What Makes Multi-iq So Good?

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Fantastic post, Hugh!  Hope Steve links to it in his "everything you ever wanted to know about the Equinox" page.

 

Hope I'm not taking this out of context, but I disagree with the blanket statement.  Multi-frequency does give more reliable coverage than typical single frequencies but we're learning from recent posts that even the Equinox on single frequencies can squeeze out targets that its multi-IQ didn't indicate were 'good'.

I see the Equinox (already 2 years into production) as an incremental step towards better detecting.  There's still a lot of room for improvement and I look forward to that progress from all detector manufacturers willing to take those steps.

 

Chuck,

 

Thanks.  

However, regarding your questions, I was tired of putting qualifiers in everywhere so of course your mileage may vary in actual situations.  It was a comparative statement and mostly theoretical to illustrate a point.  So, yeah, singling it out of my entire post was taking it out of context.  I think I was pretty clear in my original post that this is a theoretical advantage when I stated:

Quote

that means you theoretically only have to grid that field with one mode setting instead of with multiple passes at different frequencies. 

In reality it is not really that cut and dried, even frequency spectrums don't transmit every frequency and not all at the same field strength and in the case of the Equinox the  multi IQ search profiles are still divvied up by high frequency weighted and low frequency weighted spectrums.  Some might have better success gridding the field with different discrete single frequencies.  But at least Multi IQ gives you a fighting chance to find the high conductive targets and low conductive targets on a single pass better than a single pass with single frequency.

This whole line of questioning is starting to become somewhat tedious as we all know that there are no absolutes in detecting, and I feel that the questions are trying to probe for absolute statements of fact when all of us (including the OP) know full well that is just not the case nor realistic. As Phrunt says, no one detector does everything.  That's why mentioned the three detectors I use most.  Now words are starting to get parsed on just about every reply, I have answered the original question and a follow-up and now disagreements with specific statements.  I have said what I want to say on this so this will be my last post in this thread.

[Jeff McClendon]

5 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

I have said what I want to say on this so this will be my last post in this thread.

Same here.........

Jeff

[mh9162013]

13 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Is the Equinox 800 or 600 the absolute best detector for any situation? No. Does Multi IQ technology work the best for me in the vast majority of my detecting scenarios? Yes.

Jeff

Awesome post and explanation, thank you!

[mh9162013]

14 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

I have said what I want to say on this so this will be my last post in this thread.

That doesn't have to be for my sake, but I appreciate your input, for sure. Thank you.

[Chase Goldman]

7 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

that means you theoretically only have to grid that field with one mode setting instead of with multiple passes at different frequencies.

OK, I'm going to violate my own rule, but just for the sake of explanation.  While I appreciate that and also the kind words from Chuck (GB_Amateur) and others in this thread, I really felt I was just repeating myself in the process of answering the questions and it was not moving the topic forward because it is so subjective.  More for the sake of those reading the thread, people are probably tired of reading my rambling posts anyway, so I thought I would bow out.  Cheers.

[mh9162013]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

No one detector does everything, it's why most of us have a range of detectors

I know. But, I imagine scenarios, such as:

"If you could have only one detector..."

"If you were willing to dig everything..."

"If you could only have two detectors..."

The problem is, there are probably an infinite number of scenarios. Then, each of those scenarios will have their own caveats, exceptions and qualifiers.

I'm doing my best (and my best, may be awful) to try and get the 30,000 foot view of it all.

So many people will ask, "I want to search __________ site, with _________ soil, seeking __________ targets and my budget is ______________, so what machine should I get?" They may get the perfect answer, but they may not understand why.

I've seen it before, where someone will ask for a recommendation on a detector, get a good one, but from his follow up questions, you can tell he doesn't understand why he got the recommendation he did.

For instance, he's recommended an Equinox, but doesn't understand why that was recommended to him over the Simplex or AT Pro/Max because he mentioned wanting to hunt salt water beaches.

[Jackpine]

12 hours ago, phrunt said:

For me it's simple like I am 🙂

If I use my T2 or my other single frequency detectors for a coin hunt I will miss targets due to it's unstable ID's, I dig by ID as I dig in areas I don't want to put a million holes digging all targets.  The T2 probably picks everything up fine but it's ID's can be wild.  I have to circle every target with it finding just the right angle where the ID clears up to get a dig-able target, if this even happens.   It's just so time consuming working out if you want to dig a target when there are so many targets available and you just can't dig 1000 holes.

