Steve Herschbach

This has been reported by a few people and appears to be traceable to cell phones in pockets seeking a signal or some such thing. If you have a cell phone on you and are getting short periods of strong interference try putting the phone in airplane mode.

That’s interesting. Any ideas why the piece is missing from the Merc?

Not only is doing a factory reset (Reset All) of the detector a good idea but I almost forgot the WM12 also has a reset button....

Hi Lowtide, Welcome to the forum. Since your post is a commentary about this manufacturer and that manufacturer and not Equinox specifically I moved it to the Advice & Comparisons Forum. I can't argue with anything you say, but it seems to me most of the negative commentary is coming from other Minelab owners of BBS/FBS machines more so than people who own other brands. This was all supposed to be about Garrett AT and XP Deus versus Equinox and almost all the arguing is over this Minelab versus that Minelab. Which only illustrates even more however how badly the others have been lagging.

The statements in the manual are nothing more than generalities and how well they match with reality just depends on ground conditions and target mix. Even my own statements are generalizations only and have to be taken with a grain or even a lump of salt.

Exactly. Use the recommended default settings with maybe just a bump to the sensitivity. Honestly, it really does work.

Good point on consistent id on coins. In general running lower sensitivity/less gain results in more stable target id. Park 2 and Field 2 are inherently more high gain due to the extra weighting to higher frequencies, and the underlying true "un-normalized" target id skews higher. All that does mean more dependable target id on coins in Park 1 and another reason why I do not fight the machine. When hunting Parks for silver coins Park 1 is my go to mode. Park hunting for gold jewelry I would go to Park 2 for enhanced sensitivity to small gold stuff.

My Recovery Speed (Detect Speed) setting is at 6 nearly all the time. I might go to 7 in really dense trash. I see no real need for 8 - it's just there as an extreme "just in case" for some rare use. I sometimes drop to 5 and maybe 4 if I ever see low mineral ground with sparse targets. I don't see much added benefit to extra low speeds below 4 (2) and in fact I think they negate the whole reason why I have an Equinox. In high mineral ground lower recovery speeds may cause you to lose depth, not gain it. For the 600 I would stay at 3 and only ever drop to 2 for the rarest of occasions. 6 (3) is where I would glue the control if I had to pick one setting.

No, Minelab does not tell dealers how to run their business in that regard. How dealers take and handle preorders is totally up to them. Don’t take what you can’t handle is my point. Again as a guy that knows the business better than almost anybody I have little sympathy for dealers who fumble the ball. It was sooooooo easy for me to compete with almost anyone because of the general lack of professionalism rampant in the industry. I am happily retired but I have to admit to being tempted to jump back in at times because of all the opportunity that still exists for somebody that does it right.

Because tracking is designed for variable ground like prospectors run into or on beaches where going from wet to dry and everything in between causes variability. For less variable ground tracking is not required. Defaults are just that. Best guesses for people that don’t know what the settings do. Learn what each setting does and apply to your own situation as required. Equinox is pretty forgiving on ground balance settings as long as you leave recovery speed up in the 5-6 default range which I generally recommend. There is no need for tracking unless ground is highly variable.

The way the cable end semi-locks into place I can see hard tugs creating problems. Like Mitchel said, lift the connector end out of place and beware detectors falling over while attached to the cable.

They are the exact same cable. One of the benefits of getting the 800 over the 600 is you get a backup cable.

Welcome to the forum! That is other forums where trolls are allowed to spread nonsense. None of that here, and there are no worries from sensible people about battery replacement down the road when the time comes. At worst have Minelab do it. If not, people will be able to do it themselves. If Minelab is silly enough to not sell such a battery others will step up and supply them. Minelab does not make the battery - anyone can buy them and attach the required leads.

I would use the machine I know best. It’s a surface target so the model does not matter as much as knowing what you are doing.

