Jeff McClendon

Hi Drake, hopefully others will be able to give you some advice on deep coins soon. I can only tell you what I have experienced. I live in eastern Colorado. Our soil is full of naturally occurring iron, volcanics, and lots of other trace minerals from decomposing granite. So, detecting anything coin sized at a depth of 13Cm/5" is really tough for most VLF detectors. The Equinox 600/800 are one of the detectors that work pretty well here. I can at least get some kind of signal and target ID from deep coins but like I said there is so much trace iron that it is hard to tell if I'm detecting deep iron or a coin. You will have to experiment on those one way beeps and see what you find. Assuming you are in Park 1, American 25 cent coins usually have target IDs between 27 and 32 if they are not too deep. The deeper they are the more likely they will only beep in one direction and I will get nothing or a drop in the threshold in the other swing direction. I can also get slightly higher numbers (or lower sometimes) in one direction and really low numbers in the other sweep direction. I hit the horseshoe button and check for iron. I am almost guaranteed to get some iron low tones because of our soil. I also move 90 degrees from my original sweep and sweep the target again after I turn up my sensitivity some to see if I can get a two way beep. You can use a really small sweep for this. If I keep getting 27 to 32 in one direction I will probably investigate especially if I am fairly certain it is a coin sized object because of its size when pinpointing. Hopefully you are allowed to use a shovel where you are. Here in Denver I can only use a screwdriver which makes deep coin popping fairly time consuming. So I usually save those targets for later and dig the shallow stuff first so I can hear the deeper targets more clearly when I come back to that site on a future date. Most of my friends here that have found really old coins have always had to make the decision to dig or not based on one way beep targets that sounded really iffy. good luck, Jeff

Hi, I don't own a 24K. They look great and seem to work very well. I do own a Gold Monster 1000 and like phrunt I have never had to pump and sweep my GM1000 more than 5 to 10 times to give the automatic ground tracking a chance to sample the ground. I really like how it is lightweight, versatile and easy to set up. I hate the way it falls over all of the time!!!!!! Jeff

Hi Drake, You said you have the 600 right? For practice and to gain more confidence try Park 1 when hunting coins/jewelry with sensitivity around 10 to 15 and use the default 5 tone mode for a while. You can only change the frequency of the lowest tone and you can't change where the other tones occur on the scale. Those 5 tones are pretty good though. Big targets like cans and pipes will have a big detection area when pinpointing which will be way larger than coin size. Most coins will give a short abrupt response when detecting and especially pinpointing. If you get a really loud signal that indicates near the surface and you dig that far and find nothing, recheck and make sure it isn't a really big target. When coins are on or very near the surface they can sound more spread out and can be hard to pinpoint with the 600 and 800. A good handheld pinpointer will solve that issue. Coins may only read in one direction at depth +13CM, and have sketchy target ID numbers. Bottle (crown) caps will often give double or triple hits with jumpy numbers and will be slightly longer signal in duration than coins depending on their orientation in the ground. Screw caps really suck and can sound great unfortunately. The 600 will detect .5 gram ( at 5CM where I live) and larger gold nuggets quite well in Park 2 and Field 2 especially when using the semi all metal mode with the horseshoe button activated for even a bit more depth on low conductors. Keep the threshold barely audible in Park 2 and Field 2 for prospecting. You can try 2 tones also for prospecting and look for target ID numbers between -2 and 20. You can set your low tone 1 to end at -3 and dig anything above that up to 20 or so. You want to make sure that minus 2 is not disced out in the Park 2 and Field 2 presets. good luck Jeff

