midalake

We have had the Manticore here and my friend was supposed to be here but has been busy. Last year it had done well but the black sand conditions were better, with any luck it will be here in three weeks.

My conditions change a little. At no point this season has the D2 been great with recovery in the moving water. There was a short window where the 13" coil seemed to work [a little] in the wave wash. But it got rough again and the Black sand has increased lately. My general feeling right now is there does not seem to be an advantage in Tracking or Manual GB in the wave wash. My manual GB numbers have ranged from 82-87. I did experiment one day with going to a Dive program for recovery but that did not seem to solve much. Going to set-up a custom dive program to see if I can get recoveries made in the wave wash. Not very comfortable with the 9" coil on the beach. It feels like I am out there with a teaspoon. When the reactivity is above .5 the coil really shortens up audio response and swing speed becomes an issue. I keep the reactivity low, so I get a broader response on targets, and I can maintain a decent swing speed. I have to do more testing with magnetic accept and reject. For almost two years I ran magnetic accept. Now with this new program on magnetic reject my fear is the machine is not responsive to small targets. Both the Equinox and D2 would come home with their fair share of small bits. But now, the D2 rarely finds any. Two days ago, I had a smaller target that in my opinion should have had a much better response.

Yes. I bought a second hand D2 that needed a pod replacement. No issues with the original receipt.

Many Equinox users cranked up the sensitivity and noise cancelled. The goal was to try to force the machine to make the best choice.

So here it goes. Lots to unpack. [again] Been testing for weeks. Settings Beach Sensitive 40KHZ max Disc 6.8 Sensitivity 90-94 Salt sense 7 Iron vol 6 Reactivity 9"coil .5 13" coil 1.5-2 Audio resp. 6 Manual GB FULL TONES offset 8 Bottle caps 2 Magnetic reject. The good: Nonferrous targets clean-up better at depth and sound less clipped. The chatty noise level of the machine reduced/muted. Less iron wrap-around [much less] The Bad: Complete loss of detection with wave wash moving over coil. Loss and difficulty of small target detection. Lots of ground balancing required. I felt this mode of Full tones has really made some difference in making targets at depth sound better. I also credit manual GB for some of this as well. Testing showed tracking GB did make targets at depth sound a bit clippie. But is really the two put together, full tones and manual GB. While Magnetic reject helps some with Black Sand chatter, I fear it is a small item and maybe even chain killer. In trials for weeks this D2 package is nowhere near as sensitive as my Equinox on small targets. I do not have a gold chain to test but have tested a few small bits. Full tones> Full tones gets the most credit for better sounding targets at depth. I feel using the offset is mandatory. The offset is what really makes the difference in the ability to tell the difference of Black sand ticks and deeper non-ferrous hits. Sensitivity, one of the issues I see with the D2. Increasing the sensitivity to look at one target can be difficult. The D2 has a tendency to enhance both iron wrap-around and deep nonferrous. Whereas more sensitivity with the Equinox enhances deep nonferrous and will help ferrous break down more. With the complete inability to remove a target in the wave wash with the D2, I am heading back to the Equinox again and hope for my Black Sand conditions to lift some. Going to try hunting more in the wet sand with Black sand accept and see if this will result in better sounding small targets. Then switch to Reject with water contact. Thank to Jeff for pushing me to try manual GB. Even though it is an entire PIA and time consuming.

Exactly Both my equinox and D2 will identify a nonferrous target as ferrous. All I hunt is salt with high mineralization and this is an everyday occurrence.

SPOT ON............!

Awesome job!!!! Lots of digging!

Happened to me yesterday. I just keep my cover on and dump some water over it with my scoop. Goes away quickly.

I have been running two of these for over 20 years. RTG PRO ALUMINUM 6" WATER SCOOP with SS Tip (#RTGBB6tip) Light but tough with the stainless tip. Aluminum is easy to weld and repair if you have issues.

Working on Hip mounting my Equinox. Give me a week or two. Hopefully will be completed and tested. 😎

Any ideas on where to get this Shielded cable from??? OR, does anyone have a junk Equinox coil I can get the cable off of? Thanks

Really wish that stone was there for you!!! Interesting looking spot.

I think there are some people that would debate depth loss. On a 3030.

ordered there before. Golddigger is a great place.

In my years of beach experience, regardless of detector the biggest thing I have learned is: Nothing is the same in salt and Black Sand. My policy is to remove everything that I think is nonferrous. One cannot trust anything at depth to give you a correct number. With the D2 myself, I harvested a whopping 16g 14k white gold ring that blew my ears off with a 99. Also to date, of all the detectors I have owned the D2 clearly throws numbers all over the place and is the most unreliable to group any kind of targets.

I have nothing to compare to directly. But you are not the first to bring up issues with Equinox coils and capability.

OUTSTANDING!!!!

Agreed Bill. I tend not to try and fix things that are not broken or where I have confidence. I am lacking that confidence on fringe nonferrous targets with the D2 in Black Sand. Going to experiment some more, and even test your friends' settings.

Yes, Discrimination at 22. So, a few questions on ground grab. Yesterday I was hunting with the Equinox, and this has been pretty steady all season. I had to vary the sensitivity about 10 times from 19 to 22 due to Black Sand content. Would I not have to ground grab for all of those changes in Black Sand content. ? Any tips you can give me for changing conditions would be helpful. I am more than willing to try! There is one section of beach that is stable, and I can give it a try there. 😎

Ugh. 🙄

I am clearly running with more Black Sand/Minerals here. We have the same Audio Response of 6.......But I cannot get my Sensitivity past 91 with either the 9" or 13" coil. What is the Offset??? Any idea why he is running his Salt Sensitivity so low at 3? Does this allow him higher sensitivity.??

Back out with the D2 yesterday and the 13" coil. After weeks of hunting the Equinox, was not impressed with switching back. Black sand is still tough here. A couple of notes though. It seemed that raising the reactivity to 2 on the 13" actually helped clean-up some nonferrous targets at depth. This is something that is very hard to do with the 9" coil because an increase to 2 gives you very tight non-ferrous signals and one has to watch their swing speed. Still have issues with iron wrap-around with the new update. Did an experiment on what I figured was a Bobby Pin registering 52. I hunt with the Disc. at 22. So, I lowered the Disc to 0 in Beach Sensitive and re-swept the target. The target response was more robust and even confirmed more to dig it. After removing, it was a Bobby Pin. It seemed Disc of 0 was the lowest value for Beach Sensitive. Not sure why I could not adjust to -6.4. ?

Congrats!!! Interesting choice of detectors. 😎

Hi A friend of mine is looking to get a Tesoro Cibola modified by Keith Southern. Was wondering if you know how it contact him? See he has not dropped in here in quite a while. Please PM me Thanks Dave