Chase Goldman

This topic was also discussed in the thread below. The bottom line was that even though Minelab's description of the multi frequency weighting was similar (i.e., both described as lower frequency weighted) we cannot conclusively say they are basically the same Multi IQ profile and behave the same (even if all the user settings were adjusted equivalently) without more detailed information from ML and they just are not willing to go into that level of depth regarding the DNA of MULTI IQ or even the various mode profiles probably for both marketing (mysterious "magic" or "secret sauce" processes backed up by marketing tech catch phrase terms used by most detector manufacturers like "DST" "vFLEX", "Multi-Flex" "Multi IQ" and "5Fx8" and vague or ambiguous pseudo tech speak and pretty diagrams seem to sell detectors) and competition (not wanting to give away the actual intellectual property to the competition).

Not really contrary, if it is truly just ground noise (e.g., due to mineralization), and not targets as determined by highly negative TIDs, you should be able to just ground balance there by using the pinpointer and not sweeping the coil to ensure you are and remain over a targetless patch while pumping. I also stated that there are patches of ground (did not define the size) where there can be targets continuously in your coil sweep, but like you said, even in that case you should be able to find a static spot somewhere between targets where you can GB. I personally, honestly do not think doing a ground balance over some can small slaw is going to really screw up the ground balance if you are in that kind of situation, better than not doing a ground balance at all if you are working with no disc. I think we are essentially saying the same thing just a little differently. Totally agree. As you get more adept at using the Equinox, you may find situations where encountering an iffy target in Multi might be enhanced by using a single frequency to "interrogate" (for example 4 khz if you suspect the target is a high conductor - high conductive target singles couple better with an induction balance detector at low operating frequencies, in general), but I generally wouldn't do a general search in single frequency unless forced to due to EMI. In single frequency, not only do you lose the advantage of multiple frequencies working for you for a wider range of target types and depths (vs. single frequency which sort of limits your target "vision" - analogous to, but not as dramatically, if your vision was limited to black and white versus color). Multi also helps under high salt or alkaline conditions, can compensate better than single for a less than optimal ground balance situation, and, finally, the iron bias feature is disabled when in single frequency.

OK, even though you say you have ground balance, I am almost certain what is going on here is that you are being fooled by ground noise, especially since it is happening at multiple sites. The thing that is cluing me in is that you are saying in no disc (horseshoe) mode you are having a tough time trying to find a place to ground balance. Ground noise sounds like iron when you have the horseshoe button on (no discrimination) and you don't have a sat GB so you fool yourself into thinking you have a ferrous target under the coil. What you need to do is just ignore the signal if what it is a -9 to -7 TID, or GB in disc, or use pinpoint mode to verify you actually don't have a target under the coil, and then definitely just do an auto ground balance wherever you are standing. If you are regularly hunting with horseshoe no disc mode without a proper ground balance it will sound like the whole site is littered with iron, that's ground noise. Frankly, no site is typically so littered with stuff that it is impossible to find a clean spot to GB (though some small patches of ground may have that problem), so the fact this is happening at multiple sites is typically a clue, you just have to do the GB again. Frankly, unless you are doing a GB right above a strong ferrous target like a horseshoe you are not really going to get a false GB setting, most GB noise will be eliminated and other than ground noise in no disc mode, having a less than perfect ground balance should really not impact non-ferrous target detection (other than those really deep non-ferrous targets that may have been down-averaged into ferrous TIDs. So just do a quick scan with the pinpointer, listen for silence and GB there. Remember that Ground Balance and noise cancel are not universal settings so you have to do a GB and Noise Cancel for each mode you use at a site before you use that mode. HTH. Known quirk with Equinox that ML has not been able to completely fix even with several updates. Folks just live with it, reset the GB and have another go. Minor annoyance. Make sure you have the latest 3.0 firmware update installed though as they do appear to incrementally improve it with subsequent software updates and frankly, I have personally seen no downside to having the latest firmware installed.

