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Some beach erosion and high waves from Sally brought these into detector range. One silver and 3 gold. Two are 14K, and the other is 10K. About 8 hours total over 2 days. Three rings on the first day and one on the second day. I went back on the third day and all was sanded in again. I don't know what the gemstone is in the ring. Not a diamond. Bob K

Research, time, and lots of boot miles. Get away from the known areas and roads.

Got in 4 hours Tuesday AM, started out with rough water but by 11 am things were calming down. Took me about 30 minutes of messing with the controls before I got it to run stable and under control, then I slowly adjusted the setting as the water calmed. Started out with the settings ....delay 11.5 (15) Sensitivity 6, ATS 8, All metal , volume I ran high the whole time with the threshold just audible.. ( The settings that really seem to calm the AQ in rough water is the delay and ATS ) And by end of day I cut the delay down to 11, sensitivity 4, ATS 6, all metal, volume 9, and threshold 4/5 just audible. It was purring like a kitten. Dug a lot of nickels, no silver coins, one nickel / silver ring (my first marked that) and one 1.5 gram 10k.. This spot I have passed thru with the excalibur a few times of late, I've yet to find targets the way the AQ does. Shallow targets here are trash so I keep on walking on those..I only dig faints here...and the ring was maybe 12/14 inch's? The AQ loves the small gold rings. First time out this year with the drysuit, It was 60 degrees with winds early am. I hate being cold...Plus on one of the other forums some one posted about some flesh eat bacteria and I had cuts on me from working in the yard Monday so best to be safe. All worked out good and glad I went that route. Video of..........cam has been on the blink of late, I think the problem is moisture inside of the Go Pro. As you can tell by the frosty video. I checked to see if i got the gold ring on video, it did, then I stopped the recording..... then it would not restart. Once home I checked and it started to work again. I just dropped it in a bag of rice to see if that will draw some of the moisture out.

This is my "field expedient" really low budget Connector Protector. My original plan was to simple add a piece of 3/4" pvc to the end of the shaft to protect that frail looking little connector in case a fall. That done I thought if I add a 90* elbow and a "tee" them it sorta kinda protects the battery also. If you decide to try this, the only little trick is the 3/4" pvc doesn't quite fit over the end of the detector shaft. You need to make sure the black end cap that has the connector is flush (may require a tiny bit of sanding). you need to heat your piece of 3/4" pvc with a heat gun and when it is soft slip it over the end and let it cool. It will be a very tight slip fit. You are good to go. Up next my pregnant battery. Tim

I believe it's backwards - TrinityAU, aka Ray Mills, should be able to find his stuff by one of those two names. Tboykin has illustrated (masterfully) what are known as bench or terrace deposits. I agree it's a likely reason for what you've found. Depending what part of AZ you are in, the situation can be a bit more complex as many of the pediments in which these gold bearing washes are located have been incised, then re-incised many times over, cutting through multiple layers of old wash channels and bench deposits. So, often you will find that one particular wash has cut down into, and intersected an older, buried, gold bearing wash channel, and the small current-day wash is now re concentrating that gold with no apparant hardrock source. No other wash in the area will have gold because the modern day wash has not yet incised the old gold bearing wash channels. It also depends where a newer wash cuts into an older wash, some parts of the older fossil wash channel may not have many (or any) nuggets while some parts may be quite rich. Also many of these old washes are now basically just caliche and some caliche is soft (basically still gravel) while some is hard (false bedrock) and more resistant to secondary erosion, so some erodes into modern washes easily while some is not as easy a few hundred feet away. This is very common in Western Arizona where heavy monsoon rains and a once much wetter climate have created complex layers of washes in the pediment gravels. The situation can be further complicated by the fact that in AZ many of the rich nugget areas were originally fed by lenses/pods (aka pockets), largely surface occurences of very rich ore and not long, continuous veins. Many of these are now entirely eroded away, or buried under the pediment gravels leaving no trace, making the source a "mystery". They can form in swarms, so that you will have one nearby shedding prickly gold and another further up the pediment which is providing more worn gold since it has travelled. So, often you will find both slightly water worn gold along with pocket gold in the same spot, though the gold might have multiple sources. Especially if a modern wash has incised an older drainage. Also, a piece of speci gold that has travelled and then broken up can often have both water worn looking gold crumbling apart on the outside, and more prickly gold on the inside, which can lead to what you have in your hand as that speci erodes downhill and breaks up.

