abenson

Great write up Monte! I'm glad you chimed in as I know you've been doing a lot of testing yourself with Vanquish. It's good to have multiple views about its performance. We don't agree on everything but that's what's nice about more than one person's report. Things about the unit you don't like don't necessarily bother me and vice a verse. It gives someone considering a purchase the opportunity to evaluate and see how others use the machine and what types of sites the Vanquish excels in and comes up short in.

I don't know you might get away with using the Vanquish on that Beach. I tried my Vanquish at the Great Salt Lake which is very salty and has areas of high mineralisation. The Vanquish with the coil in the water ran very quiet but I had to have the sensitivity down to about 6. My Equinox in Beach 2 is very noisy in this water. Even running the Equinox sensitivity down to 15 I still get constant chatter

I’ve had the Vanquish 540 out on 4 ghost town hunts now and I wanted to give my thoughts on it’s performance in these challenging sites. 3 of the 4 hunts were at places where the items are on or near the surface. At those places the 5 x 8 coil was used. At the other site the items can be anywhere from surface to 12 inches deep because the town was located in a now plowed field. At that place, the 9 x 12 coil was used. In some cases other metal detectors were used to find some of the targets and compare signals with the Vanquish The Vanquish set at high iron bias does a great job at discriminating out surface bottle caps and other flat tin where single frequency metal detectors struggle. First site I went to I only used the Vanquish with the 5 x 8 coil, coin mode, high iron bias, horse off, sensitivity at 2 below max. The site is loaded with bottle caps and tin cans, I could see them on the surface in many areas. I hunted for 3 hours and only found a zinc mason jar lid, a large brass ring about the size of a pocket watch, two deep soda cans, the type with aluminum top and tin sides and a few other modern things like a pull tab and modern penny found on the surface. Made me wonder how much I walked over because everything was either on the surface or big. At the other 2 sites, even with the small coil on, the Vanquish really struggles on targets in carpet of nails. This shouldn’t be a surprise. With the other metal detectors (I had along with small coils) targets could be detected from multiple directions. The Vanquish on a good amount of the targets could only see the target in one direction and in some cases couldn’t see the target at all. I had several targets I could see on the ground surrounded by nails but couldn’t get the Vanquish to lock onto them. I fell like if you only worked an area from one direction you would probably walk over about 50% of the good targets with the Vanquish. Not saying the Vanquish is bad, it just isn’t the right choice for a trashy ghost town. However, on a positive note. I did have one signal that the other metal detectors ID'd in the coin range and I thought for sure I had a dime or quarter. The Vanquish gave a broken tone and wouldn’t lock on, I thought crap, too much iron around for the Vanquish to pick out this good signal. Surprise, it was a flat piece of tin about the size of a half dollar. No coins found at either of these sites. Found suspender clips, watch parts, buttons, scraps of brass, etc. At the site with deeper targets is where the gap between the Equinox and Vanquish become more apparent, and rightfully so. Vanquish settings-Coin mode (relic mode is worthless in my mineralized soil), horseshoe on, max sensitivity, low iron bias. Equinox settings-Park 1, sensitivity 22, iron bias 0, recovery 4, horseshoe on, 50 tones. The amount of iron junk at this site is moderate with good targets mixed in at various depths. I found 12-15 targets at this site with the Equinox and went over them with the Vanquish. All the targets that were co-located next to iron and less than 7 inches deep, both the Equinox and Vanquish saw (a least from one direction) and gave a good ID. I got several like 5 or 6 that were too deep for the Vanquish to ID and one gave absolutely no tone at all on the Vanquish, it was a small button at 7 inches. Other items found were large buttons, small buttons suspender clips, scrap brass and lead, shotgun brass, etc Without going into a bunch of detail, I’m starting to see some trends regarding the Vanquish. First, the Vanquish struggles with small low conductors that are deep or mixed with iron trash. Second, the Vanquish just seems to cut off at a certain depth. No glimpse of any numbers, very little up averaging, just straight out slashes across the screen with iron grunt or simply no sound at all. Most other metal detectors I use at least chirp and flash a number on deep targets. Now these could be related to my mineralized soil. But I feel like it’s related to iron bias, I wish it could just be turned off. In any case the Vanquish IMO is a good park and beach machine, comes up a little short as a relic and ghost town machine. Could also be used to scout areas out and cherry pick the good signals then follow up with a better detector later. Still better than most other metal detectors in it’s price range though. I’m headed to another ghost town with it and some other metal detectors tomorrow. This time I’ll try and shoot some video and show what I’m talking about.

