Steve,
I wish I had the hours in that you do on the Equinox but in the time I have used it the results have, and continue to be, pretty amazing.
Let me share with you a little test I did on Saturday at a very heavily hunted, trash filled park here in LA. My buddy, Randy, brought his 800 and I brought my Etrac with a Dtech 8" small coil. I have done very well with the Etrac using this small coil.
We were both digging clad, nothing special. Then Randy called me over to check a bouncing signal in the teens on his 800. I scanned it with the Etrac and did not get anything. No null, nothing. I could hit the target in pinpoint. Randy dug down and at about 6" found a little half of a brass locket. Not a big value item but still, the 800 saw it and the Etrac, even with a small coil, didn't.
There was only one other target of merit that bears mentioning. Randy got a chirpy "25" on his 800, not real deep, but he figured it was a clad dime. I scanned over the target and once again got nothing. I tried pinpoint and the Etrac would barely read it. Randy dug down and around 4" he popped out a clad dime. I know this stretch of the park we were hunting and there is no way that a clad dime at 4" should have been missed (it was clearly not a fresh drop). Yet it was.
These two targets just reaffirmed what all of us are already well aware of: the Equinox is a different animal. Even machines like Etracs, which have ruled the roost so to speak for many years, missed tough and easy targets due to target masking. The Equinox is able to sniff out these targets so truly the expression "hunted out" does not apply to anyone using one.
Now I just need to work on the "more hours to hunt" part of all this...
Bill (S. CA)