Maybe it would help if you more thoroughly described the mode you were in and other relevant settings, specifically, whether or not you were running single frequency and what frequency, etc. Did you try different modes, different frequencies, and different manual noise settings (800 only) before cranking on sensitivity to see if it was mode or frequency specific? The only substantive change was adding 4.0 khz single frequency, nothing else was described other than the nebulous "various stability enhancements..." Otherwise, ML states: All other single and multi-frequency settings are unchanged in their performance. In addition to the 4 kHz upgrade feature, various stability enhancements have been included. Overall, other than the addition of 4 khz which appears to be more EMI immune than 5 khz or the other SFs, I hadn't personally really noticed any other performance or stability differences. When it comes to the "intangible" feel for how it generally runs post-update the reactions are all over the map, indicative of nothing really changed but but people are more aware of how their machine is behaving and any difference that appears out of the ordinary is amplified and attributed to the software update (placebo effect). Some people are reporting better behavior out of pinpoint mode - I personally am not seeing that, and again people have been all over the map on that wonky feature ever since ML started issuing updates. EMI is highly variable even at a specific site - time of day (electrical load changes during the day, intermittent loads that are only turned on part time), humidiity, and the possibility of new sources can change what was typically an "EMI Quiet" site to a noise nightmare. If anything, people have generally reported more stability vice less but that is still all subjective and anecdotal.

Why not give the classifieds here a shot too. Saves you some ebay fees and I know some folks here are looking for remotes.

A little confused by your subsequent posts. You've got to remember that there is no way for us to know what your situation or journey is unless you spell it out for us - so try to put yourself into the shoes of the reader and as a reader what you would expect to know or not know about how a stranger operates their machine. We had no way of knowing this was the way you operate until you told us. So thanks for letting us know You need to noise cancel for each mode/frequency separately because Noise cancel is specific to each mode because each mode operates with a different frequency profile, it is not a global setting. You never said whether you did this for each mode you were using. Also, manual noise cancel is an option on the 800. Since you don't use noise cancel on a regular basis, you should probably reconsider doing it as a matter of routine because there is also such a thing as "silent" EMI that can affect sensitivity and it takes all of 5-10 seconds. Your previous description is how I would expect the machine to behave (Field 1 generally running less sparky than 2 because field one is weighted to lower frequencies vs. Field 2). The later situation is not expected and either means you need to do a reset because the machine has become overly noise sensitive due to some update or settings glitch or the EMI noise field is now stronger where you are detecting. You mention in a subsequent post that you upgraded directly from 1.7.5 - which doesn't have F2 so you may not be very familiar with running with it. We are learning more about F2 behavior with recent testing by some experienced Equinox users. The upshot is that F2 seems to be both more effective at making mixed-ferrous signals become ferrous signals than FE (with higher settings, less falsing) and is also a lot less likely to cause adjacent target masking than FE. This finding coming from Steve who likes to run with iron bias at 0. The thing that doesn't make sense in your description is that F2 was "way too sparky" - I take it this means it was falsing more than FE? You might want to consider running with higher F2 settings as there seems to be little downside o doing so, but that is your call. Based on your later statement that you upgraded directly from 1.7.5, I can't tell if you are saying F2 behavior changed with the update (meaning you must have had some memory of how it behaved if you briefly ran 2.0 software - again, have no way of knowing whether you ran 2.0 at all, a little or a lot - all we know that you did your latest upgrade from 1.7.5) or if you were just comparing it to Fe. Confused a little on this. Yes, I have seen that behavior too after a soaking rain on a field that usually runs mild. That is just a GB phase setting behavior thing due to moisture and probably doesn't have anything to do with the update. Yep, you pretty much covered both the upside and downside of running 4khz there. In general, since the 2.0 update, what I have experienced is that ML is simply adding features (F2 and 4 khz) and pretty much leaving the existing features alone. I did notice that going from the original software to 1.7.5 there was generally a lot more sparkiness vs. the original software (I think they tried to increase sensitivity for small high conductors in Multi) and falsing with the small coil. I found that 2.0 alleviated this sparkiness somewhat for me, again anecdotally and it could be my imagination (it certainly did not make it worse). Same goes for 3.0 vs. 2.0 - no noticeable increase in sparkiness or noise susceptibility in my experience. So your observation that 3.0 is generally sparkier/noisier than 1.7.5 is surprising to me. My suggestion is to do that factory reset after update just to set everything back to default and go from there. Or stay at 1.7.5 if that meets your needs, glad ML gives us the option to upgrade or not based on whatever works best for our individual situations. If you try it again with similar results after noise cancels and resets, then yeah, I definitely would roll back to a previous version. Detecting opportunities are too short to put up with the frustration of an unstable machine. Good luck.

