Chase Goldman

Ah, I saw the crimps when I zoomed in. Yeah, that would be fun to deal with, lol. But hard work did pay off. Great saves. Was that a cartridge box plate?

"GB Auto" - does that mean you were not using Tracking GB (which is recommended in moving salt water)? Backing off on sensitivity 1 or 2 points out of 20 nets an EMI of F? Uh, OK. Can you explain in a little more detail how you had to set up the machine differently in wet sand vs. surf?

Nice keepers, esp the plate and those buttons. Lot's of dropped live ammo in that trash...wow

I started making a list of quibbles with the Equinox early last year after a few weeks of using the Equinox and reviewed the list again after this thread started. First of all, the list is pretty short and several things have come off the list over time as Equinox has either addressed the issues via firmware updates, third party accessories are available, or the issues were just me getting used to Equinox. Also, I haven't really added anything to list in months. Anyway, here we go: Ergonomics, build quality, and accessories: Balance and shafting issues: This is a user dependent thing and I think a lot of energy is wasted over things that cannot be resolved by a singular design such as S-shaft vs. straight and overall balance. Suffice to say, ML did have issues with shaft wobble and regardless of whether you believe they have resolved those issues, at least they were willing to send replacements under warranty. In any event, there are plenty of third party options available to address the shafting issues to satisfy user preference. I am looking forward to more straight forward options regarding compact or telescoping shafts to support travel and backpack situations. Control Head Physical Design: Love that it can be removed as a self contained unit really facilitates the third party shaft options and user mods. My only minor issues is perhaps a future battery type modification that allows shrinking the handle diameter and perhaps a mechanism that allows adjustment of the handle tilt. Accessories Redesign the WM08 module to be able to accommodate either a 1/8" or 1/4" headphone plug without the need to use an adapter and drop the recessed screw-in jack design which limits choice of adapter dimensions on the WM08 unless you plan to also make the WM08 IPX weatherproof/waterproof rated. (Also reduce the standalone price to something that makes sense in the context of providing an economically affordable detector. Providing an audio accessory that costs 40% of the Equinox 600, more than any of the accessory coils, or almost as much as the (still overpriced) full-featured ML Pro-Sonic is kinda nuts. Furthermore, universal ML detector compatibility of the wi-stream products would be welcome and perhaps would encourage investing in the systems). 10x5 or similar small width/decent coverage elliptical coil options, including closed coil designs, would be welcome. User Interface: Agree with swapping of the single frequency and user profile buttons but am starting to get so used to it that it may screw me up if they ever actually did this. Lol. A simple firmware update that enable the use to step forwards or backwards through the mode profiles and the settings menu options would be welcome Would love to have an Fe3O4 mineralization level meter Performance and Related Features: Would love either or both of the following: Lower single frequency options in gold mode - I know that makes it less of a gold only mode, but it would be interesting Provide the gold mode true threshold and audio as an audio option for the non-gold modes as an alternative to tone ID Enable multiple firmware versions to reside on the machine itself (up to 2 or 3) to enable switching between them. I would limit this to just the "performance related" feature upgrades (enhanced edge-on coin performance) and not the bug fixes like the user profile mode power off bug which no one would like to see return. Welcome your comments and suggestions.