Hi Dubious I've read the article you referred to also and as others have said here MD-Hunter is not my first choice for factual information. To me they seem to sensationalize a lot of their stories or maybe something gets jumbled in translation. I have to admit that I do enjoy reading some of their stuff! Here is a quote from Dave J. who I think is Dave Johnson of First Texas referring to the founder of the original Quest Pro Maoquan Deng in February 2018: The story of Mr. Deng is an unusual one. I'll tell it as best I can here, and if someone thinks I got it wrong (including Mr. Deng himself) they're welcome to post their disagreement. Mr. Deng is a metal detector enthusiast, and resident of California. He wanted to get into the metal detector business. He had business contacts in China who furnished him with T2 clones disguised as something else. But with a trademark sounding kind of like "Teknetics" and virtually identical behaviors, the intent was for customers to know they were getting a T2 clone since the T2 has a good reputation. Now in the USA, all that would be regarded as unethical. An honest businessperson wouldn't do it, and I don't recall anything like that ever happening in the past. However China has no history of the concept of "intellectual property", only of fraudulent representation which is fraud no matter how you cut it. So in Chinese culture, what Mr. Deng did would not be considered unethical at all. They were good honest clones, Mr. Deng packaged them in a design of his own making, no fraudulent misrepresentation that I'm aware of. The dispute was over IP. Mr. Deng made a business decision that seemed legit to him, and learned a hard lesson about differences in business cultures. I don't regard Mr. Deng as a "bad guy" -- as far as I can tell, he's a decent chap who made a miscalculation out of ignorance. I haven't paid much attention to his products or company, but if his company survives he'll probably turn out ot be a respected competitor. And at this point, with his own designs, his opinion of knockoff artists is probably about the same as ours. --Dave J. It's my understanding that the original Quest Pro and the new series of Quest metal detectors were physically designed by Maoquan Deng and bear no hardware resemblance to a Teknetics T2. The original Quest Pro definitely had patented intellectual property software code that resembled the T2 and the FTP lawsuit stemmed from that issue. The newer Quest detectors do not have any pirated software or components as far as I know. I have seen many listings on the big internet auction site for clones of the T2 and the G2+. There was one or more on almost every page for awhile! I think First Texas had a successful lawsuit stopping that cloning for the moment earlier this summer. The number of Garrett clones currently is really ridiculous!!! The MD-Hunter article did not do a good job of separating the nature of these two totally different lawsuits by First Texas.

Hi, I'm not trying to start any trouble here. A Quest Q40 pretty much fell in my lap for 1/4 of the retail price. I have had the former Deteknix pinpointer and the small ear cup wireless headphones with the plug in wireless module for several years. Both of those products have been trouble free and excellent in quality after loads of use. So, when this Q40 deal came about I thought: what the heck, FTP and Quest seem to have come to an agreement, Quest is partially an American company and I like their other products. Well, the Q40 is a very nice detector indeed. It feels and operates very well. It has plenty of adjustments and is customizable for discrimination and for tones. It really locks on to coins well so far. Most of all for me, it has a very comfortable hand grip, feels much lighter and better balanced than my Equinoxes, has wireless audio, Li-Po USB charging for the detector and has a very adjustable shaft system. It does not remind me of any particular company's detector but it does have many separate modern features that all of the other manufacturers have. Its like a combination of every company except maybe Tesoro. I would not feel hesitant about taking it anywhere to detect for coins, jewelry and relics. Until FTP and Nokta/Makro come out with their new models sometime soon (I hope,) the Quest 40 is a very viable option for someone looking to use a modern designed, single frequency 13kHZ VLF, with lots of features (the pinpointing is outstanding unlike my Nox) that the big boys have for a lower price and it can hunt. I can only imagine what the newly designed Quest Pro is like... Jeff

Hi, phrunt said it well, I had a discrimination program set up that I could switch over to for target ID and hot rock identification when needed. I could sometimes ground balance on the hot rocks too and that would take care of most of the problem. Jeff

Hi, great topic since I really depend on the tones more than the display. I set up a user profile on my 800 for semi-trashy park hunting that would probably work at beaches too. I have the first notch at 10 with iron disced out up to 4 and 5 through 10 have the lowest tone 1. All of the 10K gold I have found so far has come in between 5 and 10. Second notch is at 13 for tone 2. Most of the 14K gold so far has come in between 11 and 14. Third notch is at 18 for tone 3 and most of the 18K gold so far has come in that range 14 to 18. Fourth notch is set at 23 for tone 4 and most of the 24K gold I've found has come in between 18 and 23. Tone 5 takes care of the copper penny, dime, quarter and silver range. I tried to set the tones so they sound very harmonious like a major chord with octaves since I am a musician and I can't stand listening to dissonant tones (like some of the factory presets on the Nox 600 in 5 tones) for very long. Jeff

Hi Gibson, great work on finding those two awesome nuggets! They look beautiful!!!! I'm retired so I would be all over spending my day prospecting where you are. Here in Colorado I would be lucky to find half of a gram of fine gold in 2 hours of panning or sluicing. Most of the time I happily settle for less. Keep listening for those faint signals too. The 705 can punch pretty deep. Good hunting. Jeff