I love analogies. Maybe this one will help some people. Low recovery speeds magnify signals and fast recovery speeds truncate signals. Digital machines usually chop signals into discrete portions. A target is “grabbed” and then it is “released”. A new target cannot be “grabbed” until the last one is “released”. Imagine a conveyor belt going by with a line of wooden blocks. The blocks have anywhere from 9 to 16 sides. You are standing there blindfolded as the blocks go by. You can pick up a block and feel it for as long as you want to try and decide how many sides it has. The longer you roll it around in your hands, the better. Your chance of deciding if it is a thirteen sided block or a fourteen sided block is better if you have more time. However, you are being graded by how many blocks you identify correctly, and if you hold one too long some pass by before you can pick them up. The conveyor is passing 8 blocks per minute past you. If you have a recovery speed of 1 you hold each block one minute and you get a great “signal” on that block. But seven other blocks go by as you are taking your time identifying the one block. You increase your recovery time to three and now get 3 out of 8 blocks but have less time to hold each block. Less signal information. Still, you get them all right. Now you increase recovery time to 5 and are only missing three blocks. Your slower buddies are having a hard time keeping up now and making mistakes, misidentifying blocks, but you are doing great. You notice that people standing back are having to reach farther to grab a block and put it back. They are “going deeper” but it is costing them time. You step closer to the conveyor belt so you don’t have to reach as far, and are now a little faster by not reaching as far. You lose a little “depth” but gain some speed. You go to recovery speed seven and your arms are a blur. Your buddies all give up and stand back in awe as you pick up and put down blocks at lightning speed, and are still calling them right but you can tell you are at your limit. You finally go to 8 and still get almost all right it every now and then you have to put a block back down before you can tell what it was. You don’t have enough time, enough signal to work with. You also get to change the conveyor speed. You can swing your coil slower, and now you have more time to look at each target. That means you can lower the recovery speed and still keep up with the targets. Great for the slower workers (detectors) who have a hard time keeping up. That is a decent analogy for recovery speed and what it does for the ability of a detector to clearly examine a target versus how many targets it can process and how far it can reach. Slow detectors, slow conveyor workers, don’t have a chance. Only the fastest workers, the fastest machines, can pick up and process all the targets correctly in a short period of time. They are a rare breed. One of the biggest advantages you possess in Equinox is the lightning fast recovery speed. I see far too many people throwing that advantage away thinking a lower recovery speed gets “more depth”. No point in getting an Equinox then, just stick with the slower machine you already have. Give Equinox a real good go at the default higher recovery speeds before deciding to toss away what is perhaps the most important advantage the machine has - lightning fast recovery time coupled with accurate target id and minimal depth loss at those high speeds. That is the Equinox difference. Don’t waste it. Recovery Speed, Recovery Delay, And Reactivity

Low recovery speeds magnify signals and fast recovery speeds truncate signals. It is the rough equivalent of the SAT control on gold detectors. Recovery Speed & The Conveyor Belt

Default recovery speed for Gold Mode is 6 and that is the way I run it. Now I know why you were having so many bump issues compared to me. In my opinion reducing recovery speed below 5 is rarely a good idea with Equinox. Something weird about Field 2 not hitting stuff Park 2 will. If anything I might expect them to be the same if running in all metal or Field 2 to have an edge, not the other way around. The following is cribbed from a much longer version here about the various modes but does mention some ideas worth nothing for nugget detecting. IFrom the Equinox Instruction Manual page 22 (emphasis added): Choosing the Right Detect Mode Choosing the right Detect Mode is important to get the best performance for the environment you are detecting in. To easily get started, choose Park, Field, Beach or Gold* to suit your location. Search Profile 1 is suitable for general conditions. Search Profile 2 is optimised for more difficult conditions. Target sensitivity is enhanced, but extra noise may also result. Detailed descriptions of each Detect Mode are in the following pages. *Equinox 800 only When they say target sensitivity they are referring more to small target sensitivity than to depth, though the two are related. The underlined portion above is further explained below in the portions detailing signal to noise ratios (click for larger version): Be sure to note and be very cautious about what they are doing with target id 1 & 2 as regards either shifting it into the ferrous range or blocking it entirely. For me and what I am doing I reverse those settings and even have been opening 0 up as a possible non-ferrous target. Maybe -1 also. Equinox seems to have nailed the divide between ferrous and non-ferrous but simply put I don't trust it yet (nor any detector really in that regard) and for nugget hunting in particular I pay very close attention to that range and what is going on. Micro jewelry hunters, fine gold chain hunters, etc. want to do the same because target id 1 & 2 is where that stuff reads, and possibly lower in high mineral soils. People that don't understand the last paragraph should ignore it entirely for now unless you really like digging trash. The first thing I like to do is get away from the target zone, go wide open, and run the coil over the ground. Ground signals tend to exhibit in the -9 to -7 range. If the ground balance is off or sensitivity too high there will be constant puttering in that range. This is what I refer to as ground masking. It will exhibit more in Park 2 and Field 2 (and the Gold Modes) than in Park 1 and Field 1 and may have some bearing on which profile works best. You can try and find a better ratio of ground balance and sensitivity to alleviate the ground masking OR you can go the other way and jack the sensitivity up and then block that range from signaling. There may be advantages to either method depending on the ground and targets sought. The more ground masking you observe, the more important it is you keep recovery speed high to enable the ability to peek into areas of lower mineralization and between hot rocks. This in my opinion is the number one reason why Equinox can outperform BBS/FBS in high mineral ground. It is also where Equinox can outperform simple gold nugget detectors that have nothing more than ground balance to work with. The easiest way to toss that advantage away is run recovery speed too low.

