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Minelab Equinox 800 Vs White's V3i


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5 hours ago, ☠ Cipher said:

Im sure there are areas where the GB problem others are experiencing would be more pronounced, I just haven't experienced them here to a level that would bother me. But I am bothered that I may eventually encounter such issues and that they are rooted in hardware. 

Actually nearly all complex detectors have issues or weaknesses from an engineers point of view. I would not worry about it at all unless you are actually having problems.

The tracking is no good in highly mineralized ground. The fix is to try and fudge manual ground balance via a combination of LocTrac and Offset. Not the best solution in the world though. A functional ground grab button as per MXT Pro would be much appreciated. Again, only an issue for a very few but I just happen to be one of those very few.

As an aside my Bigfoot coil does not really work as well with the V3i as the DFX it was designed for due to this. Frequency skewing at 22.5 kHz is one issue that I basically overlook. But the BigFoot also does not handle ground as well on V3i as it did on my DFX. Since I am only hunting shallow stuff with it though I overlook that also, but not as easily since the coil tends to be noisy now.

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54 minutes ago, EL NINO77 said:

“A square-wave drive TX produces a triangle-wave current and magnetic field, which produces exponential eddy responses in targets. You can sample the RX response with early/mid/late sample windows and effectively get X and R from this.

In a sequential multifrequency (SMF) where short & long duration TX drives are temporally separated, you can easily use parallel demod channels with proper timing to extract the X & R for the different frequencies. No pre-filtering needed since the responses are not intermixed.

In a concurrent multifrequency (CMF) where short & long duration TX drives are intermixed, the RX signal is bandpass-filtered into each frequency channel for X & R demodulation. Then the signal is closer to a sine wave and can be demodulated using continuous-time methods, exactly the same as a single-frequency design. The White's V3 demonstrated that when the channel filtering isn't good enough, frequency cross-talk makes ground balancing exceptionally difficult. That's why the V3 GB doesn't work as well as it should.  - Carl- Geotech forum..”.
     Very much I appreciate the thoughts Carl Moreland ....           CMF multifrekvenci is Spectra V3 ,.....and SMF multifrekvenci  is  EQUINOX... 

Thank you for that. I think I get it now. I've spent the last few months studying the difference in multifrequency designs trying to sort through the marketing gobbedlygook of BBS, FBS (which should stand for Frequency B.S.), Multi-IQ, and Spectra. Initially I bought into the claims that each brought to the table, but on closer inspection I found much more to the stories. In any event, knowing what the source of the problem is may help in minimizing it. For example, I wonder if the issue is more pronounced with different filter selections? I wonder if there's a way in the future to kind of pre-filter the signals, maybe with the creation of a sort of smart coil (I'm probably thinking out of my ass there and it may betray my ignorance on the more technical aspects of the issue). Do some coils exacerbate the issue, including the original D2? And one question that persists is why so many experienced and even proficient users claim it wasn't an issue on the V3 until it became the V3i. Obviously the same filters were present in both versions. 

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I have the impression that the V3I was using the fast tracking of the ground...,

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Wanting a waterproof machine, I recently purchased and just received my new ML Equinox 800 this past weekend and have been using it every day to hunt school yards. Also, I am a proud owner of a Whites V3I and have owned this great machine for almost 2 years. I'll tell you this, if Whites would make a water proof version of the V3i, there would be no contest.

You guys are completely missing the spectrograph capabilities of the V3i. With this feature, you get the option of viewing how the object in the ground reacts to the frequencies. I dont know of any other machine on the market that has this capability. Yes, it takes time to learn and doing your own testing, but you can clearly tell can slaw from a round object, such as a coin or ring. Also, the V3i has many more VID numbers and object icons which is very useful.

I know with the ML nox 800 I am digging more trash just because its really hard to tell when you only have a number to judge the target by.

There are things I love about the new ML nox 800 and some things I dont like, though will not go in to that for now.

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On 4/3/2018 at 6:32 AM, carl6405 said:

Wanting a waterproof machine, I recently purchased and just received my new ML Equinox 800 this past weekend and have been using it every day to hunt school yards. Also, I am a proud owner of a Whites V3I and have owned this great machine for almost 2 years. I'll tell you this, if Whites would make a water proof version of the V3i, there would be no contest.

You guys are completely missing the spectrograph capabilities of the V3i. With this feature, you get the option of viewing how the object in the ground reacts to the frequencies. I dont know of any other machine on the market that has this capability. Yes, it takes time to learn and doing your own testing, but you can clearly tell can slaw from a round object, such as a coin or ring. Also, the V3i has many more VID numbers and object icons which is very useful.