Chuck, the TreasurePro is powered by two AA batteries and runs at 8kHz. That is not really the problem. I have a Teknetics Minuteman that punches way deeper than the Treasure Pro and has the same power source and 8kHz frequency. I think the main problem with the Treasure Pro is more to do with it coming from the Coinmaster/Prizm line of detectors and retaining some of the older circuitry. Just my guess. Jeff

Hi Chuck, I can really relate to your situation. I tried an MX7 and a TreasurePro for a while because like you the display was really appealing. The MX7 felt really heavy to me on longer hunts and I got a lot of wrist and neck pain. I was not particularly impressed with its recovery speed or trash/target separation even though it was an outstanding coin and jewelry machine. The TreasurePro was much lighter but just didn't have the higher kHz/ power to punch through the mineralization here in Colorado very well and I could only count on 2 to 3 inches of reliable depth! I still have my M6 which I use at least once a week and have no weight issues since it is much better balanced and has plenty of power and 15kHz. If it only had a big easy to read display......... I also hope that Whites can fit their great MXSport/MX7 display and most of the features in a much lighter detector someday for us old folks! Jeff

Hi Gibson, you asked about settings and I am going to assume that you are fairly new at this, so here are the settings that worked for me in Arizona. -Turn on the 705 and press the pick/coin mode button so that you see the pick up at the top of the display. -Press the menu button and go through the auto noise cancelling process. -Also go through the auto ground balancing process. (Don't use tracking unless you absolutely have to since you can track out a good target by swinging the coil over it repeatedly.) -Set your gain somewhere between 18 and 22 as long as the audio is stable. -Set your threshold for a low background fairly steady hum. Basically you are ready to go once you hit the pinpoint/detect button and you see the number 5 along with the pick symbol on the display and you hear the threshold hum. Prospecting mode is audio only. The big number 5 is the default iron mask setting. Leave it alone and listen for faint or loud repeatable tones. Once you detect a good sounding target you can dig it or you can toggle to preset coin mode 4 and check the target's numerical ID. (The other preset coin modes have several low conductor numbers disked out including small gold.) You can also make your own custom preset coin mode for quick low conductor target ID by just having -8 -6 -4 and 48 disked out) For gold and a whole bunch of other low conductors you should definitely dig if you see a number between -2 and 22. Ground balance again after really big targets or if the prospecting mode threshold gets chattery suddenly. Again, avoid using the coin mode except for TID numbers quick check, since many low conductors are automatically discriminated out in those modes and depth is really lessened. You can get a great signal on 1 gram or heavier gold/lead targets at around 4"to 6" and possibly more if your ground is not too heavily mineralized.You should also see low numbers in the coin mode you setup for ID numbers that can jump around a bit sometimes. Smaller gold and small low conductors will give softer repeatable audio responses but may not give a target ID number in your chosen coin mode Minelab has a very good gold tutorial on their website and on youtube by Kevin Hoagland that goes through this basic process for the X-Terra 70 and applies to the 705 too. Hope this helps, good luck, jeff

Hi Andy a couple of weeks ago you asked about the Nox and the Kruzer. Daniel TN gave it to you straight. I had a Multi Kruzer and Nox 600 at the same time and was able to do similar testing with the stock coils and the smaller ones. My results were the same. I live in an area where digging plugs is a no,no so I have to be pretty sure of what is under my coil and how deep it is before I go after it with my screwdriver! I now have no Multi Kruzer and both Equinox's and can't wait for the bigger coil. Jeff

Hi, I think those videos were a comparison of the Deus HF 9" coil and the Equinox 6" coil. As far as I know (Steve H. may know but maybe can't say) Minelab is and will be for the foreseeable future the only manufacturer of Equinox coils: stock 11", awesome 6" and soon 15"(? in production.) All are Double D. This should probably be in the Minelab category. thanks, Jeff

