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I used my Equinox a lot in longer grass, and also in very rocky areas. The spoked design coils are never my preference but that's all the Equinox has. I couldn't believe it when the Coiltek 10x5" came out as an open design and I asked if they intended to make a solid coil cover for it, they told me no they don't. It would be very funny if Nugget Finder started making solid skid plates for the Coiltek Nox coils, In fact I hope they do. I noticed they have them for the Equinox 11" coil, so I just had to have one. I hope they continue this trend and make them for 6" coil too. Seems well built, fits well... is solid, what more could I ask for? Now I just hope they make more sizes for the other coils, especially the Coiltek 10x5" and ML 6".

I thought it might be part of a marksmanship badge or medal, or the top part of a Civil War/Spanish-American War era medal. I did find a Spanish-American War era Marksmanship medal from the Pennsylvania National Guard. It's not the same, but it may have been from a similar medal only earlier vintage. Here's the link: Spanish American War Era Pennsylvania National Guard Marksman Medal 1899 Bronze

I consider restrictive devices are only price gouging. They are restricting known technology ie. coil designs so they can have an unfair fight with other manufactures. All they are doing is protecting non patented products to make profit from their loyal customers . 🤬

It definitely is deeper than the SDC....but not near as stable in my areas. Took some pics of todays 5 hr. hunt but managed to somehow delete them after I threw em in the nugg jugg....duh!!!! Anyways.... got 6 bits today for .847 gram. The deepest nugg was .360 at 10" (could have called it 11" but want to be honest and conservative)....I was impressed! EMI was an on-off thing today again but not too bad and something I can learn to live with. Hunted in Manual 1 all day, had headphones to try but never got around to it. Had planes overhead and some caused EMI and once again...some didn't? All the areas I've hunted are previously hit by myself and others. Have used both my machines several times before using the 6 in these areas. Impressed with the 6 and the whole emi thing is just nature of the sensitive beast the 6 is and just something each individual will have to deal with depending on the ground you're hunting? So far nothing substantial weight wise but 5 hunts with the 6 (20hrs?/ 22 bits) and just under 7 gram with the 6. jmho.... PS...starting to get smokey from fires....here we go again.

Hello everyone and from me, a new member of the forum new in the search for native gold with a metal detector. My first metal detector is Minelab EQUINOX 800 with 11-inch and 6-inch coil A little about me: My name is Veisal, I am 35 years old, I am from Bulgaria, a country located in Europe

Indeed the CCs are clever as are all the X coils, but you are correct in saying I am spoilt by the 6K it is a magic machine, and will be even more magic with the coming X coils. Innovation will always win.

Had a second session, but using headphones, today. There is still a little chatter in Auto 2 Difficult, but much less than with the speaker and totally doable.

My understanding and experience of the 2 Auto sensitivity settings is the 6K automatically sets the sensitivity to suit the ground, so far I cannot fault that function and believe it is that function in conjunction with Geosense that makes the 6K the magic machine it is. But to add some context I am very fortunate to detect in a remote area that has only natural EMI and very little man made EMI.

Camel Back KuDu 20 for 2 day trips, made for bicycle riders, has a helmet holder that doubles as detector holder, 3L water bladder, back protector, wide belt, very comfy. Use a Black Wolf 85 Mountain ash for week or so trips.

Was on a football field today using the 15" in park 1 and hit a jumpy signal. I decided to dig it because it was loud and chaotic sounding... probably like was said about it by the parents of the teen who owned it originally. When I got it home, I checked to see if there was a tape in it. The tape cover popped off and emptied a full load of wet sand onto the floor...still being obnoxious. This is the first one of these that I have ever dug. Bucket list: cassette player...check.

I'll second that. Also, users/members/posters here include very knowledgeable people in regards to metal detecting, and that spills over to the dealer-members as well. Gerry McMullen is my poster-boy (hope that doesn't come off as deragatory) in this regard. He participates in just about every phase of metal detecting so he's not just a sales front. And he's honest so his advice comes first as a fellow detectorist.

