abenson

Great finds Chase, I'm hoping I make it back to Virginia in the Spring. US Bit Boss is on my bucket list, great find, Congrats!

Here's a new video XP just released.

That's funny because just this weekend I experienced that as well. I was using my GPX and my sister-in-law was using the Equinox 800 and I couldn't get within 40 feet without getting interference. We were checking each others targets and one of us had to turn the machine off just so we could compare signals.

Tarsacci MDT 8000 has mixed mode.

I was experimenting with the Beach modes in hot ground when the Equinox first came out. Whenever I go to Culpeper for DIV I still find myself using Beach 1 most of the time. It definitely isn't just for the saltwater beaches.

The more you use the Equinox the more you'll get used to the way it identifies a good target. I hunt iron infested relic sites and have had the same issues you are talking about with the iron falsing. Chase has some good info in his posts, take the time to read them and others on the subject. I still primarily use my Deus with the HF coil because I recognize falsing on it better. However, one thing I have done to get a better understanding of the Equinox is take both my Deus and Equinox to a site and compare signals. It's a lot of work and takes away from your detecting time but I would encourage you to do the same thing with a detector you know well. You will learn a lot and find that in some cases the Equinox will find targets your other detectors can't. One thing I've noticed with the Equinox is that when you get over a good target the numbers stay tightly grouped even when next to iron. For example, if you had a dime next to a nail and you circled the target, for the most part you would get 25-27 TID with an occasional null/iron grunt or TID jumping into the 30's. If you're over iron or junk the numbers are all over the place and change as you circle the target. This is where 50 tones is helpful because if you're in 2 tones or 5 tones the signal can sound great but the numbers could be anywhere in the tone break range. With 50 tones if it's junk the signal sounds crappy, if it's good the tone as well as the TID stays tightly grouped with an occasional odd tone. Also, to reinforce what Chase already said, ground balance when needed and this being a high gain machine, reduce the sensitivity when you get in thick iron to cut down on the noise.

I've got the z-lynk setup on my Makro Racer but I tried it on the Equinox last night and it works fine. You just need to buy a 1/8" to 1/4" adapter off Amazon to make it work. Here's the one I bought for $6.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078X85LFS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My Sister-In-Law who normally uses a Minelab Sovereign, wanted to go metal detecting at the beach with me over the weekend at a real sanded in beach, also lots of black sand. I figured one of my PI's would be too frustrating for her to use so I let her use my Equinox 600. I set her up in Beach 1 sensitivity 23, 5 tones, iron bias 1, recovery 3 (equal to 6 on the 800) and GB 0. I used my GPX 4000 since I hadn't run it for a while. We hunted the wet sand about 25 feet up from the water line. After about an hour I had dug a few pennies, a nickel, some lead bullets/sinkers and some shallower can slaw. She walked over to me and said she really hadn't found anything but foil and pieces of aluminum, which didn't surprise me because all of the coins I had found were 12 inches plus deep. So I suggested that I would go ahead of her and mark some targets and then have her go over them with the 600 and see what to listen for. I had about 8 targets marked and told her to start going over them and we would listen to the signals. Some of the targets she couldn't get a signal at all, which I expected since I was using a PI. But I told her to go ahead and dig them because I knew something was down there. Of the 8 holes she dug 2 pennies, a nickel, a piece of copper wire, a spark plug, a few pull tabs and a small 18k ring. She was impressed at how much deeper the PI was vs the 600. Now the interesting thing we found was that on these really deep targets, the Equinox could get some of them but they were usually one way signals and read much lower that they would out of the ground. For instance the pennies were reading in the 6-8 range. On the small 18k gold ring the Equinox was coming up with a erratic 1-2 and she said that's what the foil had been reading so she stopped digging it. I told her to dig it anyway because it was too deep to be foil in my opinion. Boy was she surprised when it ended up being a gold ring. From the size of the hole we figure the ring was about 10-11 inches deep. BTW the ring read a solid 6 on the Nox out of the ground. This was a good reminder to me that as with most detectors, when targets are at the fringe of the detectors depth capabilities, we really do need to dig everything at the beach or we're going to miss gold.

Been using mine in the water too, it has a lot less drag than some of the machines I've used.

Great report! I tried tracking GB and it ran OK but auto GB worked better in my opinion. I wish I had a few more days to play around with it in that soil so I could get it dialed in. I saw some other reports on Facebook and some people were doing really well and said the machine ran really good. Others were having a difficult time with the Equinox in the hot spoil. I feel like I was somewhere in between, got decent depth but felt it could be better. I can see an 800 in my future for the extra features in offers. I also had to noise cancel when near some of the GPX's but the ATX was even worse, it really flipped out when one of those got close. The thing that I never could figure out was all the iron falsing I was getting when running in the other modes. I don't know if it was the soil or if I had something adjusted wrong. Which is why I ran beach mode because it took care of all the extra noise and falsing.

I just got back from DIV 40 and wanted to give a quick report on how the Equinox 600 performed in the hot Culpeper soil. Mind you I am not proficient with the detector yet. In addition to the Equinox I took my GPX. I used the Equinox for a total of about 8 hours in the three days I was there. I did find some good stuff with the Equinox which included an Eagle coat button, minie ball and a New York coat button. For me I found that the Equinox ran quietest using the beach mode in five tones iron bias one and everything notched out up to 5. If not in the beach modes the machine was really chattery. It can accurately ID a Target to about 5 inches but has a real hard time with low conductors in that soil. With the adjustments the 800 offers you might get better results. At one point I buried a nickel at 6 inches in one of the fields and could not get it with the equinox, the GPX easily picked it up. Overall I thought the detector performed well and was very helpful in the iron infested areas. I know there were other Equinoxes there and some good stuff was found by those using them. I know of at least 1 breast plate found with the Equinox.

I also found the Equinox is almost as deep as the Infinium and you avoid all the junk. The TDI pro is still deeper though. I had the TDI and Equinox out yesterday comparing deep signals. I found an old brass key tag and 1915 Barber Quarter the Equinox couldn't get, both were in the 14 to 16 inch range. On the flip side the Equinox can sure separate the good stuff from the junk. I missed a another brass key tag next to a piece of iron with the TDI that the Equinox locked right onto.

Sorry I probably missed the part about it not being yours. But yea bottle caps are something that we'll have to deal with. I found an IBC bottle cap that read 26 yesterday, dime numbers. I thought great, caps hitting everywhere from 12 to 26. So I got a dime out and started comparing signals and adjusting settings. I found out a few things. As I moved the coil farther from the cap the lower the TID got on the cap. Not so with the dime. Also when I reduced the recovery speed down to 1, the cap signal got very long, the dime signal was much shorter. I'll have to do some more research. The all metal mode worked as well.

I can tell you the Equinox won't even come close to either the TDI SL or the TDI Pro (GB off) because I have them all and compared them a few days ago. I can get a good solid signal from a nickel at 14 inches on the Pro, 12 inches on the SL and only 8 inches with the Equinox. My beach is highly mineralized though. A clean Florida beach might be different. The Equinox chirps on the 10 inch but I doubt I would stop to investigate. I'm surprised you have trouble with bottle caps with the tdi's. The signal from bottle caps always sounds kind of washed out to me, unlike a nickel or gold ring where the signal is more solid. I dig very few bottlecaps with my tdi's. Fish hooks amd wire are what kill me.