I've had money saved for awhile for this machine. I'm now to the point that I don't care that much about it anymore. There's been so much talk about it over the last few years that it's actually old news at this point, most of the excitement for me is over. If it gets released, great I'll most likely still get one at some point, if not, I'm sure something else will come out I can spend my money on. Maybe Minelab will come out with a lightweight waterproof GPX that does well both inland and on the beach. I think I'd rather have a multipurpose PI anyway.

RME-Chase has a lot of experience in the Culpeper dirt and knows what he's talking about. There really isn't a program you can put in the Equinox and have it work for everyone. The problem with the Equinox is, for most people it isn't just a turn on and go machine, although it can be used that way. Additionally, Using it in hot dirt is just going to add to the issue. Now it might just be me, but personally I don't feel like I understood the Equinox until I had 200 plus hours in it. (my dirt is hot but not Culpeper hot) I kept going back to the Deus in frustration because the tones on the Equinox are subtle compared to the Deus. I now prefer the Equinox over the Deus unless I'm in thick iron. But obviously I would use a PI before either in Culpeper. Read Chase's post again and try to do some experimenting by burring various targets when you get there. Try different modes and settings to see how it affects the target signal. I will tell you this, the first time I hunted Culpeper with my Equinox I used Beach 1, ground balanced, set the sensitivity as high as I could, reactivity at 6, Iron bias 2, 2 tones and horseshoe off. Very conservative settings and I feel like I did pretty well with it, but I know others did much better with other settings. Now that I have some hours on the Equinox I prefer to be quite a bit more aggressive with my settings, but I also know what I'm listening for though all the noise. It takes time to train your ear in those harsh conditions when using a VLF. If you're planning on attending DIV 49 I'm happy to meet up and give you some help.

Just got back from 3 days in Oceanside, CA it was nice to get out of the cold here in Utah. Came back to 9 inches of snow this morning. Didn't take a PI this time because I wanted to see how the Equinox 11" coil and Vanquish V12 coil compared to each other on the beach. Area I hunted was North and South of the pier. This beach can be awesome after a big storm. I've been there before when one day you can literally pick up targets off the hard pan because the sand has been totally stripped away and the next day 2 ft of sand has washed back in. Sand was pretty deep this time all 3 days, in areas at about a foot you would hit a rocky layer where the targets would settle. Tried hunting in the water with the Equinox a few times but it was just too rough and took way too long to recover good targets. So most of my time was spent between the towel line and waters edge. Nothing exciting found, a bunch of change, and ear gauge and 1 junk ring. A few people have said that the Vanquish appears to be Equal to the Equinox in Beach 1 mode and I would have to agree. I ran the Equinox in Beach 1 sensitivity at about 21 and the Vanquish in Jewelry mode, iron bias low. sensitivity 1 notch below max and both machines were very quite. Switching off between the two I didn't really notice any difference in depth both machines recovered several nickels and quarters at the 12" mark and pennies and dime around the 9" mark. Most stuff I recovered was 6" or more in depth. Target ID on the Vanquish is rock solid on good targets, even the deeper Quarters and Nickels I dug gave a solid ID. ID's that were jumpy always turned out to be a corroded piece of aluminum or zinc penny. The only area the Vanquish struggled was in places where there were multiple targets and especially targets mixed in with iron. Because this beach is replenished from time to time with sand pumped from the harbor and other areas, there tends to be places where boat parts, fishing hooks and other junk congregates. I had several instances where I had to use the Equinox because there were just too many targets to separate out the good ones. One in particular I ran into with the Vanquish but had to switch to the Equinox turned out to be a small piece of aluminum, a stainless ear gauge, and a quarter mixed with iron trash in a small 1 foot by 1 foot area. The Vanquish was unable dial in on one target although I could tell there was more than just iron there due to the mix of positive numbers. Overall I would have to say the Vanquish is the most capable beach detector I've seen in it's price range (unless you need waterproof). I felt quite confident I wasn't missing much when using the Vanquish unless I was in a junk filled area. Great detector for a beginner, child, to loan out or as a backup for your Equinox. One thing I did notice when changing between the 2, the Vanquish is a little nose heavy compared to the Equinox. If you're getting one for a small child to use I would suggest getting one with the smaller coil or switching it out to the smaller one on the 540.