I know with the ML nox 800 I am digging more trash just because its really hard to tell when you only have a number to judge the target by.

There are things I love about the new ML nox 800 and some things I dont like, though will not go in to that for now.

Having just got my Eq800 yesterday, I still have a lot to learn. I have owned my V3i for about 5 years now. I complete agree with you about the spectrograph (and polar plot). The data of polar plot can almost 100% of the time, identify pull tabs. The amount of information the V3i shows is significantly greater then the Eq. I like my Eq800, but I keep looking for more data before I dig a target. I’m still learning the machine and think it’s going to make a great second Detector.

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24 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

There is a piece of gold jewelry that perfectly emulates the signal from every bit of aluminum trash made. No VDI number and no meter can separate them. Reject one, you reject the other. That’s just a fact.

Tell me about it. Discrimination, or at least TID numbers can be your worst enemy. I have to recall one of the best finds I ever made:

It was in the early 80's, I was in Palo Alto at lunch from Hewlett Packard with a friend to demonstrate my Whites 6000 Di SIII. It had the big TID meter on it, which I thought I was proficient at reading. We were at a relatively small and new park, when I hit a large signal. I told my friend, confidently, that's a screwcap. Had I been alone, I would have kept moving along and left the "screwcap". Instead to prove my proficiency at IDing items, we pried it up from about a 1/2" down. It was a large University of Santa Barbara college class ring. 14C gold. Yowsa. I learned a valuable lesson from that experience.

 

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You guys that still have your V3i. Try this test and you will see what I'm talking about. Set up the machine so that in analysis the machine uses the sizing feature. Flip the switch forward. Then get a piece of can slaw and pass it over the coil. Then take a ring and pass it over the coil and notice the difference in the wave pattern. You will see the can slaw has jagged lines where the ring has a nice smooth rise and fall displayed.  Now, the problem with this is it works on shallow targets and not as good when the target is 5" or more in the ground.

To me, this topic "ML EQ-800 vs Whites v3i" is like comparing a sports car to a SUV. 

Over the last couple days, I have been working the school yards, over ground that I have worked with my V3i. I found targets that was missed before with my V3i. The big plus I think is the fast recovery speed. With that being said, I have not tried boosting my recovery speed on the v3i. Some targets "Quarters", that I did find with the EQ800, I felt would have probably missed with the V3i, because there was trash right next to the target, but I do think the V3i is better at analyzing the target before you dig, mainly because no other detector has this feature.

Better question.. Is the ML800 the best waterproof detector on the market? I think so.

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Think the EQ is better at really trashy sites with its super fast recovery speed and think the V3i would be better at hunting for gold jewelry at sites not as trashy. Also, think the V3i is better at telling a nickel from can slaw. For relic hunting, haven't used the EQ800 yet, but from the reviews i am seeing, this might be the better detector because of how deep people are saying it can go.

I think the weight is better proportioned on the V3i, even though it is heavier. Coil on the V3i weighs less than 1 pound and that is the 13" Detech Ultimate coil. The EQ800, most of the weight is in the coil, so not distributed evenly. I do not like the power button being on the side with the EQ800.

The EQ800 seems to be better with it's ID's. I have had issues with the V3i mis-identifying targets occasionally. The pinpointing is better on the v3i, however, I have been getting better with the EQ800 and most cases, dont even need to use the pin pointer option.

For me, think I will keep my V3i and the EQ800 just because of the spectrograph feature on the V3i though, will be selling my Whites DFX in the near future.

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I'm still pretty early in my comparison of each, but I will say that after today I'm very impressed with the depth of the Equinox. It runs like a multifrequency F75 LTD in terms of depth and speed. 

I do find myself still reaching for my V3i often. It's worth noting that the V3i is no slouch in the recovery area either. It's processor is plenty powerful for what it is tasked with. It also has 200 points of recovery/reactivity adjustment and when you begin experimenting with it, it's a surprisingly quick machine.

The weakness of the V3i vs the Equinox is partly going to come down to the ground balance systems. The poor ground balance system of the V3i kind of relegates it to being best suited to mild-moderate inland soil or dry sand conditions. In those conditions though, I have a hard time imagining the Equinox will ever be my go-to outside of the water. I do enjoy the extra information, and so far the V3i to me is just more fun to use. There are so many ways to minimize or monitor junk, which to me is the primary purpose of running a VLF over a pulse induction machine. I find myself digging much more junk with the Equinox. But I also do not discount that my current position and preferences could evolve with more experience. I haven't yet dialed it in the way I like to run like I have the V3i. It's an entirely different setup than I've gotten used to. Once I've gotten all my little tweaks in place it might be an entirely different story. 

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