Leaderboard

I had a couple of hours to go play at the beach on Christmas day. I am posting this because I know all you Equinox owners will understand how well your detector has to be working to find stuff like these two little items. The partial neckless was about six inches down and I felt good about understanding that the intermittent signal it gave off was worthy (Diamonds and saffires). The little ring was even deeper but gave off an unmistakable 'dig me' tone. Happy Holidays to everyone.

It's nether radio-like nor magnetometer-like. It's transformer-like. It's complicated. With a sinusoid TX (most SF-VLFs) the return signal from eddy current targets (non-ferrous) is a sinusoid at the same frequency. No distortion, no harmonics. Ferrous targets can distort the signal according to their B-H curves, but a SF-VLF doesn't consider the distortion. MF detectors don't use sinusoids, they transmit triangle/ramp looking waveforms which have a lot of harmonics. Non-ferrous eddy responses are exponentials which also have harmonics, and ferrous responses are distorted triangle/ramps. These can be processed in the raw (time-domain: BBS/FBS) or filtered (freq domain: CZ, DFX, V3). Equinox is direct-sampling so it's hard to say which method is used, but freq domain seems easier. Not sure what else you're asking. If you're using an oscope, then this is a triggering issue. MF waveforms are difficult to trigger on. Also, it's critical to look at the current waveform, not the voltage.

NOW is the time to invest in Gold and Silver mining stocks ( also physical gold and silver) if you can afford it! I have subscribed to various stock analysts news letters over the last 18 years, and have found that Michael Oliver 's Newsletter is the most accurate I have come across so far. He is saying NOW is the time! His technical analysis and momentum indicators are giving the green lites. He feels gold will be at $1360 by the end of January. He also says 2019 will be an excellent year for the metals, and to expect some fast upward moves in price. A lot of the stocks are still near their price lows for the year. You want to buy low and sell high. With the gold and silver markets very small in size , when the big money starts to pour in, we will see explosive upwards moves in the prices. When gold hit close to $2000 an oz about 10 years ago, a lot of mining shares were 4x higher in price than they are today. I came across Mike Oliver 's commentary at King World News . com He currently has 2 podcasts there you can listen to, to get it straight from the horses mouth! Don't depend on a redneck ( me) for your investing advice. LOL. I wish you all the best in 2019! Detecting and investing.

The RX coil in a detector is almost* always used in voltage mode, so that the magnetic field induces a voltage (EMF) across the coil, not a current through it. See Faraday's Law. Mags may or may not use an RX coil in a similar manner, and may otherwise have similarities (some mags are designed in a similar way as a PI detector), but they are really different animals. * At least I've never seen an RX coil set up in current mode, outside of stuff I've done.

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,157902 88junior on the Dankowski site identified these as matrices for a linotype machine. They are essentially molds, each representing a single letter that are assembled by the machine into lines of the desired words. Molten lead is then used to form the type from the matrices (called a "slug"). The type setter can then assemble whole lines of type at a time instead of each individual letter one at a time. The funny thing is that my grandfather operated a linotype machine for a living from the 1930s until he retired in the 1970s. He even made me a slug with my name on it when I was a kid. I did find letters in the recessed areas. Thank you to those who took a look or responded.

I hate to see Findmall or any of the forums not doing well. This and other signs tell me the market for metal detectors in the U.S. has been quite saturated and is probably on the decline. The real money these days is overseas.

Just to add some confusions, I was trying to avoid us going round in circles, so I thought I would verify those square waves posted in the other thread, however those square waves posted in El Nino link different then my results. A nice flat square wave like thosev would imply true multifreq something or other because that is how square waves are made, by combining a harmonic series of sinusoidal waves until their peaks emulate a flat top. Conversely Fourier transform can be used to deconstruct a square wave into it's constituent single frequencies. That Carl guy ? said that these run in the freq domain so Fourier very well be used. IMO. All detect modes are kinda 7.76 kHz average effect on target excitation I feel when using multifreq. If I screw with the knobs on this thing I have saw evidence of 6,9 and 25kHz fwiw, but probably best to ignore this for the time being. With the exception of Field1/2, I don't see much "weighting" at the coil, it could be done on the receive side. Field 2 is interesting, it kinda looks like a squarish wave, like a ghost with the right shoulder constantly moving up and down, while the ghost beside it has it's left shoulder moving up and down. Beach mode does not have much of a sawtooth, almost sinusoidal looking, but it too has a little bit of the dancing shoulders. IMO this dancing might imply some mild shifting of frequencies going on. I recall older FBS/BBS machines being steady images. Actually when you look at the results of a Fourier on a square wave you get a result that looks just like the Equinox scope trace when you superimpose and center them at the crossover point. I guess regardless of how crude the "square" wave is on the transmit end, this doesn't restrict the harmonic information you can receive from the target and ground. I think that is why Minelab is always talking about subtraction, or channels. I hope this ads to the confusion and disinformation. Myself, I have seen enough, it's clearly voo-doo that makes this thing work.