Nice find and California Gold to boot! Which makes it even better.

Thanks. The Vanquish did better than I thought it would given it doesn't separate targets as well as the Equinox. As far as relic hunting goes it can hold it's own as long as the trash isn't too dense. Great backup detector to have on hand or have a loaner for friends IMO.

Here's a video of the Minelab Vanquish 540, Equinox 800 and eTrac comparing some targets while relic hunting. The area is challenging because there are not many targets left and the EMI is terrible. Steve if this should be under Comparisons feel free to move the post. Thanks

This is where mineralized dirt plays havoc with metal detectors, and knowing how you detector responds in it allows me to dig targets others leave in the ground. The Equinox acts similarly. When I get deep targets the Equinox will report many negative numbers as well as high 30's with an occasional accurate target ID. It's almost like iron wrap and the Tarsacci is no different in my dirt. I never notch out high numbers on any of my metal detectors. Deus is the same way, good targets start throwing numbers 97-99 when they get deep in bad dirt. Mixed mode on the Tarsacci gave me the most useful information in my dirt, I would only use disc when in lots of iron and rarely used AM. Although I was getting to the point that with AM I could tell iron from good targets, mixed mode just helped confirm non-ferrous.

Dew-I was just thinking the same thing, not to long ago I was in knee deep water in a bay with my GPX (yea crazy I know, not waterproof), it took me 45 minutes to recover a silver dollar and I only had the 8" x 12" coil on.

I had some unexpected medical bills come up for my daughter and it just happened to be the metal detector I sold first. I do plan on getting another one in the next few months. It's right there in between the Equinox and GPX. Not as good in iron as the Equinox but deeper overall, not as deep as the GPX but has far superior iron disc. I really liked it relic hunting. It's great for those days you need the extra depth but don't want to dig deep iron with the GPX. I would say it's a good inch to inch and a half deeper than the Equinox. In AM mode I feel it matched the depth of the GPX (but your digging iron in AM mode) but probably a good 3 inches less deep than the GPX with disc ability, if that makes sense. This is in my dirt with stock 11" coils on the Equinox and GPX vs the stock 9 x 11 on the Tarsacci. Obliviously a bigger coil on the GPX would blow it away for shear depth.

When I had my Tarsacci I used to hunt with black sand on, relic hunting. I have fairly mineralized soil and it got me better depth and ran more stable with it on. Sometimes I even used salt balance as I have quite a few areas that have heavy alkaline soils.

I totally agree with Steve on the above. Anyone going from a VLF to the Impulse may be in for a bit of a surprise. Even though the Impulse sounds like it will offer new advancements in both depth and discrimination, it's still a PI. It will most likely require 100's if not 1000's of hours to fully understand it's potential. You're still going to dig lead weights, bottle caps, pull tabs, etc. And a greater depths. But as you put in the time with the Impulse you may be able to avoid certain types of trash just like other PI's based on target response and other audio clues. We know the Impulse is going to see the biggest gains on mineralized beaches where VLF's struggle. But on mild beaches the VLF with target ID might still be the go to detector.

Steve- I belong to one club and attend their outings regularly. Most of them swing a whites, I see the MXT, MX7, DFX and XLT being used. Now the group of 6 relic hunters I hang out with that are not members of the club swing either a Deus (4) or an Equinox (2). I'm in Utah. The only other hunts I attend is DIV which as you know is dominated by PI's. But I also see quite a few Garrett's and Equinoxes, occasionally see a Whites MXT.

Rick-great write up and very informative.

Rick....That's a good looking machine. It looks better than the prototype. I can hardly wait for your report on it's performance.

I will say this about the Vanquish series. It's meant to compete with the Ace Series, low end Whites, like the Treasure Master and Pro, as well as others. I've owned a number of Ace's over the past 10 years and a Treasure Pro for my kids to use. I would take the Vanquish over any of them hands down, it's a much better performer both in depth and separation. I agree with Jeff, it's a great park detector and I feel it will do real well on the beaches too. Only place I see it struggling is relic hunting. I took it out this last weekend and compared signals with the Equinox, 70% of the signals were no problem with the Vanquish 540. I had a few that were in too much iron for the Vanquish to separate out and another couple that were too deep.

