Minelab, What The Heck Did You Do To My Equinox?????

[Jeff McClendon]

2 hours ago, phrunt said:

That could well be my problem and also why I'm seeing bouncy ID's a lot even though I'm in mild soil, rarely do I find a decent coin shallower than my Carrot depth.   The Nox 800 was able to ID them fine with great accuracy, the Manticore can't, usually 10 digits range if not more.  The Nox was lucky to have 2 digits variation.

Perhaps I need to experiment more with settings and try clear it up more, sensitivity lowering certainly improves it.

Lowering sensitivity to 18 or below on the 900 does remove a lot of spurious and real clicks and pops along with falsing responses from ground noise including small but visible pieces of magnetite and other very small (hot) volcanic rocks in my area. It doesn't do much for target ID instability so far. It definitely cuts down on the amount of noise that I have to sift through. My normal ground noise is a lot like listening to EMI........Tried it today but the ground was very wet. I will do some more testing tomorrow.

[longbow62]

I my dirt which is mild to medium I am calling pennies from dimes with ease with the Manticore. I do not get wildly fluctuating I.D.'s. either. I think I can call all coins as good with the Manticore as can the 800. Including IHP's from Zincolns. I never minded the compressed I.D. of the 800 either. I was quite good with calling most coins, except maybe nickels. Just a guess, but it must be the dirt, and the compressed I.D. on the 800 makes it appear more stable than the 99 scale of the 900.

[cudamark]

My old White's Eagle 2 SL90 had the best target I.D. of any machine I've ever used. I could predict a coin by the I.D. number and sound 98% of the time. I guess it's the price we have to pay to get better depth and tinier target response that it results in a noisier audio at a given sensitivity. I still think the 900 target I.D. is fine. Sure, there's more numbers to deal with, but, good targets are still more solid and have less "smear" across several numbers than a junk target has. The more I use it, the more I can tell a junk target over a good one.

[phrunt]

I guess for me I was used to the 21/22 target ID on a coin where as now that same coin is anywhere bouncing between 60 and 70, sometimes bigger, the jump seems too big for just the extended ID's of the Manticore.    I should also point out that I'm talking about deep targets, I don't care about shallow coins which my definition of a shallow coin is 8" or less they're often my junkers, I want the deep coins and they are the ones where ID accuracy has gone downhill.    If I was chasing shallow coins then yes, it's not too far off the Nox accuracy even with the bigger ID range.

Other that that its' a damn fine detector.

I guess I was spoilt with the CTX and it's deadly accurate ID's too even with an expanded range.

 

[Jeff McClendon]

There have been many great responses to this topic.

Some have made corollaries between the Equinox 900 and Manticore. That is fine with me. I have never used a Manticore so I don't know. They do both have Multi IQ tech and they have very expanded target ID ranges that have been more than doubled compared to the Vanquish models and the Equinox 600 and 800. They have improved target separation and recovery speed over the Vanquish and earlier Equinox models also from my experience.

Other posters have commiserated with my experiences and observations to varying degrees and also offered encouragement to hang in there. Thank You!!!

Some posters have offered solutions to problems that some of us are experiencing. Whether those solutions are universally valid is questionable as they relate to the Equinox 900 being used in a multitude of detecting environments worldwide.

This is why I respectfully asked for posters to refrain from trying to "fix" the prevailing characteristics of the Equinox 900 (and 700 by default) which are bothering some new users whether they have prior Equinox experience or not.

Everyone that has posted and has actually used the Equinox 900 or the Manticore is reporting wider variations in target IDs on targets that do not have very wide variations when detected with the Vanquish models, Equinox 600/800, Legend or Deus 2.

Some of this instability appears to be fairly severe up-averaging on 3" to 8" deep fairly easy targets whether they are coins, jewelry, relics or commonly occurring trash. The other detectors I mentioned may up-average some on those targets but not as much as the Equinox 900.

Some of this target ID instability also appears to be a current characteristic of the Equinox 900 to not lock in on a predictable, firm target ID or tone that is readily repeatable or recognizable even on shallower, fairly easy targets.

A third possibly related characteristic that some Manticore and Equinox 900 users are reporting is the very large amount of spurious, false positive, audio responses that sound like possible targets even using the most basic search modes with default or even lower sensitivity settings.

Otherwise, at least for me, my Equinox 900's physical/ergonomic improvements are fantastic. Thanks Minelab!

