Steve Herschbach

I have not tried to connect to XChange2 if that is what you mean. But yes, I have had to hook to my PC for software updates.

That is an incredibly kind and generous offer to a stranger - kudos to you Skate!! Terrific starter tips from everyone else also!

Basically it is a flat plastic screen. The glare will be related more to the screen protector in use than the actual screen. Regardless, as a flat surface it is usually glare free, until you turn it exactly right into the sun and now you get a flash of glare. Just another detector in that regard, no better or worse I guess since it’s something I don’t notice.

I assumed that when the 70 page owners manual came out there would be people finding all the neat previously unmentioned function details and would be excitedly discussing them. Who knew that the “what comes in the box” photos freely available here and elsewhere for a couple months would suddenly be the issue of prime importance now that some people have noticed after a couple months that no charger comes in the box. Wow, secrets hidden in plain sight! “Charger Gate” is a perfect characterization. The decision may have been logical - I have no less than maybe thirty ways to charge my Equinox, and have randomly grabbed any USB charger in sight the last couple months will no ill effects. Yet the blowback may have Minelab wishing they tossed one in. Good chargers typically retail around $10. Then you have adapters for international use to deal with. Whatever, it is what it is. Hopefully dealers are educating themselves so they know to inform customers they need one. Online dealers should add a purchase option for one on their sales pages.

Just to repeat, there are 6 “Profiles” (three modes each with two profiles) on the Equinox 600, each of which saves its own settings. The Equinox 800 has the four modes (Park, Field, Beach, Gold) each with two saved profiles, plus the separate “User Profile” which can store a complete custom version of any of the other eight profiles. With time and a little tweaking I am sure most people will settle into a few saved sets that cover their needs. Each profile can be reset on its own to its factory default or you can do a full master reset of all profiles.

Gold Mode is extremely high gain, extremely sparky. From my perspective as a prospector Gold Mode is for finding sub grain gold. Yet you do have a great deal of control, including notch discrimination. Like many things Equinox there really is no equivalent in other detector’s so people are going to have to experiment and find what it can and can’t do. I hate to admit it but between weather, time constraints, and on going software tweaking my ability to fully learn the ins and outs of Equinox is not much ahead of anyone else’s in some regards. It is only now that the software is locked down that I can truly learn anything.

I used to do nugget hunting classes in Alaska but it’s not something I am doing currently. There are a few western dealers that offer classes for those that are interested. In my opinion nugget detecting is one of the most challenging types of detecting, and that can make classes very worthwhile.

It is simply a default that was deemed a good idea for the Gold Mode and not the other modes, but easily engaged at the touch of a button. However, many detectors can have issues with employing ground tracking on saltwater beaches or alkali ground. The salt range and gold range overlap, and aggressive tracking in a salt environment might tune out small gold. I always use manual myself in a salt or alkali environment. Even in prospect mode I usually turn tracking off unless I need it to help me in really bad variable ground. Defaults and presets are just best guesses. You can’t possibly come up with one group of settings that works for everyone. If you could, we would not need settings!

Definitely not at this time at least. You never know what the future may bring but right now Equinox does not interface with XChange2 at all. You cannot save settings outside the machine and you cannot adjust it via any external methods.

The presets are pretty good. I am hard of hearing so I tweak the audio, and as Jackpine notes I will push the sensitivity. However, the default sensitivity of 20 is quite good. I may go 21 or 22 but above that you are getting into the “red zone”. The thing is Equinox saves your settings independently in each mode except for the few global settings. So the presets just get you going, but after one use you may end up with slightly different settings as you tweak the machine for your own purposes. I will discuss nugget hunting separately in another post soon.

You can either run the detector from an external charging device or charge it from an external charging device, but you cannot do both at once. They are awkwardly saying that if you run the machine while attached to a charging device charging is going to take longer....... because you are running the machine and not charging it!

I assume it just notifies you of the call? Don’t know directly as I admit the phone and music functions got no experimentation from me. Still, the ability to interface nearly any Bluetooth audio device is interesting.

I have to say Chase I am amazed that you think no thought went into the decisions about what features to have in each model and that the decisions were arbitrary? The Equinox 600 is specifically aimed at people that do not think the features you are talking about are important. You think they are, so you get the Equinox 800. Other people think they are not important, they get the Equinox 600. By definition people get to choose what they think is important or not. You may disagree with the design decisions that were made, but just because you disagree with them does not mean a lot of thought did not go into all this. I know I have poured blood , sweat, and tears into the project as have many, many others. There are millions of dollars and the future of a company riding on this Chase. Not one single detail of anything, from the color used on a page in the manual to the icon on a button, took place without tons of meetings and input from experts. There is not a single unthought or arbitrary thing in these machines and to imply so just because you are confused - really? Heck, I thought this would be a big day of celebration about machines shipping and the new manuals being out, not a defense of the Equinox 600. I am taking the day off - see you all tomorrow.

Chase, in my opinion the only confusion lies in the fact that both machines are covered in one manual. If a separate manual existed for the 600 that simply left out all the Equinox 800 information, it would work better in that regard. I might just make one up when I have time. If there are things you are confused about I can try and address them, that is what the forum is for. The two models are what they are however, and everyone has their own opinions about what should or should not have been in the Equinox 600 versus Equinox 800. You are not happy with the decisions that were made, and maybe a couple months ago that may have made a difference, but it is officially too late to do anything about it except educate people in those areas where confusion may exist. There is a lot to absorb in the manual, and it just might take more than 12 hours for people to digest everything in it, and longer yet to fully understand it. And again, is that not what the forum is for?

