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Equinox Software Update 3.0...


GKman

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22 minutes ago, Raphis said:

If someone one hasn’t been pounding turf as long as you have with your Explorer, no machine/person is gonna “spank” you! 🤣

Thats like asking some amateur to get in the ring with Mike Tyson!  Not a very smart move!

Hunting trashy/EMI infested turf isn’t for everyone...it requires years of patience, persistence, perseverance to become “One” with the turf to pop out oldies/deepies beyond mere mortals!! 💪🏼😆

Dan, as I said, I would agree with chalking up differences to "experience", if the only thing the 2 guys did is to compare end of the day tallies.  BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE.  We're talking flagged signals.  Where NO amount of added time and added years of experience will change a signal that's simply not there in the first place.  And/or that no amount of control configurations make the signal sound any  different than the static and shallow trash you're wanting to pass.    My friend *could * sometimes bring-in the flagged target.  But then he'd be brutally honest and admit that once he toyed with the settings to get it, that it rendered the machine a noisy useless heap elsewhere.

And trust me:  He's been on forums for the past year reading anything and everything he can about the pros & con's of every setting.   And he did quite well (spanked me) with his Nox in a Gold rush  relicky site.  Him and Greg. S (whom you know ) kicked my b*tt with their Nox's, in THAT type venue.   But I have yet to see it happen in turf.  ( Greg S has moved out of CA as of a few weeks ago, if you haven't heard. )

 

22 minutes ago, Raphis said:

I would agree with you that an original SE with stock “slimline” coil was insubordinate to that same SE with a ML Pro Coil, or even the original 1050 Explorer II coil, but that’s as far as I will concede.

 

No. I'm referring to the SE with the pro coil.  Not that original lemon coil

 

22 minutes ago, Raphis said:

Hunting down here in our So Cal trashy parks with with a person who has used an Ace 250 for 10 years would not bag you more oldies than a person who has hunted 10 years down here with a....

Don't get "lost in the example".  I was only referring to your citing your tallies, as somehow being proof of an authoritative voice on this latest matter of Exp. vs Nox in turf.   For example, you've noticed that in manufacturer advertisements, sure enough they can find someone, who's used their machine, that has a DAZZLING table display.   Yet  as you know :  That alone does not automatically mean :  "Therefore That machine spanks all others".  It merely means that single guy did good with that machine.     

And yes, Minelabs have taken over the market (in probably most states by now).  20+ yrs. ago, in a group hunt of 30 people here in CA, you'd see a variety of Whites, Fisher, Garrett, Tesoro, and Minelab, eh ?   And now, 20 yrs. later, what do you see ?  95% of them will be swinging Minelabs.  Doh !

 

22 minutes ago, Raphis said:

EMI tolerance from one treasure hunter to another is definitely not equal!! Some hunters can definitely hunt in higher EMI than others can!  The brain of one hunter can still tell target from false signal at much higher noise levels than another hunter can...

 

I can only imagine my friend tearing his hair out if he reads this paragraph.   Because ... Dan ... we're not talking "mere tolerance to some chatter" here.   He pulled his headphone jack out to  let me hear what he was hearing.  And  there is no way in h#ll that any hunter can hunt (and get any depth on hard-targets) with that sort of chatter.     Something was/is definitely wrong, that is WELL BEYOND mere "tolerance" and "experience" levels.

The problem with you potentially coming up , to try this exact area, is that if the same thing happens to you too, you can write it off as an isolated fluke, on *just* that night or day.   It would be inconclusive, to where no-amount of getting spanked would  convince you.   I'd certainly love to try it though.  And from there, no shortage of other turf within 30 min. drive, with totally different flavors.

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I've spent 14.5 hours in the field with the new update (3.1.3) for my Minelab Equinox 800.  The previous ~200 hours of detecting with the Eqx were done using the v2.x update and I really hit it off with that one.  Besides this field work I also did some test gardening, swapping between these two latest versions.  I'll start with my experiences in the field.

