Skate

You're going to have a blast! Fair warning though, detecting is like playing a slot machine, the next swing is always the winner. I can't tell you the number of times I said to myself "ok, this is the last target" only to find myself detecting an hour later. I agree you are likely to do quite well simply due to the fact that you have no preconceived notions. I look forward to seeing your finds when you get rolling. Best of Luck!

Really good report. If there was a book being put together about the Nox, your thoughts and Steve's confirmation should be included. We need to appreciate the Equinox for what it is and what it does, not try to make it more like another detector. Today I hit another spot previously hunted to death and while i didn't find any winners I found around 12 memorials that had been missed by me and two other detectorists. They were all 3-5" down. All masked by trash until today.

Having accomplished exactly what you have in terms of hunting isn't exaggeration. I completely agree with it 100%. It is simply a spot on machine. I went to an old home site from the early 1900's yesterday to hunt. I've been there probably 30 times to hunt along with my father-in law. Together we've pulled out 40-50 total coins and the last 3 times I went I was skunked with my deus and my CTX. I thought I would declare the site done only after I hunted it with the equinox and lo and behold I got two more wheats. Both were crystal clear high tones, you just knew before you dug. I hope I can get a few IHP's before you get them all.

Very cool finds, a bit of everything for sure. Your description of the tones for deep targets is spot on. Future is bright and shiny for you and the silver.

This is the key point. I got my deus turned it on and I was lost even though I had watched Gary tell me everything. That's not a knock on gary at all just that the deus requires so much from the user to work. While it is helpful to know how to detect, the equinox would work for my wife who has never detected in her life. All I'd need to tell her is when you get a tone and the screen reads 29-31 dig it because it's probably a quarter. You couldn't do that with a deus, CTX or Etrac for that matter.

Pretty much what I got last week at the beach in Ventura. All my finds had been there some time and were a result of getting a bit of erosion from the storm. The VDI's really didn't waver all that much and I knew after a bit exactly what I was digging. I didn't score any jewelry so I can't say where they will hit at. Unfortunately most people love to hate a winner especially nowadays. ML put out a machine that pretty much everyone has been asking for years in terms of weight, waterproof, ability and price and it's still not enough. When people start threads on other forums telling you all the reasons why they wouldn't buy an equinox before they were even released tells you all you need to know. Personally I love it. The last thing I want to see at a beach near me is someone swinging an equinox who got there ahead of me. I hope no one buys another one and they all gather dust on the shelf.

Outstanding! The people like yourself who really take the time to learn what the machine is telling them are going to clean up. You can run it fast and cherry pick or you can tune it, slow down and get it all. Well done Mitchel.

Very nice first hunt. I had the same trouble with pinpointing as you, but that video will help us both. I think you are going to kill it on the beach this season, much gold in the scoop!

that would be the Buttasaurus rex. Once thought to be extinct several have been spotted in the wild as of late. Approach them with caution as they can be a bit dangerous.

I have no idea what mine is doing with this but the one time I saved my settings to the user profile(park 2) and I went back to the user profile(after messing around in field 1 and 2) the tones had changed. I hadn't shut down the machine or anything just saved my user profile and then went to other modes. Instead of the high pitched chirp it was now more of a blended tone. Not sure what happened but I simply went back to park 2 and recreated my original settings and the high pitch tone 25 came back. Has anyone else seen this?

I think you ought to trademark 'Old Yard" mode. Best description of a setting I've heard yet!

That’s the thing. Depth is way overrated to me. A one inch IHP surrounded by iron and junk is more likely than one being 8” down in my experience. IHP’s are beautiful coins. I’ve only found a few. You did well.

I ran it in Park 2, sensitivity 23, 5 tones. Everything else was factory. It’s that good out of the box.

As I'm sure you know a faster recovery speed will clip your target tones and as an experienced Etrac user you are used to going slower. I would imgaine that it is an easier leap to go from a Deus to the equinox than from an etrac to the equinox. I wouldn't be too hard on yourself though. You did make great finds in places you had hit hard the first time out with a brand new machine you don't know all that well. I'd say you had an awesome first couple of hunts.