Use 50 Tones with No discrimination. This should eliminate your audio clipping. (Not falsing) You can set your ferrous range audio volume on low. Bryan

Traffic on this website is increasing so I don’t think it is as simple as people leaving forums for social media. There simply are more venues these days and traffic has been fragmenting between them. It’s called competition and some old forums got complacent. The main thing is the old forums are no longer the only game in town, yet I bet their banner fees have never gone down. It is all about eyeballs per dollar and they must not be cost effective / price competitive in today’s environment. Google Ads pay the bills here, so I am not quite working for free. The hourly wage is nothing to brag about however!

Wow" Enjoy! Ig

This was my first beach hunt in a few days because I had been out in the Rye Patch area over the weekend. While I was gone I understand that it had rained and some wave alerts had been sent to my email. Our area beaches get hit hard by detectorists but I know them pretty well and followed my intuition when I got there. We don't have a negative tide right now and there is a Santa Ana wind blowing so the new waves are very small. On my way 'out' I hunted near the waterline. There was very little to find. I walked about a mile or so with very few targets. There was a bit of a trough at the bottom of the hill (beach slope) but nothing seemed to be holding. I was thinking about leaving and I worked back in the direction from where I had come. Then I got a clue. The clue was the junk wire pack. It was completely buried in the wet sand and had a thin plastic bag around it. It certainly is an unusual beach find for me. This pack was at the bottom of the hill and just above it for about 6 feet or so was hard sand and just above that was about 10 yards of 'past wave' deposited sand. You need some energy to move targets and you need the right conditions for those targets to be 'grouped' and deposited. Some beaches will stay this way for a few days and some beaches will only keep targets for a few hours. I look for these pockets. I liken it to a crab crawl on the Deadliest Catch. Anyway, I went up into this area and found a hoop earring among the bobby pins, pennies and a few other coins. I was using the Nox 11 on all metal and I was digging EVERYTHING. Sometimes I skip pennies and bobby pin sounds but not last night. Then I was surprised by one of the silver hoop earrings and its mate was just about 5 feet away. Then came a copper hoop, and then another and all of them within 10 feet. They're all water tarnished. Then I got what I thought was a ring ... earring it turns out but then a stainless steel bracelet. Then another earring (GOLD) and finally a couple of silver rings (.925). I worked the patch with a grid pattern and it kept giving. I had had enough after 4 hours. A 'bad' beach had turned into the most hoops (10) I've ever found. I've been on beaches where I've found 5 chains in a session but they are as rare as this beach. You never know. Follow your clues. Mitchel

This was my first hunt with my own modified Equinox program. Went through all the good jewelry I'd found and set the machine up to give one tone for the range of gold rings. Dug every nickel signal, didn't dig any gold rings but found one nice .925 ring that ID as a solid 31. Very unusual and it sparked me to dig. Of all the rings I've dug the majority range from 6-13 and most will read 13. Amazing machine, very enjoyable to hunt with.

Hadn't taken any pictures in a while for show and tell. But now that I have some, its show and tell time. Nothing spectacular but its still pretty eye candy. A couple of few weeks back I was out with my V3 and got some silver and gold. The 14K DAD ring is the smallest diameter ring I have ever found. In the same patch I also found this really neat silver CZ charm. This past week I took the Compadre/Cleansweep combo out to another patch and found the One Ring! Nothing happened when I put it on so I think its just gold plated stainless. Anyway....some pics to keep the spirits up. HH Mike

Thanks Carl.........I appreciate your effort to educate.... the uneducated.... ME.

