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Gold Monster 1000 Or Equinox 800?


ks1652

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Jeff, I have not read it yet. I will try to remember to do so. I have been really focusing on the Gpx6000. 

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7 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

We all had to make a decision on what to buy.

If you're not in a hurry , no need to make the decision till you are and then there's always a "new release right around the corner " to consider too. 😉

Stick around and your new machine could become easy to pick tomorrow  !?!🤔

I agree rv.  I am settled on these 2 units. I do like auto features. My DFX 300 offered auto and manual capabilities. So I agree since I'm not in a hurry the decision will come. 

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The GM has auto ground balance where it tracks the ground but its quite slow to adjust, you can speed it up by pumping the coil although with the slow balance it can take 10 pumps, I believe they've sped this up a little on new purchases.  You can lose tiny gold by the auto-tracking tracking it out so its best to not focus on the target too long with swings and swing on surrounding ground too.  There is no way to fix the ground balance point with a manual ground balance, you're stuck on auto. 

It also has the option of auto sensitivity which I found a bit conservative and found using manual sensitivity beneficial.  It's not difficult to establish the optimal sensitivity setting. 

The Nox has auto ground tracking also, along with manual ground balance where you can lock it to a point, I prefer this and this method was adopted by the Garrett 24k which I think is a superior variant of a Gold Monster due to no bump sensitivity with the coils, more settings to enhance performance and superior ground balance with auto and manual. It also has concentric coil support and soon aftermarket coil options from Nel. 

Both the GM and to a lesser extent the Nox have bump sensitive coils, the 24k does not. If you scrub the ground and bump your coil around on rocks it can get annoying. 

I don't often have severe ground in my area but one particular creek causes terrible falsing on my GM, my Nox doesn't like it either yet I recently took my newly acquired Garrett 24k there and it worked beautifully, I was so surprised I took video of it working which I'll upload for the Garrett section of the forum when I return home. 

The Nox doesn't have auto sensitivity, I think that's no great loss. 

The GM only has volume, sensitivity and iron disc on or off.  You need to be extremely cautious using disc mode as it seems to halve depth and may disc out small gold, the Nox disc mode seems to lose no depth at all.  

You also can not trust the gold probability meter on the GM unless it slams hard left to iron, anything else can be gold, especially small gold. 

It's best to use it in all metal and dig virtually everything for best results. 

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10 hours ago, Sourdough Scott said:

Since you do much of your detecting at RP. Anyone who has detected there during wet conditions knows how squacky the alkaline soils can get when wet. I'm not sure what detector would work best in those conditions? But something to look into. 

Gpx 6000 with 14DD in conductive ground cancel mode. Works great at RP when the ground is wet.

GC

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Got to play with the Nox some more and I think it will be good 👍. Getting it figured out. You know for all the monster's short comings, I sure miss it. But, the Nox does in fact run quieter. This will be nice. What is the depth comparison between the two? Anyone have an accurate assessment of it.?

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If you were to take opinions from people like Gerry McMullen and I at face value, one might think the Equinox has got it all over the Gold Monster as a general prospecting device. I don’t waste time on depth comparison quotes as they as context sensitive. Like I said before, the machine has to be learned, and those looking for pickup and go are better off with the Monster. I personally find the Monster to be very limited, and constraining, due to the lack of tuning and coil options available. But as far as depth, just think about how a Monster with its largest 6x10 coil might compare for depth with an Equinox running a 12x15 coil on a half ounce nugget. Which would you bet on?

Tips On Nugget Detecting With The Minelab Equinox

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The GM-1000 is a fine machine and I sell many of them.  It's the most dummy proof, user friendly, turn on and go VLF gold detector on the market at this time.  But it has it's faults and when compared side by side to the Equinox 800, the issues show up.

What's cool about the NOX, I can make it just as User-friendly as the Moster and still get the extra benefits the 800 provides.   Or I can fine tune the additional features and walk all over my Monster.

I'm not going into details where the NOX shines as it's been posted on here a few times. 

I'll close with this and these are facts.   All of my Field Staff Experts owned,  loved and found gold with Gold Bug-2.  After the Monster came out (and we learned it's capabilities, +/-'s)  we all went to it, some faster than others.  When the EQ-800 came out,  Lunk and I  were the 1st to start using it for gold.  In fact it hadn't even been really touted as a gold detector,  but we were of just a few dealers who actually took the time to show up to the Dealer Equinox Showing with Engineering there to answer our questions...and boy did we have fun.

Now, all of my Field Staff use and own at least 1 NOX and some of us own 2.  I can also assure you, we've found more gold with the NOX than any other VLF gold detector.  These are facts and not by 1 or 2 guys,  but at least 10 of us.

Happy hunting. 

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17 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

In fact it hadn't even been really touted as a gold detector

Except by yours truly, who was finding nuggets with it in the U.S. before anyone else in the country so much as laid hands on one, and wrote articles trying to get the word out. I can’t help it if people don’t listen. :smile:

Here are the first gold nuggets below ever found in the U.S. with Equinox in January 2018. Equinox 800, Gold Mode, MF, relatively mild ground and so I was pushing sensitivity levels high, 22 - 25. Three nuggets, two only 0.6 grain each (480 grains per ounce) and one 9.8 grains (0.6 gram). The 0.6 grain nuggets are one smaller, fatter one plus one thin flake. The kicker? I found these with the 11” DD coil!! The Equinox did not even start shipping until February of that year, and I had yet to lay hands on the 6” coil.

So yeah, I knew this dog could hunt on my first nugget outing with it. I also knew it was different, and prospectors don’t like different, so I expected an uphill battle. The lack of  6” coil caused me to soft pedal my report at the time, but I ramped it up after running the 6” coil finally. All while screaming bloody murder for the 6x10 that would end up taking 3 years more appear, and still was not the Monster coil clone I craved.

The thing is, nugget detecting was last on the priority list in Equinox design. Imagine a multi-iq detector designed with only nugget prospecting in mind, with coils made just for that task. That will be a detector worth having, and will probably put the last of the single frequency designs in their graves.

Just so people know, the article I wrote for Minelab was updated with new experiences on my part, and better advice, in the version posted on this website.

herschbach-first-gold-nuggets-2018.jpg

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59 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Except by yours truly, who was finding nuggets with it in the U.S. before anyone else in the country so much as laid hands on one, and wrote articles trying to get the word out. I can’t help it if people don’t listen. :smile:

I listened and I am glad that I did..  😉   I have never posted gold finds on any forum but I may here maybe.

 

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