All tests (except some in the test garden which will be pointed out explicitly) were Park 1, custom 5 tones, Ground ('grab') Balanced, auto Noise cancelled, Iron Bias F2=0 (except as noted, and only applicable in simultaneous Multi-Frequency), recovery speed = 5, all three tone setting options customized, no discrimination segments excluded (what I call "wide open").  Most of these field tests were performed with Sensitivity set at 22.  I did try sensitivity 23 for a couple hours, not noticing much difference in anything, before returning to my standard 22.  Stock 11" coil, frequent use of built in pinointing circuitry, frequent check of strength ("depth") guage, frequent viewing of digital TID reading after pinpointing.  I was mostly using my standard searching and mental discriminating practices.  Exception was the use of Profile for target investigation which I set up identically to my main program except in 4 kHz instead of Multi.  Lately, prior to installing update v3.x, I've been using Profile set identically except with F2=9, also just for target investigation.  All searching is done in MF with F2=0.

Under the conditions above (important as possibly some of these 'stability improvements' Minelab vaguely tells us about might be specific to certain modes, and I'm only running Park 1) I didn't notice any differences between the 3.x version and the 2.x version running MF.  There may have been some subtle ones that I didn't notice.  If so maybe I'll pick up on those in the future

4 kHz was a different story, not surprisingly.  Here are some things I noticed in the field when investigating a target using 4 kHz which I had already located in MF:

1) In (only) one situation I actually got worse EMI noise while in 4 kHz than in MultiFrequency.  I was ~30 m from some above ground (~10 m high) power lines.  I should have looked for a transformer but didn't.  The remainded of my time in the field I didn't notice any appreciable EMI noise at either MF or 4 kHz -- reminder I was running sensitivity = 22.

2) The digital TID's were sometimes consistent between MF and 4 kHz, but those tended to be the shallow targets -- less than ~2 inches deep.  Most of the time (deeper targets) when I saw a difference the dTID was higher in 4 kHz, but it varied from a couple ticks up to as many as ~20.  Among the most striking were partially rusted crown caps (the only kind I find) reading ~13-14 in MF and 26-30 (typically) at 4 kHz.  Summary - it appeard to me that both depth of target and conductivity of target led to these differences.

3) USA 5 cent ('nickel') coins get special mention.  When close to the surface they would TID about the same in the two frequencies (12-13 typ.) but as they got deeper they got weak in 4 kHz and in some cases gave TID's in the low single digits!  It's well known that low operating frequencies aren't ideal for our 25% Ni, 75% coin and this further emphasizes that.

4) Digital TID's tended to be tighter in MF than in 4 kHz for most targets, and that includes our USA clad coinage (dTID's ~25 and up in MF).  BTW, I haven't measured the Fe3O4 level at this site but I don't expect it to be much different than my 2-3 bars (Fisher Gold Bug and F75 readings) in my back yard.  I like to call this 'moderate' mineralization -- somewhere between Florida beach and Western USA strongly magnetic ground.

Now for my backyard runs in my test stand.  I was swapping updates (v2.x and v3.x) between tests to confirm what I perceived to be experiencing.  One thing that was quite noticeable was that I could raise the sensitivity to as high as 24 and the detector remained EMI quiet at 4 kHz, but in MF I could only run quietly up to sensitivity 20.  (This latter is typical of my back yard experience.)  I did not see any change in the MF EMI sensitivity between versions.  I have two buried targets -- 6 inch deep nickel and 5 inch deep 95% copper Memorial penny.  Consistent with my in the field experience, at 4 kHz I could barely get a ratty, low dTID signal for the nickel.  The penny seemed pretty consistent in signal strength between 4 kHz and MF (v3.x update) as I raised the coil above ground.  I am going to repeat that test more carefully as I did perceive a difference, but I need to do some better measurements.

For my variable depth 'shotgun' test-stand I set up the following:

4kHz_vs_MF.thumb.jpg.fba9de347d9a93e66331ec0cdf674abe.jpg

Using MultiFrequency, regardless of version (2.x or 3.x) and regardless of recovery speed (varied between 5 and 8 ) I was unable to separate the two targets swinging the coil in the y-direction (see small coordinate system indicators at top of sketch).  But swinging in the x-direction, in MultiFrequency, the closest I could get to the pulltab to pick up the dime vTID with the coil centered along the red line labeled '(MF)'.  In 4 kHz I could get an extra inch closer -- swinging coil center along red line labeled '(4 kHz)' -- before I lost the dime's vTID, replaced by the pulltab's TID.  I realize this property of separation capability vs. target strength is nothing new.   It's just something I never thought about before.