Welcome to the forum. Yep you are hooked and acquiring the Equinox 600 was a good move. It will take you to the next level with its ability to hunt in both multi and single frequency. Check out the Equinox forum here, especially Steve H.'s compilation Equinox Essential information post below. I live just up the road in northern VA just outside the DC beltway and have done a lot of CW relic hunting in the central and northern part of the state and was interested in exploring the peninsulas for the reason's you cited. I highly recommend Andy Sabisch's Equinox Handbook as a great resource and you can read about my personally recommended Equinox relic settings in that book on pp. 87 -88. Just post in the Equinox forum if you have further questions. PM me if you would like to meet up relic hunting or for some in person Equinox instruction down your way some time. I'm always up for a good metal detecting day trip. Tect O Trac is a good, inexpensive program but it does have some limitations. One program that I have found to be very useful with similar capabilities and more is OnX Hunt to which I upgraded from Tect o Trac. It is a more expensive subscription-based program (depending on how much information you want available) but it gives you property lines, public/state/local/federal property boundaries and registered property owner information as well as tracking, finds markers, and the ability to save photos of your finds as well as a host of other "information layer overlays" including weather. GL HH.

This is a good resource of information regarding pacemaker precautions: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/living-with-a-pacemaker-or-implantable-cardioverter-defibrillator-icd Bottom line, as said previously, the issue is mainly keeping your pacemaker out of the presence of strong magnetic fields. As long as you are not placing the MD coil on your chest, the emissions from the control unit and battery/amplifier unit are similar to that of a cell phone. HTH

Nice recoveries. Probing and popping at 6 to 8 inches. That's impressive.

The ML 12x15 coil was for coverage, not depth. It was only an inch wider than the stock Equinox round 11" coil. The MDT coil would be 4" wider than the current MDT stock coil, so it sure as heck should be deeper and hopefully more than 1" gained for that price. Won't help me in my hot soil sites though as that larger coil will just suck up more ground noise, so its counterproductive. Did manage to snag this cool flower button with the MDT at my favorite site, despite it being max mineralization bars on my Deus.

Gold is still nice even without the ice. Congrats.

Are you using the supplied adapter and confirmed that it is actually supplying charge current? You never mentioned how you confirmed that it was getting an appropriate charge current. Sounds like it is not for some reason, either a bad charging brick, bad charge cable, bad battery (unlikely because it showed 3 bars and powered up the detector) or poor connection at the headphone jack/charge port (most likely) which needs to be threaded on tight. If everything is hooked up correctly and charging, the front panel battery icon should show the unit is charging. BTW, not really a good idea to take lithium ion batteries to parade rest (full discharge) outside of normal usage because the subsequent high current initial charge just puts unnecessary electrical wear and tear on your battery that has a finite (though high) number of full charge discharge cycles available during its service life. Good luck and hope you get it sorted.

I think part of the issue with the FBS die hards is their dependence on the Fe/Co target ID vs. the combination of stripped down but stable target ID with expressive target audio of Equinox. You hear all the complaints about the Equinox having only 50 ID segments, etc. as if one is going to leave a dime in the ground because one is only looking for quarters. A target ID number regardless of whether it is 2, 3, or 4 digits can only tell you so much about the nature of a target. Understanding what the audio nuances are telling you about a target (in conjunction with the TID) is key and that can really only be accomplished with a relatively fast machine such as the Equinox or Deus. There are some key advanced features in the eTrac and CTX including the Fe/Co ID and associated sophisticated discrimination patterns that if married with a Multi IQ-based framework including the key Nox features of multiple Multi IQ profiles, speed, single frequency capability, and other sophisticated filtering such as iron bias, could result in a killer high end machine...but that is the subject of another thread....

I've found the ability "hone in" on the signal as Raphis describes is what separates the Nox from it's older FBS cousins that just don't have the recovery speed ability to do this. It takes some practice and in fact I have to "re awake" my muscle memory in doing this technique if some time has elapsed between hunts, but this target interrogation technique has paid off for me in terms of being able to extract deep keepers, especially at junky (both ferrous and non-ferrous junk) sites.

7 inches for a $1 Gold is impressive. I was happy to recover mine at about 2 inches, but that was also in pretty hot dirt dirt and was a Deus not Equinox. Air test though confirmed a solid 11 with the Equinox that up averages to 12 as depth increases.

Yep. Just needs to be able to survive a decent rain shower and perhaps an accidental, momentary dunking in knee deep water.