Maybe NF will embarrass ML into doing things they should have done a long time ago.... Nah. Closed coils have their place, particularly in native gold detecting. I'm surprised no one has come up with a closed cover for the top of open coils. Mars doesn't make coil covers (AFAIK) for their aftermarket coils, claiming the housings are so tough they don't need them. But that ignores the problem addressed in this thread -- sweeping over difficult terrain or vegetation. I made a polycarbonate lower cover plate for my 6"x10" Mars Sniper and then used duct tape to cover the top. Klugy but it works.

Welcome to the forum and the 800 is a good detector for your area. The 800 loves silver and will hit it hard, I know that from using my 800. Good luck and please show us some of your finds when you come across them, we love pictures and the story behind them.

Mostly run patch hunting Auto+/normal/"no threshold", Torus speakers.

Running Auto 1/Normal, headphones

Took the Apex out for another quick run at the local park. For kicks and not sure why I didn't think of it before, I kicked the volume up to 8 and turned it down on my headphones so my eardrums don't burst and you can hear nuances with the targets and even hear faint signals so it isn't a beep n dig as I first thought. Do wish Nokta had a volume adjust on their headphones. Really makes a difference.

Have you tried to put batteries in it yet? I'm sure the tape deck is junk but how cool would it be if the radio worked!?

I took the liberty of making a recreation of what the artifact may have looked like. Maybe this will help.

I've only had a chance to deal with 2 dealers on this forum and both have been excellent. One of the reasons I like this place is the honesty of the people and dealers. I hope to have contact with the other ones as well in the future. A replacement unit has already been shipped and I should have it on Monday. The defective unit will be on it's way back to the dealer. I just hope that everyone understands that Minelab has changed our relations with our dealers, as they have little to no control in knowing when or how many units they may receive, when we are trying and get our hands on the newest Minelab machines. So our dealers usually get the brunt of the complaints and pressure to get us a unit. I just try to remember that timelines and distribution patterns are not their fault and in my case, it's not their fault that the unit did not function either. So as sad as I was about not being able to hunt that day, I have to admit that Bryan at Alaska Mining and Diving has been on this instantly and consistently since initial contact. A special thanks to him for that.

I'm not...although I am a very happy user of minelab products they have done this before...the 2300 and the loose battery box issue...they have redesigned this on the new ones and so now here we are the original owners with the same problem while newer ones are shipped out with a better set up...I cant even find the battery casing for sale on line...when I brought it up on line before the minelab dealer said I should just up grade to a new 2300 and trade in the old one....sorry nope not going to spend another 3.5 k in the mean time I will just insert a plastic spoon into the battery box like I was shown the first time I used it lol....so here you are with your new three thousand dollar machine but you have to put a plastic spoon inside the battery box to keep the batteries from bouncing around and the machine re setting...so I am not surprised at all that minelab would send out a brand new machine with speaker issues....JP already has said not to use the speaker so there ya go...what I'm concerned about how this machine will be in the California foot hills...will the emi be so bad that it is useless? strick

Welcome, Veisal! You have a high quality metal detector manufacturer there in your country. But the ML Equinox 800 is a great tool for finding native gold, so you're in good shape. I hope you are successful and will be able to photo and post some of your upcoming finds.

I only have about 100 hours under my belt with the Equinox and really like the machine. Although I'm a new detectorist and believe the Equinox is quite functional, I'd like to see some new features added if they have the headroom in the hardware. 1) Having more than one user profile would be handy. 2) I've read the pinpoint mode could be improved compared to other Minelab detectors. Perhaps the ability to select the pinpoint model used? I think it makes business sense for Minelab to continue to upgrade the Equinox, since they will continue selling it into the future and the R&D costs are already baked into the pie. Adding software functionality only improves their standing in the industry and with the users. I am new to metal detecting, but I've been around the software industry for nearly 4 decades. My number one rule is that "Software sells Hardware". Releasing new features to an existing hardware platform will certainly sell more hardware. It will also grow their software intellectual property to be leveraged with the next detector they release. Just the ramblings of a newbie. AJ

I could not use my GPX yesterday with the speaker due to noise. To test this I sat down, and let the detector hum without any movement for about a minute. Then I switched to the supplied Bluetooth headphones. The pitch variation was worse with the speaker. At about 101F it was too hot for headphones but I was left with no choice. I repeated this test today earlier in the day and the speaker seemed to effect the threshold less. My guess is that the amplifier and speaker windings are inducing noise somehow. I will write Minelab about this issue since after spending six thousand dollars I would really like to use the speaker. However since today I could not replicate the issue, it may only happen during bouts of bad EMI or maybe the component just needed some time to bed into the pcb. If the issue persists I will send it in for repair or request a solution. I am very surprised Minelab released this detector with the issue since I’ve seen others report the same thing.

