Steve Herschbach

Same story as phoenix - never used the Evo but the UFO coil sure was good to me. Great design for covering lots of ground. https://www.nuggetfinder.com.au/products

Hopefully somebody will be able to run both in Virginia and let us know, because I don't know. Minelab has been very specific to testers that they do not want us speculating on BBS vs FBS vs Multi-IQ until the engineers themselves tell us what the technical differences really are and what to expect. I expect those explanations to come in the next few weeks. I will immediately add to that discussion when it comes my own personal thoughts on where various strengths and weaknesses of the three systems are at. I think everyone is caught a bit off guard because Minelab is thinking AT Max versus Deus versus Equinox when many longtime Minelab owners are thinking Excalibur vs CTX vs Equinox. Usually when discussing detectors you want to stay apples to apples, and that usually means how do similarly priced detectors compare. Things get stickier when trying to compare a $900 detector to a $1500 detector to a $2500 detector - and all three still have their place. The bottom line right now is Minelab is focused on competing with the competition and so explaining this Minelab versus that Minelab is a little less of a priority at the moment. Important of course, and info soon, but if you want them to ship Equinox then that is where they need to focus all the effort right now. It's an all hands on deck thing at the end. Anyway, Minelab by rights gets first swing at all that, and then when the gloves come off a few of us testers can take a stab at it. Let's get real though - it will all stay up in the air until those end user videos show up from Culpepper. I am pretty sure Daniel (TN) will be on top of it, and he will be quick and to the point with a thumb up or down.

Ultimately who knows exactly why some things get found and others missed. There are so many variables all we can do is talk generalities, and those have exceptions. Ultimately as much as I like theory and discussing it when I hit the field I am far more practical. It is just kind of a "whatever works" thing and no one detector has a corner on what works. Equinox appeals to me because it packs quite a toolbox of different possibilities in a compact, lightweight package. It will not always be the best choice, but there is enough there to work with I am confident I will not be left wanting very often.

And just to come right out and say it, Dilek confirms a waterproof Makro for sure in 2018. http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/nokta-makro/564469-new-makro-nokta-detector-release-2018-a.html#post5651892

I have not really focused at all on doing much jewelry hunting with Equinox yet, although I have found typical junk jewelry finds while coin detecting. One silver ring in there I believe but need to clean it up. I did a few hours wading at Tahoe but no gold. I think with ground still frozen it’s time to get with the jewelry detecting which does not require digging a plug. Good idea - thanks!

At least there is always pocket change to find, and it adds up surprising fast. Good digging!

My multimeter shows nothing, which is as it should be.

There is a Minelab dealer meeting coming up in about ten days, and I have to think all the pricing and other missing details are going to have to be available for dealers at that time. I would therefore look for price updates in a couple weeks.

I only use pinpoint functions sporadically, but the one on Equinox is grabbing me. Just push pinpoint button and it locks into pinpoint. Work the target a second or two and it magically zooms in, but then holds a steady small tone over the center of target. Very quick, very intuitive. There are no adjustments or on/off - it just works. Most of the time I can just quickly eyeball the beeps and be right on target, but the pinpoint is nice for getting centered on those weaker signals.

I thought it was a washer. If it was not for the square hole I would have tossed it.

Well, I guess it depends on whose conventional wisdom we are talking about. I find that result to be exactly what I would expect, but maybe that is because small non-ferrous is my specialty. I think people tend to view the discrimination scale as low conductive at one end and high conductive at the other. That is the way it is always marketed and explained. However, if all a person does is hunt non-ferrous items, there is a more useful way to look at things. If items are all identical in size, then the discrimination scale does sort itself by conductivity. A nickel reads lower than a dime, for instance. But what if the items are all of similar conductivity? Say lead, gold, aluminum. How does that sort out? It's actually more about size than conductivity. Small gold, small lead, small aluminum, all read very low on the target id scale. The larger the items get, the higher they read on the target id scale, even though the composition is the same. Surprisingly, this also applies even to silver. Small thin cut silver reads very low. The reality if you start to think about it is what we are really talking about is detecting small stuff versus large stuff. And finally, its this simple. High frequencies hit harder on and better sniff out small items. That is why gold nugget hunters employ higher frequency detectors. In or out of trash, a high frequency machine is a higher energy detector that can better induce eddy signals into small conductive items. Low frequencies are lazier both in response and ability to energize small targets. The reason that low frequencies can penetrate ground better is backwards of what people think. High frequencies not only light up small targets better, but they highlight and enhance ground mineral issues. High frequencies "see" more ground mineralization, and this blinds them at depth. Low frequencies do not energize the ground as much, rendering it less visible to the detector, which still being sufficient to light up and detect larger items at depth. In extreme low mineral ground high frequencies actually punch very deep, but as you increase the mineralization, high frequencies lose depth at a faster rate than low frequencies. Anyway, I bet if you look at the targets you are finding it is the smaller stuff that was missed before that the higher frequencies are now revealing for you. That is not to say that some large stuff may not show up also, but the strength of all high frequency detectors is in finding small targets. The strength of low frequencies is actually that they are insensitive to really tiny stuff giving them better ground penetration. High frequency seems magic in this discussion, but the whole thing goes astray in modern trash. The reason the Gold Bug 2 is not used to coin hunt much is that it will pick up every tiny bit of aluminum ever dropped and chopped. In areas where you are basically wanting to recover all non-ferrous targets higher frequencies are great. But get into modern aluminum, and a lower frequency can simply ignore a lot of thin foil that a hot machine will really bang on. For normal coin detecting in parks lower frequencies are quieter on the tiny trash and still great on coins. All this is why 6 - 8 kHz was THE coin hunting frequency for a long time. Target ID / VDI Numbers For Gold Nuggets And Gold Jewelry