Note also that the Threshold for the non-Gold modes is different than the Threshold for the Gold modes. The non-Gold mode threshold just provides the reference threshold sound as Steve described for the purpose of making detected tones stand out and also gives you assurance your detector audio is operating as expected. The non-Gold mode threshold also blanks out when you pass the coil over a target that is discriminated out. This alerts you to the fact that you just passed over a discriminated target which allows you to not be bothered with undesirable target tones yet have awareness of junk or ferrous targets. If you are getting frequent blanking of the threshold this might indicate you are venturing into a trashy area of the site or an area with more dense ferrous targets (like nails) that could be the remnants of a previous dwelling. The gold mode threshold is considered "true" threshold in that variations in the threshold signal strength can indeed be alerting you to faint, deep desirable targets that are not providing a signal strong enough to give you a normal target tone or even a visual target ID. Note that is important especially for Gold mode because it uses a variable pitch and intensity tone rather than tone ID to alert you to the presence of a target and the threshold sound enables faint targets to stand out from the typically noisy background of mineralized soils where gold is typically found. In gold mode the target tone duration and intensity varies with the strength of the target signal and when combined with a visual target ID can clue you in to whether the target is large, small, shallow, or deep so you can make an informed dig decision. The difference between non-Gold and Gold mode threshold tones and how to properly set threshold levels is described on page 44. HTH.

Steve's essential information thread is your friend... Also, see this:

It used to be that recovery speed was dependent on how fast your analog or even your digital microelectronic circuitry could process and display/sound off on the signal and as a result, detectors were limited in the maximum recovery speed available with Tesoros leading the way as they primarily focused on audio performance . Multi Frequency detectors such as the Whites V3i and the Minelab eTrac and CTX 3030 upped the ante on signal processing power needs and their focus was on better target identification at depth rather than speed. Earlier this decade, XP focused on getting a detector out their that had many game changing attributes but the main one relevant here, was a fully adjustable range of recovery speeds (XP calls this parameter "reactivity"). While some detectors had limited ability "adjust" recovery speed by selecting specific modes that invariably compromised some performance aspect to achieve increased speed, XP was really one of the first to enable to user to change recovery speed and also make it such that the detectorist really would have to sweep ridiculously fast to challenge it at high settings. FFWD to 2018 and Equinox came along and took a cue from XP and provided variable and fast recovery speed.

Which is exactly why ML recommends using tracking GB in that particular situation (user guide p. 41)

I give Geotech the benefit of the doubt that he knows how to measure the transmitted signal output of a detector since he is a successful detector designer and I have seen numerous oscilloscope and SA traces here from many folks trying to crack the transmit frequency riddle. But yes, the "how many frequencies are transmitted by Equinox" debate will go on indefinitely as long as Minelab refuses to weigh in explicitly on the subject. But even Minelab implies in the article linked by Steve in this post that they minimize the number of frequencies actually transmitted to the minimum needed (presumably to limited effective transmit power) so what you may be picking up are harmonics from the a fewer number of actually transmitted frequencies. I agree the secret sauce is in the receive signal processing, but I am still pretty sure they are NOT processing each of the discrete frequencies separately and certainly not in series so the number of frequencies used/transmitted/received or whatever is probably not limiting their processing capabilities. That is all I was saying in response to your comment that they could "analyze less than all 5 frequencies".

The answer is yes, but the personal profile slot is just a place to enable quick access to a frequently used mode and whatever custom settings you have applied, if any, rather than having to step through each of the modes in sequence.. Other than setting up complex, custom tone and discrimination profiles, there really is not all that much that can and should be customized as the defaults are pretty good out of the box.. I pretty much leave the tone settings as is (I don't heavily customize them) and the only thing that gets adjusted/customized besides sensitivity is recovery speed, number of tones used, and perhaps iron bias. Otherwise, noise cancel channel and ground balance are situational and are set up uniquely for each detecting session. Since the characteristics of each search profile (Park 1/2, Field 1/2, Beach 1/2, Gold) are basically set by the underlying Multi IQ programming which is factory set and not user adjustable, there is not a lot of custom programming of each mode required other than the user settings (noise cancel channel, Ground Balance, volume/tone settings, ferrous breakpoint, notch, recovery speed, and iron bias). Sensitivity is a global parameter and is not saved unique to the user profile. The only other setting is single frequency setting, which I also seldom use. So factory resets do not require a lot of post reset customizations.to return them to where you had them before the reset. Not something that you should be overly concerned about. HTH.

