Equinox Or Excalibur?

[Ed Osmar]

I hunt the beaches and water on the Gulf coast of Florida, I have been using an Excalibur II and love it. Is the Equinox a better choice? I hunt in water up to neck deep, wet and dry sand for the most part. Will the Equinox find small gold in the water that the Excal will miss, and is it able to find targets as deep as the Excal?

 

[sdbirder]

There's a video where a guy is test detecting a small chain in saltwater and his buddy's Excalibur II doesn't see it. His VDI was only a 1, after seeing this video I now dig all targets at the beach. Two weeks ago I found a tiny 2 grain 10k earring back at the beach, VDI 1. It took several minutes to find as it kept falling through my scoop. The Equinox 800 is also 6/10 the price.

 

[Steve Herschbach]

As always probably a trade off. Equinox will hit smaller gold better than an Excalibur, no doubt about that. It will also probably have you digging more bottle caps and tiny aluminum.

You say you really love the Excalibur and the more you like the detector you have, the less chance a new one is going to excite you. In particular, the target responses on Equinox are quite different than Excalibur and so would be a change, and not everyone loves change. Long story short nobody can say how you might react to a new detector.

A big factor for me and Equinox is unlike Excalibur you can eventually use different coils easily, where Excalibur is normally hardwired to the coil it uses. The 15” x 12” coil will be real sweet for those huge Florida beaches. It will probably need some rod customization for balance however running the large coil.

The jury is out on robustness. Excalibur is waterproof to 200 feet, Equinox to 10 feet. That implies Excalibur is more waterproof but anyone using an Excalibur long term knows it has service issues. Equinox may end up having an edge there as knobs on Excalibur are replaced with sealed buttons on Equinox. Equinox has far fewer potential water and sand entry points and I suspect it will prove to do quite well as far as service with long run use in saltwater compared to Excalibur.

Short story now is until underwater headphones are available for Equinox there is no rush for anyone to get one if it will be used in water more than 2-3 feet deep. The wireless works until the pod is submerged, and after that you need a wired connection.

[BeachHunter]

Welcome to the forum Ed. Having owned and used the Excalibur, I was tiring of the constant masking of iron targets and then waiting for it to reset so as not to miss adjacent good targets.

That is why I have gone to the Equinox. Faster performance. In the water however I have not done as I have no waterproof headphones.

One must consider though, that when you add the price of a 6” coil and a set of waterproof headphones, that $900 EQ will be approaching the same price as a new Excal from a Dealer.

Best of Luck!

[dewcon4414]

Recovery time does bite on the Xcal, we kind of get around that by using it in PP.... many of us now have switches.   Steves right...... there is a lot of maintenance to an Xcal so you really have to plan for repairs.   BUT.... we dont know the repair costs yet if needed on the NOX.  Also..... warranty on an Xcal ... one year, 3 years for the Nox.   Thats really huge for a water machine.   YOu also have to have a straight shaft...... that dive shaft leaves a lot to be desired..... more money.   You have those yellow headphones so you arent really getting some of the smaller targets a better pair of phones would give you..... and like Steve said they are hard wired.   Even with a straight shaft balances...... its no where near what the Nox is to move around out there.   Ive got to give the Nox two thumbs up for how well the coil moves ...... sweet even in swift water.  We both know the Nox screen wont do you much good deep..... but you have the ability to adjust those tones..... not quite the learning curve.   The Xcal HATES iron and a bottle cap is easy.   Little more of a challenge ...... but learning them and how they react.   I believe the Nox is everything we asked for as a replacement for the Xcal as a wading machine....... lighter, easy to swing, TID screen, you can change the coils and headphones YOURSELF, batteries are sealed and the charging system seems to be bringing us up to date with USB, the shaft allows easy transportation..... but that maybe an issue with constant water hunting  and torque, FAST recovery.... almost to fast,  you have the option of wireless phones if you dont plan on hitting the water to deep....... and no lag with good response... and loud i believe its as deep as both the Xcal and CTX and will end up proving its self on small gold as well.  Lets face it most wont miss a recent drop.... so its the small gold and deep this machine has to find as good as the Xcal.   BOTTLE CAPS..... thats the creature that we havent been used to digging a lot of.... but the trade offs to me .... i see a lot of plus's on the Nox side.   You can hunt with an Xcal out of the box.... but most dont..... we add a shaft, GGA or other phones, even a PP switch, or upgrade the battery to lith.   So where we at if we do all that....... $1800?   I think this is a $2500 beach machine with less than a $900 price tag..... dont get much better than that and nothing to modify.... except a few of us dont like those yellow phones... so add $150.  

