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My New Equinox 800 Arrived!!


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My 800 came by the little brown truck this morning!!  I am hoping that the rain holds off until after it is charged so I can go out and dig up the yard.

:biggrin:

 

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Enjoy! I have been loving my 800 since I got it a few months back. It's so awesome to go back to previously hunted grounds and find all the stuff that your previous detector must have missed ?

-Bill

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Good news!  It will take time to master but you'll enjoy the ride.  Make sure to read the manual (if you haven't already) and see the following forum posts that Steve has made a nice index for:

 

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I was going to head to the farm yesterday but it poured there.  So I ended up going to my brother 's to show it off.  Heading to the farm tomorrow and will play in the mud.?

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I am going Tuesday to a plantation site where I found an eagle button and military band button last week. Found these with my AT Pro using the smaller coil.  Can't wait to go back over the site with my equinox 800!      :minelab:

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Here are some tips:

Remember to EMI noise cancel on startup.  I recommend ground balancing the detector unless your soil has NO mineralization.  It only takes a few seconds.  Also remember that each mode needs to be treated like a separate detector because each mode has a different Multi IQ profile.  This means you need to EMI noise cance and ground balance each mode you use at a site, separately.  Each mode may give you a completely different ground balance number on the same plot of land, and that is by design because the frequency profile is different for each mode.

Until you get used to the machine, I would just run Park 1 at the defaults.  Avoid the temptation to mode hop if you are not finding success.  Mode hop if you feel confident in the machine and understand its capabilities and language (e.g., Park 1 uses 5 tones and is optimized for large and high conductive targets but Multi IQ will still enable you to hit those mid conductive relics and the default recovery speed setting of is a good middle of the road starting point and high iron bias of 6 to mitigate iron falsing.

If you are feeling confident and adventurous with the Equinox and/or are experienced with different types of machines and can pick up on their quirks quickly, for relic hunting at a farm field, my favorite mode would be Field 2 because its Multi IQ profile is optimized for mid-conductors like brass, lead, aluminum, and gold, it uses 50 tones (not for everyone, but it gives you a lot of useful audio target information if you have learned the clues), has a higher recovery speed at 7 that improves separation and lowers ground noise (but may clip deeper target signals), and has zero Iron Bias (which I like because I will trade iron falsing on large round iron, nails and nail heads to preclude non-ferrous target masking for non-ferrous targets within swing distance of an iron target).

The default user settings in each of the modes (tones, recovery speed, Iron Bias, etc) are pretty good and you should only have to make minor adjustments from the defaults.  If you find yourself making gross adjustments or are adjusting multiple parameters at a time, you may only be making things worse not better unless you have an in depth understanding of what those settings do and their "side effects".  For example, folks are tempted to turn sensitivity settings way up from the default of 20 (goes to 25) or turn recovery speed settings way down to gain depth, but adjusting those parameters to gain depth is effective only to a point because you may introduce more EMI noise with a higher sensitivity setting and you need to properly adjust your swing speed and you may end up increasing ground noise overall for lower recovery speed settings.  The key to this machine is balancing settings to optimize the signal to noise ratio of the machine (i.e., increase the signal without increasing the noise).  And like I said, it is pretty optimized out of the box, so go easy on the adjustments especially when making gross adjustments of individual parameters or adjusting more than one parameter at a time..

Don't sleep on using the horseshoe button to remove discrimination so that you can hear iron tones.  Great to use when interrogating a target you may suspect may be falsing iron because the underlying iron grunt usually gives it away and it gives you an idea of iron target density where you are unting.  Love that it is just a button push away.

The pinpoint mode is a little quirky to get used to, but it is a great tool to use for more than just pinpointing (in fact I prefer to pinpoint using wiggle off the front or back edge of the coil).  The Equinox does not over-modulate strong (e.g. shallow or large or both) targets well so a shallow aluminum can may sound like a sweet target on Equinox whereas other detectors will give you a clear distorted overload signal.  There are audio cues, but they are subtle.  Pinpoint helps because it is a non-motion mode - you don't have to swing your coil over the target to get a response, so you can just sort of trace the target using your coil in pinpoint and readily recogize whether it is coin sized or bigger than a coin or relic.  Shallow belt plates and aluminum cans are hard to tell apart with Equinox even with the pinpoint tell, unfortunately.  But it is a tool in the toolkit you can use.

