Cal_Cobra

To be honest, I kind of don't mind that he's selling his. I had hoped that he would embrace it, but from the beginning he tried to find reasons not to like it, and IMO really didn't give it it's proper dues. He basically talked himself out of giving it a fair shake. BUT that may actually bode well for me, as I continue to learn the EQ800, and get better with it (I'm still employing my crawl/walk/run learning technique, have not wondered into the advanced settings at all, just learning the stock programs at this point) my hope is that I will start to out hunt him as my experience level with the EQ improves and I learn it's nuances and the tricks & tips to fine tune it for each site.... completely selfish I know

I want to preface Tom's post by saying right out of the gate that Tom called me last night, and gave me his "report". If you don't care to read his lengthy write-up he posted on another forum (he doesn't know of this forum) his bottom-line was that he found it no better, no worse then his Exp2. He said he felt the audio was better on the Exp2, which I reminded him i's likely because after using it for 20 years, his muscle memory is auto-tuned to it's responses. He said he'd be selling it on fleabay. Hey gang. I've been at this since about 1975 or '76 (started @ about 8th grade). Been "up through the ranks" of everything from the 77b & Whites 66tr, through the VLF/TR era. Through the 6000 and ADS III era, to the Eagle and XLT era, etc... And now am currently using as Exp. II for most all my hunting. Occasionally grabbing a Bandido for certain ghost-townsy locations. Some of you know my finds from other forums, and you've followed Brian (Cal Cobra) and I's hunt exploits, to know that I'm no slouch in md'ing. I've pitted many machines before deciding to try something new. So I'm very aware of the "come-back" lines that can be raised for any perceived failure of a machine in a test. I've done my best to short-circuit any such shortcoming. Eg.: subconscious biases, etc.... First stop was a certain downtown/oldtown park in CA . It dates to the 1860s/70s. Soil is moderate to low minerals. Most all the easies has long-since been pulled. But a person with a deep-seeking turf machine (explorer, etc...) can still pull some silver, wheats, IH's, etc... I flagged a few suspected deepies with my Exp. II. Then pulled out the Nox 800 to try. I only used stock park 1 and park II modes. With nothing but a noise-check. No ground balance. No increasing the sens. No alterations of iron-bias or recovery speed. I also knocked out everything on the disc. from 17 downwards. So that I wouldn't be hearing the foil, nickels, round tabs, etc.... So too was I doing the same on my Exp. II , for purposes of this test. So that those factors are even between the 2 machines. My total take for this hunt at this park was a very worn '68 seated dime, a '92 P barber dime, a '28 merc., and a few teens wheats. Depth's ranged from 6 to 8" . The Nox 800 could hear all of them. More pronounced and tell-tale "fluty" in the Park-2 mode. Hence so-far so-good. HOWEVER: In each case, it seemed that the Exp. II was giving them with "more room to spare". On the Nox , it seemed I needed to know exactly where the spot was. And then "work at it". Nonetheless, it could hear them. So I wrote off the strength-difference as to being, perhaps, my lack-of-experience on the tone-nuances of a new machine. Versus the Explorer II, where I am very familiar with its language. I tried briefly to walk around with the nox to, likewise, find something to flag to test in reverse order . But when I went to try a few of those flags with the Exp, they were 4" deep zincs , or various other clad that I would not have even stopped to dig with my Exp. But , again, I wrote that off to un-familiarity with the Nox. So , at least, I have nothing conclusively bad to say about the machine so far. Since *technically* I could find the accepted signals with either machine (given some effort & persuasion). Oh: And I did try switching to 5 khz on a couple of targets. It did not improve their strength over the that of the multi-freq. And if anything, added chatter. Next day I took it to a certain center grass median strip in San Francisco. It dated to only the 00's to teens. The downtown high-rise electronic noise is awful. And the soil is funky minerals, such that deeper targets don't want to lock on. They seem to skew downwards on the TID. So that, for example, a silver quarter might read @ dime. A copper penny might read at zinc. And so forth. The strip is very littered with tabs, foil, iron, etc... On a certain block or two of this ~2 mile long strip, I have pulled many silver & wheaties in the past . And whenever I'm in the area, can be pretty certain that my Exp. II can get additional ones whenever I want. For this test, I found a clean spot of ground with my Exp. II. Tested to make sure there was no signals of any sort, so-as to provide the ground balance spot for the Nox. I balanced the Nox, and locked it (no tracking). For my explorer sens, I was at 19 for most of the time. Sometimes down to 15. For the Nox: Sens. between 18 to 21, depending on chatter. And perpetual noise-cancels at varying intervals on the Nox & Exp. Iron bias was 02 on both park 1 and park 2 mode. I did not try up to 5 & 6 as TN-sharpshooter recommends, for nasty minerals. Didn't recall that recommendation till now. But: Wouldn't that simply have put me at risk of getting fooled by large rusty nails globs ? In any case: Iron bias was 02. Recovery speed 6 on both. Multi-Freq. on both. Tones @ 50. Disc. set to reject all items from 17 and downwards. (again, this is the same for the explorer , where I've got the flimsy square tabs and downwards knocked out). I liked it when I hit the horseshoe button. It allows you to hear an all-metal sound, while