It is true that the lower the frequency, the more EMI a person tends to encounter. I have spent a lot of time with the Impact, Deus, DFX, V3i, and now Equinox playing around with frequency stuff, and every one of them tends to run into more EMI at lower frequencies, like Deus 4 kHz for instance. It just depends on the machine also. The F75 at 13 kHz was an EMI monster, but that is mostly because of the highly sensitive high gain circuit. The 19 kHz machines on the other hand tend to be almost totally immune to EMI in most places. The bottom line is choosing a specific single frequency can be a great aid in certain situations where the small degree of adjustment available on most single frequency detectors is just not enough.

Nobody mentioned this one. I want to get Equinox into some ghost town situations, and so literally the day before snow blew in over the high country I drove up into the Sierras to find a ghost town I had not been to before. It was a day trip and most of the time was spent getting there and scoping out the location, etc. I did wander around for a couple hours digging anything non-ferrous. Equinox ran fine, not much in the way of finds except this. Looks to be my first Chinese coin find, but it is so corroded away there is not much else to get excited about over it. It's always fun to find something though, and now that I have scouted the location I hope to get back up there when the snow goes away to give it a more serious hunt.

I normally hunt the deserts of Nevada and the northern Sierra Mountain region looking for gold nuggets. My main machine for Nevada is the GPZ 7000. California, there are many old mining sites that were occupied by large numbers of people in the late 1800 to early 1900s and later. There may or may not be much wood left, but nails and old steel can fragments are littered about in huge volumes. And often quite deep in fully material. It stands to reason some of the best remaining large nuggets are in that deep stuff, but the odds are vastly higher it will be a large square or can. A GPZ can punch 2-3 feet on a can. Easy. There are the forested areas; I swear every one has been logged in the last 150 years. Slivers off old drag cables and even cable style bulldozers, etc. left tiny ferrous bits all over the Sierras. No matter how isolated the location, if miners or loggers were there before me, trash abounds. For blue sky work up there I need to be able to cover ground efficiently, and I can’t do that if I have to stop and retrieve some small ferrous thing from the bottom of a foot of duff, and have to do it every ten feet. So a main focus for me is the idea of using the Equinox 12” x 15” coil on a properly balanced shaft for use as a way to not only cover ground, but get some serious depth in cobble piles. I hate spending an hour in a cobble pile to recover a can from 2 feet in a cobble pile. The hole caves in six times before you get to your target. Cobble pile work can be unsteady and dangerous, and so an easy handling lighter weight detector is preferable. Plus I know I can snipe small gold with the Equinox if I am in the mood. Better yet, I can hunt silver with it when I get home at local parks. And hunt up at a Lake Tahoe. And Hawaii or wherever I get to next - maybe just the coast a few hours drive from here. I am honestly tempted to put all my other detectors on hiatus for a year, even my beloved GPZ 7000, and spend 2018 doing nothing but use Equinox. No particular reason except that it just sounds fun, and would force me to get out of my comfort zone and focus on something else. True story is the reason I have never found a gold coin yet is a little bit bad luck, but mostly because I simply am not looking for them. I generally can find what I set out to find, but that almost always means “gold nugget”. I’m feeling like maybe it’s time to knock that bucket list item at a time when I am all fired up and raring to go with Equinox. I would be lying though if I said I really think I could go through the year not using my GPZ 7000 - that’s just crazy talk!

