Chase Goldman

I like the geotech site, but a completely different audience, for sure. I have an engineering degree yet feel grossly under educated visiting there. Lol.

The coil will also fold back flat against the shaft. This gives a more compact profile but you add the distance between the shaft attachment point to the BOTTOM edged of the coil in overall length (a few more inches). Plus the coil and lower shaft can be easily slid off the main stem and oriented however you want for packing. It is all pretty compact. I have fit the whole thing into a carry on for flight no problem with out disassembly other than sliding the lower shaft and coil off the stem so I can pack each separately in my bag as convenient. In the field, I externally strap it onto my day pack until I reach my destination.

Which coil?

Caveat - you can make those adjustments IF you have an Equinox 800 but not if you have an Equinox 600. Just to be clear for the Equinox 600 users.

If you are constantly having to rebalance the machine to restore detection depth or eliminate ground noise then tracking makes sense. Simply listen to what the machine is telling you. If it is becoming unstable then it is either EMI (noise cancel/reduce sensitivity) or ground noise. If the latter, rebalance or shift to tracking. I have found tracking works well whenever there is enough mineralization in the ground to cause variations in ground phase and there is no appreciable downside. The tracking is not so overly responsive to in ground targets that it will distort the settings or null out targets (however, see below regarding gold prospecting and tracking). Otherwise just do an initial auto or manual GB for each mode you are using at a site and swing away. Low mineralized sites or dry white sand or sandy soil, you can get away with the default of 0 but make sure GB is actually set to 0 because Equinox will retain the last used GB setting. Thing is, you won't know what the ground phase is unless you have been there before or attempt a GB in the first place so I just auto pump GB and swing away as a matter of routine regardless of the site. Shift to tracking as necessary based on how the machine is behaving. Prospectors tend to keep tracking off even in gold mode because they say it can null out micro gold. I have no experience to refute that claim as the smallest targets I recover are percussion caps and button shanks.

The essence of what detecting is all about, all that matters is whether the find (and the story behind it) is special to you. Thanks for sharing it with us.

I have a pair of on the ear "backphone" style that are water/sweat resistant they need a beta firmware update that you can get here and can read more about them in that Equinox forum thread. A link to the Amazon page is here. I would wear them in the rain but probably not the ocean. They work pretty well but are a little on the pricey side. Quest makes a wireless headset that supports BT APTX LL based on the specs though I have not yet confirmed this as I do not own them. They are also water resistant and can be used in the rain and since they have protective o-rings, I would be comfortable taking them into the ocean for the occasional splash Here is a link to the Quest page. Again these are a little more pricey but none of the other "generic" BT APTX LL headphones available that I know of have any weather or water resistance whatsoever.

Agree both methods appear to work very well, obviously. I think it is highly unlikely you will encounter a random coil issue in the first place but in that unlikely event, the advantage of using the modified cover is that it can simply be left off the coil upon return if there is a warranty issue and if the coil appears to not be outwardly physically damaged, then minelab would probably not bat an eye as the cover itself is considered a sacrificial wear item. It has no bearing on the warranty postion, unless you physically damaged a "naked" coil in a manner in which it would have otherwise been protected had the cover been in place. With the drain hole method, users have to spring for a replacement cover to be used on land, if so desired. Whereas with the coated coil, the existing cover can be used. Once epoxy is applied to the coil itself, however, minelab can claim an unauthorized coil modification voiding the warranty whether or not the epoxy had anything to do with the failure and then you are into a back and forth dispute situation in which you may or may not prevail, so why take that chance under warranty vs. waiting until the coil warranty has expired to mod the coil itself. Again, unlikely, but folks can decide for themselves whether it is worth it to roll the dice. Bottom line, I agree with you, Dave, that unlike say an Excal which is truly ocean ready, Equinox users have to invest significant time and money (coil/coil cover mods, 3rd party shafts, and waterproof phones, etc.) to get Equinox into shape for frequent salt beach duty.

