abenson

I've had both but not at the same time. Got rid of both too. Although I didn't compare them head to head at the same time. I do have a coin garden I ran both of them through and spend hours changing settings and modes to optimize depth. In either case the bigger coils got very little depth advantage over the stock 11" in my soil on a dime sized target. If I had to chose I think I would go with the ML 12 x 15 coil just because it's a little lighter. The only reason I can see getting a bigger coil for the Equinox is for ground coverage. Unlike a PI, I generally see very little depth advantage with bigger coils in my soil. I have not used the bigger Equinox coils on a beach. But I would assume they would act similar to the FBS machines in that low mineral beaches you do see depth advantages but black sand beaches you see very little and sometimes worse performance.

Simultaneous multi frequency would seem to be the logical choice, given every other mfg is coming out with them. Now if they made the coil attached with a cable and 100% proof that would be awesome.

I took it out relic hunting for about 2 hours and after those 2 hours my arm was done. I ended up selling it. To me the extra coverage and slight depth advantage was not worth the extra coil weight. I can swing the 11" all day and even a big 14" on the GPX without a bungee. That big coil really throws of the balance and makes it very nose heavy (more so than the 12 x 15). Yea I could have added a counterweight if I really wanted to keep it. But when I say slightly deeper than the 11" I mean just that. On a dime sized target in my soil we're talking maybe a 1/2 inch deeper. On a silver dollar sized target maybe 2" at the most. That was trying all types of settings and modes (except the gold modes). In mild ground that coil probably does get deeper, unfortunately not in mine. It would be a great coil for a wet sand beach hunter where extra coverage is needed. But as a relic hunter I'd rather have the slightly better separation over ground coverage.

I think it's going to depend on your soil minerals as to the depth you get. I've had all the coils made for the XP Deus. In my area the 11 x 13 is no deeper than even the 9 round. I've settled on the 9" round and elliptical coil for all my detecting. I really think the Deus was designed around the 9" round. It's well balanced and performs well in most scenarios.

Got out again this weekend and dug more bottle and did a little metal detecting too.

Got the 15" a few days ago. I've been testing it out in my yard. Appears to be slightly deeper than the 11" but is also heavier. Hoping to get it out in the field this weekend and see how long I can swing it.

Yea I got an email myself and passed. This is the second time I've been offered the AQ in the last 3 months. So maybe they are having a hard time selling them. Yes it's the limited they are still trying to get out there. I really have no interest in the AQ at this point, I'm waiting for the land version.

We think it was a dumping spot on the outskirts of town. Industrial building are now being built in the area.

I normally don't dig for bottles but when my Brother-In-Law told me about all the glass they were seeing at this site, I decided to go take a look. The site dates from and the bottle we were digging are from 1850's to about 1900. Nothing real valuable came out but there were some real heartbreakers (broken bottles) like log cabin bitters, California bitters and a few others. We also recovered marbles, coins and tokens, but nothing real exciting to mention specifically. We used a trenching method to recover the bottles. There was about 8-10 inches of topsoil then a layer of trash that extended down to about 3 feet deep. We would dig about a 3 foot by 3 foot hole straight down and then start trenching and backfilling as we went. Between the 4 people that were there I would guess we recovered about 150 bottles. I will say I'm feeling it this morning after digging about 9 hours over the weekend. Hope to get back there again next weekend and I'll post my finds of that trip next week. Pictured below are the bottles I recovered.

Nice bunch of bottles and jugs!

The ORX (you may already know this) has 2 preset gold programs. They are Gold and Fine Gold, very similar to the Gold Field program on the Deus. It's basically an all metal motion mode. On the ORX Gold is set at recovery 2 and Fine Gold recovery 2.5. Fine Gold does give a sharper response to the targets and I believe that is due to recovery speed. The machine also runs quieter in mineralized soil and hot rocks are easier to ID. Yes the meteorite is nice sized. One of the reasons the meteorite was still there is due to so many hot rocks being in the same area. I found 5 rocks that gave a nice sharp signal and were magnetic. 4 of them turned out to be magnetite only 1 was a meteorite. Most people discard or don't dig them at all, and figure they are hot rocks. Yes PI's will pick up meteorites and a lot of people use them to do just that.

Maybe this should be in the Detector Prospector section but wanted to keep the XP section alive. I was in Las Vegas last weekend and decided to swing over to the Gold Basin area and do a little metal detecting. There were 3 of us and we didn't find much. But we did manage to find some gold and meteorites. The ORX is turning out to be a pretty good machine. Not as deep on the really small stuff, like a Gold Monster would pick up but it's not far behind.

Wow nice trime! I love finding those coins.

Thanks for all the great comments guy.

Thanks, Tom yes fairly rare although I have a few older sites around me that have given up some Spanish silver. This is my second 2R. I've also found 3 1/2 R's and a 1R. This last coin however is the oldest I've found.

