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2018 - Year Of The Equinox!


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What I'm thinking is that everyone is going to expect the same results as Steve and be disappointed. Steve proves the machine is capable but his lifetime of experience gives him a clear advantage in its use. Hell Steve could pull more coins out of the ground with a stick with a magnet duct taped to the end than I can with my V3i which is for sale at a bargain. Anyway I'm getting one anyway for the fact that it is lighter. If it works as well as my Deus I will be very pleased. Thanks Steve for the Target envy! Wishing  you and your loved ones a healthy and Happy New Year!

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Steve;

I also have been detecting for over 40 years, and this is truly an exciting new technology, and one that has me re-enthused about getting out there with my son and son-in-law, (whom I had handed the torch off to in recent years). The reason I quit, and became their researcher, is that I had found many thousands of coins, rings and artifacts over the years. When I began hunting with the RAELAR gang back in the late 70's, everything was virgin, and every day hunting was exciting. However, I felt that going forward, there were much fewer finds out there, so if my two "sons" wanted to hunt, I would only be taking finds from them. So I trained them as to hunting methods, spots, and manners, (ie... how to dig a find and not leave a trace, how to ask permission etc...) That was my way of passing the torch, so to speak. Now, they, and you, have me so pumped up on the possibilities with the Nox, I have ordered 2, and intend to accompany them on hunts again beginning this spring. Thanks for the honest reports which have given some of us vets a reason to ride again.

Rick

Southwest Mich.

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2 hours ago, Johnnysalami1957 said:

What I'm thinking is that everyone is going to expect the same results as Steve and be disappointed. Steve proves the machine is capable but his lifetime of experience gives him a clear advantage in its use.

There is some truth in that. The reason detector companies want people like me to give their detectors a spin is that experience does matter. Give me any decent machine, and I can make good finds. That being said it is within my power to make any machine look good and we have an abundance of good detectors on the market.

I hope people will understand one key thing I am trying to do here. I am not trying to make the case that Equinox is better than this or that. My brain is not wired that way - I just don’t care. The only take away here should be that this detector can hunt and in the right hands, hunt well. No detector is perfect, and I am sure there are times and places another detector might have the edge. Whatever. The reality is I can only use one detector at a time. What I am absolutely confident of is that if I have an Equinox in hand there is nobody running anything else that is going to have a serious leg up on me. And because I do think Equinox is processing targets in a way we have never seen before, I will have an edge that can only be duplicated with another Equinox. The difference is literally in the difference from what has gone before.

1 hour ago, Raelar Vet said:

Thanks for the honest reports which have given some of us vets a reason to ride again.

Welcome to the forum Rick!

I know exactly where you are coming from. I have not been able to get very excited about coin detecting for a long time. Especially with my gold prospecting going on, the time seemed not worth the effort for the relatively poor finds made these days. Equinox changed that for me and got me fired up. It is not that it is the best detector on the planet, though in my opinion it certainly is in the running. What makes me like it is it is light, it is easy, it is fun, and it does perform. I have said it before and I will repeat - it is the sum of numerous likable things that makes me want to just keep using the Equinox. You put it all together, and it is hard to go back to using anything else. That being the case, I think this is a great machine for people who need their enthusiasm reignited. Especially an older crowd where weight does really matter - Equinox is a fabulous take it easy and cherry pick detector. It certainly has me excited about coin detecting again, and that is high praise coming from somebody as jaded as I am about new detectors.

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Steve , you are picking up a lot of coins in hi trash areas,  ......with an  11" coil.  I can't imagine  how well the 6" coil will do in those trash pits.  Man, I'm lickin my chops !

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Steve, thank you for the great writeup and taking the time to share with us your spectacular finds.  Your haul is positively amazing.  That's about how well I do on old coins in an entire season of hunting my hunted out parks here in Boise. 

