Skate

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.

Yep there is no blend. When it chirps there is a reason. It's telling you something.

I’m in complete agreement with your observations. All the concerns about depth are irrelevant to me. It’s about what I’ve missed over the years that still sits in the ground. I’m tickled I found three nice silvers I had previously missed and that’s the point, the Equinox is giving me and others the chance to go back and get them out of the ground. Also I think it’s important to say that I’m not anti XP Deus or anti CTX but rather I’ve come to be “for” the Equinox. It’s not a zero sum game, it’s not black and white. I had zero intentions of selling my other two detectors before this Monday but to be honest I really can’t see myself using them anymore given the type of hunting I do. That doesn’t mean anyone else should and I’m not saying your XYZ machine is not as good as the Equinox either. Anyone interested in a couple of used detectors ??

Awesome job! I'm just curious. Do you feel like you hear things differently with the Nox?

I was running the Deus in 14.4 V4 5 tones. It's Andy's program. I also ran it in 28.8 but never higher. Reactivity set at 1. Using the 9.5 elliptical. This is going to sound kind of weird but the Deus sounds linear but the Equinox to me reports things to your brain differently. I found a barber dime today that had iron on the left and aluminum on the right from the angle that I could hear it. Each signal was repeatable in the row when I swept it with the coil. It was like the right side of my brain heard the aluminum, the middle part heard the barber and the left side of my brain heard the iron. I also don't want this to become an Equinox vs Deus thing as the deus does many things well and I'm pretty proficient with it. To me it just was at it's limits and the coins I found were beyond the deus to find. What I love about Steve's forum is it isn't about detector wars but folks learning. I'm looking forward to you getting yours because I think you're going to be amazed and I'll benefit as a result.

I got out to my old rancho permission with the nox this afternoon and I went to a spot that I had felt reasonably sure I had cleaned it out with my deus in the last month. The Old rancho had approximately 70 small homes spread out over 50-60 acres. It's now a nursery and my spots to hunt are predicated on when the owner moves his trees. Sometimes I literally hunt in between the rows in a 2-3 foot wide by 100 feet lane between trees. I've used Historic aerials to help out but the way I find a house that's been wiped from the face of the earth is to find the big iron left behind in the ground and then start to hunt in between it. The spot I hunted today was cleared about 2 months ago and it's about 60 feet wide by 100 feet deep. I was pretty secure in the fact that I had cleaned the area pretty well as I had taken out clad from the 60's and 70's, 4 mercs and about 20 or so wheaties. In addition I've found some pretty cool relics. I had hunted some of the same ground in the past 3-4 years with the CTX and ATpro just not all of it like I did with the deus. Unlike yesterday when I felt like I had an 80% guess rate in the park, the iron knocked me down to between 50-60% as evidenced by all the junk I dug that fooled me. The fooling came in the beginning though and here's what I learned. - all that junk sounded good, clear and strong however the VDI would move + or - 4 numbers. I'd get a great high tone, and then check the VDI and it would show 23, I'd move around it and then it was 27 or 24 or 25. In order to learn if this was true most of the time I dug all that junk and the tone with the jumpy VDI was the same every time so remember, good tone, jumpy VDI is probably junk. - the nox sounds way different in the iron homesteads than in a park. That may sound stupid or "duh" but my Deus sounded the same no matter if i was at the beach, park or the old rancho. To me, the fact that my deus responds the same isn't good. It means it's not AS ADAPTABLE as the Nox. I don't know if this is the reason but one is a single frequency and one is multi-frequency. I'm not trying to knock the deus but it has more limits than the Equinox and I suspect this is going to be the same for most other detectors. - when you hear the chirp you have to investigate further, don't walk on. One of the wheats only sounded off on one side in one direction only. Every time I got a chirp today it was mixed in with another signal. You could hear the iron and the barber each give a repeatable tone. I didn't have a single target that was by itself, everything was mixed together but the amazing thing was the equinox gave me the info I needed to dig. So back to the hunt in the hunted out iron patch. 6 coppers 1 zinc 3 wheats (46, 37 and one too hard to read) 1 1912 Barber Dime 1 palmolive token that's rotting and the Good Roads bell. All this from a place I'd "cleaned" out over the course of the last month. The barber was in between an iron nail and aluminum. The token had iron in the hole which is why I think it's rotting because the iron seemed to rest on the token. It's probably cliche now but the Equinox is a game changer and today proved it for me as did yesterday in the park. 2 hunted out locations, 3 silvers, 3 wheats and a bunch of clad. Keep in mind that I really don't even understand the Equinox yet. Every park, old home or place is now back open for business no matter who has come before to it. I can't wait for all of you to get yours. You're going to have a lot of fun. Best to all you, Skate