Your notion of transmit and receive cycles and recovery speed in the context of a VLF detector is a little flawed. Don't think of it as transmit and receive cycles. The transmit/receive process is continuous and a signal is only received (in search modes) as long as the coil is in motion. Think of the recovery speed setting as how fast you are allowing the detector to process the signal and instead think of executing software code and microprocessor main operating loop cycles. With modern microprocessors, processing speed is not the issue but recovery speed is also dependent on how quickly you are swinging the coil and how much target signal acquired in the process of doing so. The detector has to process the received signal from an individual target before it can process the next target signal, and like Steve stated in his conveyor belt analogy, until that signal is processed, the detector will not be able to detect AND process the next target until it has completed the first. In the mean time, depending on the recovery speed chosen AND your sweep speed, you may have passed over additional targets EVEN at high recovery speeds. So slow it down in the thick stuff. Just one comment here, even though ML is not revealing the secret sauce on how it transmits and processes simultaneous multi frequencies, it has been pretty well established by various third party measurements (see this thread and the links within), that Equinox is likely only simultaneously transmitting two frequencies at a time. The frequency values used are variable based on search profile/mode settings but regardless of what simultaneous frequenceis are being used, ML is not processing each frequency separately but is instead extracting information from the received, combined frequency target signal to derive key parameters that are frequency dependent so that can see how the magnitude of those target parameters (e.g, inductance/reactance and conductance/resistivity) change with frequency and infer material type and better balance out ground effects due to mineralization and/or salinity. This does take a lot of processing horsepower, but as I said above, that is no what is limiting the recovery speed as ML is providing recovery speed settings greater than what a detectorist can likely practically use.

The way I look at it is that it is good to have settings beyond those that you would actually use in practice so that you are never in a situation where just one more setting increment would get the job done but you are limited by the range of adjustment.

Like he said, he didn't even have time to check it's TID out of the sand. The lady took it right out of his scoop so we will never know the real story.

Really not a good idea to intentionally run your battery to shut off, this something that does tend to degrade battery life (probably ok once in awhile, but why burn a freebie). Also, it is not necessarily a realistic test, as processing actual target signals tend to suck more juice since the microprocessor is working harder and than it just sitting in the corner of the room (unless of course it is locked on to metallic structure or you turn up threshold as Steve did below). I think if you turned on the wireless radio AND used wired headphones with the volume turned up, that would be a fairly conservative test. From what I have seen, folks get around 12 hours from a full charge from such a test as Steve did in his test linked below. Here is the battery test Steve H did early last year.

Want to hear something even funnier? I use the same phones. Once I realized that ML was using rebranded Miccus phones for the Equinox, I got a pair BEFORE my Equinox even arrived (I was on a long waiting list) with the intent of marrying them up with an APTX LL transmitter so that I could use the same phones on both the Equinox and my ML GPX detector to which I affixed the APTX LL transmitter. I actually keep the ML Equinox ML80 phones pristine in their case as an emergency backup should the Miccus ever go down hard and fail and have been getting the Miccus phones dirty and banged up in the field since early 2018. I was not expecting the Miccus phones to last as long as they have given the fact that they are neither weatherproof nor of impressive build quality. I have been pleasantly surprised by their durability.

I completely understand your concerns regarding lithium cells from a fire hazard perspective and also from a life cycle perspective. But I think in-service cells in devices such as cell phones, computers, and even metal detectors have to be handled with more care than occasional use charge banks that there to provide a backup charging solution to those in-service lithium cells. I have found the external charge banks from reputable manufacturers (and I own several) to be highly reliable and tend to hold their capacity quite well because they are basically oversized for their application (backup charging), so the degradation in capacity is less noticeable than on in-service Li Ion cells which are sized to provide device power over a number of hours. If you treat them with respect (i.e., do not allow them to get banged around with your gear) and do regular maintenance charges, I have found the external charge banks to be a lot more reliable than the in-service lithium cells.