Like you and others in this thread have expressed, having experienced what it used to be like, it's hard to get excited at all anymore about finding any old coins.  Back in the early 80's when I was out hunting all day several times per week, your haul would be typical for me in a day.  I digress, but many sites I hunted had been hunted before, but usually very incompletely.  I could even usually tell what pattern previous hunters had taken at the site by where the patches of virgin ground were located ..and there was always huge areas of virgin ground remaining at every location, even city parks.  Oh, to be back in time at those locations again ...  Anyway, nowadays with every square inch of every park and school having been covered many times over, I focus on the outdoor exercise benefit and meditative serenity of metal detecting and don't have much hope, or care, of finding anything very good anymore, other than occasional recent jewelry drops.  Judging by many posts I read, this is probably how a lot of us guys look at the hobby these days.  You have to have a whole change in mental attitude otherwise you will be very frustrated, especially for those of us who can remember 10-15 silvers (or more) in a day being the norm.  Nowadays, if I can start hoping for even one silver a day, I'll be in heaven.  It sounds like the Equinox's strength is unmasking and Target ID, which could very well unlock at least a few of what have to be many remaining but heavily masked goodies left in those "worked out" spots.

What the Equinox is bringing back is a little of the magic of the early days, when you could actually expect to find at least a few old coins and artifacts with every outing.  And your writing (very well done!) is really helping stoke those old magical feelings again.  Even if it helps bring back 1% of the old magic, the Equinox will be well worth the very reasonably purchase price.  

Thanks again Steve for your great writing and for bringing back just a little of the old magic.  

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Thank you Wayfarer also for restating so well just how I feel about it. I can grab the Equinox and head to nearby parks and feel like I have a decent shot at coming home with silver. It really is the wheaties that are most telling. I dug about 70 coins dating 1956 and earlier from common park locations. A couple dimes is one thing but this also indicates volume.

The weather has been quite mild for a week now and I am thinking southern facing areas should be thawed out, so I am grabbing Equinox and going to give it a shot today. Report later....

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Happy New Year Steve and thank you for the photos. It’s inspirational since there are so few Eq’s in people hands. Congrats on the beautiful silvers you saved from the ground.

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4 hours ago, Johnnysalami1957 said:

What I'm thinking is that everyone is going to expect the same results as Steve and be disappointed. Steve proves the machine is capable but his lifetime of experience gives him a clear advantage in its use. Hell Steve could pull more coins out of the ground with a stick with a magnet duct taped to the end than I can with my V3i which is for sale at a bargain. Anyway I'm getting one anyway for the fact that it is lighter. If it works as well as my Deus I will be very pleased. Thanks Steve for the Target envy! Wishing  you and your loved ones a healthy and Happy New Year!

I think the main thing that has been missed here is although Steve is a VERY accomplished detector operator and obviously he will be achieving very high levels of competency from any detector he chooses to use even stating that very fact, his experiences have been measured against himself. He is frequenting areas that he is extremely familiar with, areas where he has given his best shot on many previous occasions.

His testing methods are exactly the way I go about testing any new detector, constantly going back and forth from one detector to another is not good practice or the "be all and end all" in any testing regime. You need to spend time giving the detector every opportunity to show what it is capable off in an environment that is base-lined through familiarity. Once you know a target is present it takes a lot of personal honesty to say if another detector would have found the target or not, whereas just going detecting over familiar terrain gives a much more balanced insight into the detectors capabilities. Find targets in familiar ground repeatedly over many sessions is a true insight into the capabilities of any new detector. 

I can relate to the hours and hours of trouble shooting a prototype, it is nice to just go detecting sometimes without all the distractions.

JP

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4 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Thank you Wayfarer also for restating so well just how I feel about it. I can grab the Equinox and head to nearby parks and feel like I have a decent shot at coming home with silver. It really is the wheaties that are most telling. I dug about 100 coins dating 1956 and earlier from common park locations. A couple dimes is one thing but this also indicates volume.

The weather has been quite mild for a week now and I am thinking southern facing areas should be thawed out, so I am grabbing Equinox and going to give it a shot today. Report later....

You're lucky with a break in the cold, it has settled in where I live, no warmth in site for at least 8 days.  With temps in the single digits and several day not reaching 32 will delay my hunting.

Keep us posted on your outings.

 

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