearing iron. Most of the time I dig everything nonferrous since I primarily relic hunt.

Edit: Found the source for the iron bias statement https://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,166825,page=6

Also, check out this post by Steve (graphic reproduced below).   Note that at the Minelab default setting of 6, that is nearly as "powerful" as Fe = 9 which is the maximum Fe setting, so perhaps not surprising those faint deep silver targets of Simon's are disappearing. 

Also note that while F2 = 0 is less than Fe = 0 neither means that no iron bias filtering is going on at 0, and that makes sense because even in Vanquish some level of iron bias filtering is always applied, you only have at most two choices low or high iron bias settings, there is no off.  I suspect Vanquish uses the F2 iron bias algorithm as I noted in my hunting iron tips here. 

Besides intensity, I think F2 is inherently different than Fe in the way it processes suspected iron signals, which means that even at supposedly approximately equivalent intenisty settings (e.g., Fe = 0 and F2 = 4), the iron audio response and degree of non-ferrous masking is different. 

In my limited experience with the update, I prefer F2 over Fe for various reasons, it seems less susceptible to iron masking at low to moderate settings (F2 < 6) than Fe, and I like the expanded range of adjustability. 

Even though I am also a minimize filters/discrimination, horseshoe all metal guy, I have found F2 = 0 to be a tad overwhelming in the iron infested ground I hunt.  Keeping F2 between 3 and 6 (max) seems to work best for me and I am more confident that there will be less non-ferrous masking with F2 at these settings than even the mid-to-high settings of Fe.  The depth loss thing, though  is something I will have to investgate further and that also makes me question Minelab's choice to set F2 = 6 as the default for the gold modes.

HTH

[Chase Goldman]

On 11/24/2019 at 11:43 AM, Kentucky said:

I’m in Kentucky. Highly mineralized ground. Full of square nails and horseshoes. What is everyones go to to hide the iron. I feel like I can’t get it to lock on? Why 50 tones over 5? Coming from at pro. Numbers have me messed up as I tried to pay attention to both Vdi and tone. I mainly hunt fields and some house sites. If u were to choose one setup from top to bottom what would it be. Deepest I’ve dug a bullets is 10 inches with the nox. Beach settings. For the future. Lol? 

When hunting relics, I personally like to use Field 2 as that Multi IQ profile favors the mid-conductive metals of which most relics consist, namely brass and lead.  Park 2 works also, but I prefer Field 2.  In hot mineralized ground, I like to also keep one of the Gold modes in my Equinox User Profile slot so I can use it to interrogate iffy signals.  I go into more detail about gold mode and how to deal with iron infested sites in this post.  I explain why 50 tones (the default tone setting in Field 2 and Park 2) is my preferred tone setup in general here.  Although, in highly mineralized ground it may be advisable to simply go with a two-tone ferrous/non-ferrous setup for reasons explained further below.

As far as mineralized ground is concerned, you need to assess how hot your ground actually is.  Note that there is no real way to tell if your ground is hot using the Equinox alone as high ground balance readings don't tell you definitevely whether your ground is mineralized, you need a magnetite (Fe3O4) level meter and only a few detectors come equipped with those including Deus, Fisher F75, Tek T2 and some others.  I hunt Culpeper Virginia which has insanely hot ground that often pegs the FeO meter on my Deus in the fields.  It is less mineralized in non-plowed wooded regions but the other thing to note is that mineralized ground phase is usually comprised of highly variable patches of terrain even over very short distances.  I usually invoke ground balance tracking on the Equinox to deal with this.  Anyway, recognize that the first thing you will lose is target ID at depth.  Beyond a certain depth (typically beyond 4 inches if your ground is truly hot) any hit will sound like iron or will have a jumpy or clipped non-ferrous ID component.  The next thing you will lose is ultimate detection depth, the depth at which you get any discernable signal at all.  This is usually 6 to 8 inches for me, max, at Culpeper depending on the target.  If you are digging minie balls at 10", that's pretty good.  Most folks under these conditions are using pulse induction machines like GPX's for max depth.

Finally, as Steve said, stick mainly with default settings and minimize mode "hopping" until you really gain confidence with the machine.  But also don't be afraid to experiment.  Try out beach modes and see what that does for you.  You will be likely more limited in depth but the lower transmit power may make the machine run more stable in mineralized ground.  From a mode standpoint, there are no real wrong answers as the Multi IQ differences between modes are very nuanced and subtle, the most readily noticeable thing are the different tone, discrimination, recovery speed, and iron bias settings between modes.

Good luck.