[Ed Osmar]

Well I went through 3 pp  switches and have a straight shaft on my Excal and tried Gray Ghost headsets but they burned my ears so now no pp switch and yellow headset but still using straight shaft. I don't find the lag to be that bad and with so many hunters on the beach now they are getting cleaner. I am worried about wireless headsets as sometimes when hunting a lost ring I have had my headset knocked off by the waves. I will have to find a way to attach them to me. I will purchase an 800 when they are ready to really get wet.

[Chase Goldman]

Ed,

You won't want to use the supplied wireless headphones phones in the water if there is a chance of them getting knocked off your head or splashed by a wave.  If they get splashed or dunked, they are probably toast as they have practically no water resistance.  If you are not submerging the pod, 3rd party waterproof wireless BT (APTX or APTX low latency) ear buds will do (~$20-40US) or you can wait for the Equinox compatible waterproof wired headsets but cost and availabity are unknown (anticipate $125 - 175 and several weeks b4 release). 

Another option is putting the supplied (Equinox 800 only) non-bluetooth WM08 module in a waterprood cell phone pouch with a sealed audio jack and using water resistant or waterproof wired buds or headphones. 

Note that the Equinox 600 is not supplied with wireless phones or the WM08 wireless low latency receiver but has the same wireless audio transmit capabilities as the Equinox 800.  HTH. 

By the way, since I don't dive, I see no reason to keep my Excal II around any longer but I also never really got enough hours to get proficient on it either.  The Equinox was pulling deep (10" to 15"+) mid conductive (e g., nickels) and high conductive targets from wet sand at the tide line for me (too cold yet to take a dip).  That's when I knew the Excal was toast.

[ripcurl382]

So I have both the xcal2 and Nox800.  I like the xcal but I don’t think it’s very good on smaller targets.  I have many small gold nuggets that it won’t detect so I’m sure you’re missing a lot of small good at the beach.  As for the Nox, I love the machine on dry ground.  It’svery sensitive and very versatile.  However I’ve had 2 pods get water in them from using in shallow water diving situations. One was at the beach in FL no more than 3 feet deep and the other at a freshwater beach at the lake in under 10 feet.   I just got my detector back the other day for the second time so I don’t think I’m going to take the pod under water any more.  I really don’t trust it.  Aside from the “water proofness” of the detector, I think it’s a great machine and much lighter than my other detectors especially with the detector Ed carbon fiber shaft.  This is my go to detector these days for pity much everything from relics & coins to gold mining.

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

On 3/28/2018 at 7:01 AM, Ed Osmar said:

Will the Equinox find small gold in the water that the Excal will miss, and is it able to find targets as deep as the Excal?

The excalibur is way deeper in saltwater when set up correct. Small target, no doubt the Nox see's smaller targets, specially tiny chains, and has a fast recover time. Recover time can be optimized with the excalibur by singling out each target in PP, than a quick push of the (on) disc button then off. 

[cudamark]

I find that the Excal with a 15" coil will find dime size and larger targets at a slightly deeper depth than the Nox with the 12 X 15 coil....maybe an inch or two. The Nox will definitely find the tiny targets better than the Excal though. As Joe experienced in Chesapeake Bay, and what I also experience here in SoCal, targets can null out (a good initial signal turns to an iron signal) after the first scoop of overburden. At least here, I attribute that to the black magnetite laden sand and it's encrustation on the target. I actually love it when that happens, as it's usually an older target. I learned early on to just take a couple more scoops to get to the target.