Gold mode is not just for prospecting.  Similar to pinpoint mode, it use pitch vice tone ID (but unlike pinpoint mode it is a motion mode and does give a visual target ID).  It can be useful in cleaning up iffy, clippy, or weak signals in the tone ID modes (Park, Field, or Beach) .  To switch modes quickly, I store gold mode in the User Profile slot.  That way I can quickly switch between gold mode and my main search program (e.g., Park 1 or Field 2) when interrogating a target.

Going to single frequency is also a useful tool to help ID a potential ferrous or junk target or to clean up mixed ferrous/non-ferrous target situations  (e.g., bottlecaps).  I usually do not search/hunt in single frequency but just use it as a target interrogation tool. I will hunt in single frequency however if EMI is really bad in Multi (the higher single frequencies do better in bad EMI) or if soil conditions are really bad (high mineralization).

Anyway, too much info to cover in a single post, especially for the new user.  Just recognize you have a powerful tool in your hands.  Do not get frustrated first time out if your site doesn't produce.  It is a different animal than the ATP you are used to, more similar to perhaps the F70.  Give it time and then get comfortable and start using its versatility and built-in tools.  Enjoy and go find some relics.

cg

 

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4 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

If you are feeling confident and adventurous with the Equinox and/or are experienced with different types of machines and can pick up on their quirks quickly, for relic hunting at a farm field, my favorite mode would be Field 2 because its Multi IQ profile is optimized for mid-conductors like brass, lead, aluminum, and gold, it uses 50 tones (not for everyone, but it gives you a lot of useful audio target information if you have learned the clues), has a higher recovery speed at 7 that improves separation and lowers ground noise (but may clip deeper target signals), and has zero Iron Bias (which I like because I will trade iron falsing on large round iron, nails and nail heads to preclude non-ferrous target masking for non-ferrous targets within swing distance of an iron target).

Gold mode is not just for prospecting.  Similar to pinpoint mode, it use pitch vice tone ID (but unlike pinpoint mode it is a motion mode and does give a visual target ID).  It can be useful in cleaning up iffy, clippy, or weak signals in the tone ID modes (Park, Field, or Beach) .  To switch modes quickly, I store gold mode in the User Profile slot.  That way I can quickly switch between gold mode and my main search program (e.g., Park 1 or Field 2) when interrogating a target.

Going to single frequency is also a useful tool to help ID a potential ferrous or junk target or to clean up mixed ferrous/non-ferrous target situations  (e.g., bottlecaps).  I usually do not search/hunt in single frequency but just use it as a target interrogation tool. I will hunt in single frequency however if EMI is really bad in Multi (the higher single frequencies do better in bad EMI) or if soil conditions are really bad (high mineralization).

Chase I enjoy your posts, you tell it like it is, and provide valuable insight to the machine and detecting in general.

You got me thinking about a recent site that I found a seated dime spill of sorts.  What's interesting is that on this same patch of ground, we've had a multitude of "top of the line" detectors over, Explorer2 run by an expert Exp2 user, Silver Sabre, F75, Racers, Multi Kruzer, even the XLT come to think of it and some detectors I cannot recall.  Not a single one of them has provided a "dig me" signal on any of the 12 seated dimes and half-dimes that the Equinox did.  I bring this up, because I was in my favorite relic mode, Field2.  I noted that you indicated it is biased to mid-conductors (which Minelab says as well), yet it was able to detect these twelve silver dimes/half-dimes, and in a challenging (apparently so as the other top shelf detectors missed them) environment (scorched earth).  My point is that it sill does phenomenally well on high conductors in field2.  I've proven this by digging 10-11" deep silver at a "worked out" site when I first got my EQ800.  Something about Field2 that just works wonders at worked out sites and on deep silver to boot!

I've yet to try the Gold mode as you suggest, the next time I've at this site I will run the EQ800 over the same ground the seated silver spill was located and see if Gold mode's able to sniff any additional coins out, and if that doesn't, perhaps running 40kHz will penetrate that scorched earth and detect something additional.  Any insight as to use Gold1 or Gold2 (or try both?)?

The Equinox works so well in Field2, I forget to try these other modes, which are really like having different specialized detectors at your fingertips at the push of a button. 

Thanks for your post, it has me already wanting to get back to that site and try these additional modes and frequencies ?

HH,
Cal

 

 

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