Equinox 800 Arizona Gold

[Jeff McClendon]

Hi,

I couldn't wait to get the Equinox 800 to Arizona for some gold prospecting especially since the area in Colorado where I live is frozen pretty solid. 

The first site I hunted was in the Little San Domingo Wash area which has been pounded by lots of people for over a hundred years. I used the Nox 800 exclusively in Gold 2 with the 6" coil due to an abundance of human metallic trash, with sensitivity at 15 to 16 (falsed over those settings) with -9 to -4 discriminated out, iron bias 3 or 4, recovery speed 4. Hot rocks were hitting in the -9 to -6 range and also sometimes in the 12 to 14 range with the classic boing sound just at the edges of the coil and almost nulling in the center. I dug every detected metallic target in roughly a 30'x40' area. Iron targets were consistently in the -9 to +16 range depending on depth, size and amount of oxidation.  Many of them jumped that whole range depending on direction of swing. When I was not using the horseshoe (all targets accepted mode) the iron targets would have very brittle, broken, clipped sounding audio and would be easy to identify just by sound alone. 100% of the time I checked those targets by pressing the horseshoe button and iron was suggested with -4 to -9 numbers included in the very jumpy target IDs. After digging each of these targets, (60 or so) iron was confirmed. I detected 19 non ferrous targets which all turned out to be lead, brass, aluminum or steel bird shot. Small lead, aluminum and shot gave beautiful evenly rounded tones and target IDs in the -1 to 4 range which were very steady and repeatable even after checking the target from a different direction. Larger lead and shell casings came in between 8 and 20 consistently with even, repeatable tones and solid numbers.

The two nuggets pictured were both found near other targets, which is probably why they were missed. The .5 gram nugget was 4" deep with an iron target about 2" away and above the nugget. I never heard the iron initially. I only heard the classic zip-zip with a solid 3 target ID. When the horseshoe button was engaged I could hear and see target ID evidence of the iron target too. The two targets were clearly and separately defined and easy to identify as ferrous and non-ferrous. I was really exited to find that small nugget attached to caliche in that situation!  The 4.5 gram nugget was 5" down, up against a large piece of hot volcanic tuft/basalt bedrock. The Nox 800 gave soft boings on the bedrock in several places near the nugget but the nugget screamed out a fantastic round signal at a rock solid 14. I thought it was going to be a 38 cal. or bigger slug. I was really surprised when I saw that first bit of gold peaking through the dirt!!!!! I lucked out on one other tiny picker at this location too during final clean up with the XP Deus.

I also got to detect near Stanton on some placer/pegmatite deposits with tons of hot and cold rocks, huge prickly pear cactus and my least favorite----cat's claw bushes=OUCH. I completely shredded a virtually new pair of gloves on those things along with my hands too. I didn't find any gold with either my GPX 4800, XP Deus or the Nox 800. The GPX 4800 is one deep machine and hunted beautifully in this rugged area. I dug several up to 1 foot deep, less than coin sized lead, iron and tin targets that could have easily been gold with a NF Sadie and stock 11" mono coils. Any thing bigger was just not very practical since this was a boulder strewn, thorny area with very little open ground. The Deus with 9" HF coil at 54kHz handled the hot and cold rocks fairly well and was reasonably quiet in Gold Field. It always gave excellent audio responses to detectable targets and gave a predictable horizontal XY graph line for buried iron targets and very angular zig zags on near surface iron. Lead targets had more of a rounded, almost cursive writing indication on the XY graph which looks a lot like gold responses. The Nox 800 with 6" coil in Gold 2 again gave very clear indications of what to expect from the targets under the coil and after digging, those indications were confirmed every time with no surprises. There was some nasty hot magnetic schist, cold ironstone and unbelievable amounts of magnetite which sometimes confused the Deus and especially the GPX 4800. The Nox dealt with them very consistently with the magnetite giving iron signals, the magnetic schist reading in the 12 to 14 range and the cold ironstone high pitched VCO screaming at 39.

Special thanks to Bill Southern and Tammy and also Rob Allison for their guidance during my fruitful trip.

The Equinox 800 proved to be an outstanding and very trustworthy prospecting detector!

Jeff

 

[Northeast]

Nice report Jeff.  And nice gold.

Thanks for adding your settings too ?

[Cabin Fever]

Yes, great report!  Appreciate the details of the hunt.  Congratulations on your well earned gold nuggets.

 

[IdahoPeg]

Thanks for sharing your gold hunt experience with the Nox....I’ve been using the Gold Monster exclusively when in Idaho, but will have to give the 800 a try!