That’s the point I was trying to make. There is no reason the features for prospecting, relic hunting, or beach hunting with a PI have to be in conflict at all (or implied needs for separate threads). I really don’t care if it can discriminate between gold and lead or between any other non-ferrous metal. Not high on my features list. It would be nice but not necessary, and as long as non-ferrous performance was not affected or that it did not result in significant cost or a delayed release, would not be opposed to the feature. I was merely using the lead vs. gold example as a way to make the tongue in cheek point that the GPX series is indeed used for recovering non-ferrous metallic targets other than gold that have value to those besides prospectors that use the GPX. I really just need it to be a good ferrous discriminator, particularly on small, bent iron that tends to behave like a small mid-conductor even on today’s ferrous blanking GPX, while minimizing blind spot holes for non-ferrous targets, in the process. Improvements in ergonomics (weight, balance, eliminating external batteries and audio amps, and user interface) are most welcome. With the innovative engineering talent ML apparently has at their disposal there really shouldn’t be any reason why ML couldn’t produce a GPX that is as versatile to PI’s as the Equinox is to VLFs.

Mitchel - I think it's relevant right in this thread. This bullet "horde" was found by a relic hunter using a GPX. The mass of lead plus other large metallic targets in the hole gave a nice, smooth, long low tone. As the relic hunter dug down, obviously, the signal became more intense and ultimate he was rewarded with this find. The reason it was in the same hole is really not a big mystery. This area served several winters as an encampment site for hundreds of thousands of soldiers who really did not have much to do for several months but eat, sleep, play poker and chess, imbibe, try not to get sick and do target shooting with their weapons. The camps were comprised of dug in shelters with fireplace hearths and trash pits/privies nearby. What happened here was that someone left behind a crate of Shaler cartridges in a hut. The huts were were abandoned when whether allowed marching and fighting to resume and were typically demolished and plowed under by the farmers who owned the land where the soldiers were camping. The GPX is ideal, especially in the hot soil of Culpeper, for ferreting out those deep signals that can get you into one of these huts or trash pits and then it is artifact recovery time, with several unbroken bottles, bullets, uniform buttons, coins, bayonets, and other soldier personal and military effects that can be recovered from a single hole or pit. In this case, the crate housing the Shalers apparently disintigrated (as well as the attached paper cartridges that held the powder) and the bullets were able to be recovered as a horde in a single (albeit large) dig hole. A next gen GPX that can differentiate between big iron and other large cache's of metal can be of great use to the CW relic hunter in former winter encampment sites such as the site at which all of these bullets were recovered. Of course the "lead as valuable as gold" was a tongue-in-cheek way to make the point that a relic hunter doesn't need to differentiate/discriminate between gold and lead as much as between gold, lead, brass vs. aluminum (i.e., modern trash). That doesn't mean I am unsympathetic to the plight of prospectors having to deal with "junk metal" (lead, brass, tin, copper, aluminum), when the singular objective is recovery of gold. Just confiming the old adage that one man's trash is another man's treasure. The prospector and the relic hunter are both using the same instrument but with different objectives and perspectives on junk and treasure. HTH.

This is a display case filled with nearly 1,000 complete Shaler 3-piece CW minie ball bullets found in a single hole dug in Culpeper, VA. At $100+ US dollars per complete three piece set, this display is valued at just north of $100,000. Not really close to the intrinsic weight value of gold, but nothing to sneeze at. Hence my comment from a relic digger's perspective who uses a GPX at these sites. The right kind of lead is valued in my world, as is gold, obviously, and brass not attached to a shotgun shell casing. Aluminum not so much.

