How Many Of You Would Jump On A CTX If Minelab Dropped The Price To 1200 ?

[Raphis]

If ML had made the CTX as light to swing as the Equinox, I’d probably pay $1200 for a new CTX.  I guess you could say I’m a deep silver slayer!! 😂🤓I’ve been hunting old, trashy parks in my locale for more than a decade with an Explorer SE, and the past year with a NOX 800.  After digging over 5000 silver coins with my Explorer, I’m here to say I wish I had an Equinox 10 years ago! ☺️ The Nox is a silver slayer!!  It finds deeper coinage and co-located deep targets in moderate mineralized soils more efficiently than my Explorer ever could.

Last year a buddy of mine and I went to a park we’ve been to about 20 prior times over the past 8 years (he hunts with an E-Trac, and I had hunted this park with my Explorer those years).  This was my first time hunting this park with my Nox 800.  That day’s hunt was so telling!! I ended up with 13 deep (7-10+”) silver coins, and nearly 30 wheats.  My friend ended up with 3 silver...We both were in shock!  The park is not very big, so this was not new ground we’ve never hunted before.  
 

I’ve since been hunting many of the heavily pillaged parks with my Nox that I used to hunt with my Explorer and finding numerous deep and/or partially masked old coinage.  
 

I did get a chance to hunt with a CTX for a week at a few old parks many years ago, and I did very well with it upon my first hunt! I read the whole manual thru and thru back then before using the machine... It’s a great machine for deep silver, as many others have mentioned, but it’s too heavy (compared to a Nox), even though it has better balance than an Explorer (but I don’t use arm cuff straps for swinging my machine and prefer a slightly more toe heavy machine) especially if one hunts for 6-10 hrs (my typical hunt day for many years).  
 

I read that article Simon linked above (comparing the Nox 800 with a CTX), and cut/pasted an excerpt of the article below...He doesn’t elaborate why he feels the IB feature/filter on the Nox causes a loss of depth, but I’m sure this could be (or already has been ??) debated by the heavy hitters on this forum.

“The Equinox 800 has incredible capability in handling heavy mineralization and identifying iron. In fact, Minelab came out with an Iron Bias discrimination feature on the Equinox which allows you to better reveal whether an iffy target is iron or not. However, using the iron bias features comes at a cost -- loss of depth. 

I do not want to declare the iron bias features obsolete, however, I have found no situation in which I need them. “

[Raphis]

On 3/12/2021 at 11:08 AM, Tom_in_CA said:

Mike, I know that the "Nox faithful" would dispute what you are saying, but :  I agree.  The old school explorers were better for cherry-picking in junky-parks types of scenarios.   A better "grasp" at telling a potential coin apart from trash. 

 

HOWEVER, that's only a select niche of hunt style preferences.   A lot of hardcore guys simply do not troll junky inner-city turf for silver.   They are strictly relicky guys.  Who are just after anything conductive, and don't need nuanced tones that a cherry-picker needs.   In the case of iron-riddled zones, I've noticed that my equinox friends are indeed spanking my Exp. II.  However, in turf, I tend to spank them.    I know some Nox guys will dispute these results, and try to say that the Nox guy "just needs more experience", blah blah.   But ... so far ... I just haven't seen it.

Boy, Tom, I wish someone could enlighten you for once!! 😆🤣. Years ago, I clearly recall not a single hunter could pry that whites DFX of yours from your clenched fists, until you got spanked at a certain Nor Cal park by an Explorer hunter....only then did you change your mindset in a matter of a day! 😂
 

I’d imagine though, you can’t compare apples to oranges (DFX vs Explorer) back then for deep turf silver....but the Nox is no slouch to an Explorer.  That’s a fact!  You’re still hanging on to your Explorer because you can’t live without your Sunray inline probe!  🤓

[Dances With Doves]

  There were some spots that  were pounded  by the explorer that we took the Nox to and did not get much.There were many spots that were pounded with the Explorer that we cleaned up on . Many  were spots that dried up  for the explorer.I can use the Nox almost  anywhere and get good results. I also can take it in the water and get the goodies there too. I will say the  explorer  is a great machine and was way ahead of it's time.       