Musta been a lot of mud for someone to lose something that big ! Were you detecting at WOODSTOCK ? 🤔🤩

You got me GB, HA HA, Freudian slip, I probably was thinking how bad I feel for posting the silvers in your time of drought. It must have overwhelmed me. I doubt I could ever be offended by you pointing out my brain fart. Nice to see someone other than my wife keeping me in line. Sure wish you were closer, I would love to do a hunt with you, Of course I would have to blind fold you to protect the innocent. Ha Ha

Jeff and I had a couple PM messages back and forth about Iron Bias, and what it does. Jeff made mention he thought it took items with mixed ferrous and non-ferrous responses and reduced or eliminated the non-ferrous response, leaving only the ferrous response. I usually set Iron Bias to 0 unless I forget and leave it at some default setting. I hunt full tones and between high 39 spikes and audio "tells" while in full tones I generally do not have much issue with ferrous tricking me, and so it has not been anything I have investigated much. The bottom line is I was feeling vague on exactly how this control acts in practice. As we all know bottle caps with the normal FE settings had a habit of reading in the mid-teens near 13. I have also run into issues with large flakes of decomposed steel cans in old mining camps that read in the teens. I'm not worried too much about bottle caps, but in some old camps that rotted tin can debris can really mess an area up. Minelab introduced the new FE2 setting that allows for more range on the control. Jeff's message made me wonder - is Iron Bias reducing the non-ferrous false signals, or increasing the ferrous signal? This short video shows the problems and the solution, and answers this question. I start with a piece of tin steel that gives a non-ferrous reading around 15 in normal FE mode, and show that from FE0 to FE9 the target gives a clean mid-tone with no ferrous report of consequence. The old FE setting was ineffective on this stuff. Then I go to FE2 and show that increasing the setting rapidly shifts from a non-ferrous reading to a ferrous reading. At 0 it's clean non-ferrous. Just going up to 2 makes it a mixed ferrous and nonferrous reading, at 3 it's mostly ferrous with some high tone mixed in, and at higher settings it is a solid ferrous reading of -7. To me it looks simple. The control is variable, and a particular item can be adjusted to read solid non-ferrous, or to give mixed tones, or to read solid ferrous. It is not a matter of just decreasing the false signals. More like converting what were non-ferrous signals to ferrous signals in a continuous range. This all goes back to the ferrous versus non-ferrous range having a full overlap, and much like how you can use the tone break to decide what items near target id 0 read ferrous and which do not, the Iron Bias offers a secondary control that does the same with these problematic items. The part I do not show? There are good items that will do the same, and I need to try and find one. In theory there is a good item that will give a false ferrous if this setting is too high. Otherwise we would not need the control. Just set it to max and forget. So the real question here that I think remains is not about the ferrous. The control will clearly help with making ferrous items read ferrous. But what about the reverse? What non-ferrous items will be revealed by leaving this control at a low setting? I take it as a matter of faith these items exist and so I leave the control low at or near zero. But how common are they? Am I suffering needlessly? What are the risks of setting the control too high? Minimal risk, or high risk? The best way to find out may be to simply go detect, but take the time to double check items at the full FE2 setting of 9 to see how many might read ferrous when they are not. Be patient - it might take a minute for the video to start once you hit go. fe-v-fe2.mp4 If somebody could make a perfect ferrous/non-ferrous filter, then we would not need the control. Many casual detectorists don’t need it at all either. The reality is the setting is a trade off. Higher eliminates more ferrous, and also runs more risk of missing the desired non-ferrous. Conversely, lower settings reduce the risk of missing desired targets, but you dig more trash. So the question is pretty simple. Are you willing to let the engineer pick the best setting for you? Or would you like the ability to make that decision yourself? People hate digging trash, so I find presets to be too aggressive for me. I get very worried if I’m digging no ferrous at all. So I tend to set where I’m digging some, but not so much as to bother me. It gets me “iffy” finds others miss. This is a simplified example. Iron bias far right gets all gold, but you dig all the ferrous also. Far left eliminates all ferrous, but loses all gold. A typical factory setting as illustrated might eliminate most ferrous, but at what cost? It is interesting that the control is on,y available in multifrequency on the Equinox. The issue predates multifrequency, with variable bottle cap reject controls going back to analog detector days. It’s an issue inherent in the physics of the targets being detected. If anything this is a problem that was accentuated with the switch from concentric to DD coils. Concentric better separate flat ferrous targets than DD coils, so this was less an issue when concentric reigned supreme. The newest bottle caps are even worse also, being made of a much larger range of materials than the simple caps of old. It is not just bottle caps though, but decomposed flat roofing steel, old rusted can pieces, and more. Why ferrous items can read non-ferrous From Whites XLT manual (6.59 kHz single frequency): BOTTLECAP REJECT Adjusts how strongly the instrument rejects or breaks up on iron. Most starting programs use the minimum setting. As larger numbers are selected, more bias rejection against iron occurs. The advantage of higher BOTTLECAP REJECT settings is that in high-trash areas more decisive iron rejection occurs. Trash becomes easier to identify by the broken sounds they produce. The disadvantage of a high Bottlecap Rejection setting is if an iron target is close to a good metal, the high degree of bias against iron may cause the detector to cancel both responses. Another disadvantage is that all targets, iron and non-iron, tend to start sounding more broken at high levels of BOTTLECAP REJECT. The operator needs to fine tune BOTTLECAP REJECT according to their preferences and the conditions being searched. Note that according to White’s, setting this control too high can contribute to masking issues. It makes sense, as all we are doing is adjusting the tipping point on mixed target responses, and a ferrous target next to a non-ferrous target presents just that issue.