My nickels come in a range of 11 - 14 with 12/13 the dominant number. Out of all those nickels, maybe a few came in at 11/12 or 13/14, but the majority toggled back and forth within those 4 numbers but 12/13 was the steady and consistent numbers.

I primarily use 3 modes all site dependent or just to switch it around a bit. I like Park/Field 2 the most with settings at 20-22 sens, 0 IB, 3 recovery, multi freq and mostly in AM. I disc out 1-10 and 15-17 if extremely trashy site. I always leave iron open.

Yep.... I get those too. But not any more than usual.

I hope you can too.. You're on some incredible ground there as far as finding early presses of both colonial and USA coinage goes.. Finds of 18th century foreign coinage is, let's say, "common" in the NE US.. Late 18th & early 19th century USA struck coins..? Not so much.. Good hunting to you come springtime..! Swamp

Geotech is Carl Moreland, founder of the famed Geotech Forum. Later a senior engineer at White’s Electronics, where he had a major hand getting the V3i out the door. He is now a senior engineer at First Texas. The people who make Bounty Hunter, Fisher, and Teknetics detectors. You can very much rely on his opinions.

Which is not much different then any other day, they are used to digging coal. Happy holidays to all you Minelab goofs.

All you electronic gurus........ which im surely not, when it sends ...... lets just say 15khz single into a ring.... does it receive 15khz back or is it converted to something else entirely based on the conductivity/magnetic field of the metal and everything around it? Meaning ..... does the khz used only LIGHT UP the metal which the length of this time is a known for various metals? On multi freqs....... does one sustain a longer period that it lights up the metal...... in other words..... 5khz... is transmitted first then followed by 15khz.... giving it a longer period to be seen/read than a single freq might?

Happy holidays to you too!

I truly hope one day Cal. comes to their senses and allows you folks bck. into the water. They just don't get it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You are correct, Dubious, thanks for making me look this up. While we are both factually correct in using the radio analogy because (the metal detector meets both the definition of radio and magnetometer) because it is emitting electromagnetic energy in the radio frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But the electric field energy (the radio part) is being lost in the ground while the accompanying magnetic field is doing all the work, including inducing the current in the target that results in magnetic field detected by the receive portion of the coil (the magnetometer part), as you described. It is probably more correctly referred to as a radio frequency magnetometer (i.e., what you were describing) than a radio. Used the radar analogy because while a metal is not a radar, a radar is the sort of the radio equivalent of an RF magnetometer because the transmitter is detecting its reflected transmitted radio signal (electric field) off a distant target so it was the closest familiar RF thing I could think of that detects how its own transmitted electric field signal is modified by a target like a metal detector's modified magnetic field. I learned (or re-learned) something today which is always a good thing.

Steve, I take your point that other detector manufacturers have also misrepresented their technologies; but I'm still a bit disappointed in Minelab. These misrepresentations obviously don't mislead people in the know or engineers in the industry who examine the detector but they do fool consumers like yours truly, and I don't think that's fair. White's explanation is a good one. We can't count potential harmonics, or every single-frequency detector would be a multi-frequency detector. The only harmonics that matter are ones the circuitry is designed to enhance rather than suppress and that are powerful enough to energize the coil and produce a working magnetic field; and, that is easily determined (by engineers with the right equipment) by analyzing the transmitted/coupled signals. Geotech, who apparently is an engineer with the right equipment, determined that for each Equinox mode, only two frequencies are used (i.e., current at those frequencies that energizes the coil in a meaningful sense). Unless someone can explain how he's wrong, that is the reality. You are right, Steve, that simultaneous use of five frequencies would not necessarily produce a superior result. It's Minelab that told us it would--producing more data points to analyze. Geotech suggested use of three frequencies would produce benefits, but probably not a greater number. Myself, I really don't know enough to venture a guess. BTW, for anyone confused, I realize I and others have sometimes used RF jargon in talking about the Nox and its frequencies. Although there are, no doubt, weak spurious RF emissions, the Nox does not use radar or radio (or propagation of radio waves) to detect. It energizes its coil with VLF (very low frequency) current; the coil's oscillating magnetic field impinges on targets, producing eddy currents and magnetic fields that the Nox detects. No VLF transmission in the radio propagation sense is involved in the detection. (VLF radio transmitters do exist, used for things like long-distance communication with submarines; but that's something else entirely, involving very large antennas and huge amounts of power.)