As a matter of fact, even though i use the ML80 phones primarily, I still keep a charged WM-08 module in my MD Gear Bag as a backup if the ML80 phones do bite the dust battery wise so I can keep detecting wirelessly. I think the passage in the manual that you cited is probably confusing to folks who are not familiar with wireless audio tech and also do not necessarily understand why ML included both the ML80 phones and the WM-08 in the EQ 800 box. I know of several postings by folks who have had trouble starting out with the Equinox because they plugged the headphones into the WM08 not fully realizing this was not the normal wireless configuration they should be using. Oh, and i should also mention, that even with some marathon, multi-hour Equinox detecting sessions, I have never had to resort to that backup solution. The ML80 has plenty of battery life.

Yep, that is exactly what they are saying. I think it is less about using the WM-08 because it has less latency than the ML80 phones, but the WM-08 provides an emergency backup wireless solution to keep you wireless should your ML80 phone battery gets drained or you forget to charge it since you can still use the ML80 phones powered off with the WM-08.

Thinking about it from multi-day rally perspective, I wouldn't wholesale reject the increased capacity internal battery solution, but I think even if you give the upgraded battery twice the capacity which is probably the technological limit based on the battery compartment volume, you are still probably in the same boat relying, at some point, on an external power charge bank solution during a multi day rally. A 30,000 mAH charge bank can be obtained for less than $30 US and could conservatively be used to fully charge your Equinox 5000 mAH internal cell and wireless headphones up to 4 times over even accounting for the efficiency losses in the process of doing so. So I would have to see how much the RNB solution is being offered for to see if the value proposition vs. an external charge bank makes economic sense and is worth the trip vs. just bringing a high capacity charge bank in my MD gear bag. I am all for increasing the internal battery capacity to provide reserve capacity in the event you cannot recharge between detecting sessions, but have still never run into a depleted Equinox battery situation even after back to back, multi hour detecting sessions without charging in between. Regarding an AA solution (especially using rechargeable AA cells) mentioned a few posts back. Great compact design, but I am also not really seeing the practicality of that given the ready availability of high capacity external charge banks in a number of packages including watertight packages and also with associated solar charge capabilities. Finally, even though this has not been suggested recently, I am not really seeing the practicality of an alkaline battery pack solution either. I really try to avoid single use batteries in this day and age, if possible. Just not a good solid waste legacy and I am not exactly what you would call an avid environmentalist. This is directed more at those folks who try to focus on negative aspects of providing an internal rechargeable battery in a detector. I often hear those folks say they prefer AA or 9-volt powered detectors vs. rechargeable internal batteries because they can run down to the local convenience store and grab a pack of alkalines in an emergency. The fact is that cell phone charge banks compatible with Equinox are ubiquitous and can also be bought at that same convenience store nowadays. I really am a proponent of taking advantage of the live charge feature that ML has provided with the Equinox and doing so with Li Ion external battery solutions. Just my view.

Way to make a comeback splash. Great find and great story. A true old fashioned treasure hunt.

You definitely seem to be in the minority on this opinion of the TE phones' audio and it is the first instance of flooding damage I have heard for them, but thanks for sharing it. Would be helpful if you let us know which of the other six (!) Equinox compatible headphones that you own besides Tony's you consider to be the best waterproof phones of the lot and why.