The merc was found about 3 inches down with a pull tab right next to it. I've been over that spot with so many other detectors myself and yet there it was. It was masked all this time and as I took the time to investigate the signal the tone got clearer and the ID read a consistent 26-27. I was saying to myself "I bet this is a silver dime, Steve's diagram says so." Then the next thing you know out pops the merc. It was really a sight to see. The 1940 silver quarter rang loud and clear in another area of pull tabs but the VDI was a little more spaced (31-35) and I figure that's because it was deeper. Another thing that may or may not be helpful to hunters is that the Nox hears everything in the ground. In contrast with my XP deus, it heard lots of things but even it seemed to lack the separation that the Nox has. To me, more separation means you hear more things. I'd been trying to clean up an area of my park over the past 4 months of any and all targets so that when i got my nox and ran over it I could look for deep and true targets. Much to my surprise what I thought my deus had cleared the nox just revealed more of. To me this means that in places you've previously hunted out with other machines you likely have, you've probably reached those machines capacity in that area. I think it must be the multi-frequency that opens up these older areas at least that is what it appears to me to be. I wish I was more technical minded as maybe I would understand it better and be able to relay it to you in a cleaner way. I think the average hunter is going to have fun but the serious hunter is going to be on fire. Today will be a good test for it as I move to an area where it used to be a farm camp of old small homes from the early 1900's that have long been bulldozed and gone and is now a nursery. I've hunted it for 6 years now and I always pull something out of the ground amongst the iron and trash. Hopefully I'll thinkk the nox is still all that after getting out there.

That ring is amazing. That is likely extremely collectible and rare. I'd trade a gold ring for that babe ruth ring any day. That's historical treasure.

Well I got the chance to hit my favorite park this afternoon for the first time with my new nox. I ran it in 5 tones, park 2. To be completely transparent, I ran it in this way because this was somehow how it was when I turned it on today and pushed some buttons. I was able to pair the bluetooth headphones completely on accident as I thought I was following the instructions and it wouldn't paired and then I went to turn them off and when I did it paired. Seriously I had no idea how I did it. When i finally hit the ground all I could think of is man this thing is fast! The park I'm hunting is one of those "hunted out" parks. Over the past 45 years it has had MD club hunts, and a bunch of detectorists like me who have brought every machine known to man to hunt it. I personally have used a silver umax, Whites MXT, V3i, AT pro, Etrac, CTX, XP Deus on it over the years. I was out for 2 hours and it was a great hunt! 2 silver, some clad and of course the junk. Some observations 1. If you're a new detector and you just got a Nox, I'd use 5 tones and for the first 10-15 hours or so I'd just hunt for coins. Set your tone for coins to 25 so it rings loud and start to see how your coins sound in your soil. Learn your VDI's, the merc dime was a 26-27 and the 1940 quarter was 6-7 inches down and gave a VDI 31-35. 2. If you're coming from a Deus the Nox will seem heavy believe it or not. I got so spoiled using my deus in terms of lightness and the nox was heavier. Obviously if you are coming from a CTX or Etrac it will be like swinging a toothpick. 3. The 11" coil is easy to sweep and scrub the grass with. It really feels like you can cover a bunch of ground. 4. Beaver tails come in at 12-13. So does nickels, so does gold. 5. Pinpointing is a breeze but truthfully you can wiggle it just as easy and not use the pinpointer and end up over the center of the coil. The tone is easy to "see" under the coil if you know what i mean. 6. Study Steve's VDI diagram. It's spot on. I knew with an 80% accuracy rate everything I chose to dig. I dug one zinc just to test the VDI and then avoided them the rest. Now when I go jewelry hunting I'll change my approach but for today I could notch it out just by hearing and seeing. 7. The Equinox is a confidence machine. The hype definitely gives a placebo effect. You feel like you're going to find good stuff. 8. I didn't think I'd sell my XP and Excal but after today I likely will and replace them with a second 800 and once the coils come out I'll just keep the 6" coil on one and the 11" on the other for beach and park hunting. 9. Don't let the haters change your view of the Equinox. Multi-frequency is going to be better in 90% of the the situations you'll likely find yourself hunting in. The arguments surrounding FBS and BBS is irrelevant to the average hunter who is simply looking to find coins and jewelry. That's not a criticism of the CTX or Etrac but rather how good the nox is going to be. Who cares if it costs a 3rd of a CTX. Unless you're buying a CTX it's price shouldn't matter. There's probably a ton more I could say if I was a technical type person. I'm not, I'm strictly a treasure hunter and what I don't have in eye sight I have in hearing and the equinox is a really, really good machine. Tomorrow it's to the ranch and the iron patch. I can't wait, life is good. Best to all of you.

I got mine today. It is together and is currently in my garage charging. I put it next to my deus so it could taunt it. My excal II is sulking in the corner knowing it's probably going to be sitting there a while. Life is good.

Love the watch. That's a beauty right there.

Very cool. I get mine on Monday but I have a stupid mentor teacher meeting from 4-7 that I can't get out of so no chance to get to the beach until Tuesday. Did the gold tone match up with your air testing done before? I'm just curious how similar the tones are in the air and wet sand.

since the end of September. It's worked flawless to this point.

6-8 months. I hunt a lot though but I’m not particularly hard on my equipment. My ground is not mineralized like others according to my detectors I use. Garrett’s are great but I’ve had better results with my MI6 and the 90 hours run time is key for me. No running into 7/11 to spend $5 on a 9v because I forgot to check on the battery.

I really like MI6 from XP. The battery has a 90 hour limit (never verified by me just going by what I've read) and is waterproof like all the others. I have never paired mine to my Deus but I don't feel like I need to. I've used the Garrett's before and each one (black/orange) began to false over time. So far all is good with the MI6.