Day one... I headed to the hills this morning to beat the heat and log a few hours behind the control pod of Minelabs' latest offering, the exciting new GPX 6000. Hiking up and down the hills with this featherweight P.I. nugget detector is pure bliss after lugging the GPZ 7000 around for the past 6 years...has it been so long?! Armed with the 11-inch GPX mono coil, I targeted an old nugget patch that I had carefully gridded many times in the past with several detectors, including the GPX-5000, Gold Monster and GPZ 7000. With nearby power lines, operating at a Manual Sensitivity of 10 or Auto+ proved a bit too chattery and required excessive Noise Cancel delays that became rather irksome after awhile. Backing the Sensitivity to 7 smoothed things out considerably without any noticeable loss of performance, and if I got an iffy target response, a quick jump to 10 would provide a definitive yes or no. After digging a few trash targets, the first “nugget” that the GPX 6000 hit was a 0.04 of a gram surface screamer, and the next couple of nuggets were small and shallow; nothing surprising. But how did the Gold Monster miss these? Must not have got that little 5-inch Monster coil directly over them.🤔 It was the next 3 targets that really blew my mind, however... By late afternoon, the temps were soaring into the mid-90's, and despite a nice breeze, it was becoming a tad uncomfortable, and I was thinking about calling it a day. That was when the GPX 6000 sounded off with a sweet, mellow and deep sounding target response. A few scrapes with the pick exposed the underlying bedrock, and somewhere - in a crevice, no doubt - a golden treasure awaited to be uncovered...or so I hoped...could just as easily be a bit of square nail, a bullet or boot tack.😒 Blasting a few inches into the bedrock with the pick got the target out - a nice little golden picker in the scoop. 🙂 After backfilling the dig hole, just one swing of the detector revealed another soft, mellow hit a mere foot away. Same scenario: a small golden goody a few inches deep in a bedrock crevice. Then, about another 4 feet away, a faint response. Quickly jacking the Sensitivity from 7 to 10 brightened the signal a bit, so I began digging about 6 inches through a layer of gravels before hitting bedrock and a rather thick tree root. A little more pick work and pinpointing with the edge of the coil located the target in a crevice right next to the root. This one was deep; nearing the 12-inch mark, the target was finally out, and it was screaming off of the coil edge! A quick sift with the scoop uncovered a hefty 1.34 gram nugget. How the GPZ 7000 missed this beauty, I'll never know...it's a head scratcher.😅 Time to call it quits for the day on that high note, for sure! I'll be at it again tomorrow, this time with the GPX 14 DD coil in EMI Cancel Mode; should be able to run flat out in Auto+ Sensitivity with the threshold as smooth as glass.

