Cal_Cobra

Finished 🤠

Garrett is welcome to ship me one, I'd test the snot out of it, and see how it stacks up against the EQ800 🤠

Thanks Mike! I used to find a fair amount of gold rings when I park hunted, but since shifting over to old relic sites, my gold ring finds have plummeted.

So you wouldn't happen to know anything about said second gen Multi-IQ product would you?

Believe me it's more location, location, location than machine. We spend a lot of time researching old sites, and I'd say that 9 out of 10 turn out to be duds. Many were short lived, and although the first couple of hunts may be pretty productive, they tend to peter out pretty quickly. My Spanish Trail site has lasted quite a while, but a good portion of it is getting "hunted out". Although ironically, my hunt partner Tom has little to no interest in detecting there any longer, after hammering it for ten years (a few times per year) my last trip there was one of my best, with a gold coin, three seateds (two semi-rare) and a IHP. Oddly very few relics on that trip, but other than the seated dime cache I dug there, it was the most coins I've dug in one trip. I chalk it up to the Equinox doing something different, the last hunt with the new FE2/0 upgrade seemed to aid in digging a few more coins. I look forward to seeing what Garrets SMF technology brings to the table!

You either learn from history, else it tends to repeat itself.

Hi Mike, I'm not really a park hunter, so it's a rarity for me to find gold rings, but I found this at Golden Gate Park on my first outing with an old friend that had found a little area that had been scraped for new landscaping, and I was sure it was going to be a nickle when it banged in with a solid 14 TID 🙂

That thought crossed my mind too. Now that the EQ600/800 is going on what, three years old, and the Vanquish is last years history, Minelab is no doubt prototyping the EQX2. Rumors through the grapevine have alluded to the EQX2 already under development for a few years. After experiencing what the EQ800 is capable of, things are about to get interesting 🙂

Doubtful, he's rather stuck to his Explorer2, although over the past year he's been given a number of beat downs relic hunting, and is starting to say things like "the nox is better in iron". Yet he's still looking at the machine in its totality, and he loves deep turf silver cherry picking and I would give a nod to the Exp2 over the EQ on that one, especially given he has what, 15+ years of experience on his Exp2. I personally do not care much for park hunting that much these days, as why kill yourself all day for a couple of mercs, when you can go hit stage stops, ghost towns and other late 1700's - 1800's sites for busts, seateds and perhaps a few pesky barbers 🙂 Seriously though, once you get addicted to digging western frontier history, parks just kind of loose their appeal. I'm impressed that Garrett pulled this off, but I'm also very content with the success my EQ800 has brought, so I'm in no hurry to try anything new, this machine has done more then I imagined it would finding coins at extreme depths, noodling around in iron and opening up old hard hit sites. I should make a log of everything I've found with my EQ800 since I got it, definitely been dozens of seateds, a lovely 18K jewel encrusted gold ring (first hunt actually), a rare $1 US gold coin, a few rare silver coins, tons of relics, it's really exceeded my expectations and I barely even dabble with the advanced settings (other than the new iron settings, which BTW work great). So I'll wait and see what Garrett has up their sleeve with their AT SMF Apex and also waiting to see Nokta's entry into the SMF arena. You have to love this hobby 🙂

Fair enough, what I actually should have said and mean (and stand by) is that multi on the EQ800 and EQ800 are identical, it's the advanced features, prospecting mode, and ability to select 40kHz as an individual frequency that are different (and the headphones and whatnot).

Definitely wasn't expecting this, kudos to Garrett on getting on the SMF bandwagon! Don''t really care about submersible, rainproof is good enough for me. The 50 tone option like the EQX has would be great, I've taken a liking to it on the EQX, lot of audio intel once you get tuned into the symphony of tones. Software up-gradable would be great, wonder if it is or isn't? I like how they introduced this as an ACE top dog unit, because that tells me that now that they have SMF technology they will be bring out a AT series with more features. If this is the baby ACE unit, I'm totally looking forward to seeing what their AT SMF detector will bring to the table. Looks a bit more ergonomic than the EQX, Not crazy about the shaft setup though (seems like Garrett hasn't been stellar with shafts since the ATP came out, heck the initial ATP shafts had to be sent in to get upgraded camlocks/holes/something, I forget exactly). Good job keeping the weight down to 2.5lbs! I've actually grown accustom to built-in rechargeable Li-ion batteries, and like them. Keeps the weight down, goes for a day or two easy, and less junk to manage. That brings me to the headphones. Although I'm a wireless headphone lover, I do not like the propitiatory types like Nokta and Garrett are doing, I think Minelab got it right with an open standard that allows us to use whatever we want. I love my EQ800, but given the choice between this and a Vanquish, I'd go for this. This and an EQ600 though, that would be a different story, the EQ600 would win all day long (still has 40KHz in multi just like the EQ800). I like that they were modest in their release, just enough teasers so we knew something was up, but I think this being a SMF took everyone by surprise without having to parachute out of a plane LOL As Steve mentioned, patience is a virtue here, when their AT SMF comes out, not only should they have the bugs worked out by then (the ATP has issues when it first came out, shaft, faulty seals, etc) but it'll simply be a better detector, likely waterproof, more features, possibly more frequencies, and probably will be priced between the EQ600-EQ800 if they want to remain competitive (unless it does something fantastic the EQX cannot). Still looking forward to the Nokta SMF, but seriously FTP and White's....tap, tap, can you hear me, is this thing even on? Crickets....ouch.

I thought this was interesting. I've noticed that a U.S. silver dime will TID spot on at 25 when either air testing or when at shallow depths. BUT as the coin gets deeper, the TID goes up. I've seen anywhere from 27-32, the deeper the higher. This phenomenon along with the additional modulated audio at depth, and frequently loss of pinpointing, will almost always result in a deep (9" or deeper) squeaker silver coin for me. Once I understood this pattern, I'm personally okay with that, I actually even prefer it that way because when I get a target with these conditions I have a fairly high confidence it's going to be a silver coin at good depth (I've observed similar results on deep silver quarters as well). Are others observing the same phenomenon? Disclaimer: Almost all of my hunt time (none lately due to C-19 SIP restrictions) is dedicated to relic hunting environs.

Nice one Simon! I need to jump into the 3D printing arena. Having never used AutocCad or anything similar, I wonder how difficult it is to learn/use the software to design items to 3D print?

I've noticed the same thing. Oddly there's no shortage of used CTX 3030's 🙂

This and one other forum are all that I really need, welcome!