Chase Goldman

I think it can run plenty hot, not sure why you would really want to increase the noise floor any further (diminishing returns), but I guess it's cool you figured out a way to hack your Equinox to do so.

Do what Jeff recommends to minimize coil bump sensitivity. If you are within 5 points or so of the actual ground phase reading you will lose minimal depth. I don't know why it happens, but you can work around it.

If I push GB high, it increases coil bump sensitivity, I can even get falsing by simply shaking the coil in the air (i.e., nowhere near the ground). I can't explain why that happens, but I recall Steve H. not being surprised when I described this issue. You can see his response here and a longer discussion of causes for bump sensitvity here.

Agree with Jeff, It's just a latch of the TID on the screen at the instant when you press the PP button Basically meaningless once you engage PP because as Jeff says, it doesn't change once latched even if you move on to another target while PP is engaged. Especially true if the TID is jumping around which it usually does because I engage PP only when the coil is off to the side of the target and if it's changed due to an adjacent target or falsing off the end of a ferrous target, so be it. It still apparently pinpoints the intended target with the same sensitivity regardless of what number latches on the screen. Just another one of Equinox's quirks AFAIAC.

Hard to answer, the way it is asked because it is totally situational. 90% of the time if at the beach (the other 10% being tracking if in surf), 0% of the time when land hunting (mostly auto or tracking). So the total depends on my split of beach detecting vs. Land detectig which varies considerably. I guess I would say 25% overall I guess based on my ratio of beach to land hunting so that was the basis of my vote.

”The recovery speed would not go lower than 5 if there was no reason to ever go lower than 5. I did personally heavily fight the knee jerk concept of lower recovery speed automatically means more depth, and I just as much fight the idea that high recovery speeds are always the answer.“ Heed this quote above by Steve H. from the thread he linked to in the post above. Although it is talking about recovery speed settings specific to Equinox, there is a lesson learned here that basically also applies to Vanquish and it’s modes supposedly divvied up into various depth vs. separation trade offs. Basically, it resurrects the truism that there are very few absolutes when it comes to detecting and how detectors behave. ML may have had general intended performance objectives in mind for the designated Vanquish modes, but the realities of the specific site conditions and the depth, condition, orientation, and junk density will ultimately determine which mode is optimal for the site and targets of interest and it may look nothing like what ML had intended and may be counterintuitive to what you might think would have been the optimal mode setting for that situation, So the bottom line is not to rely on what the book says or even what the so called ”experts “ say. Those may be good starting points. However, if possible, you should do a little experimentation at your sites on known targets to validate to yourself whether the detector is behaving as you expect for the given settings and conditions and adjust as necessary. Takes some patience and a little time when you are anxious to get out there swinging away, but worth it.

Steve - I fully get what you are saying but instead of providing an optimized relic mode a la Equinox Park 2 or Field 2, I think they simply set out to focus relic mode on depth vice separation which probably means they backed off on the fixed, preset recovery speed vs. coins mode which they purposefully designed for separation based on the user manual mode descriptions (so coins mode is what should be used in trashy ferrous sites). Jewelry mode splits the difference on separation and depth between Coins and Relic modes. I really don’t think there is significant, if any, difference in the Multi IQ profile between the three modes so they are not really preferential to any specific set of targets based on conductivity and size - they probably picked an all purpose target Multi IQ frequency and signal processing profile that could run stable in wet sand and varied preset, fixed recovery speed settings for each mode to get the desired trade off between depth and separation. Relic seems to be the most sensitive to ground noise and sweep speed which would make sense if it also had the lowest recovery speed. So, forgetting what the modes are actually called I would say ML intended detectorists to use “Coin” mode for situations were you need improved target separation (regardless of coins, jewelry, or relics), “Relic” mode for max target depth (except at mineralized sites), and Jewelry as a good all around “Goldilocks” mode for stable, general purpose land or beach detecting. That was the intent anyway. That is, if you are going strictly by what the manual says. The rub is, as pointed out above, did the mode properties REALLY turn out the way ML INTENDED and described and I think the jury is still out. I have not yet had the opportunity to do extensive testing to compare and verify the mode properties against one another, but I am not surprised that it may not exactly line up with the user manual descriptions, especially if you take into account ground condition variability which is a definite Achilles heel for Vanquish because it has preset ground balance points and perhaps tries to compensate for that by using Multi IQ signal processing magic, but that really doesn’t work under very extreme soil mineralization conditions.

If it pairs up at all, then it's not your detector, the lack of a plus sign definitively means the D9 is not flashed with APTX LL, as I feared (just plain Vanilla APTX or some other non LL APTX variant, like APTX HD). That's why I specifically asked the + sign question of drive-by poster FoundingFather1776, who never re-visited the site after posting. See if MPOW has a firmware update to get the D9 to APTX LL. If not, you are out of luck and you should return them unless you want to use them for other purposes than detecting. I too have run into ambiguously worded specs by MPOW and received a non APTX LL set of headphones purported to be low latency.