[Jeff McClendon]

This is not meant in any way to discourage anyone from reading and learning something from the article Simon referenced. All I will say is that if the person who wrote it is the same person who does the NW Detector YouTube videos.............I am not paying too much attention to his advice, setting choices or his opinions on the Equinox, CTX or any other detector he thinks he has “mastered”.

I am definitely not a “turn on a go” detector user. I like to be able to adjust settings. I will not hunt like that gentleman is suggesting however. No target is so important that I need to run through half a dozen different adjustments to analyze it. Just dig the damn thing or walk on.

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

This is not meant in any way to discourage anyone from reading and learning something from the article Simon referenced. All I will say is that if the person who wrote it is the same person who does the NW Detector YouTube videos.............I am not paying too much attention to his advice, setting choices or his opinions on the Equinox, CTX or any other detector he thinks he has “mastered”.

Jeff - The article Simon linked is mostly just a summary comparison of features between the two detectors.  Fairly accurate from what I can tell, except he appears to have a total misconception regarding iron bias, as pointed out above by Raphis (he says it affects depth which is not consistent with my experience).

[Jeff McClendon]

3 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Jeff - The article Simon linked is mostly just a summary comparison of features between the two detectors.  Fairly accurate from what I can tell, except he appears to have a total misconception regarding iron bias, as pointed out above by Raphis (he says it affects depth which is not consistent with my experience).

Believe me I have read the article and seen some of his videos. I have spent plenty of time with the CTX. I have thousands of more hours on the Equinox so I will just concentrate on the Equinox.

His favorite thing is to over analyze targets by flipping through the single frequencies (without ground balancing) which he calls the Equinox “Secret Sauce” which is actually his own secret sauce....I challenge you to make it through one of his videos where he demonstrates his Secret Sauce recipe.

In my opinion, the Equinox weak point is its iron identification capabilities.. He considers the Equinox to be outstanding in that department and then declares its iron bias functions as basically unnecessary and obsolete. His description and opinions of the Equinox iron bias function and its effect on depth, are not his only glaringly erroneous statements...........”all of the modes can be used in multi frequency or single frequency”.......not the Beach modes. Also back to the Equinox “secret sauce” which in my opinion is Multi IQ not its single frequency choices.

He goes on and on about how good (correctly) the Equinox is in high mineralization but never puts 2+2 together and considers or even mentions the Equinox Gold modes for gold prospecting. 

So, much of what he says is suspect concerning the Equinox.  His description of the CTX is fairly good. I will just say that the CTX is definitely not deeper or IDs better than the Equinox on any edge of detection deep target in moderate to high mineralization with similar sized coils.

[phrunt]

It seems I caused a bit of a stir 🙂

While the guy has his own opinions about things like iron bias his general thoughts were similar to mine, I'm not overly clued up on iron bias, I never really had a need for it as we don't have much iron junk in our soils around here so I just set it to 0.  I don't see how iron bias would limit depth but I find recovery speed does affect it.  Maybe he was meaning with certain iron bias settings the ID's become less reliable so you may pass on some deeper targets thinking they're junk?

I've used my CTX on my local sports field which as some know was a very good producer giving me hundreds of silver coins, I knew there would be more, I seem to never get them all 🙂 The CTX did surprise me with how well I did do in a short time.  I always was a cherry picker though, for me to dig a silver I had to have a pretty good ID that it was going to be a silver or I didn't dig, the reason for this is I didn't want to dig hundreds of holes in a public area.  I wanted to keep my digs to a minimum.  When I went back with the CTX after doing some basic air tests to get the numbers I was chasing I found quite a few missed silvers quite quickly.  Almost all the silvers in this field are deep, regularly at about the depth of my Carrot.  The CTX wasn't finding coins I'd missed with the Nox not getting the depth, I just think it was giving me a better ID. 

Now, why I think the CTX is possibly deeper while still providing a good ID is last weekend i took my daughter detecting at one of the local ski fields, we end up doing this once a year for a bit of fun, she mainly wants to do it as shes so excited about ski season starting so she just wants an excuse to go there, the deal is also that she gets any money we find 🙂

So I put her on the Vanquish, and basically just told her only look for ID's 21 and 22 ignore everything else.  That gets her our gold $1 and $2 coins and that's all she'd have the patience to dig. 