Posted November 17: “The Li-ion battery in the EQUINOX detectors is easily replaceable. Minelab has not yet released official information as to whether or not a user can change the battery over without voiding warranty or if we recommend the battery is changed by a dealer or service centre. Further information about battery care and maintenance will be provided in the EQUINOX Instruction Manual, which has not been released yet. This will be available when the product is available. The EQUINOX detectors are not designed to run from AA batteries. However, you can use a standard USB power bank (as you do with mobile phones) to recharge the built-in battery and operate the detector at the same time.” I suspect the person you talked to meant the Getting Started Guide - it's easy to get confused on this stuff, and trust me, not everyone knows everything at Minelab. I am fine with pdf manuals personally since all my detector manuals are on my phone and iPad. Let's be honest, Minelab did not start this. I am an Apple guy and none of their stuff comes with anything other than a Quick Guide. Same with most any computer gear I purchase. Paper manuals actually do cost a lot to print these days, and one change or mistake and they are all wrong. Electronic devices of any sort, this is getting to be the norm. Again, not defending it, but it is the way things are heading, like it or not. It's also a function of an early announcement or release. People who hear about Equinox for the very first time in 60 days will have no idea a manual never existed early on. But we can tell them about the old days back when nobody knew anything.....

Both have the same Beach Mode, but the fact is that A. Beach Mode works only in multifrequency and B. Nobody has any idea how Minelab mixes and matches different frequencies in different modes other than that Beach Mode multifrequency is not the same as Park Mode multifrequency for instance. So while the Beach Mode is identical on the Equinox 600 and Equinox 800, until Minelab clears all this up it is all speculation as to what Beach Mode is doing different than say, Field Mode. Put another way, Field Mode multifrequency will not work in saltwater but Beach Mode multifrequency will. What we are seeing is a true digital program based detector where different modes are for all intents and purposes different metal detectors.

I got a chance to handle the old Go-Find models and it was the somewhat loose plastic feel to the whole thing that turned me off. I was at the dealer meeting where they were introduced (I was there to speak about GPZ) and I was offered one for free. I declined under the pretense that surely a dealer there needed it more for their purposes than me, just an old retired bloke. The truth is I did not want to accept a freebie only to take it home and sell it immediately! My perception was that it was a kids toy, and nothing wrong with that, but not what I needed. Hopefully the new models have been firmed up to feel more solid. I think Minelab is on the right path here in trying to make a detector that appeals to the younger generation. But that is another area where they fell down on the job. The phone app for the Go-Find 60 was more advanced and had some cool functions but I never saw anything ever released by Minelab that explained what it was all about or the perceived benefits.

I had a friend who liked to find old banks in small, obscure towns where he would get bags of half dollars, and he told me he did very well at it. When I was younger I used to do it with dimes but that was a long time ago. Great idea, and possibly more productive than metal detecting for silver these days!

http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/5002-600-vs-800-differences-more-than-just-a-gold-prospecting-mode/?do=findComment&comment=52305 I am pushing as hard as I can guys or is it more like pulling hard on the leash? It is walking a tightrope and the other testers are wisely keeping their mouths shut for fear of saying the wrong thing. I may end up looking like a loose cannon, and there might be repercussions regarding that, but with Equinox I am throwing caution at least a little to the wind because you all want to know things and I am dying to tell you. Let’s not derail this thread and leave it for low frequency discussion but I promise I am trying hard to get to the point where I can say more regarding Equinox and Gold Mode. There is a dealer meeting coming up in like 10 days where Minelab will spill the beans to the dealer network. Everyone knows dealers leak like a sieve, so Minelab has to know that the ability to keep this stuff under wraps is fading fast. I expect in a couple weeks the lid will be totally off.

Opps, sorry Randy, hope it does not feel like I am picking on you! You are going by the past, and that has been true in the past, I agree. The old idea is that single frequencies always have more punch than multifrequency. The problem is - that's not really the case with Multi-IQ. Not only are you unlikely to see more depth in 5 kHz only, but your target id accuracy will drop off because you are no longer doing target comparisons at multiple frequencies. That said, I also have not compared the Equinox at 5 khz running the large coil against the same configuration while running Multi-IQ on your ground, so I admit that in the end I do not know either and you may very well prove to be right. The point I am making is the old rules no longer apply with Multi-IQ, so be careful about applying past assumptions. My best advice to anyone getting an Equinox is to try and start with a fresh mind. It really is new and different and past assumptions no longer hold. We all have to start over, and honestly that's part of the fun. Until recently I would have said a multifrequency machine can't possibly compete with a single frequency gold prospecting machine. I am not able to prove that true any longer with Equinox.