Deteknix first appeared about five years ago. Then, as Jeff notes, Deteknix was caught lifting technology from First Texas. They then promptly changed their name to Quest. Quest 40 Report

As was already mentioned, their pinpointers and headphones and 2.4 gHz wireless transmitters that go with them are excellent. Their headphones specially made to accept the XP Deus WS4 and XP ORX WS audio modules are outstanding. Their detectors (at least in the USA) have a bad reputation. Not because they are bad detectors but because their top of the line original Quest Pro was proven to have pirated software from First Texas Products Teknetics T2. Whether this was by accident, ignorance or on purpose who knows. Several lawsuits have been settled, refiled and are in limbo. As far as I know there is no official warranty repair facility for Quest in North America at the moment. I owned a Quest 40 for a while and really liked it but something called the Equinox was released a little after that and I no longer needed a Quest 40. From what I have read, Quest still makes excellent detectors that have plenty of great features and can get most single frequency detecting jobs done very well.

My girlfriend got us permission to detect an empty lot owned by her employer. They recently bought the lot and took the early 1900's house down. She's been wanting to learn how to detect, so today was her first lesson. We headed there with the Equinox and my old AT Pro. Set her up with the AT Pro in STD/Coins mode, and went over ground balancing and how the ID scale works. Explained and showed her the difference between solid, repeatable signals and the less repeatable signals with bouncing target ID numbers. All I can say is I wish I would've had someone to show me these few details when I first started. Below is what she dug while we were there...a pretty respectable junk to coin ratio. She's hooked! 😀 I managed a handful of modern coins, couple old Hot Wheels cars, another handful of junk, and the few keepers below. The cooler weather has been nice recently! Hope y'all got out today...Jeff

https://www.lovecpokladu.cz/home/fanky-depot-8203

I do not have this problem because I am a glutton for punishment. I had the Equinox 600 first and felt it was a "crippled" version of the 800. Got rid of it. Some time later I purchased the Equinox 800, and feel better about that. It allows me to set the tones to my ears, where the 600 did not allow it. I have an XP ORX, and it is a good little unit but again I feel held back and that it is a crippled version of the Deus. Unfortunately I could not afford the Deus so I still have the ORX (this is my second one) with the X35 11" coil. Of all the things I wish the ORX would do is allow tone pitch adjustment. If it had that it would be ideal. The XY Screen also fascinates me, but Deus only feature.

Welcome to the forum. Might want to snag Fist Full of Gold from Chris Ralph. Sold on Amazon but seems to be out of stock. If your new to prospecting.

The brand is actually Quest, they were formerly known as Deteknix, but changed their name a few years ago. But the old name still gets mentioned, particularly in relation to their pinpointers, which were big sellers. Their website, questmetaldetectors.com will give you a starting point for your research.

I have 2 complete Deus units,one setup with the HF elliptical coil mainly running the Hot prog and the 2nd unit running the 9'' LF coil,the idea of having 2 was the LF would be a backup if i am away on say a long weekend detecting vacation.But alas after 7-8 years of using the Deus although the finds rate was stable it had a massive drop from my DFX and T2 days,so these 2 Deus setup have become mainly backup machines and also for use on some of my more trashier roman sites. The Nox that i have has also become a backup machine and pasture site which i feel it excels at and will earn its keep. But my original green T2 came out of retirement a few months back as did the DFX which i have owned from new and my finds rate surprise surprise has started rising again,sometimes the grass is not always greener on the other side.Is it a coincidence that my finds rate has risen again while using both my old faithful 2,i dont think so so nothing has changed in the context of selling or buying detector but what has changed is what has become my 2 everyday machines and what have become my backup ones.

