Cal_Cobra

Might as well add a bit of fuel to the fire, wouldn't want it to die out So happens that Tom Dankowski (aka NASA-TOM) was also a field tested for the Equinox, and he recently posted that he was the cause of a 6-week delay,. An inquiry as to when that delay timer kicked of was met with deafening silence: NASA-Tom Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- ((Although I'm to blame for the 6-week delay.)) Tom when you say you're responsible for a six week delay, can you share when this delay incurred? Is that six weeks from when you made your post? Six weeks from January 1? Just what are we looking at here? Another month or two to wait for the equinox? No idea how that factors into the unicorn we're calling the Equinox.....I will say that with Tom D. being a long time, avid (die hard) methodical and scientifically minded detectorists, whatever it was that he impressed upon Minelab to delay the Equinox, must've been a fairly big code rewrite as many of these tweaks and whatnot can be done in a matter of days, not months. It'll be interesting to see what else he shares, as so far he's been exceedingly tight lipped about all things Equinox.

Ah hem....it's THREE words Makro MULTI Kruzer

Ironically I'm on a little road trip right now field testing another vendors machine at some of my better "hunted out" relic sites. I was really hoping to have the EQ800 in hand by now so that I could do some side-by-side comparisons for relic hunting in heavy iron, sea of nails, and around that rusty tin that drives every machine I've ever used in my life crazy. I don't know whoever coined the phrase "Patience is a virtue" because I'm not seeing it

Now that the Prospecting Mode supports multi mode, wondering how it will work for relic hunting in heavy iron? Can't wait to test one of these and do some head to head testing between the EQ800 and the Makro Multi Kruzer at my iron infested relic sites

Unless you're still using a flip phone, and driving a 1985 Honda Accord, you should have a pile of USB chargers around...

I assume there's no mic in the ML wireless headphones, so if you pair them to your smartphone via bluetooth, then you're just getting the incoming call announcement correct? I'll likely not use this for a couple of reasons, it's nice to have the "sorry I couldn't hear your call cause of the headphones" excuse to the wifey BUT more importantly, with BT enabled on the phone the battery discharges noticeably quicker. Now if the wireless headphones had a built-in mic, that would be very cool Actually I suppose you could use some BT gaming headphones with a built-in mic and that would work...just make sure they support aptX low latency.

Everyone knows reading directions is a last resort, it's like asking for direction when driving

And so it begins.... or does it Looking forward to using the EQ, and reading how everyone gets along with it

I absolutely enjoy reading Steve's well thought out posts, and the no-nonsense culture of this forum. It's a breath of fresh air coming from some of the other forums where the EQ implosion is completely out of control. Not only that, but Steve has a great way of communicating his knowledge, thus creating an almost classroom like environment in which the teacher/master and students have an open and respectful venue in which to learn from each other, and share ideas and lessons learned.

Agreed. This is what ML posted on their site: Minelab is pleased to announce that the new EQUINOX Series of detectors is expected to be available for purchase worldwide from late January, 2018 onwards*. *Initial availability will be limited in all regions due to the very high pre-release demand. Please contact your local dealer for specific price and availability information. We will be doing our best to get detectors into the hands of our valued customers as soon as we possibly can. Definitely a bit of ambiguity / wiggle room in their wording as it doesn't per se indicate whether the "available for purchase worldwide" necessarily means it would be in your hands or in dealer stock. I suspect, if you read between the lines, that it means it would start shipping end of Jan 2018, and by "shipping" I suspect from the manufacturing plant to the distributors, not necessarily to dealer or end users. It's anyone's guess whether they'll go slow boat or air, as air transportation obviously has a premium attached to it. Perhaps they're doing both so that the pre-orders can be fulfilled, and slow boat additional inventory to seed stock as they see fit to build their pipeline. One way or another, everyone will receive theirs in due time

Nice that they posted that BUT that was a week ago. I guess "coming days" is a somewhat undefined term, but days would imply less than a week no? @DestinEngineer Not sure if your comment " To be pissy and have an attitude about their distribution process is self imposed. They haven't broken ANY deadline, messed up any shipping schedule; all they did was generate enough interest to drive people to the point of insanity about the Equinox's release. This effectively drives some people's anxiety through the roof and they pop off about it. " was directed at me, but for the record, wasn't being pissy at all, just trying to extrapolate a timeline in the absence of transparency from ML. Although I'm as eager as anyone else to see what the EQ can do at my own sites, I have plenty of detectors that, although deemed obsolete, still seem to work pretty well to tide me over until this Unicorn materializes My obsolete machines live to fight another day

At this point only Minelab knows.... hopefully they share an update, transparency goes a long way in this day and age. It doesn't really matter to me I have plenty of detectors, but a lot of dealers are posting that their detector sales have been halted since Detectival, that's brutal.

I purchased the Impact Pro Pack and didn't have any issues with it. Seems like something other then a coil issue if they've already replaced four coils, perhaps ask to see if they could swap out the control unit.

