Steve Herschbach

That’s because you probably lack knowledge in how detector design works. It all starts at the coil and how much the coil weighs. Now, you can do one of two things. You can design the detector to be as light as possible, or you can design it to be perfectly balanced. Given the fixed weight of the coil you can’t have both. Since weight is a key spec people look at, Equinox was designed to be as light as possible. The normal solution for balance is to go the F75 route of perfect balance by putting the battery box under the arm and adding weight. Equinox weighs just under three pounds and the perfectly balanced F75 weighs 3.5 lbs. many detectors use underarm battery boxes to achieve better balance. The problem with the underarm battery box is it is a hard to modify design. You are kind of stuck with what you get. Equinox is more versatile. If you are happy with the light weight then all is well. Honestly, if you can’t swing three pounds maybe a little more detecting is in order to build that arm strength. If you do think you want better balance, and trust me with the 15” coil you will, the armrest was designed specifically with slots to strap and hold counterweights to customize the machine for proper balance no matter the coil that you use. With the 6” coil the machine would be light in the nose if perfectly balanced to the 11” coil but as is will be near perfect. That’s what I call a good design - one that gives me options. Equinox does just that. My only ergonomics complaint is specific to me. I have smallish hands and the round hard post handle is just a little uncomfortable for me as compared again to the smaller soft oval F75 handle. I think a single wrap of soft tape will fix that for me however, just a minor niggle. First time poster - are you actually interested in Equinox or just trolling?

Minelab is catching up on old backorders but new ones are piling up just as fast so people placing orders now could end up waiting past the end of March. It’s not like dealer shelves will be stacked high with unsold Equinox by the end of March.

I notified the appropriate people. Thanks!

They make great little detectors for a dedicated niche market, and if they are not spending any money on R&D they can just ride on what they have for a long time. To actively compete with what we are seeing just from Minelab and Nokta/Makro at this time would take a significant investment of money and I just don’t see it happening. They are getting killed on the high end and low end both with rapidly dropping prices from the competition. I personally get the sense they are just milking it for as long as they can. That’s just an opinion though since you asked. I have no inside info. Put another way, if I was to get back into selling detectors tomorrow, I would not bother becoming a Tesoro dealer. Why would anyone? That about says it all.

Thanks again Steve for keeping it real. Be sure and try Park 2 or Field 2 or both with nothing notched out (All Metal).

Great post John - Thanks to both you and the “other Steve” That’s pretty much my exact take on the situation. Yes, I want to be able to show what Equinox can do for me on gold. At the same time I do like the machine so much I worry about blowback from people who do not fully understand what we are trying to relay. The back and forth in this thread puts it all out there very clearly and is now the best thread on the subject anywhere. I have a great deal of faith in what I can do with Equinox and gold nuggets personally, and I am not surprised at all that it will hit gold that you other machines missed. Remember, Multi-IQ has both the high and low frequency components working for it and is almost guaranteed to punch deeper on some nuggets than a dedicated high frequency machine because of this. Remember this Gold Monster chart? And this Equinox? Yeah, Equinox can do great on tiny gold, but I am going to be looking for larger nuggets in trashy areas myself. We will see. I already basically agree with Condor - I am leaning Equinox over Gold Monster because the coil issues are secondary to what my gut tells me those charts are saying. The heck with the tiny gold - I want the 15” coil for tailing piles!

The long rumored Cazador is not even producing rumors anymore. Not a peep I am aware of but that does not mean they could not pull a rabbit out of their hat.

Very nice!!! Yes, we can only hope for an SDC in a more basic configuration someday and with extra coils. A Eureka 2300 would suit me just fine.

According to this Facebook post 50 Equinox just landed in France...

Someone dug a nugget that should have been left for me!

I am still learning myself but I have a high confidence factor in the mode recommendations as outlined in the manual and so I take the recommendations literally - at least for a start. From 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. So for a new relic type area I would probably start in Field 1 myself and go from there. Field 2 is a "Pro Mode" requiring more skill because it will be noisier (the signal to noise thing). 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 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. Once I get into the hunt area I am again going to tend towards listening for and accepting everything and then adjusting accordingly depending on the trash mix in the area. I prefer myself to sort it all out by ear but a person can also just notch out the peskiest stuff, whatever it may be. There is no point walking away from a site because of some horrible trash target that drives you crazy. Just notch it out, accept that maybe some goodie in that range will get missed, and get on with the hunt. Whatever. We all have different tolerances for this stuff and different ways of dealing with it. If tiny non-ferrous makes you crazy, just block it out, as has been done by default in Park 2 and Field 2. And remember that Park 1 and Field 1 are inherently less sensitive to the tiny bits in the first place. Keep Beach modes in mind when experimenting. Yeah they tune out the salt range and therefore lose an edge on tiny non-ferrous but maybe that is what you want in some places. Beach 2 will handle mineralized ground that would shut down most VLF detectors. Single frequency modes also act to mellow the machine so give 20 kHz or lower a go if things are too sparky. I am in no way trying to make any of this out to be anything but suggestions. I refuse to ever fall into thinking any one mode or search profile is the answer for everything and try to approach every new site as if I am starting all over to a certain degree. I find settings that work for me from all available and they by no means are "the best". They just work for me and I seem to be able to find stuff with detectors so I am happy. The point I again want to emphasize is that the default modes and their suggested uses really were well tested and thought out and are the best place to start. No matter how it sorts out or what others end up doing I am really clicking with Equinox and that's just the way it is. I am quite convinced right now that people who have used BBS/FBS in the past and found it wanting are the ones that will like Equinox. Those that really love BBS/FBS - not so much. I hope this helps rather than confuses. Old timers will get what I am going on about. People new to detecting - stick to the suggested defaults!!! You can easily ruin a great detector not knowing what you are doing. Don't expect to get in a Formula 1 race car and win races on the first go. You need to learn high performance driving first. Start slow and take it easy - Equinox has plenty of power to spare.