Conclusions:  In my ground, Park 1 mode, and specific settings outlined above, I didn't notice any changes in MultiFrequency between v2.x and v3.x.  The new 4 kHz is certainly EMI quieter in my back yard than MF.  It also has some advantage in separating ability as shown in my rigged setup illustrated above.  Its digital TID drift and poor performance on deeper nickels means for me it likely is a feature that I will use only in special circumstances.

I will add more in the future if I find other differences.  Most of the time I'll be in the field, but I'll do a bit more test stand/garden checking, particularly comparing MF vs. 4 kHz on my 5 inch deep copper Memorial penny.  For now I'm sticking with the new v3.1.3 except possibly in my test stand/garden investigations.

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59 minutes ago, Tom_in_CA said:

I can only imagine my friend tearing his hair out if he reads this paragraph.   Because ... Dan ... we're not talking "mere tolerance to some chatter" here.   He pulled his headphone jack out to  let me hear what he was hearing.  And  there is no way in h#ll that any hunter can hunt (and get any depth on hard-targets) with that sort of chatter.     Something was/is definitely wrong, that is WELL BEYOND mere "tolerance" and "experience" levels.

The problem with you potentially coming up , to try this exact area, is that if the same thing happens to you too, you can write it off as an isolated fluke, on *just* that night or day.   It would be inconclusive, to where no-amount of getting spanked would  convince you.   I'd certainly love to try it though.  And from there, no shortage of other turf within 30 min. drive, with totally different flavors.

Tom, in my past 13 years of hunting a thousand parks/sites with my Explorer SE here in CA, I have only come across maybe 3-4 zones/areas within these sites where no amount of “tinkering” with my machine would allow me to hunt, given my ultra high EMI tolerance....that’s it!  An extremely infinitesimal statistic!  It’s a “way of life” down here to hunt many old, inner city, blighted parks with ratchety sounding EMI...and so far, in all the sites I have hunted with my Nox (which happens to be spots that I have hunted countless times in the past with my Explorer), I have not noticed any worse conditions while using my Nox!  In fact, I would say the Nox allows me to hunt some areas with less bothersome EMI than I had while hunting with my Explorer....I think this is because of the advantage of the Nox’s ability to lower the ferrous volume (in addition to very low non-ferrous signal volume), while hunting all metal (wide open)....Something you couldn’t do with the FBS machines....

......but if, as you say “there would be no way in hell that “any” hunter could hunt in that type of noise”  you heard in your buddy’s headphones, then I have no explanation for you...maybe I would then have to bump up by 1 my infinitesimally small occurrence of unhuntable ground since I’ve been hunting with ML machines

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6 minutes ago, Raphis said:

Tom, in my past 13 years of hunting a thousand parks/sites with my Explorer SE here in CA, I have only come across maybe 3-4 zones/areas within these sites where no amount of “tinkering” with my machine would allow me to hunt, given my ultra high EMI tolerance....that’s it!  An extremely infinitesimal statistic!

Since you say it's possible to happen to  the Nox  too, then I'm willing to say that this is one of those rare flukes.   As I say, I realize it's not conclusive.    Which only makes me want to try the same tests elsewhere.  We shall see.  Because since the nox kicked my #ss at a relicky site, then  I sure as heck want one, *if* it can be shown to likewise kick my #ss in turf.  So far, I haven't seen that.

 

I'd be willing to simply get one *only*  for relicky sites .  Except that there's probably matching ability in several other machines.  Like the Deus, the Racer, etc....   And it's also tempting to make  the plunge for no-other-reason than it's waterproof.   But seeing as how we've  had 3 lame winters in a row (no storm erosion), I rarely hunt the beach  anymore.  Nor is angling for micro-jewelry an interest for me. 

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28 minutes ago, Tom_in_CA said:

I'd be willing to simply get one *only*  for relicky sites .  Except that there's probably matching ability in several other machines.  Like the Deus, the Racer, etc....   And it's also tempting to make  the plunge for no-other-reason than it's waterproof.   But seeing as how we've  had 3 lame winters in a row (no storm erosion), I rarely hunt the beach  anymore.  Nor is angling for micro-jewelry an interest for me. 

Tom, If I could (you’re pretty set in your ways), I would tell you to purchase a Nox....even if you will use it only at your Relic’y sites...it’s def worth the purchase...you’ve been a Minelab guy for many years now (and a Whites guy for many years before that).  No need to purchase a machine from s different company!
 