Appreciate the smiley Dave. Just telling it like it was. Multiple folks vigorously defending drain holes based on positive personal experiences and you were single handedly taking them all on with direct applied coating. Somehow I got pegged as a naysayer in the "debate" on drain holes when you didn't respond to my questioning all the positive press against your claim that sand would get trapped and cause chatter. Seems like both methods work but if something goes wrong with a coated coil (not necessarily due to directly applying coating which would be unlikely to cause damage - but for some other reason) then warranty repair might be an issue. Epoxying the coil cover to the coil was another, less popular, option due to the effort involved and the consequences of not getting it completely sealed right. IMO it should not have been a debate but a sharing of ideas (i.e., no one was right or wrong) with the readers deciding for themselves what was the best option for them.

SoundPeat Q12's are splash resistant.

Also shows how you can get different results air testing vs. in the ground.

I have the 12.5" round and a larger SEF Detech coil and GPX iron reject works as expected with them. If there is a difference, it is not discernable and iron reject is probably about 75 percent reliable in the first place. FWIW Iron reject is not really true iron discrimination because you can still get false breaking of non-ferrous targets with either a 3rd party or the ML Commander coils - but that's just the nature of iron reject as implemented on PI detectors vs. Disc on vlf induction balance machines.

If you read closely, there is actually only one individual on this thread that has a strong opinion against using drain holes vs. direct application of epoxy to the coil. Really not much of a debate, quite frankly. It is a great solution, with several different drain hole pattern approaches to choose from that preserves the integrity of the coil and no fear of warranty replacement issues should the coil fail.

I agree with Lacky's recommendations, those have been confirmed to work with Equinox and will pair up in APTX low latency mode vice just APTX which is worse for lag (regular AAC or SBC bluetooth is unusable). I have been burned by other "off" brands that claim low latency but do not connect to Equinox in that manner. There are A LOT more full size headphones that support APTX low latency than ear buds. The Sound Peats have been verified to work and are affordable.

If Vanquish hits before Simplex, game on. Garrett needs to start innovating, or they are toast. They haven't done anything interesting since they introduced thd AT series. The AT Max is just a warmed over AT Pro. It is a race to the bottom folks, the only market left that Garrett has significant market share. None of these forthcoming entry level detectors interest me personally, but the detector market implications are interesting.

I don't prospect, but use gold mode frequently for reasons other than gold prospecting. That being said, if you are not going to go relic hunting and if the park sites you plan to detect in are not super trashy (requiring the faster recovery speed settings available on the 800) you will do OK with the 600. You may only regret the purchase down the road if you plan to expand your detecting hobby interests but by then you will likely have other choices, in the mean time you will have put in a modest investment which is wise if it turns out that detecting in not your thing. Good luck.

T Dan, I think you've made that abundantly clear. However, by quoting my several weeks old post without the quote I was originally referring to and that was contained in my original post to a specific poster's claim that "everyone" was missing his point and his "fear" that the cover would not drain effectively, you lost the context and meaning of my post. Note that I was asking a question of the subject "quoted" poster trying to pin down their position on drain holes and their implied stance that direct sealing the coil was not only superior to using drain holes but that drain holes were detrimental to performance for the reasons he stated (i.e., his fear of insufficient draining). I was not making a claim or statement directly to you or others using drain holes for or against drain holes (IMO - they appear to be very effective based on the number of folks successfully using them) but merely was, in my question, noting the irony in his claim given that several folks, including you, posted how drain holes provided a benefit to keeping the coil clean and that none of you were reporting having issues salt water detecting using the altered coil covers. In other words no one seemed to be having any problems with the altered covers draining effectively as was his claim/fear. The question was never addressed with a direct reply btw....?