I am a gigantic fan, supporter and avid user of the Minelab Equinox series since they were first released. Anything I am reporting here needs to be flavored by that fact. I don't have any desire or reason to take unwarranted shots at any detector especially the Equinox. 

Maybe the learning curve for the Equinox 700/900 is just too big for me right now.

I was not expecting any kind of a learning curve since I assumed the Equinox 700/900 would be a logical, seamless transition from the Equinox 600/800 especially for those that have hundreds to thousands of hours on those detectors in a wide variety of hunting conditions. My personal transition from the Equinox 600/800 to the Legend and Deus 2 was truly seamless, painless and took less than 10 hours.

The "prolonged suffering" that I am experiencing, to coin a phrase from Loren Lemke's excellent Manticore Early Impressions video posted by Bill S in the Manticore area, is not something that I had planned on dealing with after thousands of Equinox 600/800 usage hours which were tough for about the first 50 hours but have been mostly sublime after that. 

After another 10 or so hours of prolonged suffering so far this week, maybe a light bulb will be turned on for me tomorrow when I take the 900 out again.....

 

[phrunt]

If the bouncier ID's are not user error which for me is entirely possible as I'm still learning the machine and I expect to be doing that for some time, I learn slowly as I learn by finds, the more finds I do of a particular target the more I understand how it behaves on that target, so I tinker with settings and find stuff and gradually figure it all out.   With the Nox it was easy and I never really needed to leave default settings and it just worked extremely well, now it seems I have to change that way of thinking with the Manticore.

If they do make an update to improve it I'm going to absolutely love my Manticore, if they can just get it so they're on par with the Nox taking into account the larger ID range that's all I'd need.  I never complained about the Nox ID stability, I was very happy with it, if the Manticore just bounced a few extra numbers to take into account the larger ID range I'd be so happy.   I'm already able to use it to dig more silver threepence coins because the bigger range has separated them from the common pull tab where as the Nox they both came up the same numbers so I'm pleased it has the expanded ID range, I'd just like a little bit more stability with it if it is possible.  In beach mode it has the stability I desire but obviously with that comes sensitivity issues to smaller targets, I've not noticed any depth issues in beach mode.  It does feel like a bit of a bandaid fix by detecting fields in beach mode though.

I also hope one day the Nox 800 goes into a Nox 900 body, I'd buy that to get a better quality Nox 800, I'm not all that interested in a 900, the Manticore can take that role and better it, I'd like a tougher 800 though as I intend to stick with that detector for a long time.

[Jeff McClendon]

8 hours ago, phrunt said:

I also hope one day the Nox 800 goes into a Nox 900 body, I'd buy that to get a better quality Nox 800, I'm not all that interested in a 900, the Manticore can take that role and better it, I'd like a tougher 800 though as I intend to stick with that detector for a long time.

I agree.

I figured Minelab would increase the target ID range. I did not figure that they would more than double it on the 700/900 and so far at least for me, that is not working out very well married up with Multi IQ.

[King-Of-Bling]

Only thing I could add here is if you were in So.Cal , we could have met up for a beach hunt.

[Jeff McClendon]

For those of you who may not think or believe that Minelab cares about their customers or that they pay attention to these forums, I had a very nice, lengthy phone call from one of the Equinox 700/900 design engineers tonight (4/28) in order to talk about the experiences I was having with the Equinox 900 that I own.  

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this topic and who kept it real, no nonsense and as factual as possible. Minelab does care about the experiences we are having especially with new models and also when they are reported in a level headed way.

For you GPX 6000 owners, I did give the gentleman that called me a huge thanks for the speaker/audio/EMI mod and I gave him and Minelab a special request for a small DD coil for the GPX 6000. Maybe it will happen.

later,

Jeff

[phrunt]

Thanks Jeff, that's great news and good to see Minelab are on the ball, I'm sure we all very much appreciate them doing that phone call to you and they called the right person to describe the situation well.  I hope this means a firmware update is on it's way for both the Manticore and Nox 700/900.   Perhaps in their testing ground they didn't see these problems and they do have to rely on testers that they have selected in other ground conditions and perhaps they didn't have the issue either, who knows, seems odd but that's metal detectors for you 🙂

This really is fantastic news. Good work Minelab!  A little DD for the 6000 is a very desirable coil, so good move there Jeff giving them a poke about that.   Thanks for thanking them for the EMI fix, I for one am VERY happy they did that repair, such a difference it has made.