But remember the people are mean out in there WA--- and there are so many things to derail your hunt-- Like the deadly bung-arrow, the poisonous Willy Wagtails , The Purple Flesh-eating Fauna plant, the Carnivorous Meat ants--- and you have to remember that you cant brush up against ANY vegetation for fear of the toxic sap that will put your heart into arrhythmia before you can smoke that last ciggy. Yeah mate, ......It's a bloody miracle that I made it out ALIVE...... Merry Christmas ya'll Outback Yank

http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showthread.php?24893-Minelab-Equinox-800-Frequency

Much caution is required when chasing that heavy stuff, our first trip top WA, we stopped at Norseman at a rest area that had showers and a tourist advisory centre. There we were given a glossy "official" pamphlet of a xter in Kalgoorlie who for a fee would take you to his leases and let you fossick there for however long you were prepared to pay for. We set up camp there at one of his "leases" after 3 days of successful prospecting the actual lease holder turned up. Fortunately for us he was a reasonable xter, and listened to our position and even let us take the gold we`d found. Although he asked us to move on he gave us some good local advice, "go with a reputable Tour operator and learn the ropes". We took his advice and enjoyed 2 years of trouble free prospecting in WA. I can only suggest the same to anyone plus you need a lot more then 2 weeks, take Pauls 2 month advice there, remember he was given the good oil, "chastised" and acted on it. Victoria is a good first option, you have the advantage there of local State Forests Maps on gold where you can prospect but remember you are following in the footsteps of thousands, be prepared to enjoy your visit and accept any gold you find as a bonus. This forum has OZ members that are prepared to help you, take them up on their offers, they are the real gold.

I'm sure that a few of us Victorians can spend a day or two each with you Mitchell if you end up coming our way ?

This is all based on an assumption people make - that more frequencies are better. Are they? Why? Other than advertising, what makes anyone think that? There is no reason to compare items at close frequencies. Comparing 10 khz and 12 khz is a waste of time and processing power. What you want to do is compare the targets and ground at a few widely differing frequencies. That way you see what happens that is different at say 4 khz and 32 kHz. That difference or lack of difference gives you extra data to work with. And as Minelab points out in the article about Multi-IQ the more interesting question is how few frequencies are needed to get useful information. And that seems to boil down to two or three. "'How many simultaneous frequencies?' you may ask, wondering if this is a critical parameter. Minelab has been carrying out detailed investigations into this in recent years. Just as you can color in a map with many colors, the minimum number to differentiate between adjacent countries is only 4 – a tough problem for mathematicians to prove, over many years. Similar to the map problem, it’s perhaps not the maximum number of frequencies needed to achieve an optimum result, but the minimum number that is more interesting. When it comes to frequencies in a detector, to cover all target types, how the frequencies are combined AND processed is now more important, with the latest detectors, than how many frequencies, for achieving even better results." My assumption always when dealing with frequencies and what is processed versus what is transmitted goes like this..... Manufacturer claims multiple frequency operation, simultaneous or near instant sequential, I don't care. They state a number of frequencies. I then assume that out of the frequency range mentioned, that at least two or more frequencies are being received and compared at the processing level to justify the claim of multifrequency. Just exactly what frequencies are being processed and exactly how they are being compared.... I do not expect any company to tell me other than in vague terms. That's it. That way I stay calm while others try and divine the magic. And with that I leave the subject to better minds than mine.

I suggest using the horseshoe button to cut out discrimination, this will prevent mixed ferrous/non-ferrous signal clipping due to mixed ferrous/non-ferrous or corroded targets partially popping above the discrimination breakpoint as the coil passes the edge of the target (typical of nail heads). The drawback is that you will hear the iron but then you can at least correlate the iron tones to the unclipped non-ferrous tones to see if what you are hearing is a corroded target or a target partially masked by iron. If you do go that route, be sure to increase recovery speed again if you are overcome by ground noise (-9 and -8 tid signals). Lowering sensitivity is a good move in this situation to keep the ferrous targets from overloading the detector. There are no easy fixes to this difficult detecting situation. I like to use Field 2 in this situation and interrogating the target in prospect mode helps, unfortunately that's not an option with the 600. Good luck. HTH HH

Hey Everybody, I was finally able to pick up the larger coil for my Equinox from big boys hobbies. He mentioned he had a few in stock. So, I can’t wait to see what this bad boy will do down at the local beach. I just hope I’m up to the task of digging all those gold and silver rings (I’m going to find) from the deep holes lol! Happy Holidays to all!

