Chase Goldman

The key difference is that with Equinox, at least, ML gives you the choice of using proprietary 2.4 gHz (like Nokta) wireless OR BT. It's nice to have options, not a liability and BT is not nearly as complicated and confusing as you are making it out to be and since it is an industry standard, the hardware is a lot cheaper than the the manufacturers proprietary solutions (EZ Wander is $100 without headphones, ML Wi Stream is even more expensive - whereas quality LL BT H/P are $39, receiver/transmitter $30). My recommendation would be to provide both options built in.

Vanquish

I didn't switch out to CF for weight but for quality locks/craftsmanship, adjustability (no detents), and the ability to add counterweight for balance. If you plan to use the Equinox in salt water a lot, the quality 3rd party CF shaft systems are designed better to withstand the punishment of that type of usage.

My only knocks against the Vanquish if you are considering it as an alternative to the Equinox is fixed ground balance and lack of a single frequency mode, both of which as an experienced detectorist that hunts in a variety of situations, makes the Vanquish too limiting. If those are non-issues for you, the Vanquish is a good introductory multi machine. As far as Equinox complexity is concerned, I had a lot more trouble acclimating to the Simplex than I did acclimating to the Equinox FWIW. The Equinox was very intuitive and the defaults are spot on, requiring minimal tweaking.

Yep, if the name of the game is using a suboptimized and overburdened electronic device like a phone to do the heavy lifting, minimal price advantage, you can forget about using this in water, phone already gets terrible battery life, no option to use with only headphones like Deus. Yes, a game changer indeed, but not in a winning sense IMO.

Not sure what the return on investment is for NOT using it. Minuscule weight penalty, no performance penalty, yeah they're a pain to remove and clean, but why risk damage and wear over time to an expensive coil for lack of a cheap piece of plastic?

XP has been saying that for the last 4 years...

BTW - for relic hunting, my favorite coil is the 9" white HF round running at 28 khz. Those came out before the X35 coils that can be dialed up to 25 khz, so either the 9" or 11" x35 coils are good for relic hunting too. 18 to 28 khz is a good relic hunting frequency range. You can scan for shallow micro targets at higher frequencies with the white HF coils (54 khz for the 9" round and 72 khz for the 9" elliptical). Not sure what coil you are running Tom, but if you are using G-MAXX with a white HF coil, then the frequency will not be 8 khz but will instead be the lowest default frequency for the HF coils which is 13 khz.

https://www.amazon.com/AUKEY-Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Water-Resistance/dp/B07T1H22DX/ref=sr_1_3?crid=L83T3VN8VMDD&dchild=1&keywords=aukey%2Bb80%2Bhybrid%2Bdual%2Bdriver&qid=1594415469&sprefix=aukey%2Bb80%2Caps%2C162&sr=8-3&th=1&tag=androidcentralb-20&ascsubtag=UUacUdUnU91517YYa https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QPSFY5F/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/MEE-audio-Bluetooth-Enhancement-Earphones/dp/B07B4MP8TS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mee+audio+earboost+eb1&qid=1594411965&sr=8-1&tag=androidcentralb-20&ascsubtag=UUacUdUnU91517YYmYg I know the Aukey's work and have decent drivers resulting in good sound. They also have some level of sweat and moisture resistance as IPX6 rated. The neckband ones have $30 off coupon if you are Amazon Prime which is an incredible deal. I don't know much about the MEE audio buds other than they do have Aptx-ll which is essential for detecting because of the minimal lag. Earbuds (vs. Headphones) that support APTX-LL are just hard to come by these days for whatever reason. The popular Equinox user APTX-LL earbuds by Sounpeats are no longer available. There are no "true wireless" (i.e., no wire between the buds) APTX-LL BT earbuds that I can readily find. HTH

