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Help With Equinox Ground Noise


67GTA

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Usually, ground balance takes care of this.  I see that you are ground balancing, so obviously that isn't the issue.  If increasing recovery speed is not helping, one thing you can try is biasing your ground balance setting manually in an attempt make the ground noise go away.  In other words, do the auto ground balance and then push past the balance setting in either direction to see if it clears up constant ground noise, if you want to search in multi.  Just reaching here but it is worth a shot and I suspect one of the reason they give you full manual control of your ground adjustment.  Worth a shot.

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If you are getting ground noise that mimics targets do these ghost targets give you discernible tones and target IDs? 

What mode are you trying to run in multi, what is your sensitivity level and have you tried Beach 1 or 2? What is your iron bias setting?

Is your phone on airplane mode or off? Are there electric cattle fences in the area or cell/radio towers or even a small airport?

I get the desire to run wide open with nothing discriminated. The Equinox in multi will not lose depth if you can discriminate out the iron range number or numbers that are causing the ghost targets.

Sometimes when I am gold prospecting I have to at least discriminate out -9 in order to not hear the ground no matter how well I ground balance. Otherwise, I can't tell an actual target from ground noise in certain types of high mineralization if it is coming from iron particles or other hot rocks. 

If you are dealing with coke, coal cinders, previously burned ground, heavily fertilized/manured ground or salinity the target ID numbers should tell you especially if they are occurring between -2 to +2.

The Vanquish is always running with a form of saltwater beach assist engaged. You can't turn it off. This might be the reason that the Vanquish is quieter than the Equinox. Like you said however, the Equinox is a much higher gain detector than the Vanquish.

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They aren't repeatable signals, but usually show up around -9 to -3. Most square nails are around -3 to -6. Guess I could notch out to -3 and still hear the iron. Just got about 5 inches of snow, so it will be a few days before I can try beach mode. I've tried all the park and field modes, and run sensitivity as high as possible. Turning down the sensitivity doesn't help much either. Never thought to try beach mode. That might make a difference if it is mineral/salt related. Hunt a lot of rural areas with crop fields and pastures. Could just be a lot of fertilizer in the ground. I run into a little red clay every now and then, but it is usually pretty quiet.

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3 hours ago, 67GTA said:

Never thought to try beach mode. That might make a difference if it is mineral/salt related. Hunt a lot of rural areas with crop fields and pastures. Could just be a lot of fertilizer in the ground.

Interesting thought.  I look forward to other repies and your tests when the weather clears.

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67GTA, I am having the same challenges you are facing...and I thought it was just me! At first, I thought the shafts weren't tightened enough, but when that didn't fix it, I decide to try other things, I ground balanced then tried to manually try to eliminate some of the falsing, but to no avail. I currently run on park 1, with sensitivity at 22. I do the noise cancelling and ground balancing. I have tried switching to different modes, but still nothing. I am only one month into my Equinox and I'd sure like to find an answer!

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On 2/17/2021 at 9:55 PM, 67GTA said:

They aren't repeatable signals, but usually show up around -9 to -3. Most square nails are around -3 to -6. Guess I could notch out to -3 and still hear the iron. Just got about 5 inches of snow, so it will be a few days before I can try beach mode. I've tried all the park and field modes, and run sensitivity as high as possible. Turning down the sensitivity doesn't help much either. Never thought to try beach mode. That might make a difference if it is mineral/salt related. Hunt a lot of rural areas with crop fields and pastures. Could just be a lot of fertilizer in the ground. I run into a little red clay every now and then, but it is usually pretty quiet.

As a User Program I still use the Beach1 or Beach 2 program .. .. with a slightly higher iron bias setting ... it's mainly for checking suspicious signals, / a good signal usually has the same ID in both programs..but also signal modulation ../ but also so quickly I will find out which program can work more stable on a given field the best ..

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67GTA, I've experienced the same exact thing one a few properties in central NC. One in particular is horrible.  Almost constant soil noise and when you go over a rock it's even worse.  On this particular site, it's impossible to quiet it down by ground balancing...it just wont balance.  It's an odd soil type, different from most of my sites (which are generally pretty crappy difficult clay) and it's very difficult to search in.  Can't seem to dig anything deeper than a few inches.  I've tried upping recovery, all of the 1-2 modes, ground balancing, and can not really tell any difference.   One thing I have not tried that I saw mentioned in this thread is one of the single frequencies. 

I manged to dig a musket ball the first time I visited the site (sounded mostly like iron) with my buddy who runs my old ATP. The ATP was running as normal, so I buried the freshly dug musket ball about 5-6 inches to see if we could pick it up.  I managed to get a little bit of iron grunt swinging over the ball, and the ATP actually signaled a bit better than the Nox with a non-iron tone.

So, next time I try this horrid place, I am going to try the single frequencies to see if it will quiet it down.  Might be a while, but I'll report back once I do.

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On 2/17/2021 at 3:55 PM, 67GTA said:

They aren't repeatable signals, but usually show up around -9 to -3. Most square nails are around -3 to -6. Guess I could notch out to -3 and still hear the iron. Just got about 5 inches of snow, so it will be a few days before I can try beach mode. I've tried all the park and field modes, and run sensitivity as high as possible. Turning down the sensitivity doesn't help much either. Never thought to try beach mode. That might make a difference if it is mineral/salt related. Hunt a lot of rural areas with crop fields and pastures. Could just be a lot of fertilizer in the ground. I run into a little red clay every now and then, but it is usually pretty quiet.

Just curious.  What sensitivities are you running?  In my experience the NOX is a chirpy detector.  If I run it above 22 in my areas it can be very noisy.  I had a hard time in the beginning getting past the noise and dug many holes to nowhere (even stopped using it for a year or so).  With time, I felt more comfortable running it on a high sensitivity and just filtering out the ghost tones with my ears. 

You mention that changing sensitivity doesn't help much.  How low have gone?  I would be concerned if your NOX was still behaving this way with a low sensitivity (below 15).  You probably don't want to detect down there, but it might be a worthwhile test for troubleshooting. 

There is one YouTuber I can't remember their name, but he does 3-4 hour live detecting.  He mostly uses the NOX.  All I can remember is he detects in NYC.  Watching his videos gave me the confidence to trust my NOX despite the chirpiness of the detector. 

Have you played around with iron-bias?  If so what are your settings?

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