That’s awesome Mrs. Clause is giving you the large coil for Christmas. Very nice! The best of luck with yours as well. Merry Christmas to you and the Mrs.

In the forums/social media shakeup, those that stay in the forum game will reap the rewards. Forums that stay focused on organizing information, and filtering trolls without becoming draconian about their rules will survive and grow. This is one of those. Forums like Findmall, TreasureNet, etc will die out with the old timers due to their own silliness, draconian style, and focus on the bottom line rather than the hobby itself. I like the combo myself. I like coming here for serious business (research, fruitful, engaging,conversation) and organization, and I like the freedom of social media. The endless scrolling of social media is the reason good forums will continue to exist in the short term, until social media learns to provide methods to organize. Serious troll free engagement is the reason some will always survive.

Don't give Facebook any information you would not want govt or hackers to have.

I prefer Forums to Facebook, their just better organized and easier to find what you're looking for in general. That said, you can actually do a decent search in a FB group, and further refine it with filters, but I agree that it's generally much easier to find stuff on a well run and organized forum, such as this one!

As many of you know forums cost money to maintain, and some forums will not host company-specific sub-forums if the company does not offer financial sponsorship. If you choose to look at this as paying a toll, well that is one way to see things. I think this is a testament to Steve's DP forum in that he spends so much time as admin doing work for free, and we all reap the benefits of the platform! Carl and a few others pointed out the reach of social media being farther than forums. This is also true, though it can be more difficult to find relevant info on Facebook/Instagram/YouTube. The great thing about forum posts is that they should in a perfect world last forever. I can't tell you how many times I have found good detecting tips, vehicle maintenance, or construction advice on a post that is 5 plus years old. Good luck finding the same info on Facebook's infinite scroll! But the times they are a-changin' and whether we like it or not, more people spend their time on social media than forums. This is backed up by traffic statistics as well as growth numbers across multiple channels. It is sad that this particular forum in question decided to nuke the White's forums, but even sadder still is that very few people will notice (present company excluded, who prove by their presence that forums still serve a valuable purpose).

Could it be that White’s didn’t like you say anything about another detector company with the same breathe ? Chuck

Apologies if this is a repeat for some, but it occurred to me that posting this on the Equinox forum wasn't really the best place for a relic hunt ? Tom and I were able to get out and check out a remote site that we researched in the spring. Research indicated that it predated the gold rush by at least 20 years, but apparently it was a gold rush era camp, as everything that we dug was pure 1850's. There weren't a ton of targets there, but everything you dug was old, not a single pull-tab, no clad, interestingly no bullets or shell casings either (hip hip hooray for that!!!), nothing dug by either of us was newer than the 1850's. The first bucket lister was a cast tongue and grove eagle buckle! I dug the male part, and five feet away I dug the female part. Somehow, I lost the female part ? The female buckle shown above it in the group shot is smaller, and was broken in two parts, and dug in two digs, but they fit together perfectly so they must go together. Also dug a broken tongue, so must be another eagle to match it out there, and below that is a thin female buckle part that's all mangled up. Hopefully I can find the buckle half that I lost, should be on the surface. My second bucket lister was a decorative powder flask (one side only), also shown is a pewter spoon (pretty rare to find these in California): This early Eagle on an Anchor Navy button was all crudded up, but I could see a glint of gold gilt left, so I used lemon juice to clean it, and am very happy with the results! This a sword hilt!! Cleaned up nicely with lemon juice (tu) Little sash buckle kind of decorative item: Found this token, it's a large size, thought it was a large cent when first dug, but it turns out to be considered the first token issued in California! http://tokencatalog.com/token_record_forms.php?action=DisplayTokenRecord&td_id=8515&inventory_id=8752&td_image_id=33494&attribution_id=8321&record_offset=2 Some misc finds. There were a ton of tools dug at this site, axe heads, chisels, and other misc tools. I dug a bunch of lead and other small scrap/junk conductors not shown. That big square nail is bronze. Planning to return to the site this weekend, and I believe there are other camps there, and larger than this one, so hopefully we have as good of luck with them as this one. GL&HH, Cal