Hello, thank you all for the warm welcome. The place where I look for native gold is this as rock geology is this, I searched for about 2 hours but found nothing, I will try again for more time searching in the same region ?

I too had the XP Deus/Orx and equinox 600 combo i sold the Nox cause I needed the money and was aggravated about the unavailability of the 10x 5 coil. I like the equinox but the Orx/ Deus Lite suits my needs better. As for the 13x 11 coil, thought about getting one but decided the 11” is big enough considering I dont detect too many fields and wide open spaces. I hope you do well with it

Thanks for this info which is not in the Apex manual btw, I had this idea but never tried it in the field. Will try it asap ... I like the Garrett MS-3 volume potentiometer , the MS-3 design is perfect ... 🙂

Unfortunately not yet re: the 17”.

Just so everyone knows what the shield looks like on a New Jersey copper.

Welcome aboard Vaisal ! You just found a lot of new friends to help guide your hunts . There's a lot of posts here with good advice and discussions to read up on and just ask about anything you would like more info on That 800 is a good machine and will treat you right , hope you found lots of treasure in Bulgaria. Any finds so far you'd like to show off or just can't identify post a picture...

I use roof and gutter silicon to stick all of my coil covers on. It is there until the cover wears through. After it wears through I just peel it off and re silicone the new one on. Or I usually replace the standard cover with a pice of 1.5mm to 3mm lexan that is siliconed in place of the standard coil cover. All of my coils end up with the much tougher lexan on them after the standard coil covers wear through. Tape requies constant maintanance or crap, oftern metallic crap gets inbetween your cover and coil and can create unwanted signals or noise.

The US military did not adopt the crossed rifles insignia for the infantry until 1875 and the crossed rifles with the Federal Shield design was not used until 1881. I like to see the back of the artifact if that's possible.

I spent about ten hours total detecting with my GPX6000 in Southern Oregon. Got three small bits for 1.2 grams total. Sensitivity is great, ground balance is a little finicky with the mono coil, but holy balls the EMI was bad. The way they hooked up the speaker made it so I had to use headphones. Maybe the amp is too close to the sensitive stuff, but as soon as I switched to the speaker the machine started going off. Lucky for me it was only 101 degrees so I just wore the nice black headphones. The chunkier .7g piece was at least six inches down! The GPX did sound off on some of the andesite and hotter serpentine but the ground is murder for most machines so I am fairly happy. It’s a keeper as long as they can fix the speaker issue. “Just don’t use it” is not going to work for me in bear country. But the second day the EMI was not as bad when I checked the speaker.

I've been tempted many times in the past at the play-on-words (sort of) that mis-spellings generate, but I couldn't pass this one up, and DoD (play on letters?) is usually a good sport so I don't think he'll be offended, at least I hope not. So, is a guilt button kind of like a mood ring? (Hey, there's money to be made next Christmas if you can convince the gullible public to go along!)