That's an awesome day for sure. I haven't run 50 tones yet and I'm not sure if I'm ever going to. That IHP is really cool. Do you remember what it rang at? Great job on the recoveries. Hopefully the 6 will be here soon. I'm not going to try and jewelry hunt my park until I get it. The nox just picks up everything.

Thanks to all. It was truly awesome. These are my two oldest US coins I've ever found. I've scored a 1787 reale and a bunch of chinese coins from the early 1700's but before this my oldest US was an 1895 shield nickel. In my area we just don't have much in the way of historical coins in the ground at places like parks that go beyond the early 1900's. I was in a cluster of oak trees near the foundation tree and it is my understanding they used to have church picnics out there after services. Unfortunately much of the park area near this is covered with asphalt. The Equinox is a really good machine for sure and I look forward to seeing how everyone does. The law of averages says I'll be visited by the skunk here soon so I'm going to ride this wave as long as I can.

I went back to the same park I hunted on Tuesday to see if I could pull any more goodies out. To be clear I have never pulled anything out older than a 1932 wheat. I've dug quite a few merc's, silver washington quarters and a few silver rosies. I chose an area to hunt that I had run my deus, CTX and AT pro at over the years. I don't think it's fair of me to compare my time with the CTX as if I could really run that machine because between repairs and just comfort it wasn't there for me but the deus and AT I could swing. I dug the 1875 seated dime first. It was 8 inches down in front of a large rock. I could only get the top quarter of my coil over it and the VDI ranged from 24-28. It was a quieter signal meaning you could tell it was deep. If you are a VDI hunter you would probably have passed this by as it was all over the place combined with the faint clear tone. About 5 minutes and 15 feet away later I got the same type of clean clear faint signal. The VDI was again jumpy showing anywhere from 27-33 depending on how I turned the coil. I dug about 6 inches down, shoved the pinpointer in there and there was nothing. I stood up, ran the equinox over it again and now the tone was a little louder and the VDI moved to 29-32. I dug another two inches, pinpointed again and got a tone, dug 2 more inches and there it was, my first seated quarter! The town I live in was only created in 1887 but the park had been there since 1875 when the First Presbyterian church dedicated an Oak tree in the park as it's foundation tree. I found both seated's about 25-30 feet from that tree. I didn't find anymore silver just a bunch of clad and I'm embarrassed to admit about 15 old twist off bottle tops. They all rang in at 22 and in the same area as the seated's. I was trying to remember where Indian heads came in at on the equinox and I thought it was 22 so I dug them all and was fooled every time. I'm starting to understand the Equinox now, what it's trying to tell me and on deep targets don't judge them by their VDI. Loud signals 4-6 inches with jumpy VDI's have been trash but these two were jumpy at 8" and 10". As an aside I sold my deus and my Excal is up for sale. I'm throwing all in with the Equinox and going to get a second unit and the additional coils. I only can swing one machine at a time and for the foreseeable future it's going to be an Equinox.

I'd say it's most likely user error. There is a feeling of shaft play that comes from the weight of the coil on the end of the rod but it's not enough to effect the use of the machine.

I have heard this as well and while i would love perfection in a machine I'm going to have to dig everything to find it all. I air tested a ring my wife had and it hit 3-4, way lower than I would have expected a gold ring to hit. The only signal I've found that I don't like is 19-21, it's been zinc or junk every time. Best of luck and I hope you get gold in your scoop.