Since you can only swing one detector at a time and you have two V540's why not put one of the small coils on one of the two 540 rods you already have?

If that was the case, they shouldn't have made the dealers wait behind Dicks and Cabelas to get Vanquish inventory. KCo is just now fulfilling December "pre-orders" for Vanquish, while Dicks has has had the Vanquish in stock since at least January.

Haven't tried it but the mounting scheme is brilliant, one end attaches to the armrest fastner and the other clips onto the shaft. From what I can tell from written descriptions of it, it is about 5000 mAH (equivalent to the Equinox internal battery, supposedly), but curiously, no one is publishing the actual numbers. RNB Innovations doesn't even show it on their website. I have sent them an email inquiry to verify the capacity in actual mAH numbers. That being said, I have a few concerns. First of all, the price is pretty steep for a 5000 mAH power bank. Even ruggedized, water resistant 5000 mAH power banks can be bought for less than half the ~$43US MAP. Larger capacity (and lighter) 10 to 15K ruggedized mAH packs with multiple ports can be bought and can be attached to the shaft with velcro pouches at about the same price point. Not clear how water resistant the package is for rainy conditions or splashing (even when not using it for charging, can't tell if the ports are sealed and it would be a PIA to have to remove it for a passing rain shower). It is obviously not submersible. I like the flexibility of using it for more than charging the Equinox. Wish it had more than one output port or a bi-directional USB PD port, though. One-way Micro USB charging and lack of a USB-C port is pretty "old school" at this point. So take that into consideration if you are planning to carry this for sale on your site or as a purchase.

Like I said, since they are both multifrequency vlf machines their depth will be similar on a salt beach since they both have good salt cancellation. The question is do you want to be digging a lot of small stuff (foil pieces, can slaw, tabs, bottlecaps) so as not to miss small gold/silver (e.g.earring backs) in addition to the larger more obvious targets or do you want to simply filter to larger targets like coins and rings. Both can get fairly deep (> 1 ft but < 1.5 ft max). If you are just interested in max depth, get a Pulse Induction machine. Some swear by the Tarsacci MDT 8000 as getting perhaps a few additional inches on the Equinox and other MF vlfs. It is a single frequency machine with multiple selectable frequencies and a sophisticated salt balance scheme. So you might want to research that one. The Tarsacci is dunkable but not designed to be continuously operated submerged. HTH

You need to be a little more specific. Beach sand? Mineralized Soil? Wet salt beach? What type of target - high conductive large silver, mid-conductive small gold? Also, what coil are you using? The answer probably varies depending on which of these targets and conditions you are hunting. Overall, from a "raw depth" perspective, they are probably about the same. The CZ21 shines as it tends to disc out bottlecaps and small aluminum yet you can still hit heavy gold jewelry and coins. The Equinox is probably better on micro jewelry and has a more versatile set of modes that make it a great all around detector under a variety of conditions. The CZ21 is a tone only machine but is also designed to operate as a dive machine but this also makes it heavier overall. Depth performance is not really a performance feature that is used to differentiate these two detectors.

The XP pinpointer if you use it in wireless mode cuts off the coil and sounds off through the headphones.

What you are asking for (detection 50' away) does not exist, at least in a cost effective package in conventional induction loop metal detecting. You are going to have to get the detector loop OVER/ABOVE the intended target and can detect down a few feet at best once you are over it. If you can get a metallic ring, disc or tag that you can consistently manufacture that will give a single, stable ID number, for a specific detector, you can set the detector to ignore all other targets, but if you don't know the approximate area of the yard the access tube is located, you will still have to sweep the yard until the desired target passes under the edge if the loop. "Two box" detectors effectively increase the detection loop diameter from a foot or so, to several feet, increasing your coverage area and depth, but still not 50' away. There are other technologies out there such as Ground Penetrating Radar, but you still need to be within a few feet of abd basically above the target, and the cost is pretty high. A magnetometer can sense when a ferrous object is distorting the local magnetic field (called an anomaly) but it can't really be dialed in to ID a specific metal and works best with ferromagnetic metals which comprise a lot of the junk buried in yards. I think your best bet is the setup described by Steve above or use of the Tag described in the post you quoted, none of which fully meet your requirements as stated.

Ground grab would be great, but not at the expense of the horseshoe button, I really don't want to have to set up two machines with separate custom search profiles just to be able to use a custom disc pattern for two modes. I would rather they program to use a long press on it or another button instead. Because if they actually do fix the GB issue, that should fix AM and being able to selectively cut it in or out on the fly would be convenient in some situations than repeatedly altering the disc profile for the search modes you couldn't store in the custom slot. BTW, I now realize why they didn't throw in a single fixed frequency mode. Because it would force them to include a ground balance feature. ML gets away with the "0" GB fixed reference setting by exploiting Multi IQ's ability to infer the ground phase. This only works up to an extent, then it is appropriate to do a manually initiated GB. Single frequency cannot compensate for a the fixed GB reference. Anyway, I doubt any of this is going to happen as it moves Vanquish further away from ML's cost and simplicity objectives and with only about $150 separating the Equinox 600 from the Vanquish 540, I suppose ML reckons that that if you want and need the features described (e.g., ground grab, single frequency), than users should just spring for an Equinox. What ML is NOT realizing, is the Equinox 600 would be the right answer provided they had the foresight and/or lack of greed to have made the Vanquish coils cross compatible with EQX or at least made Equinox compatible versions of those coils.