The Nox and Vanquish don't seem to need targets to be circled, any angle is a good angle and for me in my mild soils the ID's are virtually always bang on, incredible how accurate they are.  I don't have to try average the numbers in my head to get to an ID unless it's a very deep target and even then the averaging is obvious. The number I see as the ID is virtually always the number of the target, it's that simple.  Maybe it's because I'm lucky to have mild soils, but no other detector for me has such accurate ID's.  The Gold Bug Pro comes second for ID's but still not even close to a match for the Nox/Vanquish and it still needs targets circled to clear up most ID's.

The deeper targets on the Multi-IQ machines instead of getting wild numbers deviate a little, so a silver coin that should ring up 15 it will go 15, 14, 15, 15, 15, 16, 15, 14, 15, 16, 15, 15, 16, 14, 15, 15, 15, 16, 14, 15, 15, 15, 14, 16 so it's pretty obvious it's worth digging when it's showing very deep on the meter, it's averaging around 15 with it being the middle number.

I just go with a small list of numbers I want to dig (silver coins and UK classic coins) and if I only dig those exact numbers I'll do just fine with the Nox or Vanquish, I can't do that with any other detector that I've owned.

Again, this is just my experience in my very mild soils but its' the reason I love multi-IQ so much.

That says it all for me.   The first time I used the 800 and compared it to single freq detectors in the 12Khz and above range that is exactly what I saw.  That said, in really tough conditions is where experience comes in, but for the everyday user and most all finds I totally agree.

[palzynski]

17 hours ago, mh9162013 said:

Can you elaborate?

On iron trashed areas the most important thing is reactivity rather than depth capacity. I think that monofreqs at high freq like the Deus/ORX at 30khz are faster to react than a ML multifreq machine. Why ? Probably because it is more complex to analyze a multifreq output signal rather than a single freq signal, then it takes more time for the detector processor , then the machine is less reactive on these targets among nails.

In fact in Europe we have very specific conditions that you do not have in the US I think , we are often looking for small / very small coins ( sometimes around 1gram ) not existing in the US of course,  where the coins are bigger . To get those small targets in iron trash you must have a very reactive detectector , which explains that the Deus/ORx are a standard over here in Europe .  In fact we need very specialized detectors for those "nail carpets"  as we call them... The first detector that had a great success in France at the beginning of the 2000s was the Tesoro lobo at 18khz , because of its high frequency / reactivity.   Then XP came with the Goldmaxx at 18 khz in 2005 and the Deus/Orx  a few years later, which has a great success because it answers perfectly to European prospectors needs.

Actually reading the prev posts , I can see that Deus/Orxs are also used in the US ( at least by Jeff and Chase 🙂 ) for detecting on iron trashed areas , so this is not specific to Europe  ...

However the ML multifreqs like the Eq800 and the Vanquish 540 are to me better than the monofreqs for finding medium/big size coins at important depths in low to medium iron trashed areas.  This is why I often use my Vanquish 540 with the big V12 coil  ..  

All this applies for inland detecting only . For salt beaches it is totally different . I am not a beach hunter so I will not give my opinion on this , even if I know that the ML multifreqs are excellent at the beach ...

[GB_Amateur]

51 minutes ago, palzynski said:

In fact in Europe we have very specific conditions that you do not have in the US I think , we are often looking for small / very small coins ( sometimes around 1gram ) not existing in the US of course,  where the coins are bigger .

Well, not quite.  AFAIK the smallest coin minted in the USA as an official USA legal tender coin is the silver 3-cent piece (nicknamed 'trime') which tips the scales at 0.80 grams.  They were minted from 1851 to 1873, although only the first 12 years realistically saw circulation.  Not surprisingly their tiny size and to some extent, oddball denomination led to their unpopularity.  Second on the list is the silver half dime (i.e. 5-cent piece which was evenually replaced by our still minted 'nickel') at a whopping 😁 1.35 grams.  Those had a 90 year reign from 1794 to 1873.

Your point about trash is meaningful.  We've had in the neighborhood of 200-300 years of people dropping metal trash while Europe & Great Britain (and other parts of Eurasia and some of Africa) have to deal with a window 10 times that long.

 

[palzynski]

50 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Well, not quite.  AFAIK the smallest coin minted in the USA as an official USA legal tender coin is the silver 3-cent piece (nicknamed 'trime') which tips the scales at 0.80 grams.  

 

Ok thanks for the infos , I did not know about these very small US coins ...