I used my Nox and 11" and had the CTX and 11" with me that I found targets with one and checked the targets with the other, not on every single target, just the deeper ones.  I found the CTX was doing a great job on ID's at depth, but so was the Equinox.  Only some targets the CTX gave a more reliable ID and often the shallow targets on the Equinox were more wild with their ID like a $1 coin buried at only 1 or so inches was less of a reliable ID with the NOX than one deeper.  The CTX gave good ID's on various depths even the really shallow ones.  I'd never noticed that before with the Nox how the ID's are a bit less accurate wth very shallow coins and perhaps that was just the soil type at the ski field causing that.  There was one particular deep $2 coin that the Equinox was very erratic with the ID on while the CTX was quite stable and easily identified it as a $2 coin. 

The beginners areas are always best, they fall over the most 🙂

So in my very mild soils I think the CTX is great as a cherry picking detector, so is the Nox and Vanquish though.  Even my Ace 300i is pretty remarkable with the stability of target ID's in my soils as long as there is only 1 target under the coil.

I think in my area a person could do almost as well with any main manufacturer detector that have target ID's, they may have to dig a few more iffy targets but I personally think I could do just as well on coins with any of my coin capable detectors.  I'm confident if I used my Ace 300 I wouldn't leave much for the Nox to find afterwards if I was willing and able to dig every potentially good target.  We all have different soil types so our opinions on things can vary wildly.

She managed to get 70 something dollars for her efforts on the day, mostly my finds 🙂

 

[Jeff McClendon]

Simon, you did not cause a stir at all. This is not the first time that the person who wrote that article’s opinions and techniques have been discussed on this forum and it probably won’t be the last.

Thanks for relating your experience with the Vanquish, Equinox and CTX and especially your hunt with your daughter and your photos. I am glad she can swing the Vanquish.

 

[Chase Goldman]

14 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I challenge you to make it through one of his videos where he demonstrates his Secret Sauce recipe.

No thanks - I do not accept that challenge!    I am not a big fan of videos in general.  When I see folks just post a video on a forum with no description (other than someone I personally know), I just move on.  Really can't deal with videos with no written context and I generally do not consume youtube without a concrete reason for being there.  The non-professional videographers are generally poor verbal communicators in the first place - don't know how to tell a story to capture interest or are over the top, attention grabbing phonies using you tube histrionics, blaring soundtracks, combined with poor production values and/or audio and are a big turn off.  Am I beating around the bush too much?

Jeff - you definitely read it closer than I did.  I guess I glossed over the Equinox stuff and focused on the CTX stuff.  Yeah, he definitely has some big conceptual and knowledge gaps when it comes to Equinox.  I get what you are saying.  Lol.

[GB_Amateur]

On 5/27/2021 at 9:39 PM, phrunt said:

I don't see how iron bias would limit depth but I find recovery speed does affect it.  Maybe he was meaning with certain iron bias settings the ID's become less reliable so you may pass on some deeper targets thinking they're junk?

I was thinking the same thing, but (note: I haven't read or watched the link) if that's the case he should have been more explicit with details.

I recall when experimenting with the ML Equinox IB that at least on one occasion a 6-8 inch deep silver dime (don't recall the depth more accurately than that) gave more ferrous tones (along with some non-ferrous tones) than it did with IB minimized.  Some have mentioned the possibility that ferrous that is nearby non-ferrous sounds off more when IB is set high, so that could be what I was experiencing.  I'd like to be able to provide more details and more examples, but that's what I've got so far.  For my parks and schools I haven't found any need to use IB setting other than F2=0.  I leave Tuesday for a month out west.  I'll definitely be playing around with IB (among other setting adjustments) as I expect to experience considerably different ground and trash environments than around my docile sites.

On 5/27/2021 at 9:39 PM, phrunt said:

There was one particular deep $2 coin that the Equinox was very erratic with the ID on while the CTX was quite stable and easily identified it as a $2 coin.

I don't suppose you noticed if the coin was oriented horizontally or vertically....  🤔