100% agree. Clive you are putting out some great nuggets and valuable insights here especially on these salt water and coil control issues, but I often get bogged down when folks use abbreviations for metal detecting terminology specific to certain machines. There are a lot of newbies and veterans to Equinox here lurking. Don't assume your audience is a bunch of nox beachunting insiders totally familiar and comfortable with the arcane Equinox and beach hunting terminology, much less their abbreviations. Take the time to spell it out for us so we can all benefit. Many thanks. By the way to Sting Ray - Clive can confirm, but "TX shift" I believe is referring to the reduced transmit coil power used in Beach 2, for better stability in high salt conditions and transmit power autoreduction in beach mode in general if black sand mineraluzation is detected (p. 25 and 26 of the Equinox user guide). "TB" refers to the ability to shift the ferrous/non-ferrous "tone break" in this case slightly higher than the 1 or 2 default to give better non-ferrous tone stability as the nox tends to want to bounce around zero on many weak targets. You might sacrifice the occasional gold chain this way in order to gain more tone stability overall. And I believe manual undertune is referring to manually setting GB to minus numbers in salt surf. Again, Clive can chime in to straighten me out but this should help clear some stuff up in the mean time. Agree, that is why I wish Minelab would incorporate a pitch tone option and true threshold similar to what is implemented in gold mode as an option for all search profile modes since gold and other "hot" modes are unusable in salt. Or even a more sophisticated ferrous tone grunt + non-ferrous pitch tone, similar to what can be configured for the XP Deus.

I have found the ORX gold modes actually do the best in the mineralized Virginia dirt. Not a fan of the limited 3 tone option on the ORX in the coin modes for Virginia hot dirt relic hunting (vs. the multiple tone and pitch options of Deus) but they can be used. However, the ORX and Deus gold modes will give you more depth and sensitivity in hot dirt. Problem is in really hot ground, the VDI becomes unreliable on both ORX and Deus at around 4 to 6 inches of depth but you will hear the target, you'll just have to dig it to find out if it's ferrous or a keeper. Use some test targets like previously recovered minie balls and buttons and experiment with recovery speed settings (reactivity) and coil frequency to see what combos work best at your sites. Gold mode uses a pitch based tone rather than tone ID and it has a threshold tone and iron rejection vice discrimination. Iron rejection breaks up the audio if the detector thinks you are swinging over a ferrous target. Problem is, in hot mineraluzed dirt the reject signal keys off the magnetite in the soil so most all targets ferrous or not break up so it is kind of useless. I personally like reactivity at 2.5 or 3 and 28 khz frequency as the sweet spot for relic hunting using the round 9" HF coil. I am partial to pitch tone mode on the Deus vs. the ORX, but you can snag some great relics with the ORX too. Good luck.

They were primarily used for arrows.

Thought of you on this one, Dave, but it was kind of the opposite problem (too noisy vice too quiet and loss of depth). A problem nevertheless in the surf. Hope you have better news after July. Otherwise, a different detector might be the answer, unfortunately.

Since far field electromagnetic signals (i.e., radio waves) that cause EMI are highly attenuated in water, noise cancel which finds the "clearest" channel with minimal RF EMI interference is only really effective if the coil and/or control head (the antennas that receive the RF interference into the detector circuits) remain above the water line. So if the control head remains above the water line (even with the coil submerged) then noise cancel will be effective against EMI but it has no effect on wave action and debris causing falsing primarily to varying salinity levels - in that case you might want to try tracking ground balance as recommended on page 41 of the user guide: "Tracking Ground Balance can also be useful when using Beach Mode 2 underwater at the beach (in salt water)." HTH

Quite a few outstanding bucket listers for me there and you snagged them all in one year. Congrats.

Rosemary, note you haven’t re-visited us since you posed your original question. Please don’t be a stranger. Let us know how it all worked out. It helps us learn whether we are barking up the wrong tree with our suggestions or have encountered a new, unfamiliar failure mode. Thanks.

No reason to dip your recovery speed simply because your swing speed is limited by coil drag, IMO. The higher recovery speed helps limit ground noise that occurs due to the slower sweep speed. Some detectors like Deus respond better with higher sweep speeds when using higher recovery/reactivity settings but I have found with Equinox you can get away with a slower sweep speed even with the higher recovery settings without target signal degradation. Your mileage may vary, but give that a shot to see if you can lower falsing and ground feedback noise.