Recouped from the 4th of July BBQ Party under the new Pergola. I loaded up my truck in the hot driveway and set my sights Eastbound I-80 to the Rye Patch area. Leaving at 1530 hrs (3:30 pm) and looking at my Thermometer on trucks dash bouncing from 99 to 101 for the 1 1/2 drive. I wasn’t smiling but, but eager! I wanted to put my thoughts to the information I received from a couple of my partners who hunted Rye Patch the week before finding 13 nuggets in a day and half, before the heat sent them home. The first spot I hit, was in the shade of the Eugene Mountain, I just hit the area we did best at with the 2300 and 7000’s. No Joy, but a few trash targets! Loaded up and off to the next spot to hunt till dark. This spot we killed the little patch with 2300 and 7000’s. Again, I hunted the heart of the patch! No Joy, with same results! Oh, by now you might be asking what settings was I using. Normal ground, Auto Plus w/Threshold and headphones. Machine was running great with mid day EMI’s down to minimal. I hunted till past dark with no Joy, same results with small trash targets! Putting my partners information together with my current results, I drove off in the Moonless darkness of the high desert to my next location. I’ve been to this area countless times and still missed my turn. I parked on a Patch we camp for the evening. Had some left over Baby Back’s from the party and was enjoying the cool breeze in my face! Up at 0500, boots on and geared up, I hit this patches best spots with no Joy! OK, now to a hottest dirt patch to put our thoughts together! This patch the ground is hot and we never could run the 2300’s on 5, and ran kind of ragged on 4. 7000’s High Yield/Normal was tiresome to your ears and mind to listen for targets! Again, I set my sight to the hot spots of this patch to see the power of the new 6000. I was surprised it would run in the same setting as I was using in the prior milder patches. Running great, in the still cool morning. I swung over to one of the sweet spots of this patch and Bam. Amongst, dozens of old dug holes a nice loud signal. There wasn’t hardly any trash on this patch, but it still had me thinking maybe we dropped something from out trash pouches? A couple boots scraps and looking at the family soil told me it’s not trash. Clearing off the area with my boot so the coil would cover the target. I tested it in different sensitivity setting. Seemed the highest Manual setting was louder than Auto Plus? But, it heard the target down to the lowest setting! Well, time to see what it is, 7 inches down and out, it’s in my hand! A little .549 gram nugget in a sea of dig holes that we pounded. I was impressed! Swung the area well with no other Joy. I swung over to another hot spot of the 2 acres patch. Seeing all the old dig holes, I wondered! I didn’t have to wonder much any longer and I heard a nice sweet little tone familiar to my ears! Couple boot scraps of the fluffy ground cover dirt and down to hard pack dirt! It sounded shallow. A couple more hard boots scraps and the target was out and into my hands a little .152 gram dink. Wow! This 6000 in my mind would be a fresh patch Destroyer! Mild or hot ground, it wouldn’t take long to empty the vault, just keep digging! Ok, the cool morning was evaporating with the Sun well above the Mountains shade lines. I wanted to swing some deep nugget spots on some old patches at Rye Patch that my Partners didn’t have time for. On the Move again, to beat the heat. Donned my gear and swinging on deep nugget ground with 1 bar left on my battery. Machine, still in Max setting and running well with the expected retuning of the rapped rising temperature. No Joy at either of the two different deep patches, I chose at Rye Patch. I didn’t swing the Burn Barrel, but my Partners did and pulled 5 off it the week prior, which they ended their sweat feast 1 1/2 day hunt there! Burn Barrel, will always produce! Well, I agreed with my partners assessments of their hunt to mine! 6000 is not a 7000 killer which Minelab says! But, it’s light weight and deadly and really is sensitive as the amount of little trash pieces I picked up in the heart of several whirlwind patches in this Beat The Heat hunt. I know there is gold left on every patch I stopped at, but I wasn’t there for extended amount of time! So, the patches we want to hit are the ones that gave our 7000’s the most difficult settings problems. My Partners in California, are having a blast in the hot difficult grounds of many Hydraulic Pits where running the 7000 in High Yield/Normal was impossible. So, no your ground with the 6000 for best results. Until the next Hunt! LuckyLundy

Day two: The goldfields greeted me in the morning with sunny blue skies and a nice cool breeze. I was trying out the DD coil this time to see if it would mitigate the EMI issues I was having with the mono coil. Upon power-up, the GPX 6000 defaulted to the EMI Cancel mode, and I set the Sensitivity to Auto+. The threshold was very unstable, no better than when running the mono coil; I backed the sensitivity down to manual 7, but, although better, the threshold was still erratic. Performing a couple of noise cancels didn't seem to help much, either. Then it finally occurred to me to do a reset to the factory preset, and sure enough, the machine settled right down. Whew, thought there was a real problem there for a few.😅 The threshold still wasn’t ultra-smooth, as it is on a GPX-5000 with the Coil switch set to Cancel, but I guess like JP said, it's the price we have to pay for the incredible sensitivity of the GPX 6000. Swinging towards where I had left off the day before, I encountered a few trash targets, including a 22 casing buried at nearly a foot deep; the initial target response was very clean and quite obvious. Continuing along, I got another deep sounding target, and after digging down around 6 inches, the signal was out of the hole. Pinpointing with the left edge of the coil is required when using the DD coil in EMI Cancel mode, since the coil becomes a pseudo monoloop, where the left side of the coil is now operating as an 8” x 14” elliptical mono, and there is no sensitivity at all on the right side of the coil. A quick sift of the material with the scoop brought a sweet little 0.65 gram gold nugget to light! After digging a few more trash targets, I finally arrived at the spot where I had left off the day before, and almost immediately, a sweet mellow target response from my Avantree Torus wireless speaker had me once again blasting into a bedrock crevice. The target was around 4 or 5 inches deep: a quarter-gram nugget. Just a few feet away, another signal in a bedrock crevice, this time a thin, 0.15 of a gram piece at about the same depth. Not bad for a few hours on an old patch with new technology; covered gas for the trip and then some. Stay tuned for day 3...