Thanks. I know it sounds like folks were giving you "advice" for things you already did, but if you look back and read through your posts it was not clear that you actually had the detector's wireless radio and/or the headphones and WM08 turned off when you described no sound coming from the speakers (even though you stated you were resetting the detector, that would not do anything if either wireless unit were powered on and you never explicitly said you had ALL the wireless stuff turned off). If the radio is off or if both the WM08 and ML80 are off (even if the wireless radio is on), you should indeed have sound coming through the speaker. Every time I initially turn on the detector, even with the wireless radio turned on and headphones on initially, it takes some brief period of time to connect to the wireless headphones, during this time I can clearly hear the power on initialization tones of the Equinox and EMI/ground noise/Target tones through the Equinox speaker until the wireless headphones connect. By resetting the machine and the headphones you have eliminated any "intermediate" unstable states of the detector that could cause the speaker to be in an inconsistent locked-out state. I agree that it sounds like you have an on-board audio or speaker problem and that ML service is required for your detector. Clear and concise information is crucial to help the service personnel troubleshoot and repair your issue. I does sound like something the repair facility will be able to readily replicate but I would not leave anything to chance and lay out the following either in the note you send to them, or have it written down and available as a reference should they call you in the event they can't duplicate the issue. Summary description of issue (what I have gathered from your posts, correct any information that is incorrect or missing): No audio is coming from the Equinox Control Head Unit speaker. (Verify that this has always been the case even before you ever paired wireless headphones to the unit - this is important information as it shows that the speaker has NEVER been working from the get go). 1. You were able to successfully pair the Equinox to the wireless ML80 headphones and audio seems to be normal coming from them and the detector seemed to be operating normally. 2. Similarly you were able to successfully pair the Equinox to the wireless WM08 module and normal audio came from it with Equinox headphones plugged into it (True?). 3. Did you ever plug a set of wired headphones into the back of the Equinox control head unit, or ensure that nothing is plugged into jack on the back of the control head unit - doing this verifies two things for the repair folks, that: 1) you do (or don't)get sound out of the headphone jack (no sound would indicate an audio circuit issue and not just a speaker issue) and 2) verifies the speaker is not cut out solely due to something being plugged into the rear headphone jack. So if you DID DO THIS, provide that information to the repair center technician as well. 4. Upon factory resetting both the Equinox and the headphones you were unable to get the speaker on the Equinox to work regardless of whether the wireless radio on the Equinox was turned off completely, and/or even if both the WM08 and ML80 headphones were turned off. Having all these facts logically laid out and readily available for discussion or provided to the technician in writing should help eliminate unnecessary questions and the repair going down the wrong troubleshooting path when your detector arrives so you can get a repaired detector back in your hands as soon as possible. BTW - (for everyone reading) laying information out like this in a logical, complete but concise manner really helps the repair center folks (I've done tech support and the most difficult thing is not the actual technical troubleshooting but communication between the tech center and the folks having the problem). Communicating effectively helps you by eliminating ambiguous and unnecessary information and gets your detector fixed sooner. Also, If applicable, describe that you did any troubleshooting steps included in the manual to address the issue. In this case, there are no troubleshooting steps for no sound coming from the speaker other than making sure you have detector volume turned up. Which it was in this case, otherwise, 1848cal would not have been able to hear anything in the wireless speakers. 1848cal - good luck and hope you get your detector back soon. I know it is a annoying to have your detector not working properly right out of the box.

If you want sound to come out of the speaker make sure all the wireless receivers are TURNED OFF.

A little confused as to what you are trying to do. First off, why are you using both the WM08 AND the ML80? You only need to pair the ML80 headphones if you want use wireless. The WM08 is a separate wireless receiver you can use if you have a preferred set of wired headphones you want use wirelessly with the Equinox. So make sure you are connecting one or the other but don't try to connect both. If the Equinox sees the WM08 receiver is on it will try to pair with the WM08 instead of the ML80 (it will ignore the ML80 until you do a factory reset attempt to re-pair the ML80 again), so make sure the WM08 is off and you have reset the Equinox if you want to pair and use the ML80 headphones. Note that if the Equinox pairs with either the WM08 or the ML80 headphones, the speaker will be automatically cut off. The speaker will only work if it does not connect to any wireless receiver and as long as no wired headphones are plugged into the headphone jack on the back of the control unit. Hope this helps. Refer to pp. 54 through 58 of the user manual linked here for more details. HTH

I might almost consider getting a V3i solely for that ground reading feature. Lol.