Looks like you've gotten some nice finds and I'm glad your liking the 800. I'm not Bayard, but I choice the 600 over the 800 partly because it was available then and because I didn't have any need for the WM08 module, nor did I think I'd do much tweaking with the extra settings on the 800 (and indeed, I seldom find myself changing much from the factory settings on the 600). I bought a pair of aptX LL headphones on sale before my 600 arrived for less then $50. So, with the $250 I saved over the 800, I spent $50 on the aptX LL headphones and I still have $200 to use for six inch coil.

Oh please don't try to make me feel bad for owning a 600. My story.... I initially bought the 600 due to lack of inventory on the 800. I thought, "I can easily afford the 800 when they arrive" but I couldn't wait to break myself in on the Nox so I bought the 600. I'm up to about 80-90 hours now and I have to be honest....I don't think I'll be buying the 800. Why? Because I have a good understanding of the 600 now. Coming from the Safari/Etrac FBS tone machines, it's an easy transition. I hunt in 50 tones and I don't feel the need for tone breaks, etc. I've gotten pretty good at determining what's under my coil by listening to the tones and reliably the TID's. I hardly dig screw caps but only to randomly spot check. Nickels, dimes, coppers, quarters, (silver or clad) have their respective tones and TID numbers and you pretty much know when you are over one. I still get fooled by junk signals, but I've overcome many that at first took up a lot of my time. As far as recovery speeds, It seems to me and from what I'm reading, 800 users rarely ratchet it up to 8. My top end on the 600 is 3 which is equivalent to 6 on the 800. Pretty quick I think considering my success with it. It seems that many are having consistent success in the range of 5 - 7 anyway. The 600 has given me bucketlisters from the day I bought it. My first 3 hours at an old heavily pounded park in L.A. netted me my first injun and a couple of mercs. Overall in my short time with it, it has given me a couple of V's, buffalos, mercs, rosies, a GW, dozens of wheats, tokens, rings, and tons of clad. And now since I'm focused on nickels, I'm simply killing it. The other day I dug 16 nickels in 3 hours. It just brings me closer to digging more buffs and V's.... and I'm excited about that. I don't own the 800 and never used one but I don't think it's fair to sell the 600 short due to a few more bells & whistles that the 800 has to play with. And I certainly hope that others look into all the details before making their decision from one over the other. Lastly, I'm not a gold hunter so the lack of prospector modes is fine by me.

Used in the Crimean War and US Civil War. Ran through a hole in the lapel and connected with a brass chain.

Hi Keith, According to the manual: "Ground Grab (GG) - This feature is not available in Discrimination mode. Your best results will be achieved by first performing the GG procedure in All-Metal mode. The ground balance setting achieved using GG will carry over into this mode." I assumed it did but never put it to the test. So I did just now with my Gold Bug Pro (version 3). I have three rocks; one GBs at 89, one at 63, and one at 43. Bottom line is by balancing these rocks and going to disc mode and testing them, along with GB set at 0 and at 999, I proved ground balance does indeed carry over to disc mode. The 89 rock in particular screeched in disc mode when GB manually set very low. However, the rocks would almost never give a target id in disc mode, just audio reports, and not very good ones. However, the disc mode is very forgiving and it really took huge unrealistic GB offsets to see this in action. I can see why you would not think it is doing anything because with normal adjustments there is no obvious effect in air tests. I suspect with in ground tests in very bad ground it would be more obvious. Something I discovered by accident also. Set GB at 999 and go the full gain disc. I have EMI static simulating a threshold. Now set GB at zero and go to high gain disc. My EMI totally goes away. GB at 50 minimal EMI. In my location at least, the lower the GB setting in all metal, the less EMI in disc mode. Could software be boosting gain in disc mode as the ground balance setting increases? Hmmm. Just a quickie test but informative. Thanks for asking!