I may sound a little harsh bit it sounds to me like you need to learn how to read a GPs and a topo/claims map before you worry about the type of detector you should have... Any detector that does find you some gold would be great---especially if it is on your claim. This is a basic tenet of detectorists'--- to know where they are at at all times-- dont be that guy who has to be embarrassed when the real claim owner shows up busting your a.. and all you can say is. " I thought we were on my claim"-- Trust me-- at the time it sounds so weak of an excuse that you will want to crawl under a rock. Hopefully the claim owner will blow it off and tell you exactly what i just did. Opinion given with love---- but dont mess up!!! -- too easy to use a real map !!!

Got up early to try and get some time in on the 6 before the heat. Got in 3.5-4hrs and 4 nuggs before the bad heat and the flies were REALLY bad, never seen em so bad, ever! Drove me crazy more than the heat and thought about the poor Aussies and their flies...lol First place I wanted to hunt I'd hit a couple times before with only 4 nuggs previous. Got skunked with only trash and also a thunder storm messed with the threshold. Next spot is a place I've hit at least 10 times before with sdc and Monster, got quite a few nuggs but they were really getting slim and Monster small. The threshold going bonkers all the time was pissing me off and something I'll have to just get used to I guess? I was using the lowest sensetivity and lots of noise canceling. I was having second thoughts between the unstable machine and digging crap. Then it happened and one of the targets was a small nugg but around the 6 inch mark and I was kinda impressed. Couple more crap targets but Goldmonster small but a few inches deeper than usual Monster bits...impressive! Then a few junk targets later I get a good faint target and I dig and keep digging and dig some more and pop the biggest nugg at 12"...this is getting better! Second biggest piece was 9-10". It's been 2 months of nothing but a few tiny bits and the 6 has proven and given me what I wanted out of it which was a bit more depth, no cords, bungees, handles great, etc. The 6 also really impressed me on finding tiny tiny stuff at 4-6" range, Monster tiny sized but a tad deeper! I have a hell of a time PP'ing with it but that'll come in time. Bottom line for my first outing is that I hit the second spot where the 4 nuggs turned up because it quit producing weeks ago but the 6 says "you've got more work to do now"..... I don't like PI machines basically, they make me dig junk and dig deeper but obviously after today the tired spot has more, just gotta work a little harder. So I'm impressed with the 6 as I haven't had a 4 piece 3.3gram day in this area for a few months now......

Here is your video!

Detector Pro at 2.4khz is very week to gold so it might be just ok on silver rings and clad. In the water the Seahunter with 8" coil does pretty well, 10x14 had much better depth but both will hit all targets so the discrimination may trim out some small foil but not iron nails without loosing too much. Average beaches with not too much trash the Seahunter is very good for the price.

Poked around my local park for a bit with the Multi Kruzer, 3 tone, and Superfly coil (too lazy to swap it out). First hit was a 19 in the foil range and turned out to be a thin 10k gold ring. Not long after that I hit another 19, dug it and it was a chocolate still in the foil wrapper score! 🙂 Rest was some clad and bits of can slaw and some junk I dug out of curiosity to finish the night out.

For me I was surprised FE2 kicked in so quickly. FE has no effect run to the extremes. FE2 has an effect almost immediately, with the ferrous breaking up significantly at only FE2-2 The control is more aggressive than I anticipated.