simultaneously hearing your accepted targets in their correct TID tones (If I'm understanding correctly). I would definitely use that for relicky sites where I want to hear iron in the background, to perpetually let me mentally gauge the amount of human historic traffic I'm in, and the iron I'm' trying to contend with /see-around. Yes the modulation is very poor for the top 5" or so. Very difficult to gauge 1" vs 3" vs 5", etc... And I notice that the 6" or more, where there starts to be a "fluty" sound, is very narrow band. Ie.: you have to be right over your target, swinging "just right". And also: A shallower target can be made to 'be fluty' by simply happen-chance having the coil slightly higher, or being slightly off, etc.... Unlike the Explorer where I more immediately recognize the signals for what they are. But, again: Wrote all this off to my vast experience on the Exp., and experimental only on the Nox. At the San Francisco grass strip median: The first couple of targets I flagged and compared, proved extremely poor for the Nox. But then later I saw that I .... for some reason ....... had been in only 16 sens. (not sure how it got bumped lower since the day before). Once I put it up to 21, I could, like the day before, start to hear some flagged signals. Occasionally had to lower sens. to 18, since 21 was producing chatter. Likewise the Exp. II had to be lowered to 15 on those same stretches. As I flagged more signals, they again, like the day before, seemed bolder and stronger on the Exp. vs the Nox. One particular reverse order flag (found first with Nox) was one that the Nox gave a good fluty deep repeatable signal. And when I went over it with the Exp. II : I had to admit that I WOULD NOT have elected to chase this one with the Exp. Hmmm. I had to "coax it out" JUST to even see/hear what the Nox had even been beeping on. Hmmm, this was going to be interesting !! Eh ? Turned out to be a mid-conductor metal nut thing. That ... yes ... once out of the ground was indeed within my acceptance range on the Exp. disc. settings. So *technically* I should have gotten it on the flagged stage of the test (albeit with a TID I might have elected to pass). So this proved a plus point for the Nox. HOWEVER: At a certain point, I'd just dug a 1915 deep green wheatie. Which both machines had heard (albeit with some coaxing on the Nox). And once I'd covered the hole, I rechecked it. Just slightly off to the side, I got a sssuuuppeerr deep warble. Almost a null, but with a hint of something trying to warble in. This was a signal that, if it hadn't been for just having dug a deepie, and double checking for additionals, I might not have even registered. One of those "is this my imagination?" type signals. Yet ... you suspect "Oh, maybe there's another one down there @ same hole" type of moments. And it was slightly to the side, in un-disturbed ground. Now on THIS one: The Nox could not hear it. No flicker of the audio. No flicker of the #'s. Nothing , nada, zilch. Tried noice-cancel. Tried playing with the sens. Tried everything. It could not be made to get any hint whatsoever. Turned out to be a very deep 1919 wheatie. 7 to 8". Which, I know, is not "deep" for some parks. But here, as I say: Stuff in this depth range , in this soil, is funky. So IMHO this was a negative chalk mark for the Nox. on that target. I know someone will come on saying how it could have been heard doing XYZ. But realize that if you start "hopping up the settings", you then run the risk of loosing differentiation on other targets (ie.: EVERYTHING starts to "sound good" or "give identical signals", etc...). I did not have to "hop up" the Exp. II to get that signal. So IMHO, that one signal was given a fair shake. Thus to conclude for turf: IMHO : If you put 2 expert users in a deep-turf scenario: User #1 with an Etrac or Exp. II. And User #2 with a Nox 800. I do not believe the Nox user is going to out-hunt the Explorer user. At least not on THIS exact grass median I was on yesterday. This was not a test of iron-riddled ghost town sites. Was not a test of beach. It was only tests of various deep turf strategy cherry-picking for high-conductors type hunting. Oh, and for kicks & giggles, for those who might know what long center grass median strip in SF I was referring to: My total take was 2 mercs ('20 & '44), a silver roosie ('64) , 9 wheaties (1913 and onwards), and an '03 IH. The IH was in the hole with 2 twenties wheaties. And 2 of the wheaties were in a hole with the '44 merc. So if you count those pocket spill as "1 target", then the total take of oldies was 8 oldies. I also had various "woulda-couldas" that mimic old coins. Eg.: very deep copper grommets, hinge, flat brass sportsmans button the size of a quarter, and so forth. So even besides coins, there was "period targets" at-depth, that were counting towards the flagged tests, as being just as legitimate as if they'd turned out to have been coins. I had tried to do some videos of both machines. But it was a very windy day. So whenever I tried to unplug the jack to capture audio, I was getting tree-rustling, and car traffic noises too much. Nonetheless, I did end up capturing some audio tests, where a person can plainly see the Nox is needing "coaxing" to get in what the Exp was getting more boldly (again, I know this is user specific and a bias and familiarity I may have). But ... the viewer could judge. HOWEVER, as Murphy's law would have it: Each time I took great lengths to stop , video, narrate, etc... : Those turned out to be household doo-hickeys like hemweights, copper tent grommets, or whatever. Yes they are "period", yes they read in the coin range. Yes they were as deep as period coins. Thus yes they hold equal merit to a deep-turf-coin test. But it just took the wind out of my sails when they turned out to other items.