May not work on your beach then. There is no beach mode per se on Vanquish. Jewellry mode comes closest but it is more like Beach 1. There is no mode on Vanquish eqivalent to Beach 2 for wet sand/surf and no GB trackng.

Like hitting mosquitos with a sledgehammer

I felt this way too when I first saw the Vanquish specs, until I realized with the latest Equinox firmware update that you really can't turn iron bias off on Equinox either, as Fe=0 is approximately equal to F2=4. Someone had previously posted (perhaps you, I can't recall exactly) that iron bias low on Vanquish appeared to behave approximately equivalent to F2=2 (which is less than Fe=0). The only way you can truly turn off iron bias on Equinox is to go to single frequency. So I think the masking issues are probably dominated by the lower recovery speed of Vanquish, but I am sure the iron bias plays a role, too. Speaking of single frequency, it would have been nice to go to single on Vanquish (say 10 khz) of course that would be another cost driver. Great ghost town report, btw.

Agree with you, as I said in my post, that the iron bias low setting option of the 540 doesn't really matter at the beach. Regarding, BT headphones, I don't use the ML stock BT headphones except as a backup because the audio seems sub par compared to a few of the 3rd party phones (including a pair I have that has active noise cancellation). Regarding lag, have not had an issue with any true BT APTX LL headphones I've used (including the ML's), and I can definitely tell the difference in lag even with a pair of APTX (non LL) which have greater latency but still about half of anything else BT. BT wireless that is not APTX LL is basically unusable for detecting. The user interface makes more sense to me than the Simplex, probably because I am coming from Equinox, but I also like the separate dedicated toggle buttons for Volume, Sensitivity, and navigating the discrimination segments. Very intuitive. Couple of quibbles, pinpoint doesn't latch. Not a biggy but different than what I am used to. I don't like how the horseshoe button dis-engages if I switch modes. Regarding performance, I only had limited time, but I like the tones and response of the 540. It hit everything in my test garden (high conductors, a dime masked by iron, small mid-conductive button and buclke relics, a minie ball, a nickel masked by iron), but everything is at medium depth around 6 to 8 inches. It had the most trouble with the nickel with nearby iron. IB adjust didn't make too much difference, but it did help some to lower IB to widen the angle were I could get a repeatable, clear target response. I need to do a true A - B comparison with Equinox and Simplex but haven't had the chance. Getting back to the OP, either the 440 or 540 should get it done at the beach as a backup no problem. Don't drop it in the surf though. The 540 personally gives me more bang for the buck with wireless and slight additional adjustability plus for beach hunting, the larger coil vs. the 440, provides a definite swing coverage advantage. Would love to have this V12 coil on my Equinox. Thanks for considering that option ML ("not!").

Also, 540 has the ability to switch to a lower level of iron bias vs. the 440 and the 540 has built-in BT audio while the 440 does not. As Jeff said, basically, the same performance between the two, but having the extra control over iron bias does make a difference for me based on the tests I conducted in my test garden today, not sure it would make a big difference at the beach though. I really have trouble going back to wired headphones though, so built-in wireless is really something I have trouble giving up at this point.

That should work and is a cheaper option than getting a new NDT cord with the small plug. Let us know how it goes.

Sandi, I know Andy (I teach detecting boot camp classes with him). I will reach out to him and have him send you a signed book on me. PM me with your address and I'll have one sent out. And let me know who you want it signed to: you, your husband, Nate, or both of you. Chase

Welcome to the forum. You might get more views if you post this in the Equinox forum, but I’ll try to get you started on some possible solutions. First some clarification needed - The proper what? Headphones or adapter? I’ll presume you were referring to the adapter. When you say the GG’s don’t work - are you getting no sound or is the on-board speaker not cutting out? See below for more information on what works and doesn’t work as far as 1/4 inch adapters, headphones, and the Equinox. Also, you can get an NDT cord with a 1/8” mini plug that should plug right in without using the M/L adapter. Lots of good info in the Equinox Essential Info thread.

There is a First Texas machine called the Impulse AQ but it is geared towards jewelry hunting on salt beaches/surf vs. prospecting. You can read all about it in the FT forum. The other rumors revolve around a successor to either the GPX 5000 or GPZ 7000 that was purported to be word of mouth by “trusted” ML insiders but nothing official out of ML in terms of an announcement or even a Vanquish-like tease promotion.