I have imported both into Google Earth and Garmin Basecamp. As long as the data gets exported to a standard format, people should be able to pick and choose what application they want to import into by simply using the import function on those applications. You could probably write a safer, easier app that what I have come up with, which is more a manual process, so stay tuned. I have already exported from the old GPZ firmware directly, but obviously the format has changed somehow (probably to save the new patch mode settings) and so I need to check and compensate for that.

How do you know this to be true? Have you used the Equinox and large coil and compared 5 khz to Multi-IQ? I am not disputing 5 khz and a big coil are not a good idea, but I am not sure how you could know that 5 khz alone will outperform Multi-IQ.

Anything saved when running the newer firmware can't be accessed when downgrading to the older firmware. The only way right now to have a functional GPZ interface with XChange is stay with the older firmware. I am frustrated also and will be posting soon on how to hack the GPZ to dump data into some other system and cut XChange out of the loop. I will also show how to get existing data out of XChange into something else. This is obviously not a priority for Minelab and although I have been a proponent of and avid user of XChange up to now I do believe it might be time for me to move on. I am not satisfied with the current deadlock and need to have a different game plan for the upcoming season. Even if Minelab updates XChange to work with the latest version of the firmware, if it is not upgraded to also include an export/import function then I am still considering abandoning XChange. That is just a basic functionality I assumed would be added in time, but if simply getting XChange to work with the latest version of GPZ firmware is taking this long, then hoping for an import/export function may be nothing more than wishful thinking on my part. A shame really, as I thought the system had great potential and could have become the "glue" for an ecosystem of Minelab product that could all use and benefit from XChange. Anyway, back to the hack. I have already done it personally and computer savvy people can gain enough clues to figure it out themselves. Hacks already exist for the CTX 3030 that can be applied to the GPZ 7000. Anyone interested can find details at Access and Export XChange Data and Direct GPS Track Data Extraction. Like I said, I have done this already for the GPZ but need to boil the process down to be as simple and foolproof as possible before publishing the methodology. What I would be shooting for is the ability to go ahead and use the GPZ built in GPS system, but then dump the data directly from the GPZ to either Google earth kml files of Garmin compatible format. Either can easily be converted to the other so I just need to decide what works best from a generic standpoint.

There is a very important thought process at work here. Nobody, but nobody, not me, not the other testers, not even Minelab, knows exactly just what the Equinox is capable of and what uses people will find for the various modes and frequencies. To a large degree there is a bit of a "throw in the kitchen sink" thing at work here. Then turn it loose in the wild and see what everyone does with it. Collect feedback and data, and incorporate into later models down the road. Why include single frequencies? Good question. The genuine answer - why not? They can do it so they did. But it will mostly just be a way to show people how great Multi-IQ is and how Minelab's statements regarding single frequency really do have a basis in reality. So far for me the single frequency modes are mostly just a fallback position for extreme EMI mitigation and a way to tune the machine down, not up. But that is not to say that tens of thousands of users worldwide experimenting with all these modes and frequency options will not discover uses or oddball applications that nobody anticipated. I never knew I would end up using my cell phone more as a GPS than as a phone until I got it and used it. Equinox is the same thing. It really is new, and figuring out just exactly what it does in the real world and how best to apply it for different uses is going to be a huge part of the fun here once the machines hit the street.

I have been keeping the Equinox stuff over on the Minelab Equinox Forum including the original post that resulted in the Treasure talk blog entry. The interest level is so high it needed its own discussion area. No doubt it will be the best selling detector of 2018. The obvious target for Minelab is the XP Deus and Garrett AT Max - coin, relic, jewelry, both on land and in water. However, like most top "do-it-all" detectors both Equinox models are perfectly capable of finding gold nuggets. While these are not going to be sold specifically as prospecting detectors, anyone interested in a general purpose VLF that can also be used as a VLF prospecting machine might want to take a look at Equinox. I think it is going to be a very good detector for working around trashy mining camps and hydraulic pits, tailing piles, or anywhere else gold lurks where ferrous trash is a big problem. I have detected gold nuggets weighing under 1 grain (480 grains per Troy Ounce) in the field so I know the machine is capable. However, it has many functions beyond just prospecting and so is more for the person wanting a detector for more than one purpose. Personally, I have never used a detector that does such a wide range of things so very well. So about time a little something got posted about it here - thanks Flak!