Hi I can only echo what Simon said about the Gold Monster 1000 and the Equinox 800. I have not yet seen or used the new White's 24K For just gold nugget detecting, especially smaller gold the Gold Monster 1000 is a fantastic detector. I started out my detecting life as a nugget hunter with a Tesoro Lobo ST. So actually having a display and the other features of the GM1000 are a great improvement. You will find gold with the GM1000. You will also find lots of other stuff large and small in the gold fields as the GM1000 makes you learn what various targets really sound like. Tin, lead, copper, aluminum and even big iron are going to go into the non-ferrous scale. The ferrous/nonferrous display readings and the discrimination on/off features help but are by no means accurate above 40% of the time. The detector operator needs to develop their skills to improve that percentage rate. As Simon said, one drawback is the lack of waterproofing of the control box housing which is quite substantial in size and awkward to cover. I can swing this detector all day and it has worked well for me in the Colorado mountains and the Arizona and California deserts. It is simple to use and can be "mastered" fairly quickly. The Equinox 800 can quite simply do it all if you are looking to detect targets at less than one foot deep. Any type of metal detecting you want to do can be done by this detector as far as I know except for detecting maybe semi-molten lava!!!! The 800 will also find gold nuggets in Park 2, Field 1 and 2 and of course the two Gold modes down to as small as .02 grams at least from my experience at two inches depth. Any larger gold will increase the probability and depth of detection. The small coil is in my opinion a must for nugget hunting. The features, flexibility and adjustability of the Equinox 800 can be overwhelming. Those who have recommended starting out in stock Park 1 and 5 tones or less for the first 40 or so hours are offering outstanding advice whether you are an accomplished detector user or just have a little experience with an entry level detector. If you are new to detecting this might not be the detector for you. (Sorry, I just noticed that you are not a newbie by your profile!) My only complaint with the Equinox 800 is that its hand grip is just too big (since the batteries are inside) with no padding and the detector is not balanced well. All the other complaints I had were corrected by the recent downloadable software update. It is fully waterproof, rugged and will challenge my detecting skills for many years to come. I did use both the Whites MX Sport and the MX7 for awhile which have the same ergonomics as the 24K. They were excellent detectors although a bit like the Equinox, they felt very nose heavy to me and gave me quite a bit of hand and arm fatigue in the beginning. Forgot to finish this, so if I was taking my son (relative newbie) to the gold fields say in Arizona I would hand him my Gold Monster 1000 and tell him to dig everything that makes a tone in disc mode and anything that goes into non-ferrous in deep mode even if just once. He is 21 and would have no problem digging 50 to 100 targets in 8 hours and maybe find a couple of nuggets. You could do the same thing with your GBP in all metal basically by reducing the iron tone volume and by setting up discrimination mode to reject iron and maybe the highest target range for hot rocks. It is not a hard detector to use if it will ground balance in your area without too much difficulty even though hot rocks can be a pain with the GBP. Then you could get the Equinox or 24K for yourself! Jeff

Absolutely Chuck, If I wasn't so crazy about gold prospecting I wouldn't own an Equinox and the MX7 would probably be my favorite detector. It is a coin monster plain and simple and does really well with relics too. For anyone wanting an excellent USA made multi-use metal detector with lots of great features the MX7 is really hard to beat. Jeff

Hi, I had an MX7 for four months and really liked it for the most part. My reasons for not keeping it are: it was not balanced very well and caused some fatigue on longer hunts, the 8 AA batteries didn't help the weight problem and the detector seemed to be a power hog especially with rechargeable batteries, the recovery speed and separation on adjacent targets was average at best. I am a part-time prospector and I was not impressed with the MX7 on small gold. My old Compadre was better at target separation and small gold detecting. Go figure??? Just for fun I borrowed a Whites Treasuremaster for a while and really liked it for coin shooting So did my daughter. The TreasurePro with manual ground balancing might be something that I look at in the future. I love my TDI SL. Instead of the MX7, I opted for the Equinox 800 for my main detector and have not looked back. It's excellent target separation, recovery speed, frequency flexibility and all around amazing performance on an incredible array of targets and detecting environments make it an almost perfect VLF detector for my needs especially with the 6" coil and after the recent software update. I don't care for the size of the grip handle but since the batteries are inside I'm stuck with it.

Hi, I was having lots of weird issues with my Tek-Point like constant falsing and retuning, instability and super sensitivity to any large metal objects even 3 feet away. I was about to send it back but instead I read the manual a little more carefully. I noticed on page 5 - Do Not Use Zinc-Carbon or Heavy Duty batteries. Duh, I had been using some Harbor F. heavy duty batteries. I took them out and put in some standard name brand alkalines. Now my Tek-Point works absolutely fine. Took it gold prospecting last weekend near T. Hoffman's Colorado site and it helped me find plenty of black sand/small gold concentrations crevicing and detected small birdshot at 3 inches! I'm so glad I actually read the manual.