My only comment on G-Maxx (if you are using the default settings) is that the recovery speed of 1 is a little low in the event you do get into thick targets/junk, but you are maximizing depth with that setting. Relic targets of brass and lead tend to "like" the higher frequencies more (18 khz, 25 khz), G-Maxx default frequency is 8 khz which is a good general purpose, middle-of-the-road frequency, but buttons my be more responsive to the higher frequencies. For these reasons, I lean towards Deus fast at 18 khz. Deus fast also sets silencer to -1 (off) which tends to reduce ferrous masking vs. 2 for G-Maxx. Silencer is great for breaking up bottlecap signals, which ring up nice and high otherwise, but if bottlecaps are scarce, I rather have silencer off. Finally, G-Maxx also uses zero iron volume. Some level of iron volume (even with iron disc'd out) can be good when canvassing a site. It can clue you in to concentrations of nails that might be indicative of a former dwelling or structure. Anyway, great find, and just some suggestions. But if you are happy with G-Maxx as is, for now, stick with it rather than trying to shoehorn in someone else's recommended alternative settings (like mine). HH

Agree, you seldom see the rowel intact. Great find, Tom! Though, I don't really mind digging minie balls all day, the spur tells you that there must be some buttons and other goodies there too so keep pounding that site.

Um, ok. Your approach sounds a little overly complex and rigid to me (noise cancel every 20 minutes? Keep sensitivity above 23 always?) as I encounter a wide variety and range of detecting situations with multiple environmental, ground, and target varieties that no single setup works for all those situations (for example, lowering sensitivity well below default in thick iron situations often enables shallow non-ferrous targets to pop out of the ferrous muck and I like to use different modes to interrogate iffy targets)...but who am I to argue with your success? I do agree with some of your points like taking the time to do a proper ground balance. But for me, dialing back to 2.0 just means I lost the quiet 4 khz option ML so graciously added to the Swiss-Army-Knife-like Equinox tool kit. Have fun and Happy Hunting!

I don't think so, there were still four left when I bought mine.

Yep. You're right, Steve.. They have similar model #'s per the FT cross compatibility table but are not cross compatible and what I was recalling was that they share the same coil cover because the have identical form factors and it was listed as F70/F75/GB2 compatible when I bought it 4 1/2 years ago. Foggy memory. Doh!

If I recall correctly, this coil is also compatible with the Gold Bug 2 at 71 khz. I have one of these (for the F75, it's the old style) and can't wait to try it out on Pinky when it gets here...

Not necessarily. Single frequencies, especially higher frequencies like 20khz can be less susceptible to EMI. One of the reasons why having a single frequency option vs. multi can be advantageous, especially if the noise cancellation scheme in multi is not very good.

Did you solely use Multi or did you try any of the single frequencies too?

Oh yeah!

Seems to be a common and undesirable attribute of Nokta detectors, in general. I have only owned a Simplex and the AM mode just seems weak and underpowered. A real disappointment as the discriminated search modes are pretty good. A real head scratcher.

They really need to pay attention to recovery speed rather than treating it like an afterthought and then making unsupported and ambiguous claims of "fast" recovery in their spec sheets. At that point they can work on iron volume in a meaningful way. Otherwise, the are just checking a features box without regard to real life functionality. [Iron volume, yeah we got that. Except that the meh recovery performance makes it useless as abenson mentioned above].

Pinky's are all gone now...

Honestly, though, even knowing that, your parameters are still too broad to really give you a definitive answer. How much salinity? Any black sand? Composition of the target? In general, the Excal probably punches deeper in that config, but on average, are you doing more guessing on target ID (effective depth) or simply beep digging it all? If the latter, perhaps the Excal has the edge. But on shallower targets are you just guessing or discriminating? The recovery speed of the Equinox doesn't bring much to the table from a performance standpoint, but at least it is knob you can tweak which is not available on the Excal so it cound make the difference in certain situations. Anecdotally, I am not seeing a lot of folks touting their Excals over the Equinox unless they are doing a lot of submerged water detecting or rough surf, where the Excal has the edge because it is more durable. That's my take.

How big is the excal coil, 8 or 10".

Other relevant threads: Some of the info in the above threads duplicates that presented in this thread but there are other worthwhile nuggets too.

Thanks, Steve. The fact that it worked for you was encouraging, I just have no way of really benchmarking whether I am getting max performance. I sort of figure there is some sort of difference because they are separate part #'s (otherwise why not just add F70/75 compatibility to the list?). Probably splitting hairs if there really is a difference. Will give it a go nevertheless. Nothing to lose.