Hey, that's understandable. The terminology is not entirely clear and standard across the board. For example, manual GB makes sense to me. But I think of "auto" as auto/tracking (interchangeable terms) and what they call "auto" for the Equinox, I am used to calling ground grab. I keep a PDF copy of the manual for each of the detectors I regularly use on my phone for reference in case I forget how an obscure setting should be adjusted in the field. HH

I wanted to start a discussion on F2 again FE in high trashy areas. I have done a lot of research on the F2 update (I recently picked up metal detecting with my Nox 600 again at the beginning of summer and realized the new update at that time) and understand it has its ups and downs. One of the major things about it, is its supposed to help ignore bottle caps!! that is almost a holy grail in my eyes however in older trashy areas, other objects seem to be the problem most of the time, rather than bottle caps, (for me atleast) I have recently had the pleasure of hitting a property built in the late 1800s for a whole day and unfortunatley dug up trash the whole day. It was the toughest trashiest place ive ever detected. I have tried changing settings constantly to see if I could pull up the good stuff rather than nails, scrap metals and bottle caps but to no avail. I even created a small 3" hole and dropped a dime in there. the Nox 600 could not hit that target, even after playing with settings and trying different things. I understand the machine fairly well but just couldnt quite wrap my head around how to deal with this place that was so trashy that I couldnt even pick up the dime I dropped in a 3" deep hole, with the detector. I assume the 6" coil would fix this issue completely but is it then pointless for me to hit extremely trashy areas like this with the 11" coil? should I just wait till I get the 6" coil and hit less trashy areas? Maybe I was doing something incorrect. I have seen a lot of videos in regards to the F2 update for the Nox and it seems to me that the F2 on level 3 will ignore iron more, such as bottle caps but, you will also mask the good targets as well. So in a very trashy area, what is the best thing to do. Use park 1. lower sensitivity, and FE at level 0? I cant see why you would turn up iron bias if it will mask the good items and if there is iron everywhere, then every good object will get masked, am I right? I am hoping this hasnt been discussed already but I dont have much time to look around unfortunately so I thought I would start my own discussion. Thanks for reading. All tips and knowledge is welcome, and appreciated 🙂

Plastic is supposed to last 100's of years. I'm guessing someone will come out with a plastic detector some day after it has been banned. I can just imagine someone 200 years from now cursing all the idiots who threw their plastic bottle caps on the ground.

Some DIY cheapo protection tip: This has been done with 1" heat shrink tubing (no glue inside). I'll try 30mm next time, didn't have it in house.

Carl (Geotech) addressed the slow fire up on Dankowskie’s site yesterday with directions on how to re-calibrate your F-Pulse.. Holefully both Carl and Steve don’t mind me reposting it here.. I did see improvement on my F-Pulse after the re-calibration.. It’s a little tricky to do.. You need to be quick with the start of the 6 button presses.. It took me several attempts.. Bryan “ncwayne Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Tom, being one who insists on incorporating every efficiency, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the > 2 to 3 second delay between pressing the button to turn on the F-Pulse - and it turning on? > My thinking is that this is due to the LED brightness adjustment program starting with the F-Pulse off. geotech quote> If you quick-press the button to turn on, the LED code is bypassed, has no effect. What happens on power-up is some internal calibration stuff. It is critical during power-up that the PP is held away from metal, if you're waving it around and it sees metal (and it can see large metal from a fair distance) then this will extend the cal time. The cal is supposed to be accelerated by a factory calibration that saves a very close starting point in memory. If you are still seeing a long power-up delay, you can re-cal your F-Tek and it should speed up. Here are the steps: As you turn the PP on, you can continue holding the button to toggle the state of the LED. That is, if the LED is normally on and you want it off, continue holding the button on power-up and after about 1 second the LED will turn off. At the instant the LED turns off (or on), release the button and then immediately press the button 6 times in a row. The PP should beep on every button press. After the 6th press stop pressing the button and just hold the PP still, it is now doing a cal routine. This can take up to 10 seconds to complete so be patient. When it's done the PP will beep 2-3 times and the LED will start doing a weird dance. Turn it off, then turn it back on and see if it's faster to boot up. Two things to keep in mind... 1. Keep the PP away from any metal during the cal procedure. 2. The cal procedure also executes a factory reset on all settings.“