Nobody is gonna spank you these days like what happened to you many yeArs ago when you went on a hunt with Ron for a duel between a whites guy and a Minelab guy! 😂. Multi-frequency machines (especially from the same company) will be closely matched against each other!  

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Tom, I didn’t purchase a Nox because I thought I could spank myself when I used my Explorer all these years! 🤣. I purchased it because I wanted a machine that was 2 lbs lighter, with every bit of capability as my old machine, in addition to some newer technologies incorporated by Minelab! I really wanted a new machine, and I’m content (more than I thought I’d be) about my  decision because it has performed above my expectations at many of my sites I’ve hunted with it so far.

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4 minutes ago, Raphis said:

Tom, I didn’t purchase a Nox because I thought I could spank myself when I used my Explorer all these years! 🤣. I purchased it because I wanted a machine that was 2 lbs lighter, with every bit of capability as my old machine, in addition to some newer technologies incorporated by Minelab! I really wanted a new machine, and I’m content (more than I thought I’d be) about deciding to purchase the Nox!

Yup.  Definitely lighter.  And yes, does some things the Explorers can't .  Like do a cross-over to nuggets.   And  cross-over to micro-jewelry (if either of those goals was something someone  desired ).   And yes, can be set up to be a ghost-townsy iron-hunter.     And yes, waterproof for someone not wanting to lug around the heavier Excals  or CTX's . 

 

BUT, there's more to it :  1)  Doesn't allow for the inline  sunray probe 😞  (that was deal-killer on the CTX for me, for instance).   2) I have yet to  see that it outperforms the Exp II in the turf (but am willing to be shown).   

 

C'mon, get up here !  🙂

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24 minutes ago, Tom_in_CA said:

BUT, there's more to it :  1)  Doesn't allow for the inline  sunray probe 😞  (that was deal-killer on the CTX for me, for instance).   2) I have yet to  see that it outperforms the Exp II in the turf (but am willing to be shown).

I really thought I was gonna miss my Sunray probe too....I was like you...a staunch inline probe or nothing hunter.....but since I can actually detect deeper with my Garrett carrot than I could with my inline probe, I’m not missing the inline probe anymore....angling for what you think is a deep coin/relic only to find that it’s actually deep iron with a stand-alone probe does effectively slow oneself down over a day’s hunt, but not as bad as I thought!  A failing inline probe can be a nuisance also...with the added falsing from a partially broken or exposed shielded wire.

The Nox is very appealing with its minimalist, lightweight design on the outside, but under the hood is a high tech, firmware upgradeable, digitally sophisticated, able to do-it-well in most TH’ing situations machine with new enhancements/niceties to earlier multi-freq machines...

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16 minutes ago, Raphis said:

........angling for what you think is a deep coin/relic only to find that it’s actually deep iron with a stand-alone probe does effectively slow oneself down over a day’s hunt ....

Dan, this might be true for park turf.  Which isn't a blanket of iron.  But in my one-time trial period for the carrot, I was at a relicky site with a CTX .  And ... it was quite nerve-racking  to have the carrot give me a target, which I'd fumble around at-length to find.  And finally .... drum-roll .... a teeny  bit of iron (thumb-tack sized cr*p or whatever).   And repeat a few times.   In other words, it seemed like every hole invariably had something else in there that competed with the conductive object.  And as you know, that problem is immediately solved with an  in-line probe.    Don't you get annoyed when small foil or something leads you away from your desired target ?

 

But you're right : Other people have adapted.  And have no problem with non-discriminating probes.  And now they're even making discriminating probes.  Albeit only iron vs non-iron.  Not full (or  not  very expanded) TID.   

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4 hours ago, Tom_in_CA said:

But seems that others, on forum chit-chat, are not agreeing with this.  Seems that others say it makes the Nox more vulnerable.

 

Not seeing this at least not on this forum.  The general consensus (including my experience since loading V3) is that not much if anything has changed regarding EMI performance on any EXISTING MF or SF mode on Equinox, and 4 kHz seems to run QUIETER than 5 kHz but significantly up averages most target IDs.  

If you guys were just silver slaying at that park, I reckon your friend would have had his best fighting chance hitting the park at 4 kHz single frequency and perhaps frequent noise cancels IMO.

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