Chase Goldman

1 hour ago, Mxt Sniper said:

I am just not a dd fan. I find a concentric small coil pinpoints much better, and there is added depth over a dd of same size. I can get by with my 6" DD for awhile anyway. Til Steve gets his 6x10 dd.

Yep, those are all the basic DD vs. Concentric arguments for the perpetual coil debate.  I believe, however, a DD overtakes the concentric on detection depth in highly mineralized soil conditions and if you are going after gold, it is more likely than not the soil will be mineralized.  Coin shooting with modern and ferrous trash in mild soil, the concentric usually wins out.

https://www.garrett.com/hobbysite/hbby_searchcoil_tech_sheet_en.aspx

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

My biggest issue is not knowing how big an object is under the Equinox, I can easily mistake a full drink can for a small coin, target ID's the same (21-22 for cans, same for our gold coins), signal feels the same, I have no idea how to tell the difference.... with my T2 I could easily tell how big something is, and if it was huge like a coke can I would get a coil overload so I knew not to bother, it's not the coin I was hoping for, it's huge.

I try lifting the coil up higher above the ground in the air to check if its a can but a shallow coin can give me the same sort of air level as a can deeper does, so that doesn't really work....

Am I doing something wrong, is there a way I can work out what's a can and what's a coin?  I haven't found the depth meter all that reliable sorting this out and I've dug 6 cans now... what on earth full cans are doing underground I don't know and they're almost always beer cans ? ....

The only thing that is possibly setting them apart from coins is the sound is sometimes choppy, not sharp like a coin, but then I worry its a coin on edge or deeper where harder to get a good signal or surrounded by iron or something...... 

2 minutes ago, steveg said:

Phrunt --

 

Here's one thing that might help a bit... I can say that using pinpoint ode helps a ton, at least for me.  Listening closely to the "length" of the pinpoint signal really helps, for me.  It's ironic; in my opinion you don't NEED to go to pinpoint mode, with the EQX for the specific purpose pinpointing; it is (to me) easy to "pinpoint" targets without using pinpoint mode, as I find the EQX to be so "accurate" so as to render pinpoint mode unnecessary on many targets.  BUT -- USING pinpoint mode offers some other "clues" that I find very helpful, and thus -- I DO use pinpoint mode on many, many targets.  One thing that helps for me, is the modulation of the audio is better in pinpoint mode; thus, it helps me get more information about depth of the target.  And then, there's the sizing advantage I mentioned; for me, pinpoint definitely is another tool to help with "sizing" the target -- which helps to allow me not to dig certain large targets that I'm not interested in.

Steve

Agree with Steve's recommendation, pinpoint mode gives away large shallow objects big time.  Pinpoint coil sweep and audio modulation easily tell me I am swinging over a shallow can vs. a coin.  I have even used Gold mode at sites littered with big iron because the VCO pitch-like audio behaves in a similar fashion (though pinpoint is a non-motion mode so it is easier to "trace" a large target outline, than gold mode, which gives a cruder representation of the size of the target).

Most of my best finds are pleasant surprises.  Pulling out a keeper that I did not actually expect as I was recovering the target (gold ring that I thought was going to be a nickel, Civil War breast plate that I was convinced was another piece of aluminum trash).  I think I only willed myself to a specific recovery a few times, once when I was determined to pull some 19th century silver from a certain area of the site that had been giving it up to others.  I got my first Seated Quarter that day as well as my first Civil War plate on the same day.  But the best days of detecting are when I can share whatever I find with detecting buddies and then watch out as the trash talk, exaggerations, and good natured chain pulling commences at the end of the detecting day.  Good times.

Technologically not a challenge, all I am just saying that ML is not moving fast on any new coils for the Nox and then you start talking more specialized coils that may or may not have a wide customer base, and ML may be even less inclined to make the effort.  As Steve said, let's get them to deliver on the coils they already promised before we start throwing more specialized coil requests into the mix.

22 minutes ago, EL NINO77 said:

CC-coil -I'm thinking about this idea a few days ago, even in terms of ID of iron undesired  waste ... "From my observation 6" equinox coil on targets 1 grain- range 3 ", standard coil 11" - range 2 " with the same sensitivity-20 ... program park 2, .... Is there also the possibility of a small coil-DOD-super D coil ...
 

Now you are asking for a miracle.  Lol.

I want the 6x10 elliptical DD too.  Like I said, not sure ML is into concentrics as much as say Whites, so not worried they would do one before getting a small elliptical out the door.  Any 5 to 8 inch wide coil with 10 to 13" length would be welcome.