In the words of the late, great Mel Fischer "Today's the day!" Here's how things seem to be going with the EQ shipping from what I gather: Another forum posted that ML said at the U.S. ML Dealers meeting this month that the EQ would be delayed. Strictly looking at the shipping logistics to the U.S., I have doubts anyone in the U.S. will receive a production unit until March, perhaps even April depending on the delay. If they ship via container shipment from Malaysia to the U.S. that's a good month or so, then they need to be processed through customs (unknown time delay), then shipped to the distributor. Will the distributor ship to the dealer to reship to the end customer? Or will they drop ship it to the end customer on behalf of the dealer and save a bit of time? Hopefully ML will surprise us and everyone will have their pre-orders in hand sooner

Are you able to customize and save your tone options per mode? Say for example that for relic hunting you only want five tones, yet for park hunting you want full/50 tones? Or do you have to readjust the tones manually each time you select a mode? I'm assuming on the EQ800 you can save whatever settings you want, but might be wrong...

Chuck it's very generous of you to run the contest. One question, if nobody gets the exact date/time, will you select the closest match? HH, Brian

I wouldn't view the blendy bleedy tones as a negative, it's just another clue that you can use when detecting. I'll give you an example, I was out again Sunday testing the Multi Kruzer. One of the spots I went to for a couple of hours I previously found two wheaties and two silver mercury dimes, this is a spot that's been pounded to death, but in 4-TONE the silver sound was unmistakable. So yesterday, I got a couple of those aluminum 40 OZ beer caps, and they sounded OK, but come in around 72. I dug the first one, and got the same signal a while later and was able to predict it was the same thing. Then I got the same sound I got on the two silver dimes I previously dug there, just a pure audio tone that jumps out, with an 82 TID. I was detecting with my buddy and he had his Racer 2. The silver sound was so distinct, that I almost called him over to have a listen with his R2 and say that I was confident that it was going to be a silver dime, but then I decided against it in case I was incorrect, but sure enough it was another mercury dime. If you were park hunting, the pure tones are going to be coins, the raspy, thin, multi-tone signals are going to be something else, so you could cherry pick out coins no problem IMHO. Now if I was at one of my old ghost town sites, I could apply the same logic, but then you might miss some cool relics.

On the Multi Kruzer the audio has been enhanced from the Racers and Impact. I didn't care for the 4-TONE mode on the Impact (Di4) as the audio had that harsh digital/artificial response, but on the Multi Kruzer I am loving the 4-TONE mode audio, it still has that bleedy/blendy audio and it's a bit akin to analog audio IMO. The 3-TONE mode has a fast reactivity setting with GAIN settings of 89 and lower (not 90 as Shelton stated). These units already have fast recovery times, but the fast reactivity mode on 3-TONE is something to behold! Note all comments are from testing a pre-release beta unit, features may be subject to change on the production units.

I agree, they are one of the few (only?) detector companies that actually listen to what their users want and do it! I expect that we will continue to see innovative, new detectors from them in the future as they work on covering their basis based on customer wants and needs versus what they think we need. I won't mention any names, but I am so tired and disappointed in one of my originally favorite detector companies as I see them continue to lag behind everyone else, continuously re-release/re-package/re-brand their ten+ year old detectors. I guess their not obsolete, but man how many times can you re-packge the same old thing over and over and over, and simply slap on a new decal and call it "new". They've starting to become the laughing stock on the industry. The American auto industry tried that, and it didn't work out too well for them. HH, Brian

Pretty much in the same boat. The Impact is a great detector, one of the best I've used for the kind of detecting I enjoy, but your ergo sentiments echo mine as well.

Dilek at Makro has given the go ahead to share field test information on the new Makro Kruzer series. I was asked to field test the Makro Multi Kruzer. I only received the detector last week, so I've been working hard to test the machine as much as possible at various sites (salt water beaches, relic sites, parks, etc). Here's a quick video I did of some of the testing, hopefully this will answer some questions you may have: HH, Brian

Shhhhh.....don't tell anyone, but that's going to make all other detectors obsolete!! Dodge Ram?? I'm more a Ford kinda guy (even though I drive a Toyota FJ Cruiser)....

Hmm.....I'll say: 1) First EQ to land will be Feb 12th @ 9:39AM. 2) Ridge Runner will not get his until April 1st, because the original one shipped to him will get "lost" in the mail and the ironically the UPS driver has a new hobby 3) I'll get mine.....whenever the darn thing gets here - lol No worries, I have another new toy that I'm playing with....hint, it's not a ML device, but I cannot (yet) talk about it

The Nokta/Makro wireless headphones are really good IMO. Excellent audio quality, comfortable, they charge fast, and you can go for a few days of detecting (full days) on a full change. They spoiled me on my R2 and Impact so much that I'll never consider another detector that doesn't have wireless headphone capabilities.

Steve I hear you. If you need any help with those ghost towns, let me know