Many at fire sale prices

Couldn't have said it better Steve! There are valid reasons AOL, DVDs, and landlines have gone the way of The dodo Myself I enjoy trying new things, and I understand that not everyone may be in a position to do so. Before the Equinox came out the used detector market was fairly stable, so it wasn't that big a deal to sell off an old unit to purchase a new one, but the market dropped out after the Equinox was announced, but I think I will finally be down to two machines- the EQ800 and the Makro Multi Kruzer, between those two machines I cannot imagine a site I couldn't tackle.

Perhaps instead of being evangelists for the EQ, we should all go dark. Just post finds, or nothing at all, or whatever, but stop touting the EQ. What I find, most people resist change, it's human nature. The older we get the harder it is to embrace change. Let's be honest, the demographics of detectorists is skewed towards the right on the age graph, so there's a lot of resistance to change there. What surprises me the most, is the amount of existing Minelab fans in that camp. My hunt partner is a perfect example. Cannot tell you how long he held out with an old school flip phone....sigh. Now that he has a smart phone, I literally cannot get him to put it down. We go on a road trip and he's answering emails, making calls, texting and looking at the forums WHILE HE'S DRIVING He's been equally resistant to giving the EQ a chance. He did some cursory air tests on it and already exclaimed it did no better then his beloved Exp2! I forwarded and asked him to read the Treasure Talk blogs, especially the last issue that explains in more detail why the EQ is different. He hasn't so much as read the manual, instead calls me to spoon feed him "OK, so what do I do?, how do you set this up?". Very disappointing to say the least. To be honest, now I kind of hope he sells it off, perhaps I'll finally have a leg up on him when we revisit our old haunts

I believe this is their second generation of what amounts to a GPR in a detector format. I'd imagine that as technology gets cheaper and cheaper to implement, so to will devices like this, and likely smaller. Perhaps we'll eventually see that separate display logger integrated into a single hand held detector.

Awesome find!! Major congrats to the finder!! A guy here found a gold coin cache years ago, their out there.

Maybe never? Depends on the technology of the coil. If it's a proprietary design like the ones for the CTX, it might have to be made by a Minelab partner, like Coiltek. I'd love to see Detech, NEL or Mars make coils for it, the more options, the better. We definitely need a 10" x 4"/5"/6" closed design coil for relic hunting and prospecting, and a small coil for trash and iron.

Very slick, I like it! I always felt that the Go Find collapsable format was the ultimate compact format, and always figured that Minelab was using that format as a test mule for future products, which I suppose it is, the made more Go Finds

Looking forward to that coil too, bet it'll be deadly at iron infested relic sites. Hope it doesn't loose a lot of depth over the stock 11" coil, that'll be interesting to see.

Very well said Steve! I've been having such a challenge trying to convince my hunt partner that his Exp2 is 20 year old technology, and impress upon him to give the EQ800 a fair shake. Contrary to me seeding him good vids, and the well written Minelab Tech Talk series on the EQ and Multi-IQ technology, he continues to convince himself that his Exp2 is a superior device. He just received his EQ800 Monday, and his big plan is one test at a park, and if he doesn't immediately see the wow factor, he's dumping it on fleabay. Oh well, I tried to lead the horse to the water.... I kind of feel that way towards the rest of the naysayers, because to be honest it doesn't affect me one bit. I don't really care anymore what detector they use. Actually that's not entirely true, I'd prefer folks continue using their legacy detectors, because that leaves more finds for us EQ users to dig

Nice job Tim, enjoyed reading your report and glad to see the trend continue.

Sorry bout that Chase, didn't read far enough That's what happens when you try to squeeze in some forum reading while working - lol BTW I bought the SoundPeats, and they sound OK, but I think I like the EQ800 headphones better, so will likely send the SoundPeats back, and stick with the factory BT headphones. If I get into beach detecting, I may revisit the SoundPeats....but for relic & park detecting, the factory BT headphones work great IMHO. HH, Cal

Good write-up, will re-read it again when I get home from work. They probably should've left out the "If you haven’t tried EQUINOX yet – why not give it go" part considering many still have a sour taste left from the roll-out (and many still haven't yet received theirs) but aside from that, very interesting article, certainly worthy of a second reading.

