midalake

What am I supposed to learn from this vid??? PS I do not hunt the dry sand much unless I am called into it to find something.. What we know. We know he Equinox has issues with targets on edge. We know when you open a hole the Equinox has issues with seeing the target especially if the hole fills with water. In the vid, the person doing it is swinging the coil too fast to see if the target single rings or double rings in horseshoe mode. This is why coil control is so important. I do not know the rest of his settings it would of been nice of him to share. Impractical to keep turning circles to qualify a target, you say? I say you will never know what a fringe target is for sure unless you circle it in horseshoe mode. Actually this vid kind of proves that. Now mind you not every target needs 360. I tend not to dig a lot of trash. I do agree with his thought, NOTHING, and again NOTHING is the same on a salt beach with black sand and water. In my opinion, the number in the read out is only so good. As in depth good. Once a target gets to a certain depth it will not read well. THIS is why I advocate one tone at the beach. TO HEAR THE TARGET, and to DECIDE Ferrous and Non Ferrous. Ferrous stays in the ground, non ferrous comes out regardless of what it is telling me. You seem to be quite hung-up on what you might miss. You should be more concerned about what you CAN RECOVER.

I have used both machines in my moderate black sand. I was able to find settings that would allow both machines to run at peak levels. I would say my black sand does effect the Nox a little more.

Well again, in your smattering of settings no one ,not even Minelab recommends them at the beach. It would not be an issue if you were happy. However you are clearly disappointed in noise and other detector issues. It IS because of your settings. I suspect you are not willing to change and will not be effective at the beach. I hope you are able to get a different 11" coil and compare it to the current one on recommended beach settings. Good Luck.

Cracks or cracked off areas around coil ears would not cause falsing or sensitivity issues. Dave

Who advised you do do that? What is your setting?

YES!!! Protect yourself from the TSA not even knowing their own rules.

Just in case anyone looks at this in the future. DO NOT put anything with batteries in your checked luggage. Bring your batteries in your carryon luggage. The TSA will throw out anything with lithium batteries. MANY of them can not tell the difference in any batteries.

I can usually tell chain time by what I am digging. Getting keys, key chains and other large oddball targets........it is time to pay attention!

Are you running a threshold?

Yes I am running 800's. You get to know the conversion. But there are several important items. I have advocated 1 tone for some time now at the beach. Stop that machine from chirping at you from different tones and listen to actual targets. With all the other ticks and chirps. Not sure where you hunt the most? But until you master the wet sand keep the Equinox out of the wash. Even though I can run 23-24 in the wet sand in my location, stuff that Equinox in the water and all comes unglued. There lies the issue. One almost needs a dual setting at a touch of the finger to do the two different terrains. Water contact and wet sand with the Equinox is a difference of night and day. Coil control is important, that is a whole topic on it's own. But in doubt, keep the coil glued to the sand and go slow. GB Tracking. The original FE-6 setting combined with recovery 6 is a magical combo in horseshoe mode that REALLY allows very deep id on iron with a double ring. Could you back down?? Maybe, but you risk instability and turning the sensitivity lower, that would be a locality thing. Also lowering the recovery requires even more coil control to ID iron. Yes as stated, I have one coil that stinks in wet sand and water contact. That coil acts the same on both pods. Dave

I have lots of thoughts. Who told you to run some of these setting? What is your IB? Think you really need to get down to basics and understand why Minelab recommends the initial settings of each mode. Here is what I run: Beach 2, Tracking GB [a must], 1 tone, IB FE 6, Recovery 6, Sensitivity 22-24. Run in HORSESHOE mode. Anything that shows ferrous scale and double rings, DON'T DIG it, it is iron. ANYTHING that double rings with a plus VDI dig, as well as ANY target that does not double ring or breakdown, as you work around the target 360 degrees. Center target to dig in discrimination [if necessary] I also own two machines. I have done coil modifications that help decrease effects of black sand and moving salt water.[Not ready to share this yet.] HOWEVER, one of my coils is WAY NOISER than the other in the same conditions [wet sand and moving salt water]. But yet this coil works 100% perfect in dry sand or on soil. Consider trying another coil on your pod. Dave

I would like to see a head to head in an established test garden between the two 15" coils. I have seen plenty of evidence that the Minelab 15" does get better depth than the 11". I have heard nothing but complaints so far with the coilteck 15"

I think you are close to popping something good!!!!