Thanks for the invite Mitchel, I'd love to meet up some time, I could learn a ton from you. I agree about the waves. I feel like we got screwed again by fake stormwatch. All week the mouth breathers on the evening news have been hyping this storm so I had planned to hit it today to coincide with the low-1.0 tide and score something. The quarters and dimes had been there quite a bit as they were toasted and most unreadable. After looking through the pennies I did get a 1940 wheatie which is a rarity for me on the beach. We need to get Steve to come to SoCal for a field trip

This was hunt #3 for me putting me at 6.5 hours on the equinox now. I usually last about 2-3 hours a hunt due to needing a 2nd hip replacement so I envy those of you who can swing all day. I hit the beach in Ventura after school today hoping the storm and high tide would result in some erosion. I figured since it was cold, had just finished raining I'd have the beach to myself. I get out there and there is a family having a picnic and one of the women is in a bikini getting out of the water. Only in California will you find people in bikini's swimming in overcast 55 degree weather with a water temp of 57. I digress so here's how the equinox did on my black sand beach. I used beach 2 as I hunted the wet sand. The Equinox didn't disappoint. It was a dime magnet. I can't recall finding this many dimes (11) in such a short two hour hunt. The VDI was spot on from 24-26 on every single one. My first target made a slight chirp that was faint so i decided to investigate and it was a dime at least 3 scoops down. It isn't sugar sand so I was probably down about 16 inches in the heavy rock/pebble sand. The quarters were each 29-31 I had been using my Excal II on the wet sand and it's a great machine but tone only and now with accurate VDI on the Equinox I think the Excal is going to get a little dusty. The shore break is such that I don't get out beyond my knees so all i'm going to need are the waterproof phones. I didn't find anything of real value, I dug every target for the first hour and then cherry picked the high tones until I left. The nickel rang at 12. It was a foot down and no matter how many times I turned 90 degrees on it the VDI was 12. The junk hit mostly at 9 and 15-17. I dug two or three zincs and the VDI was 19-21 each time so after those 3 I just ignored those #'s for the remainder of the time. I didn't really expect to find gold as I need the summer so folks can replenish the sand. The couple times I dug an item with iron you could easily hear it. It made a sound like Pfft at the end of the tone. Interestingly enough i did get 3 different ghost signals where it said there was a target, I dug, dumped the sand checked the hole and the sand pile and the target disappeared. Made no sense whatsoever. Pinpointing was a chore. As good as I could pinpoint at the park the other day was as bad as I was today in the sand. I don't really use the pinpointer, I try to wiggle my way to locating the target. I dig, swipe the pile with my foot and scoop the target. Today I dug, swiped, scooped, swiped etc., etc. I'm willing to say the problem was me but it was an issue. I guess you could say I'm now an official Minelab Equinox Fanboy. I have complete confidence that if a ring of any shape or metal was under my coil I would have heard it clearly and cleanly. It handled the wet sand with little to no falsing. I bumped up the sensitivity to 25 just to see how it would do and it got a little chatty so I backed it down to 22 and it was quiet. It got so quiet that I turned up the threshold to where it was audible so there was at least a sound. One issue I seem to be having with the headphones is that they cover my ears so well that they really block out external noise. Twice now I've had people walk up on me and I had zero clue they were there. It could be that I'm just concentrating so hard that i'm zoning out or that my ears are the perfect size and fit for the headphones. I'm going to get a second equinox as soon as there is an inventory available. I'm going to get the 6" for the dirt and keep the 11" for the beach. The equinox works better out of the box for me than probably any detector I've owned other than the MXT or maybe the ATpro for turn and go detecting. I have to go to the Junk fair with my better half tomorrow at the fairgrounds so I likely won't get out again until Sunday. Best to all

No worries! Glad to see you’re having fun and doing well. Keep it up! I first hunted in Park2 because I somehow put it in park 2 to begin with. I was so anxious to get hunting I kept it there. To be completely honest I applied no logic to it and just got going. I’ve only got 4.5 hours on it total so m about 50-60 hours away from saying I’m a proficient user.

That's what i would call a complete hunt, you got everything. I was doing some air testing today and an 18k gold earring came in solid at 3. have you done any air testing to see where the targets are hitting at? I get the issue with foil though and with easter coming up the beaches are due for a foil dusting.

Great report. I'm hitting the beach tomorrow but I'm just going to hit the wet sand and then the dry. Would you recommend taking the coil cover off for beach hunting only?

That is some neat stuff. I love that crab, poor little thing didn't know what hit him.