Another option would be to get some AptX BT wireless sport earbuds with a high IP rating (weather resistant/water proof). Their marketed towards the sports crowd as sweat proof. SoundPeats makes some in the $25-$30 range that actually rate well on amazon.

Good job buddy!! The Nox is bringing home the goods, it's going to be fun rehunting old haunts, I'm pretty sure they still hold lots of good finds!

This particular spot isn't that big. Back in the 40's -80's one could rent a paddle boat and paddle around the little lake here, and people would picnic on the hillside. It's small, maybe a quarter the size of a football field at the most. The spot I started getting the silver out of, was about the only place I could hunt because the grass has turned into a jungle there, but I know for a fact that I've been over that same spot with my F75, and other detectors I've owned since, and buddies that I took with my went over it with their Etrac (don't think the CTX was out yet). So, sure it's possible it was missed, but I believe I have detected this exact little patch of ground multiple times in the past, so I believe it was the detector. That's my goal, but it will likely be at a relic site. PSD....that's hilarious... I was already having PGD after lucking out on that gold ring on my first hunt, but since then no more, although I was at one spot with tons of nickel ranged signals, but darned if the ones I dug weren't all pull tabs I have to say that it's a very fun detector to use, as is the Kruzer, so I believe between the two detectors, I have any site that I'd ever encounter well covered Thanks everyone for watching, and HH! Cal

I had a funny experience. Last summer there was a park scrape at an 1860's San Francisco park, and one evening I was detecting it with my Racer2 and I got a funky signal, just like you describe. It had repeatable high tone, but seemed really large, but at one point I could get a fairly repeatable high 80's signal. I dug and found a big piece of old 1800's copper wire all twisted up into a large formation, and figured that was the culprit, but I swung over the spot again, and this time was getting a solid 89, nice and tight small signal, and dug out a barber quarter. The irony is that this was an area that had the grass just barely scrapped off, in a park that had been hunted to death, so I have no doubt that signal had been detected dozens of times over the years, but folks simply figured because it sounded so funky and possibly large, they moved on. HH, Cal

Nice report Chase!! What settings are you using for the beach? HH, Cal

Nice hunt!!! And so the trend continues

Took the EQ800 to a spot that petered out long ago, and had a pretty good hunt. HH, Cal

The EQ loves nickels doesn't it. I noticed that crusty bent nails are more abound when using Field2 vs FIeld1. That said, I think I like FIeld2 better so far, just seems like I get better depth and make more finds using Field2, but I have a lot to learn.

The stand looks very nice, no doubt about it, but to be honest, I have to admit that the EQ800 stand is one of the best stock engineered stands for not falling over I've ever used. Every detector I've ever had in the past, be it Minelab, Fisher, Teknetics, Makro, Nokta, Garrett, doesn't really matter, they all tip over, so very easily, so I'd about given up on a detector maker actually making a stand that actually stood the machine up. With the EQ it's darn near impossible for the detector to fall over. Heck even in the back of my vehicle it stays upright the entire ride and let's just say I'm not a gentle driver - lol I had a stand like the one the one shown for my Sov, yes it works, and maybe it's just me, but the less junk I have attached to my detector, the lighter it is, not to mention the ergonomics are better, and it's not getting tangled up on anything.

Thanks TNSS, appreciate the vote of confidence. Tom's a tough nut to crack as far as trying new detectors, he's attached to his Explorer, (success is hard to argue) I hope he gives the EQ a fair shake, and if he does, I suspect he'll be pleasantly surprised. It's not a CTX, Etrac, Dues, etc., which I've tried to impress upon him not to expect it to be, it's different, and I think if you go into it with that impression, you can do well with it, but if you try to make it something it's not, chances are you'll be disappointed. I can't wait to get to our ghost town sites.

I'm planning to detect all day Saturday, neat place, has turf and relic sites to detect. Not too old, but I've dug plenty of silver and jewelry there over the years, and I like taking the EQ800 to a place I'm familiar with as you know what to expect as far as soil conditions, iron, etc. If I can pull some goodies out of this site, I'll be super impressed. TNSS I'm planning to try auto tracking tomorrow - noise cancel, auto GB, then switch to tracking and see how she does. Steve H. said he had found the EQ auto ground tracking to work excellent. I'm thinking of detecting in Field2, discriminating nothing, dial iron audio down to reduce audio fatigue so I can hear the iron zones. Not much of a modification from the default program, and maybe, just maybe leaving the iron disc'd out isn't a bad idea, as it sure makes for fun detecting, but on the other hand, it's sure enjoyable to have such a quite detector that brings home the goods!