With lifeguards gone Kids gone cooler weather and the lowest water level in years, fresh water I was out chin deep in what it seems to be undetected area. all targets were very deep and have been there for a long time. The Irish ring is stamped 375, the locket 585, and the blue ring 14k and I have not cleaned the 14k at all it is tarnished or stained. All found with TDI BH but I did mark the area that the locket came from to return with my Nox to try and find the chain.

Always nice to see finds measured in ounces or pounds Troy instead of grams! Great score Chris, I’m sure you worked hard for it. 👍🏻

I wouldn't be too concerned about that. Hard work (and that includes all the study of geology as well as other research) isn't a new concept. Neither is use your head. And yet it seems to be advice less followed today than ever. NVchris, I looked at your first photo multiple times, thinking one of us got the decimal points in the wrong places. Even 1.308 ozt in 15 days would be a great trip for most (particularly me). Thanks for re-inspiring the dream.

Outstanding nvchris. Its true, research, long walks detecting and long days are essential for the serious and for success. Just hope not too many of the welling mass of new gold detectorists catch on to the secret to be honest

Found a beautiful little diamond ring, probably CZ. It says Avon sterling but there is a little chip that looks like it’s plated. Does anyone know if Avon sterling jewelry is .925 silver?

Ok, i have a few! Of course, besides Steve H., and many other Forum members here! It started more for me with Mel Fisher, And Charles Garrett! Also several Treasure Coast hunters have done a fair share of keeping my interest detecting, even before i found this Forum! Thanks to all!👍👍

There are no "simple" answers to Skookum's excellent questions, but Tom and Jason have given some really masterful info. Several more thoughts need to be mentioned or repeated. The current geological formations we detect are often far deeper (lower in elevation) than the original auriferous deposits of times past. Thus, erosion at euvial locations, over time, have repeatedly both revealed and re-covered, shifted, dispersed or concentrated, auriferous deposits, making it difficult to precisely locate the original lode gold deposits of times past. The original lode deposits may no longer exist. My favored method of locating eluvial gold: at sites known to produce alluvial gold, walk along the hillside above the wash, looking for the typical "markers," quartz, greenstone, and red dirt. Maybe even manzanita or desert trumpet. Detect uphill, especially concentrating on low spots, wash outs, and small tributaries. One thing to remember is that success at electronic prospecting is more of a "boots on the ground, detector in hand" scenario rather than anything else.

Here is a view on the Forrest Fenn treasure from a lawyer who also metal detects. His name is Steve Lehto and has some entertaining and informative views and opinions on just about everything https://youtu.be/5LxipSblIjo

You do, and I rescinded the ban because you indicated you would stop. I’m questioning that decision after your last post and the parts I deleted. People here know how to shop. I don’t mind known, longer term members here passing on info about the deals. I do it myself sometimes. Until you have reached that point please refrain mentioning company names and prices etc. and stick to detecting and detector finds. Thanks.

Well I thought about it over night again and I went ahead and made my mind up to go ahead and sell my Deus stuff. I am just not going to use it and I prefer the large ID screen of my ORX and the fact that it is only 3 tones is just fine with me because that is what I normally use anyway. The Deus is an excellent unit. One of the best but not matter what I do with it, I will still only use a deep and fast program. Plus I cannot just let a machine such as the Deus just sit idle and collect dust. Do it is off to the great auction site once more.

Yup, I got my Tony Eisenhower waterproof headphones before any of the others were even available. Still using them!

Have to say I forgot to reset prior the update, but did it few times after. Updated from 1.7.5. Rolled back and will go there again.

Welcome, Dirt! A lot of history in your home state, and more than just discovery of gold and its subsequent mining there. I look forward to your posts of finds, as well as your learning experiences. You should consider attending a local GPAA club meeting. (Probably currently suspended due to the virus.) You don't have to join to attend a meeting (at least not at my local group where visitors are welcomed). P.S. That does sound like a good price on the Minelab GM 1000.

Don't know any thing about the detectors but the Quest WiFi systems are very good and I use them.

I got out today for a little exercise and to give the Equinox a workout also since it’s been a while since I last took it out. I can honestly say it didn’t disappoint. I only did dry sand since it was high tide. The large gold ring and the pendant are marked 14k. The little one isn’t marked but I’m guessing is 10k. The last ring of the bunch is copper and gave me the same VDI as a penny. I found $9.75 in clad and it was thanks to a pocket spill of $2.47. Thanks for looking and stay safe out there. HH

I'm exaggerating a bit of course but this little patch has yielded a few silver coins each time i search there.. this morning's haul..

