Steve Herschbach

The guy is asking for general opinions, not a pointy finger to somebody’s personal honey hole.

Many people are not greedy with information. The whole point of the forum is to ask questions, and share. Though I admit many seem more interested in being takers than givers.

No idea on that, but I have no doubt it was Bruce’s brilliance in audio processing that paved the way for Minelabs success. At the end of day it’s all about filtering out what we don’t want to hear, leaving only what we want to hear.

Fisher has been working on a new multifrequency for about a decade. I think it's safe to say with First Texas now that speculating on when new models, or even accessories, will be available, is a complete waste of time. Believe it when dealers have it in stock for sale, and not before. The deal with the new coil in particular simply defies any sense of reality with what is going on there. Hopefully something develops with them this year, but the year is going fast, and the company dead silent.

You can find the tests pinned at the top of this forum. But my quick eyeball check says no.

Nobody like rules, regulations, or permits. However, long term success requires learning how to comply properly with those that exist. Outlaw miners are generally not very successful, as the efforts and consequences involved in skirting the law come with long term costs of their own. If proper permitting makes things impossible or unprofitable, then you need a different mining plan using different methods, or a different location.

That’s the key way to know for sure. https://www.gemsociety.org/article/select-gems-ordered-mohs-hardness/

Go, or you’ll regret it. At most you are talking a few hundred dollars, if you are pulling a huge trailer. Less if you have a rig with decent fuel efficiency. Find a way to save the money somewhere else. Sell a spare detector? Or just tell yourself you’ll have to find a little more gold. But go. Life’s too short to pass on rare adventures when the time allows, and time is one commodity you will never be able to get back.

To chime in, for gold nuggets, Equinox still has an edge on the Deus 2, especially once accessory coils are considered. Coin and relic is another story, but for gold nuggets, the Nox is still a very safe bet in a discriminating VLF.

Well, that's what recovery speed is basically. Just a simplistic way of looking at it. Here are the details at the thread below. Ground figures heavily into everything to do with metal detecting. As I said, bad ground with hot rocks can mask targets. Magnetite infested ground has "see through" issues to deal with that are not unlike those found in a bed of nails situation. Which is why tests without ground are kind of useless except to establish base parameters. Again, details below, but it all kind of misses the point. A person should be comparing and adjusting for the best results on their ground and their targets, not using stuff found in posts. Find targets in your own ground, spend an hour adjusting recovery speed up and down to find what works best, go with that. Frankly, anyone who owns a detector has all they need to get real answers. Don't believe me or Tom or anyone else, simply find out what works best for your own particular needs. Think of recovery speed as a gas pedal in a car. You don't check on the internet to find out where to place the gas pedal. You learn to adjust it up and down based on conditions at the time. Too fast or too slow gets you in trouble, and one setting does not work everywhere. If the ground and targets change, so might the setting have to change. The only way to learn this is to experiment a lot in the field on actual found targets before digging them, to see what setting gives the best audio response on the widest range of targets possible. In your ground and your targets - that’s the key. https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/4835-equinox-recovery-detect-speed-settings/?do=findComment&comment=50803 This chart is from the link above. It’s for the Deus, but applies 100% to the Equinox, or any other machine with a recovery/reactivity control. Notice the emphasis on ground conditions.

In my opinion the Deus II is specifically tuned to do better in areas where the Deus I and ORX are weakest. Specifically silver coins in parks laden with modern trash. I do not think it was meant to challenge those detectors on small low conductors. My Equinox versus Deus II field comparisons on tiny low conductors in bad ground will not have me putting my Equinox aside as a small gold nugget detector. However, I saw great promise for high conductors in bad ground. So much so I’m switching from the 9” coil for my D2 to an 11” coil instead, as my intended uses for the detector have changed. In a nutshell I’m going to give it a go for hunting silver in parks with fairly bad ground. What I saw was not absolute depths exceeding the Equinox, as both it and the D2 hit the same coins at the same depth in magnetite laden ground. However, the Equinox started up averaging the results sooner than the Deus II at depth, with the Deus 2 holding a more accurate target id to greater depths than the Equinox. On the deepest targets the Equinox up averaged enough to “wrap around” and read ferrous on the deepest high conductors, which is normal for detectors on targets in the worst ground. The Deus II edged the Equinox out, still calling those coins accurately, when I might have passed them as deep ferrous with the Nox. This is all the more impressive as it was the ability of the Nox to hold accurate target id at depth in bad ground that first really wowed me with the Equinox, versus other detectors in my ground. Long story short the Deus 2 is no slouch on small low conductors, but in my opinion can’t match machines like the 24K, or Deus 1 and ORX if they are running the HF coils. I also think the Equinox barely has the edge on tiny low conductors with the 11” coils. Put a 6” coil on the Nox though and it’s no contest. I want to reiterate though the D2 is very good on low conductors, and will find nickels as well or better than most detectors. I’d be able to hunt gold nuggets with it just fine, but it just won’t match the few that define best of the best in that arena. What I’m liking is what I see for high conductors in the worst magnetite soils, and as long as EMI in town does not mess me up, I’m hoping it can pull some silver out of ground where I did well with the Equinox. If the Deus 2 can impress me at the park, it may hang around. We’ll see. I’ve had one sitting around for over a week now, and been too busy to even get out once with it, but maybe next week.

With all due respect to Tom, much of the information that he presents is not very applicable in bad ground. People read his stuff like he is the last word in what works. The reality is that the information is not useful in some cases, counterproductive in others. Nobody has a corner on metal detecting knowledge, and anyone hunting magnetite laden ground, should take many of Toms statements with a large grain of salt. The depths he reports are so much deeper than what many people will experience they will think their detector is broken. He normally hunts ground so mild it may as well be air testing. How many people know about the effects of packed hot rocks on targets, and the benefits of higher recovery speeds in places loaded with stuff like that? Hot rocks mask adjacent targets just as well as nails in some locations. Hint - higher recovery speeds like 5-6, possibly even 7, can be very useful in really bad ground.

Yup. Nobody will ever go very wrong telling a new person "just get a Minelab" no matter what it is they need. Other companies have a few good machines to consider, but nobody matches the Minelab lineup across the board for top performance in nearly every category.

If you hunt areas a lot that have tight locations where an 11" mono refuses to fit, you already know the answer. It is not about whether the smaller coil detects small gold better, as much as it is about it fitting where larger coils will not go. I think the 11" round is an amazing coil, detects gold as small as you could wish for, and also has good depth on larger stuff. A very good balance of performance aspects. A smaller coil will hit tiny bits a little better (not much) while also giving up some depth on larger bits. Not a trade I'd really advise for most people, if space constraints are not an issue. For me, getting between rocks, tightly spaced sagebrush, manzanita, wide deep crevices, etc. is the sole reason for wanting a smaller coil. I've found some very nice nuggets in nooks and crannies. Any small gold boost is simply a bonus for me. Put another way, if space allows, the 11" coil stays on my 6K. A small DD could be very nice, as the 14" round is too heavy for my taste. I'd be just fine with an 11" round DD. A standard Minelab coil, surprised they did not make one.