Did you get the first WM12 to work or headphones to work? If you get no audio with headphones the detector probably needs to be serviced. Owners Manual Page 29: Connecting Additional WM 12s To connect additional WM 12s, select Connect Additional WM 12 and then follow the instructions displayed by the Guide. During the guide, a search bar will appear at the bottom right of the guide screen to show that the detector is searching for WM 12s. This will continue for 20 seconds or until an additional WM 12 has connected. The connection process can be cancelled using the Back button. Additional WM 12s will emit a sound when they connect to the detector, and will begin to generate detection audio. Note: The Connect Additional WM 12 Guide will be displayed even if Guides are turned ‘O ’ on the Preferences page.

Park 1 and Field 1 are less sensitive to tiny stuff than Park 2 and Field 2 and also less sparky on ferrous stuff. If you want quieter hunting focused more on coin type targets consider Park 1 and Field 1. Mind you those two modes are already hotter on small stuff than BBS/FBS. If you want the super hots on tiny stuff and are willing to deal with a little more noise, a little more ferrous falsing use Park 2 and Field 2. It’s really not complicated. Click to enlarge...

Sorry but as a business owner myself that is no excuse for treating customers like dirt. I could manage that situation myself and have no sympathy for dealers that can’t. Nobody put a gun to anyone’s head to take preorders and no company should be taking more than they can manage. It has to be really tough to sit on 100 customers money while giving them nothing in return. I don’t know what the true situation is but any problems with dealers reside with the dealers themselves. Frankly, dealers are famous for trying to toss blame for situations of their own making back at the supplier. In my case I never took money from anyone until I had stock on hand because I learned long ago that delays not only can but will happen. Problem solved.

A truly beautiful coin, the Walking Liberty, one of my favorites. Congratulations!

Ironically the superior ground rejection capability inherent in the Equinox may be part of the issue with meteorites. I would not write it off quite yet however as there are some tricks that might help with that.

Thanks Walt

I hate it when people criticize me so hopefully Brandon will forgive me a couple comments. 1. He mentions Equinox is not nose heavy - well, it is a little. And 2. he mentions that you can just plug your favorite headphones into the WM08 wireless module. Unfortunately the WM08 is designed to accept the waterproof connection from the underwater headphones you currently cannot get. That means you need the Minelab 1/8” to 1/4” adapter you currently cannot get to connect your existing 1/4” headphones to the WM08. Which means you are on your own finding an adapter that works properly. Other than that, yeah, you can just plug those 1/4” headphones right into the WM08! The nose heavy thing is inconsequential in my opinion and no worse than dozens of other detectors so I am being picky there. The WM08 with existing 1/4” headphones issue however really is something people need to know about. If I got an Equinox just thinking I was going to be able to plug my Sun-Ray headphones right into the WM08 I might just get a little annoyed. Other than that a nice rundown of some of the things that make Equinox an easy detector to like.

I was starting to wonder if Brandon fell in a hole he was digging with Equinox and could not climb back out!