Chase-LOL I agree with you about the ORX, should have taken that statement out before I posted it. Yes I tried the zero disc mode and the signals were still choppy. Steve-I'm able to run Tom's settings at a recovery of 3 but not 2 in fairly clean ground as in not much iron trash and even at 3 it takes very controlled sweep speeds to make it work in my ground. Id is all over the place on deep targets but it is definitely deeper if you can work slowly. When I get in trash, recovery of 4 works better but still pretty amazing depth and separation is achieved. But I would have to agree that Minelab must have been looking at performance in mild ground and yea why would they undermine Equinox sales with the Vanquish.

I posted My Minelab Vanquish 540 pro review on another forum last week but have added quite a bit since then. Video link is at the bottom as well with some of the tests I performed for those that are interested. Ergonomics are good compared to most detectors out there, it’s light weight and I like the layout of the menus and screen. I can tell it’s aimed at the Garrett Ace series of detectors. The 540 pro pack is a good value for the money. But if a person is on the fence between a vanquish 540 Pro or the Equinox 600, I would pay the extra $150 and get an Equinox 600. Performance wise it’s a beginner metal detector and that shouldn’t be a surprise as the price reflects that. Menus are easy to navigate and straight forward. It’s a great metal detector for someone who doesn’t want to dig junk. ID is accurate and almost identical to the Equinox ID numbers. If a person runs the Vanquish in any of the modes and uses the stock high iron bias, virtually all iron trash and bottle caps are eliminated. I’m going to make some performance comparisons between the Vanquish and the Equinox for those that want to know how it compares. Not saying that one is better than the other because it’s all going to depend on what you want to use each one for. The iron bias on the Vanquish in high is about equal to F2 level 6 on the Equinox and on low equal to F2 level 2 as far as I can tell in side by side comparisons. Modes I’m sure have different weighted frequencies and it’s anybody’s guess what they are. So other than the weighted frequencies I think recovery speed is the big factor in each. All modes are 5 tones. Relic mode I feel is about like having the recovery speed on the Equinox 800 at 1, Jewelry mode about like level 3 and Coin mode about like level 4 or maybe 5. Recovery speed is not adjustable on the Vanquish. Recovery speed on the Vanquish vs the Equinox was based on coins with no iron near it. So, this is where it gets interesting. There’s got to be more going on than just recovery speed behind the scenes on the Vanquish because I was very disappointed with it’s unmasking abilities in any of the modes even with the small 5 by 8 coil. A few simple tests were performed. First, I laid 4 rusty nails in a row long way with a penny, dime and nickel between each nail. The coins were about 1.5” between the tip and heads of the nails. The Equinox 11” coil can easily see each coin at a recovery speed of 3 and even 2 with a controlled sweep speed iron bias at FE 2. The Vanquish couldn’t see the coins even with the small coil with iron bias set at low. I had to put the Equinox at recovery 0 iron bias 9 to perform as bad as the Vanquish. Next I placed a coin below a nail 2” the nail was 6 inches away. The vanquish couldn’t see the coin in any mode at any sweep speed with the V12 coil. It could see the coin with the V8 coil. In my yard I have 3 dimes buried at 4, 5 and 6 inches. My soil is bad 4-5 bars on Fisher F75. Most detectors can’t hit the 6” dime and not call it iron. For example XP Deus with 9” HF coil, Makro Multi Kruzer, Fisher F-19, and Teknetics T2 with 7 by 11 coils all call it iron. Equinox and eTrac hit it fine and ID it as a dime. The Vanquish in relic mode is useless in my ground I can’t even hit the 4” dime. In jewelry mode calls the 6” dime iron, in coin mode it hits it one way but ID’s 26, so not bad. But this is clean ground as in no iron near. I took it to my local park to try out for a few hours and I was pleased with it’s performance. But I wondered what I was walking over based on my test with recovery. My question was kind of answered on one signal I got. It was a long weird signal in the 25-26 range. Good but too big to be a coin or so I thought. So I grabbed the Equinox and sure enough there where 2 dimes about 4 inches apart. One was about 3 inches deep the other 4. The vanquish couldn’t separate the two coins unless in pinpoint mode. Next, I took a trip to the Great Salt Lake Marina and State Park here in Utah to see if it could perform in the mega salt environment. I ran the Vanquish only in the jewelry mode as I figured it was the one best suited for the beach. I was able to push the sensitivity to 8 out of the water and 6 in the water without too much falsing. This surprised me because I can’t run the Equinox out there unless in the Beach modes and even then, it’s pretty noisy. But stability comes as a price and that price is depth. I located about 9 targets with my other detector that were anywhere from 2” to 10” deep. Of the 9 the Vanquish could only see 2 of them and they were both junk, one was a piece of can slaw at 2” the other was .22 brass at 4”. The other targets were a swim cap buckle, .22 long brass, 1 nickel, 2 dimes and 2 pennies. They were all in the 7-10” range. Now on a normal salt water beach with no black sand the Vanquish will probably perform better. I haven’t had the Vanquish out to a relic site yet but will try in the next few weeks weather permitting. Most likely will do signal comparisons between the Vanquish and Equinox. I worry how it will perform in my iron infested site, we will see. It’s going to be a good metal detector for my daughter, which was my intentions of buying it in the first place. She won’t be digging many rusty nails or other junk and can cherry pick coins easy. It should also work good on the beaches in California when we vacation. Overall good value and I think Minelab did a good job for the market it’s intended for. Comparing the Equinox to the Vanquish is kind of like comparing the Simplex to the Anfibio. The low priced models just aren’t going to perform at the same level although they have good DNA.