First of all Cal I want to thank you for using default settings when starting out. Too many people are making a mess out of Equinox out the starting gate trying to outthink the designers. My settings vary very little from defaults, just tweaks really. Random tips. People may be overly entranced with Field 2 as a “magic mode”. Park 2 and Field 2 are hotter on tiny stuff and weak conductors. So much so that Field 2 by default has target id 1 and 2 blocked to eliminate the tiniest non-ferrous targets, foil, and coke. In my opinion blocking this range takes some of the edge off that I seek. If tiny stuff or coke is not driving you crazy open it up. I open it up first and only block it if those items are creating problems for me. I don’t like blocking things by default. If tiny stuff is creating an actual problem it may be better instead to run Park 1 or Field 1 instead which are not as hot on these tiny objects in the first place, especially if hunting high conductors. No right or wrong here just food for thought. For me the surface target indication is a triple hit as the coil edges and middle pass over the shallowest targets. Equinox by design will not overload in situations where other detectors go into continuous overload. It can run on magnetite black sand that will blow other VLF detectors off the air. I have had problems with Euro machines going into continuous overload in many places in the west. It is unlikely this will be an issue with Equinox, especially with Beach 2 as emergency fallback. The sheer power of the machine does also make targets sound shallow for quite a few inches. Remember that depth meters are just signal strength calibrated to a known target like a dime. Modulation requires the signal strength to fade or that the machine have some other way to know the target is getting deeper. The problem? with Equinox is signal strength does not begin to drop off until you get fairly deep. If modulation started at the surface deep targets would get way too weak. I am not saying these things do not have possible fixes but there are reasons why it is the way it is, not just simple oversight on the part of the engineers. Multi-IQ really is different and everyone is having to learn new things about it, including the design team. It is critical when dealing with ferrous to open the ferrous range up so you can hear the ferrous component of a signal. Many ferrous items give off both ferrous and non-ferrous signals, and by blocking non-ferrous audio all you hear is the non-ferrous component. Set tones and volumes such that you do not suffer from audio overload i.e. lower the ferrous volume. For me 50 tones wide open is the way I normally hunt, for all the reasons noted above but five tones offers more customization flexibility, especially on the 800. Great video, great first hunt, that ring may be more valuable than you think! Thanks for posting. P.S. I liked the ring for another reason - the recent debate on nickel signals and pull tabs. My take was you just never know what will pop up in that range and getting too fixated on one target id can miss some great finds. You just proved that!!

You earned your nickname Lunk for a reason - congratulations Keith! And I know no matter how much gold you find, that had to have really been a thrill.

I am happy you posted what you did Steve because I have been trying to not make every prospector think Equinox is something it is not. That is why I have not been posting about the machine hardly at all on this forum and in fact created the new forum to keep all the buzz away from here. It would be easy to hype it up as a gold machine because it can get the gold, but there would indeed be blowback over the coils from some. One way or another I am going to get a handle on it however. Saw this video elsewhere...

I have to admit being a prospector that the bottle cap threat does not particularly deter me. I have normally beach hunted with PI detectors. This was a haul from a couple weeks in Hawaii with my Garrett ATX, and it was bobby pins and rusted nails that were the most fun. I am just a digging fool I guess! Anyway, no way is Equinox going to be worse than a PI so I will be just fine personally.

PI detectors are pretty forgiving on ground balance, and the ATX does save the last setting, so maybe you are already good to go? If in doubt first thing I do is a factory reset....

It would be nice to know what “stronger build” actually means.

A target id video... Another thread with target id information

Welcome to the forum Walter! I try to stay neutral but AMDS was founded by myself and my school chum Dudley Benesch in 1976. After 35 years in business Dudley and I were ready to move on, but we did not want to see something we built for decades come to an end and we certainly did not want to put our very large staff out of work. We managed to create a leveraged buyout for the employees and the company has now been employee owned since 2010. Pretty cool I think and Brian Berkhahn there will bend over backwards to help his customers. I know for a fact they have more Equinox detectors in the pipeline than most others dealers due to the strong financial resources of the company allowing for a very large initial order. And being off the beaten trail - well, an option worth looking at. I will get off that soapbox now and leave it be. I am not here to sell detectors to people. That's Brian's job!

EQUINOX and the dreaded coke problem… Gold coins, micro-gold nuggets (0.7g) and cut quarters, located in the ground under coke, are no problem when you wield the new EQUINOX! I hate hearing coke, as it breaks your concentration and you always end up thinking “what have I missed.” This is the main reason I moved onto the Minelab multi-frequency machines. Hopefully this blog will put you at ease with a commonly asked question on Facebook and various forums – “Does the EQUINOX hear coke?” Full article at Treasure Talk

I like the jewelry people are wearing (losing) in Southern California! Those are seriously nice finds.

If water gets into the plug area it will not be able to get into the electronics, but it could corrode the headphone contacts.

I hear you Mike - me neither. Seems like people come looking for me. Those days are probably over now though!

Never underestimate how fast battery technology will advance and prices drop. The battery in Equinox right now is the perfect example. There will be a battery in three years that costs not a dime more, but will be a better battery. Or the existing battery will drop in price by half or more. That’s just the way the technology rolls.

I use my Apple chargers.