Hi Surface area is critical when detecting small nuggets. My 600 with the stock coil has no trouble with .5 gram and larger nuggets and lead fragments down to about 3” in mineralized dirt. Anything much smaller and that is porous or not fairly flat might be iffy to undetectable at more than 1” with a 600. Jeff

Hi Norm, great answers so far concerning Field 2 on the Equinox 600. If you use the default Field 2 I would add in 0 to -2 in the default notching. I have had really small gold come in at -2. -1 and 0. If you choose to run in All Metal with nothing notched out and you encounter a lot of ground noise you can try running just in 15kHz instead of multi frequency Field 2 temporarily. You can also notch out -9 to -3 if the ground noise is still there to quiet down the 600. You should be able to hit .25 gram and bigger gold. In noisy ground the single frequency option sometimes gives a cleaner target sound (not necessarily deeper). Mine will hit a buried .3 gram nugget down to 2" with a faint threshold bump. Any larger gold up to .75 grams will give a great signal down to about 3". I haven't found anything larger yet with my 600 but I can only imagine what a 1gram+ signal would sound like!!!!!!!!!! Your 800 can do a lot smaller gold and go deeper. The same ground noise reduction can work by running temporarily in 40 kHz instead of Gold 1 and/or by notching out -9to-3. good luck Jeff

Hi I started with the 600 so I could learn the detector and compare it to my other detectors. I spent $39 on a set of low latency bluetooth headphones and haven't regretted my decision. The 600 is such a great detector!!!! I sold a Makro Multi Kruzer, Makro Gold Racer, Tesoro Vaquero and Whites MX7 in the meantime. I just didn't enjoy using them anymore.....Recently got the 800 with a military discount and hopefully along with my TDI sl I'm done detector shopping until First Texas brings out some truly new detectors????????? I love the flexibility of the 800 like the original poster and enjoy using the wireless module with my favorite headphones without being tethered to the 600 or 800. During all day prospecting I have backup headphones ready or earbuds when it's super hot like today by using the wireless module. I also like the freedom to setup my own personal hunting program, the more flexible audio options, and the expanded recovery speed/iron bias levels that the 800 offers. However, if I wasn't an insanely avid prospector I would have been totally satisfied with the Equinox 600. For the price and with a 6" coil it promises to be an incredible machine and bargain.

She Detector did some salt beach and underwater testing. Her You Tube videos are always fun.

Typical 2 hour hunt with the Equinox 600 today. I decided not to dig at least as many targets as I recovered. In Park 1 with no modifications except for ground balance 3, sensitivity 17. Iron signals within 6” of almost every target including the 9.2 gram 18k gold ring at 4” depth, 15 TID. That’s 4 gold and 2 sterling silver rings in just over 40 hours detecting. LOVE the Equinox 600

I can only echo everyone so far that has commented on this topic. I have had many detectors in the past 10 years that I thought would fit my needs especially the Minelab Xterra 705 and Teknetics G2+. I really liked the G2+ but it was just too "hot" for my area and I could not solve the high ground mineralization-high iron content-mid to deep target recovery equation. There was just too much noise for me to sort through. The Xterra was a fine detector that just never clicked with me. Unless I was in prospecting mode I always felt like it was too quiet and left me wondering what was under the coil. I was afraid that the Equinox would also be a bit of a mystery too. I guess my long experience with the Xterra made the transition to the Equinox easier since the 600 and 800 immediately challenged me but rewarded me too with many great finds and after about 10 hours of using them their tones started to really make sense. I have just begun to explore all of the other modes. I made myself stay in Park 1 for at least 40 hours without trying out other modes so I could gain confidence in the Equinox's and my capabilities. What a fantastic pair of detectors!!!

Hi, I don't think you can go wrong with a Deus or an Equinox. I have more experience with the Equinox and I know the 800 can work in most any detecting situation including high mineralization at depth. Just found a clad quarter this morning in a local Denver park at 9 inches. That was with a screwdriver and probe! Ground balance is a 1!!! at this park so mineralization is almost off the chart. I have stopped digging many times with the Equinox since I just can't reach the target in the local parks here. For the vast majority of situations in Colorado, you won't need a PI machine. Most of the detectable gold that us mortals have access to is way less than half of a gram and only the best PI machines will hit really small pickers and flakes in the .1 to .2 gram range at depth. A 40Khz vlf like the Equinox 800 can detect that size gold here down to about 4 inches and anything bigger at that depth or less will scream at you. Jeff

Hi, two of the gold rings I found with an Equinox 600 gave a solid 17 response so discing out that number range just above nickels could be a problem. Jeff