Minelab Equinox Vs Garrett Ace Apex Vs Nokta Makro Simplex Relic Hunting

[abenson]

I recently picked up a Garrett Ace Apex with 3 coils for a very good price locally. This is the second one I have owned. I spent the last few weeks doing some indoor and outdoor tests as well as some park hunting to get reacquainted with it.

I stated on the Garrett forum that I would give the Apex another chance and do some infield testing against the Equinox and Simplex and report back. I had a chance to spend about 5 hours at a relic site over the weekend and do just that.

The site has had mixed usage since the late 1850’s and includes Military artifacts as well as more modern house site items. The site has been hammered over the last 6 decades and so I thought it would be the perfect test. Ground is 4-5 bars on the F75 and is for the most part loaded with iron except farther out where we will usually just find fired .58 cal bullets, shotgun and .22 brass.

I started with the Apex 8.5 x 11 coil out where we usually just find bullets running MF, custom program where everything is accepted over 20 and sensitivity all the way up. My goal was to just see if I could find bullets, no comparisons were done. I quickly found out the sensitivity was too high as I got a lot of false signals and chased a few ghost signals. Once turned down 1 bar the Apex ran smooth. I managed to find 4 .58 cal bullets and a few .22 and shotgun brass. Deepest bullet was 6 inches and was a very jumpy signal. I’ve done a video in the past digging bullets with the Apex in this same area if you want to see it you can find it in the Garrett forum. It’s under 10 things I like and 5 I don’t like about the Apex. Unlike the Equinox in this same area, the Apex has a real hard time identifying deep large targets vs small .22 brass. The signals are jumpy in both regards and hard to determine depth.

Next I moved to an area close by that has produced quite a few buttons and dropped bullets in the past. The area is very trashy in places with glass shards and square nails. I used the Equinox 800 with the 11” coil running Park 1, 50 tones, iron bias F2 0, recovery 4, Multi and sensitivity 22. The Equinox 600 can be setup exactly the same way. I proceeded to mark 8 targets that came in at as low as 1 up to the highest being 15 on the Equinox. All of these targets were located in the trashy areas. The Simplex 11” coil Park 2 was able to see all but 2 targets, one being a small pewter button about 3 inches deep the other being a fired percussion cap also about 3 inches deep. The Apex 8.5 x 11 coil unfortunately was only able to see 2 targets. The first being a large pewter button maybe and 1 inch deep the other being a fired percussion cap on the surface. A small Navy cuff button laying on the surface (that only read 1 on the Equinox) was surprising invisible to the Apex. Granted there were a lot of iron signals around it.

Last area, the house site. This time I started with the Simplex 11” coil running park 2. Now I know what some of you are going to say. Why use the larger coils in trashy sites? I wanted to see what the stock coils would do, I consider the 8.5 x 11 the stock coil for the Garrett machines. Yes I may have gotten better results with the Apex using a smaller coil. Anyway, I located and marked 4 targets with the Simplex. The Equinox was able to see all 4 but did struggle with one, all explain in a minute. The Apex was able to see 3 out of the 4, but was totally blind to the one the Equinox struggled with. Target 1 was a modern penny about 1 inch deep and was not a problem for any of the detectors. Target 2 was a small piece of decorative brass about 2 inches deep which all the detectors saw. But the Apex numbers were all over the place where as the Equinox was a solid 14 and the Simplex a solid 44. Target 3 turned out to be a 1929 S wheat penny at 5 inches deep. The Simplex read 66-68 and could get the signal as I rotated all the way around it. The Equinox struggled, first direction I tried got nothing but iron grunts. But as I rotated around it, I started to get a choppy signal that would bounce up to about 17. The Apex got nothing but iron grunts no matter what I tried. Signal 4 turned out to be a 1946 dime at about 3 inches and was a good solid signal on all the detectors. I also located 2 old clay marbles while I was walking around the house site.

In a relic hunting scenario, the Equinox and Simplex have a clear advantage over the Apex. The Apex likes round objects and does the best on them and has a fairly accurate ID. Odd shapes are not it’s strong point for sure. But for someone who only wants to dig coins, it could be great. I will also say that of the 3 the Apex was most comfortable to swing and I think I like the wireless headphones the best on the Apex.

In the future I plan to take the same 3 machines to a ghost town and the beach to see how they stack up against each other. I will say that the more I use the Simplex the more I see just how great a value this machine is. For the money you can’t beat it.

[Jeff McClendon]

Thank you for the great write-up.

Your Garrett ACE APEX results sound very familiar. My former Apex has a new owner………. I hope it works well in their soil conditions.

Rocky Mountain USA F75 4 bar Fe3O4 iron mineralization is tough for any VLF detector.

The Multi IQ Equinox with its adjustable recovery speed and different frequency weighted modes (Park1 vs Park2 etc.) make it a very good iron trash and modern aluminum trash relic detector in this tough dirt. 

The Simplex is also excellent. I hope Nokta Makro’s SMF detector will be as good or better especially with more accurate target IDs on deeper targets.

[Chase Goldman]

Andy - fantastic round up review.  Great info and not too shabby on the finds too.  Thanks!

[palzynski]

Yes very good comparative review ... I agree the Apex is not the best for target depth and vdi stability , this even in mild ground. It also falses too much on the irons . Garrett has definitely to improve the Apex electronics ( or coil design?  ) to solve these issues . 

On the other hand the Apex is a fast machine , and as you said it is very comfortable to sweep compared with the 2 others which is a very important feature for some people , at least for me 🙂... 