Well I didn't expect such a detailed explanation. But thanks for taking the time to break down all the finer points of the ORX. Sounds like a great machine. I like the normalization across the board on the ORX with all coils. That's one thing that takes some getting used to on the Deus when using it with the HF coils.

Chase what do you think the two coin programs are similar to on the Deus? Deus Fast and Deep? Or maybe none of them?

Chase- I have very little experience with the ORX (had the Deus 5 years also) so all that you have said may be true. Since audio was the main concern here that's what the Deus has the ORX lacks and mostly what I was suggesting. I like to run my Deus wide open in iron. -1 silencer, 0 disc, 3 tones basically 2 tones, Audio at 4, sensitivity as high as I can get it, reactivith at 4 and negative ground balanced. It's noisy and most people wouldn't be able to stand it but it works for me and gives me tons of information about both the ground and the targets in the ground. Non-ferous targets really jump out of the iron as well. Personally I feel the ORX is too limited for my likes. No Silencer adjustment, No audio ajustment, No iron volume adjustment, reactivity limited to 3 which I use 4 80% of the time and no tone adjustment. Obviously my opinion only, but like you said if he already has an ORX and it can get it done then why spend more money on an Equinox or a deus. Now if I'm going for depth I'm going with the Equinox or a PI. Neither do as well in iron IMO.

There has been some really good advice given about highly mineralized dirt. Dirt in my area is pretty bad and I've also been to Culpeper VA a number of times. I have both the XP deus and equinox 800 and which one I use depends on the conditions. That's if I'm not using a PI. If you just have bad dirt with a moderate amount of trash I prefer the equinox. But if there's lots of signals to contend with I'll take the Deus any day. Compared to ORX you can really open the Deus up. And if there's lots of signal depth really isn't a concern. The audio on the Deus can be set in 3 tones 0 disc so that tones 1 and 2 can be set at 200 Hz and tone 3 at 900 Hz which is a spread you should easily be able to distinguish. I personally just find it easier to evaluate lots of signals with Deus vs the Equinox but they are both great machines and compliment each other.

There are a few good dealers still out there that are very knowledgeable and one I consider good friends well. But for the most part I've got to agree with Steve and Chase. 20 years ago I owed a fly fishing shop, just before the big sporting goods stores got into it. We provide free instruction for all new rod purchases and answered any questions customers had. Most of my employees had vast experience in the sport and had used most of the fly rods available for purchase. They could then sell a fly rod to the customer to best meet his/her needs. I never told my customers to contact the mfg I always took care of the customer and dealt with the mfg myself. Slowly the big boys started to move in and I could see the writing on the wall. Customers would come in to get information and then make their purchase at a big box store to save $50. Now that was fine for someone who didn't need help. But for those just getting into the sport it was a bad deal because we and other dealers charged $200 for a beginner fly fishing class that they would have got for free had they purchased from us. Long story short most dealers today don't stock detectors and know nothing about what they're selling. I can't tell you how many times (outside of one dealer in particular) I've called to ask about a metal detector to be told they've never used one or don't have it in stock. The people on this forum would make the best dealers but I'm sure most feel like me. They want to be out metal detecting and enjoying the sport. Not dealing with customers trapped in a shop.