Normally, I would go with Park 1 or Field 1 as they are most heavily weighted to high conductors. No real need to stray far away from the defaults other than removing discrimination as desired and # of tones is a personal preference that doesn't affect performance. F2 iron bias seems to be most effective on ferrous falsing while mitigating the downside of such filtering, namely, non-ferrous target masking. However, if you are really solely focused on high conductors like silver to the extent you are notching out everything else, then Multi IQ frankly doesn't bring that much to the table. In fact you are putting detector transmit power into simultaneous frequencies you are really not using. Therefore, you should really consider giving 4 khz single frequency (SF) a go with some caveats. If power line EMI is not an issue (low operating frequencies tend to be more susceptible to general power line EMI - but noise cancel can still be used to attempt to find a clear shifted 4 khz channel) and iron junk target density is not an issue (Iron Bias is not operational in SF - but you don't seem to be utilizing its advantages anyway), then 4 khz might be a good option. Seems to run with less noise than 5 khz and you will get slightly deeper ground penetration for high conductors like silver. The only other thing you miss out on by going SF is the forgiveness Multi IQ brings to the table with a less than optimal ground balance (which manifests as more ground noise heard when operating with no ferrous discrimination). So having a sat ground balance or using tracking (recommended ONLY if ground phase is constantly changing across the search area) is critical. Ground noise level is also exacerbated by running recovery speed so low (1) with no real payoff in increased depth (as Badger noted) just a higher noise floor. The main goal with Equinox is balancing and optimizing the signal to noise ratio. In a nutshell noise cancel, get a sat GB, run sensitivity no higher than necessary (it is no fluke that ML chose the default setting to be 20 out of a max of 25). Optimize recovery speed to trade optimal swing rate vs. target separation, while not running it so low you generate excessive ground noise. Use iron bias as necessary to minimize ferrous falsing without compromising separation leading to target masking. Good luck!

As a relic hunter, lead is gold. Now if they find a way to separate aluminum from gold, lead, and brass, then we might have something to talk about...

Yup. Thanks Tom, though my wife thought I was OK even before I found it. She was very insightful and pragmatic about it: “So basically that coin is valued at about half the cost of the detector you used to find it right?” I said, “Yeah”, enthusiastically. She said, “So why aren’t you still out there looking for the other one?”

Probably a cost they are willing to bear because of the small percentage of users that submerge their units and the smaller percentage of those that will suffer failure. Otherwise, official acknowlegment of a flaw and the resulting blanket product recall would force them to replace units that would never see a drop of water. Again this is all speculation in the absence of any official ML response on the suspected issue.

Agree, but the Apex is not the one worth jumping ship for. Hopefully, 2nd gen addresses the shortcomings (tone limitations, recovery), but they appear to be brand fixtures at this point. Rooting for Garrett to prove me wrong, because having multiple coil options is a great thing.

Yes. Just another false rumor that some of the final production units were not manufactured in Malaysia borne of the fact that ML refuses to explicitly acknowledge the issue and instead quietly replaces them under warranty leaving users to speculate widely as to the root cause. At least ML are standing behind the product warranty. But on the other hand, the silence on a problem that is obviously not just isolated to a few units (especially based on those individuals who have reported multiple failures) gradually erodes brand confidence and trust in my view and makes me wonder how this is going to be handled once the initial warranties start expiring early next year. To the OP - contact the ML repair center for your region and get your unit repaired/replaced. Speculation on what ML refuses to publicly acknowledge is just spinning wheels.

Any bluetooth headphones that use the low latency APTX-LL codec should work. Low latency ensures that you hear the target response consistent with the position of the coil over the target. Most non-low-latency Bluetooth phones introduce a signiificant delay such that by the time you hear the target signal your coil has moved inches beyond the actual target position during your swing. Here are a couple phone models on Amazon that are known to work with Equinox and that are considerably cheaper than the ML branded accessory phones. Avantree AS9P Paww Wavesound 3.0 with noise cancelling Aukey Neckband Style Earbuds HTH

Sea Hunter II does not have adjustable channels like the Infinium.

Hard to say what is going on at this site. It is a mix of Colonial, CW, Victorian, and early 20th century. Spanish and Mexican Republic Reales, Capped Bust Silver, Seated Silver, Largies, IHPs, Trimes, Shield, V, and Buffalo Nickels and Gold coins have all been found here along with both Union and Confederate CW relics (plates, minie balls, buckles, buttons and other brass items). It seems to be a multipurpose site through the years - Colonial home site and picket/lookout area during the Civil War, as well as a couple cache's of relatively modern early 20th century silver coins. The person who has the permission suspects the coins were used for gambling purposes, but like I said, hard to say because the context is missing due to the crop farming. All I know is every time the farmer turns the soil, new stuff pops up.