[strick]

Nice detailed report...I'm starting to get the fever again

strick

[Majuba Man]

Great gold and great report, and a positive learning experience - what else could you ask for? WTG

[Jeff McClendon]

Hi Idaho Peg and strick,

first, I left out a couple of important details. I like a threshold tone. For my ears there is a big jump in threshold volume level between 12 and 13 on the Nox 800 in Gold 2. So I kept it around there. It really helps with the faint targets, hot rock evaluation and determination of ground balance stability. I did not use tracking ground balance. I manually ground balanced (just a habit I guess) and the levels at both sites stayed between 1 and 5. Also, I hunted exclusively in Multi. 

Idaho Peg, I owned a Gold Monster 1000 for awhile (during the same time I was getting acquainted with the Nox). I found it to be an excellent gold prospecting detector. The two things I was missing on it were a threshold tone and the ability to manually ground balance. For me it was limited by being too automated. The Nox has outstanding numerical and audio ferrous/non ferrous indication with the press of the horseshoe button in any mode. It also has a much more accurate depth indicator (which I used) and an excellent pinpointer (which I constantly used). It also has so many ways to adjust and use its audio features that can really help in audio target identification support.

I am in my mid 60s. Even though I'm fit, I definitely do not enjoy digging dozens of deep holes looking for tiny targets with my GPX 4800 or my former Gold Monster and just relying on the intensity level of low-high, high-low tones, gold probability indicator left/right meter, my pick magnet and maybe a hand held pinpointer to speed things up. With those two detectors, cherry picking is very perilous. With the Nox 800 and even the 600 (it probably would have detected both of those nuggets easily in Park 2 or Field 2 multi) there is a whole lot of information gathering at my fingertips and ear drums that makes cherry picking a much safer activity if I am tired, have a long hunt ahead of me, want to mark very unlikely gold targets for later inspection or just want to dig obvious non-ferrous targets first. The Nox 800 gave me tons of easy to evaluate information, a 6" coil and -3 lbs weight, all options which I happily used. 

[Steve Herschbach]

Impressive posts, and it’s obvious you know your stuff Jeff. Do to the unique nature of the Equinox and how different it is than any other machines used for nugget detecting.... let’s just say I have not been anxious to have lots of people piling on thinking it’s an easy nugget detector. However, if you are the sort of person who is at your level I think you will find out why I use the Equinox now as my go to VLF nugget hunter. It’s something I think users need to grow into organically and not get forced onto them. That’s about all I want to say about that though... probably should have kept my mouth shut. 

You did just what I do. Dig everything for awhile, observe, adjust. That in effect is my entire gig in one line. Anyway, love the posts. It’s nice to see the Equinox from other perspectives without me polluting the atmosphere in advance with my own opinions on this particular subject. The Equinox is deceptively simple but after a couple years use I am still growing into it. The machine has a lot a depth from a learning point of view that people will never capture just giving the machine a spin. It’s another reason along with lack of time that explains why I have ditched everything else to concentrate on Equinox. I don’t need anything else because I still have not really discovered the true limits and possibilities of this technology. And just a reminder... this is first gen. All the effort I pour into learning the machine and it’s unique operating properties (there really is nothing just like it) will be rewarded in spades whenever we see the next gen. Historically Minelabs v2 versions are very refined versions of v1. Equinox has not hit the limits yet of where we can go with Multi-IQ.

Great posts, again, thanks!

Edit for a tip... when the going gets rough don’t forget the other modes. I have been able to get Equinox to do anything I want by ignoring mode names. Park is not just for parks, Beach is not just for beaches, etc.

As you can tell I am still pretty infatuated with the Equinox. Thanks Minelab! ?

[Gerry in Idaho]

Jeff,  Not only was your post very detailed and informative for newer EQ users, but you backed it up with good gold recoveries.  Now I realize part of that is location and hanging around desert rat gold grabbers such as Rob and Bill, that certainly gives some more odds to you.  Those are nice digs and I would expect you to be back there with the GPX trying to sniff a few more deeper ones too.  Keep us posted and thanks for sharing.

[Jeff McClendon]

Thanks Gerry, Steve and all of you for reading my experience. We all have different levels of detecting skills that's for sure. I used a Tesoro Lobo Super Traq for years for prospecting. Its was a very good detector for that purpose. Having the Equinox is like shopping in a big department store in comparison. I feel like I haven't even left the Sporting Goods section yet when it comes to the Nox 800. 

I'm glad that all of my hundreds of hours on the 600 and 800 paid off though. I practiced on small gold and lead versus iron targets and hot rocks a lot and really experimented. I feel like I know enough about operating it while prospecting to be successful. Now I want to get in some beach detecting..................

Jeff