 

[GB_Amateur]

3 hours ago, abenson said:

Target 3 turned out to be a 1929 S wheat penny at 5 inches deep. The Simplex read 66-68 and could get the signal as I rotated all the way around it. The Equinox struggled, first direction I tried got nothing but iron grunts. But as I rotated around it, I started to get a choppy signal that would bounce up to about 17. The Apex got nothing but iron grunts no matter what I tried.

Did you happen to determine the orientation of this coin?  (I seldom do myself with my recovery methods....)  I've noticed the ML Eqx can struggle with vertically oriented coins, particularly with higher recovery speeds.  But you were running RS = 4 so that particular 'feature' should have been less of a problem, relatively speaking.

Thanks for the thorough, objective review.

[abenson]

27 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Did you happen to determine the orientation of this coin?  (I seldom do myself with my recovery methods....)  I've noticed the ML Eqx can struggle with vertically oriented coins, particularly with higher recovery speeds.  But you were running RS = 4 so that particular 'feature' should have been less of a problem, relatively speaking.

Thanks for the thorough, objective review.

I have no idea what the orientation was. After the initial shovel full of dirt the coin was in the bottom of the hole in the lose dirt. I think the Equinox was struggling due to all the iron targets around the coin.

[Jeff McClendon]

1 hour ago, abenson said:

I have no idea what the orientation was. After the initial shovel full of dirt the coin was in the bottom of the hole in the lose dirt. I think the Equinox was struggling due to all the iron targets around the coin.

I had a similar question. What was your discrimination setting on the Nox and Simplex for the 1929 Wheat penny. The 66-68 and 17 target IDs are consistent with nearby iron target/mineralization  down averaging for that coin. 

[Chase Goldman]

34 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Wheat penny. The 66-68 and 17 target IDs are consistent with nearby iron target/mineralization  down averaging for that coin. 

Jeff - your question of Andy leads me to another question regarding the Equinox.  Unlike the Deus, I find the Equinox discrimination when engaged has little effect on non-ferrous targets ID from what I can tell observationally when switching it off and on using the horseshoe button.  I have not done controlled tests to verify this observation.  Deus disc does seem to help with ferrous down averaging of non-ferrous targets.  From my experience, disc on Nox seems to act more like an audio notch than disc.  I infer from your inquiry of Andy, you have observed Nox disc aiding in reducing ferrous down averaging of non-ferrous targets (although you are also referring to Simplex in your question).  I somewhat dislike the disc implementation on Nox - it really clips the audio on targets which appear to Nox to have mixed ferrous/non-ferrous characteristics and with no iron audio option on Nox (other than threshold blanking) I find myself operating primarily in no disc mode unless the ferrous is so overwhelming to be fatiguing or cherry picking high conductors.

[abenson]

30 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I had a similar question. What was your discrimination setting on the Nox and Simplex for the 1929 Wheat penny. The 66-68 and 17 target IDs are consistent with nearby iron target/mineralization  down averaging for that coin. 

Horseshoe ON. I always run with horseshoe ON because of the clipped audio as Hugh had stated above. I have not noticed any down averaging being worse with the horseshoe on or off. The Nox IMO down averages less than most when close to iron. That penny reads 22 on the Nox the Simplex 71. So in this case the Simplex both down averaged less and sounded better than the Nox. Overall I feel the Simplex just does better in iron trash than the Nox on high conductors. Low conductors the Nox had the edge.

[Jeff McClendon]

44 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Jeff - your question of Andy leads me to another question regarding the Equinox.  Unlike the Deus, I find the Equinox discrimination when engaged has little effect on non-ferrous targets ID from what I can tell observationally when switching it off and on using the horseshoe button.  I have not done controlled tests to verify this observation.  Deus disc does seem to help with ferrous down averaging of non-ferrous targets.  From my experience, disc on Nox seems to act more like an audio notch than disc.  I infer from your inquiry of Andy, you have observed Nox disc aiding in reducing ferrous down averaging of non-ferrous targets (although you are also referring to Simplex in your question).  I somewhat dislike the disc implementation on Nox - it really clips the audio on targets which appear to Nox to have mixed ferrous/non-ferrous characteristics and with no iron audio option on Nox (other than threshold blanking).

So, there are some non-ferrous relic hunting places that I simply cannot engage the All Metals Accepted horseshoe button and hunt. I would go more nuts than I already seem to be........The iron mineralization is just too enormous and/or iron targets are too thick. I compromise by accepting enough iron range IDs to hear most iron targets without having to hear continuous -9, -8, -7 and maybe -6 ground/target responses. This setup does not seem to really effect non-ferrous target ID audio length. What does really effect non-ferrous target ID audio length is an F2 iron bias setting above 0 or at most 1 in the areas I relic hunt that have both high iron mineralization and numerous iron targets. Lowering the recovery speed to 5 or 4 does help with clipped non-ferrous responses but that is also an iffy compromise in thick iron/high mineralization.

1929 Wheats read 22 to 24 on my equinox and 71-74 on my Simplex in air tests.

Andy and Hugh, I totally agree that the Simplex is a very good detector in thick iron trash as is the Equinox.  This is why I wanted to try the Simplex and the APEX in tough hunting conditions and is why I bought them for testing. The Simplex has not disappointed at all. I really look forward to Nokta Makro's SMF/Simplex detector.

The Deus is definitely on another level in iron trash but any kind of dependable depth on coin sized or smaller targets past 5",  if you add in iron mineralization using a Deus....... ain't happening.