Pretty darn narrow maybe 20 yards wide or less, but could be 50-200 yards long just depends how long its been shedding I guess. Most these areas are very small overall, obscure, so its easy to see how a person might not find gold in a given area, yet someone else who knows exact locations (perimiters) will be more successful. I found a few of my patches by working off others dig holes, then checking for lines after finding a few nuggets. Gradually you will see how and where a patch runs. I learned this from reading AuTrinity's postings yrs ago.

Thanks Kitz, thats the answer I was looking for. Lots of nuances in the audio. I just placed an order for the X. I need a good " in the iron" machine. Also getting the 6 x 8 and 14".

I'm happy to wear the Grumpy Crown. Nokta makes awesome detectors, But I feel like a kid two weeks before christmas. I'm hoping for a multi freak Kruzer based detector, But I'll take what I can get. Oh and by the way my wife calls me Grumpy at least twice a week.

Haha! Yes the two in the first picture were about 6to 8 inches deep. I suspect they got set on a blanket and the blanket later got picked up. They were about 3 feet from the edge of the sandbox area of the playground. In the picture of the 5 rings, the one on the end is 10k it was the first good gold ring I found.

Ok, here is another try. At first, all I hit was playgrounds, then they stopped producing, so started working basketball courts. Then I started working playground perimeters. These were in the same hole, about 6-8 inches deep. They are both 14k. The white gold is 1.55 carat total diamond weight. Found them at a park I've been to many times. Went back last weekend and some kids mentioned that after 4th of july, 5 detectorist were working the park. I've only ever see one other person detecting in my town

Big to ME. Good job again Joe.

Took a couple days off work to do some detecting...finally got back to this spot yesterday for a little longer hunt. The water is down about 4' from it's "normal" level, so there is strip of exposed lake bottom about 50-60' wide X 300' long. This trip I concentrated on getting the high conductors out of the way. There are a TON of low-mid conductors here...can't wait to start picking thru those. Ended up with the items in the picture and an ice cream pail of junk. Ended up with three silver dimes, silver ring, couple 30's wheat cents, St Lawrence Seaway pendant and chain, and a cool old Evan Owen's barber shop trade token. The spoon says "PLATED WITH PURE SILVER", but most of the plating is gone. It was a very fun hunt and the weather was perfect! Looking forward to the next trip back here...

Does this mean the detector manufacturers & retailers will be posting ads, encouraging detector sales to take advantage of the high precious metals prices? Of course you 'Southerners' are just approaching the summer months. But I wouldn't be surprised to see that kind of advertising here in the N-hemisphere, too. Christmas is always a good time to tickle the imagination (don't forget the gifts on the 5th Day of Christmas -- some of those are sprinkled along the beaches, as the Impulse owners, among others, have been proving repeatedly).

There is so many ways to go about it, but every spot/patch is different. You are going about it the right way by thinking about your options. The main thing to do is to try the shallow ground first and decide how deep you can get that type gold as you go.

Thank You This is a small beach that I live 3 minutes from,It was replenished with sand in early 60s I need to get through this sand, For the old stuff. I use a floating sifter and dig every sound. Almost all trash has been removed through the years. The best part of removing everything is when people ask if I find anything good I show them fish hooks and their attitude changes.

i don't think this little patch has a patch on Phrunt's cointopia.. but i'll give him a good run for his roses.. 🌹 🌹

Well bigtim, As you know, you pretty much described the situation with my traded Nox 800! I just felt i wasn't utilizing all that it had! Not that i probably couldn't have grown into it more! It's a great detector! I guess I'm just not fond of fiddling with programs in the field; it's a time killer! And with all the bright sunny days, and humidity, hard to see the screen well! I can always revisit a more multi feature detector later, if the need arises! But i think my recent units will serve me better for now!👍👍

I see I am not the only guy driving a hot rod that is stuck a traffic jam now. I really love how small it is and all of the settings it has. In order for me to justify having them both I would have to do some very serious hunting in environments that are unique at each and every field or house I encountered in order to take advantage of the settings. They both get the same depth and have the same speed on the same Target. Although there are no other units on the market in which you can carry a complete spare control unit in your shirt pocket. The next best thing one could do is to buy 2 minelab equinox units and pull off one of the control heads completely off of the shaft and store it in a fanny pack or shoulder pack in case something went haywire with the one you were swinging. But you would even have to carry the tool in order to swap out the control pods. That is about the smallest control pods that any competitors manufacturer. I am probably going to keep both of them. What I should do is just use one and then on the next outing use the other. Swap them out on every other outing.