Got out this weekend for about 4 hours with the Equinox 800 and 11" coil. The outing started out a little slow and after 3 hours I was getting a little discouraged. I had dug a few small musket balls, a dropped Sharps bullet and a crushed cuff button. So decided to head over to where my 2 buddies were digging. As I changed directions and worked toward them, I got a jumpy 15-16 on the Equinox and was rewarded with not 1 but 2 J hooks in the same hole. The area I worked between where I was and where my buddies were hunting was loaded with iron and progress was slow in getting there. When I got about 50 yards from my one friend I got a 19-20 signal and dug a zinc penny about 2 inches down. I thought great what's that doing here. Not 5 feet from the zinc penny I got an identical 19-20 signal only deeper. My first thought was another zinc penny. But at about 6 inches down in the bottom of the plug was a nice 1857-O half dime. That made my day! I walked over to show my closest friend and asked how long he was planning to stay as it was his permission. He told me he actually needed to get started back toward the truck now. We were about half way back to the trucks when I got a 18-20 signal one way but negative numbers the other. This kind of signal usually turns out to be iron but I decided that this might be my last decent signal and dug it anyway. I was down about pin pointer depth and the item was still in the hole, I loosened the dirt and took one last handful out of the bottom and through it on my pile next to the hole. In the pile I could see the edge of a large coin, so I called to my friend and said I think I have another coin. He came over and his first words were wow it's old. I said looks like a quarter and he said no it looks like a 2 real. I picked the coin up and to my surprise it was an 1781 2 real. Two great old coins in one hunt, still can't believe my luck. There's still stuff to be found out there.

That site is giving up some awesome relics and coins.

Wow! California Territorial $5 gold coin. That's a great find and probably worth a good 7k or so depending on what it grades at.

Location, Location, Location and dig everything is the key, at least for me. I've done it 3 times. 1st time 1851 $1 and 1851 $2 1/2 in the same area about 50 yards away from each other both using the Minelab GPX. 2nd time 1854 $1 and 1852 $1 first one with the XP Deus second one with the Minelab GPX found in the same day but actually hiked to a different area about a 1/2 mile away. 3rd time 1853 $1 and 1852 $1 first one was with the Minelab GPX second one with the Minelab Equinox 600. Found same day in the same general area but over the hill from each other. Who says you can't use a GPX in iron trash?

I've been detecting since the late 70's and early on I didn't own any of my own metal detectors. My Dad was a dealer from about 1975-1990 for Whites, Fisher, Garrett, Bounty Hunter, Teknetics, Compass, and others that are no longer in business. So I used a lot of different detectors that my Dad had in stock. I liked Whites for most of my hunting though and I think the 6 DB was the first one I actually purchased and later a 6000 DI. Then when Fisher came out with the CZ 6 I purchased one in late 1991 and used it almost exclusively until I purchased a Minelab Sovereign in about 1998. When the Explorer II was released I got one of those (actually owned a few of them) and then later an SE Pro. In about 2010 I gave up most of my other hobbies and focused on metal detecting and fishing. Since 2010 I've owned quite a few different metal detectors in my quest to find the best performing detector for the task at hand. I've have had up to 12 in my possession at a time, currently I have 6.

I passed on the AQ limited when my number came up opting to wait for the final product. But now I'm not so sure I want it for that price. If I lived close to the beach and I was only after gold rings I could see getting it. But I use my PI for gold nuggets, relics and beach work. The AQ isn't going to work for that. My hope is the land version will be more versatile, then I could see spending 3k for it.

I've had my Deus for 6 years now and believe me it has been through some tough conditions. I haven't a problem with anything except batteries wearing out. They really are some rugged machines even though they don't look like it.

Got to agree with most of this. Not trying to be negative or keep anyone from trying one out. But for me personally having used about every metal detector under the sun, it's got to really stand out anymore for me to want to own one. I was hoping the Garrett Apex would offer some competition in the multi frequency arena, unfortunately that didn't happen (the packaging is awesome, the brain not so much). I'm even going to be a little reluctant when Nokta Makro releases their version of multi frequency as I think Minelab is so far ahead of the game they are going to be hard to beat. New strides in technology are what excites me anymore, companies just trying to play catch up don't cut it. I could actually see getting one as a loaner but for now I have that covered with the Vanquish 540.

When Minelab first added the F2 iron bias I didn't like it. I think because of what I was reading on how it compared to the FE iron bias and I tried to adjust my settings for F2 based on what I was reading. But once I set out on my own to see what was really happening I really started to like F2 more. Now I run F2 at 0 most of the time. The exception is when I'm hunting ghost towns that are littered with bottle caps and flat tin and then I'll run it up to 6. I run 0 most of the time mainly because of the targets I'm after and the sites I hunt. In mineralized ground IMO you really need to ne careful about how high you run your iron bias. Small and deep targets will report as iron if you run it too high. Now back to why I didn't like FE vs F2 when it first came out. First place I went was a military camp relic hunting (ground is mineralized). I set the Equinox up with iron bias F2 running at 4 based on what I had read and how it compared to the FE settings. Come to find out F2 at 4 is really starting to knock some stuff out and lose depth. Found a few deep targets which turned out to be things like p-caps and small pewter buttons. When comparing these signals I found using FE 0 they sounded great and then going over them in F2 4 they sounded like iron. It was in a later hunt I realized that turning the F2 settings down allowed these deep targets in mineralized ground to come through and report as non-ferrous.

I use the WM80 wireless module exclusively but have the ML80 headphones with me as backup. I don't like the ML80 headphones because they lag and the sound is muffled and hollow sounding to me. I prefer to use headphones I can plug into the WM80 module and just make them wireless.