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The Minelab Equinox And Detecting Salt Lakes For Gold


Northeast

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Having just spent a few days at the beach using the Equinox in beach mode and it performing so well I wondered if people use them for detecting salt lakes looking for gold.  Maybe a silly question? 

My disclaimer is that I have never done that sort of detecting but have read many comments over the past few years about salt lakes being notoriously hard for detectors to handle. 

Although the Equinox is a VLF and might struggle against a PI in mineralised ground, would it possibly have a distinct advantage in a high salt environ.  

Steve H - thanks for shifting my other thread about beach detecting. Again, wasn’t sure about this one - Gold forum or Equinox?

Cheers, N.E.

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Northeast I had no trouble detecting in salty ground (It was worst when damp) if the VLF detector had pure TR discrimination (not motion disc. and could be set to balance the detector in this mode by using the discrimination to ground balance the detector and stay in TR every signal had to be dug. I was fortunate that most were gold and very little junk.

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Hi Northeast,

I have in the past suggested people keep the Equinox beach modes in mind for extreme salt and mineral situations while gold prospecting. The detector will tell you this is needed by falsing so much on the ground that you can’t operate effectively, and if extreme mineralization is present, the overload downshift function available in beach can maintain operability. Sensitivity is sacrificed of course, but if it is a choice between beach mode and going home, try beach mode. Pounds of gold are being found in saltwater with the Equinox, so any thought it is not worth a go is ignoring some impressive evidence. But again, as a last ditch solution, Beach 1 first, then Beach 2 for dire straits. See below for details.

Minelab Equinox Nugget Hunting Tips

As far as moving threads, I do that to get better coverage for the original poster. When a thread runs out of steam, if there is another forum where it may get additional action, I move it there and leave a link for 30 days. Sometimes I’ll cross link to multiple forums. Basically I’m just trying to help threads get responses and sorting them into final locations at the same time.

minelab-equinox-beach-modes-explained.jpg

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  • The title was changed to The Minelab Equinox And Detecting Salt Lakes For Gold

Thanks for the replies geof and Steve. 

So geof, was the VLF with pure TR discrimination actually better in a salt environ than a PI?  TR was also a new expression for me so I Googled it - not surprisingly it sent me straight back to DP Forum for the answer  🤣

"The IB detector employs two coils, a transmit and a receive coil, that are kept in electronic balance. They were therefore also commonly referred to as Transmitter/Receiver (TR) and that term saw more popular use. The TR produces a steady tone that increases in volume and the early TR models, like the BFO, responded to both conductive metals and magnetic minerals.

The BFO and TR were both very limited because their ability to detect magnetic minerals interfered with their ability to detect conductive metals. An IB or TR variant was developed that allowed the detectors to not only eliminate the signal from ground minerals but to discriminate between various metals. These detectors ran at lower frequencies than the TR models and referred to as Very Low Frequency (VLF) detectors. Dual mode models existed, the VLF/TR, but the TR modes were so limited they were eventually dropped in favor of pure VLF operating modes."  This was taken from here - 

 

 

I suppose the next question is has anybody used the Equinox for salt lake gold detecting and has it been successful (if you are willing to share).  Any pics of finds?  JP - any use in W.A. or anywhere else during testing?  

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The depth is limited but ML have done a pretty good job on the Equinox for wet beaches so I see no reason why it shouldn’t be good on the pure salt lakes. The real issue will be any highly magnetic mineralised ground associated with the lake, so areas like around the edge of Lake Austin near the Iron clad mine or Lake Annean will be a real problem. 

The real issue however is the vast majority of known salt lakes have been well worked with GPX machines which have the ability to either go into Cancel mode with a DD coil which limits depth relative to normal coils but still pretty good, (there is also a dedicated Salt timing)it is way better depth wise than the EQ or you can use any off the MPS machines using an AI coil. 

If the area has pure salt and not a lot else with shallow small nuggets to be had then the EQ might have a chance at some reasonable gold in beach mode thanks to the extra sensitivity, however that window is closing fast with the advent of the GPX6000 (spoiler alert 😝)

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