On question #2 I answered with #6. I do use the same mode (Park 1) with a different iron bias in my user profile but I mostly have it for a 5 tone trashy park discrimination pattern for coin and jewelry hunting with specific tone volumes, tone pitches and tone breaks in case I am being overwhelmed by trash signals using 50 tones with little or no discrimination outside of the User Profile.

I looked at my Equinox 800 screen when I heard it. This Sound had potential. It was not like the familiar sounds of pennies, quarters and even the nickels. The screen read 9 and that had Potential too. I swung over it in a couple of directions and it still had a solid 9. Then you dig. Still a 9 and a good sound as you go down 3-4-5 inches to the patch layer. Then it is in the scoop and you look down in the dim light and you don't see a coin. You can see a shape and the wire mesh too! That is real POtential. I turn on my light and voila it's a ring and its yellow! POTENTIAL! When I got home I looked it over. It is not the best ring that I've ever found but it was the BEST and only ring I found last night. It is 10k/RL/CZ/BOUVIA. Potential realized. Now, this is the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say. Last night was a hunt pattern that I have repeated before. It is a normal beach detecting pattern for me. I put my son to sleep about 8 PM and when he is sleeping a couple of hours I get up and detect the beaches for 4 hours or so. The beginning was the same with parking and beach entry. After walking about half a mile I could see a detectorist light up ahead working the beach. I could not tell which direction they were working but I knew this spot. It could be good but I was going to let them have it. I walked off the wet sand into the dry and avoided the spot for quite a distance and then I dropped back down to the beach. Someone had been to this portion of beach before me but they were gone or it had been the detectorist I avoided. I could not see them any more and no one was in front of me so I relaxed and looked for the clues. Pretty soon I found a coin. I circled and found another. I saw some recent (within 2 hours) unfilled dig holes and I included those in my pattern and then in my grid. The picture emerged and I could see the beginning and finally the end of the patch. It was a small patch this time but I'll take it. No one came across me while I was working this patch. There were no seagulls. I hope this happens for you on your patches.

Hello fourumers & hope you are well.Update on the sdc issue.Sent back to minelab with a quick turnaround, they replaced the circuit boards & were very professional & took the time to explain the issues which were identified & acknowledged.The problems i had with this machine were driving me insane & thats putting it mildly. I have learnt that this detector is very sensitive & possesses capabilities that others dont even come close to.In appreciating this fact i acknowledge that any little issue can put the whole thing out of whack. Minelab fixed the issue & the detector it humming like a bird now.Pefect.If you ever have a problem, dont stress, they provide excelent back up service.Thanks again to forum & minelab.

Garrett Z-Lynk employs a transmitter box and as such will work with any detector with the correct adapter. There is nothing special about White’s audio output. The Detectorpro switch is not a “White’s” switch, it is a stereo / mono switch. Some detectors put out mono, some stereo, and you need to be properly matched in that regard. Many detector headphones have a stereo / mono switch for this reason. Most White’s detectors have stereo output. Only Minelab to my knowledge uses non-standard wiring to ground and shut off the external speaker on some of their models. Long story short, for any audio system not working properly, acquiring and using the correct mono to stereo adapter (or vice versa) will almost always do the trick. Just a reminder.... Z-Lynk is proprietary and will not work with standard Bluetooth headphones. Z-Lynk Manual Compatibility • Z-Lynk can be used with both VLF and pulse metal detectors. • These modules can be paired with any Garrett wireless-enabled device. This wireless system is nearly universal, designed to work with almost any brand of metal detector and almost any wired headphone. click images below for larger versions... Garrett Z-Lynk Wireless Audio System

There is more to it than just an add on single frequency option. Not that I’d know anything about this kind of stuff though. I think it’s best I just sit these kinds of threads out as they tend to baffle the hell out of me.