Glad you brought this up Chase. I too have found noise issues when lowering recovery. Esp at a salt beach. As other posters have mentioned, I noise cancel quite often. When EMI does exist, rarely do I get any relief from noise cancel.

How do I follow-up to that response???? 😄 I think if going to Rat Shack and I bought a female part, there would be more than one lump on my head!!!!

Why would you want to hunt without headphones Chuck??? I never recommend it.

Well it takes about a minute to wrap a couple of sheets of foil around your detector in the EMI location. Don't need to see the screen to know if it works, you will hear it. BTW I use corded headphones and for this test use corded phones.

Here is your cell phone [100% fix] and some communication's EMI fix. I slide an aluminum shield over my pod protector. This may not work well for electrical EMI. The Equinox is the worst detector for EMI I have owned. Dave

My cable is set like yours. Except I use black electrical tape for a more secure cable to rod pressure because of water force. I have been doing my cables like this for years. Your right, you can get another inch. However 1 inch is not going to cut it for me.

Hey Aaron Thanks for this explanation. I now understand why I did not see a physical change of the GB when in tracking mode. Even though I did not run this way for most of my hunting. Now knowing how it works, I would be tempted to try this again on a salt beach.

It just don't know how many times I have to write about this subject. Your hearing is one of the most important items in metal detecting. An ocean beach is one of the noisiest places to be. Waves, wind, people sound. All of these sounds come to you unabated and it will wear on you concentration level. Several makers put speakers in what are shooting muffs for the most part. The cup part starts blocking out 25db of the noise coming to you. If you are not using headphones that block out ambient noise at the beach you are handicapping yourself. PERIOD Here is what I use and have been using for years. Notice in the specs up to -29db rating. Dave https://detectorpro.com/black-widow-headphones/

Had a good friend loan me his Tarsacci for a few months. Settings: Sens 9, Black sand ON, Salt 33, 9khz, disc -30, G-bal 623. Tested both coils First off, if you are tall like me the detector is NOT long enough. I know Steve is working on an extension but here is the problem. Not enough coil cable length. So if you are tall and plan to order one, be sure to ask for longer coil cable length . Myself, I would need 4-5 inches more rod length. Pros: Works good in the wave wash [all metal mode], good depth, silent running wet sand, NO EMI issues in a known EMI problem area, Awesome battery, good sound and volume. Pinpoints well in mixed mode, good target separation, fast recovery speed, large coil was just as stable in saltwater. Cons: Too short, lousy coil mount location on small coil, poor on target identification [vdi display]. Iron wrap around issues, gold chain issue?. I will probably ramble some so if you have a question please ask. For the most part worked in all metal. I was impressed how the Tarsacci handled moving salt water. While it is no GT Sovereign, it is 100% better than the Equinox. There is an initial disturbance by the wave and then sometimes on withdrawal but working in the wash is more than workable. Also you will never lose or bury a target in a hole of soft sand like the equinox. The tarsacci will chase it all the way until you recover. The ability of the machine to give you tone and VDI numbers at depth is a question. I was not confident that the machine separates the difference between iron and non-ferrous well at depth. While I dug very few nails and no bobby pins the MDT had an issue with the ferrous Mexican coins. Many of them would want to ring-up and some of them indicated must dig. I would say anything past 8 inches had issues to where the target would not lock-out. I am sure more time on this machine would solve some of this confidence. One tip I have on deep targets is to take a small scoop of sand 3-4 inches off. The MDT did better reading targets regardless if there was water in the hole made or not. On my last day both myself and my friend were on the MDT and myself the Equinox. I found a gold wrist chain that had a small name plate on it. I hit a solid 5. When we got together the MDT would not lock out on the chain with the 12”round coil, even on top of it. I could take the Equinox to about 4” above it and still locked out at 5. All in all, the machine was a pleasure to use. The increased coverage of the larger coil is well noted, and in my case no difference in salt water effect on the machine. Target identification takes a bit longer than the Equinox, but the MDT exceeds in moving water contact. It is not even close. Also the loss of EMI issues for three blocks of beach is a huge plus. Dave

In all reality. There is not a set non corded phones made that should be used at the beach [that I am aware of]. Get yourself a pair of -25db ambient sound shielding corded headphones and increase your comfort and finds.

A few ideas and a fix. Are you running a coil cover? Have you cleaned it? If a beach has black sand it could only take 10 minutes to have enough black sand under the coil cover to give problems. Cell Phones- 100% fix An aluminum shield that goes over my pod protector.

Sounds harsh. But I doubt a production version of this will ever be released.