Chase, if the Equinox 600 had all the features of the Equinox 800 it would be an Equinox 800. I guess I am surprised you would call the Equinox 600 the “unnecessarily crippled 600”. What a horrible characterization for an incredibly great detector. Two detectors, one with less features for less money. That is the way it works with everything in retail. Is the White’s VX3 an unnecessarily crippled V3i? Is the Fisher F70 an unnecessarily crippled F75? Products are differentiated by the features they have or that they lack. People evaluate those features and decide how much they are willing to spend extra to get those features. You are being offered options and choices. I think the Equinox 600 is a killer deal and I could use it and do just fine. It will find near anything the Equinox 800 will for $250 less. Tone options are just that, but at the end of the day people saving $250 are doing it because they are not willing to pay for the very same options you are decrying as critical. Anyway, you say you don’t want an Equinox 600 because of the features it lacks. You are getting the 800 instead. So now you have decided to complain about the Equinox 600 because, well, because for less money you get less features? Or is it just that you personally would have left those features in and left others out? All I can say is If you don’t like what the Equinox 600 offers, don’t get one, and you aren’t. The most feature packed detector ever offered for $649 is “unnecessarily crippled”? Where is the better value for the money? What does that say about the competition? This information has been available for months, and now it is a huge issue? Color me confused, but I just don’t get it.

From the Minelab Equinox Full Instruction Manual, page 56-57 (click to enlarge)... Welcome to 21st century metal detecting!

From the Minelab Equinox Full Instruction Manual, page 63 (click to enlarge)... Portions marked with asterisk are Equinox 800 only. Minelab Equinox Factory Presets

From the Minelab Equinox Full Instruction Manual, page 48 (click to enlarge)...

You would know Carl and I am sure not interested in attempting anything like that. Still, It seems to me that with two of the old V3s I could transfer a program from one machine to the other. If I could intercept that transfer it would then be a matter of making program changes one at a time and noting the which parameters are passed and how they change with each transfer. With that information in hand a PC interface could be created that could duplicate or modify the same parameters. But you would be stuck using old V3s that still had the interface code intact. Or not. I really am just talking out of my posterior! The idea of lost knowledge is intriguing. I once asked about simply adding frequency shift to the MXT. What I was basically told was that was all coded back when Dave was working at White's, and that basically nobody knew anymore exactly what the code did and how to modify it without making a mess. The longest program I ever wrote ran into many pages and although relatively short and simplistic, I know anybody else would have a major chore trying to figure out what it does exactly and how. I would have to spend quite a bit of time myself just to get my head back into that program if I wanted to modify it myself. I would have to expect that a person like you is now imposing strict documentation guidelines, but back in the early days undocumented "spaghetti code" was more common than not.

The lower rod by itself is 18" but the whole unit collapsed is only 21" so hardly worth the effort to pull it apart. Kind of the whole reason to do this is to get away from having to disassemble the machine. You could probably get a Deus clip and glue or otherwise attach it to the Golden Mask handle, or just fabricate your own. The following threads may give you some ideas. My next project will be to convert a Minelab Equinox to this rod. XP DEUS / Golden Mask Rod Conversion Minelab Gold Monster / Golden Mask Rod Conversion

In my very limited experience such machines are not near as simple as the marketing makes it look. The imaging is usually very vague requiring a skilled operator and a high degree of interpretive skills. Nothing I hunt for is large enough to even trigger such devices, which are best for looking for the proverbial buried treasure chest.

I doubt the hardware changed - probably just some code removed as you are guessing. Remember that old models were eligible for a software "upgrade" to V3i status, which conveniently removes the "Share" capability at the same time.

Yeah, you are right of course. I was referring more to the "Forum" as a whole.

The original V3 included detector to detector communications for transferring programs between users. This capability was eliminated in later versions, and was probably the key to the wireless transmission protocols. A person might have to track down an original V3 is they wanted to try and hack the system. Spectra V³ Owners Guide bottom of page 30: • Share - Allows sharing of program settings by Transmitting (sending a program) to another Spectra or receiving (getting a program) from another Spectra. • Transmit - Send one or more of your programs to another Spectra. ENTER, then select where to get the programs to send. Menu (Menu & Live Control List) or Library. Menu/Tab to SEND, ENTER. Wait until transmitting completes one or two cycles through 100%. Press ENTER to end transmission. Menu/Tab to EXIT, press ENTER Note: The other Spectra has to be set to RECEIVE, on the same channel as you are sending. Saved Programs; Select a program from your Menu or Live Control listing. Library, select All Programs or just an individual Program to send from your Library. Channel; select a channel free of interference (majority green in bar) and select same channel within other Spectra (Receive Unit). Speed; Select the speed the data is sent, mid range to slower speeds generally more reliable. • Receive - a program from another Spectra that is Transmitting. • ENTER, then select how to receive the program. • ASK, Asks you (after receiving) how and where to save each program. STOP – Stop receiving Programs. Ignore – Don’t SAVE this Program (skip). Create Library – Add Program to existing Library. Create Program – Add Program to regular MENU and Live Controls (if there is room) , not Library. • Update Library – Replace existing library programs with new programs being received. • Create Library – Add receiving Programs to existing Library. • Create Program – Add receiving Programs only to Menu & Live Controls (if there is room). • Update Saved – Replace Programs of same name with new received Programs. • Update Current – Update only Programs of same name on Menu and Live Control listings. • Don’t Rename – Keep same name as sent. A. B. C. added to front of new programs using an existing name.

That was true initially but changed some time ago, so whoever is saying that has not kept up. Gold Mode has 20 khz, 40 khz, and Multi-IQ options.