Ok thanks.  I have issues with  some of what you wrote regarding ML's ability to implement tones in Gold mode but it is probably best to just agree to disagree. We are probably both talking past each other to a certain extent resulting in "misunderstandings".   Good discussion nevertheless.

41 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

The Equinox is fast, but all digital devices are made from 100% analog parts and analog parts suffer from losses of signal during processing. 

Ok, I work in engineering, but you lost me on that one.  Electrical parts are electrical parts, at their very basic level they are neither analog nor digital .  Signals are either digitized or analog and are processed by either digitally based software/firmware algorithms (using an microprocessor comprised of thousands of electrical component parts to process digital signals) or analog based circuits or a hybrid combination of both..  It is true that when converting an analog signal to digital some information loss occurs (usually negligible) and the sensor is capturing analog information to begin with and is subject to signal loss, not due to digital signal processing but due to the natural energy losses which show up as heat and noise introduced by the analog circuits.  That is why engineers try to get the received signal into digital form as early in the process as possible, because they are not subject to the analog losses.  Switching to gold mode doesn't really change anything having to do with losses that occur when the received target signal at the coil is converted to digital information and doesn't essentially change the most intensive signal processing that is going on with Multi IQ which occurs (albeit with different digital algorithms) in every mode.  Gold mode just changes the nature of the digital audio output (pitch vs. tones) and is actually processed just as much as the tone audio in the other modes, it is just processed to provide a different output to the user.  That is why I think it would be relatively simple to implement Gold Mode audio in the other modes just as it would be possible (but not desirable) to use tones with Gold Mode since the point of gold mode is to find gold not silver, so tone ID is not as important. They are just two different, but effective ways to provide audio feedback to the operator for two different detecting objectives.  One is not less processed or has less signal losses than the other at that point.

12 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

If you run 50 tone, you're running an audio filter. That is the specific filter we want to turn off. Small an deep targets aren't strong enough to generate a response, think targets beyond "iffy."

You can run a true all-metal audio while running a parallel process to generate a TID number or to mute the audio over a rejected target. That is most likely why the Equinox has the all-metal audio in the Gold mode. To hear small and faint targets that the 1/5/50 tone filter would ignore as apart of the noise floor.

 

I have no choice at the moment in the other modes so I do the best I can with what I have.  Besides, I draw the line at that point, because tone audio gives you so much more information about the target than a single number VID alone and I certainly would not want to hunt solely with pitch audio alone and no VDI or even PITCH 100% of the time  unless I wanted to dig it all 100% of the time which is impractical.  Besides, the much faster processing of the Equinox makes it generally a non issue 90% of the time.  It's those 10% masking situations where I wish I had VCO pitch audio.  As I think more about this I wish they had implemented true threshold with the other modes as they did with Gold mode.  Right now, the threshold on the non-gold modes just blanks when you run the coil across a discriminated target.  I could probably live with that and forego VCO pitch mode.  But it would be good to go with both on all modes because Gold Mode doesn't necessarily cut the mustard if going for deep silver.  

21 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

Ya being a freshwater hunter I think I'm in good shape.

What I (and others) found attractive about (All-Metal / Pinpoint) audio of the Excalibur is the added depth and real time feel it gives when you remove the filter that bins the signal into tones. It is used to locate extra, deep targets in the sanded summer months. Whatever the coil size, you expand the range the machine can locate. Minelab is the best at signal processing, however my quick test this morning easily showed the added depth and real time feel the Gold modes all-metal audio gave when you remove the 1/5/50 tone processor.

The easiest thing would be for Minelab to add the all-metal audio as an option to all the modes, as well as the ability to toggle the Multi-IQ weighting from high to low.

Agree, I generally hate to run filters of any kind so I typically run all metal, 50 tones, and no iron bias because filters just mask important information AFAIC, as long as you can stand all that audio input and process it yourself.  Just to clarify, the audio in gold mode is not "all metal" audio per se in the sense that Gold Modes can still run with discrimination.  It is that the audio as VCO pitch only gives you depth and target size clues and requires you to look at the display for target ID.  In other words, it sounds practically the same for two targets of identical depth and shape regardless of their metallic composition except that a mid-conductor like gold may sound off slightly louder than a high conductor at depth due to the Multi IQ weighting.

Like I  said, I too agree that ML should add the VCO pitch audio option down the road as a "tone" setting for the other modes.  That is how XP does it for the Deus.  You can select multi tones, full tones (analogous to 50 tones), or pitch for any discrimination-based mode on the Deus and has a separate Gold Field mode with VCO audio but iron rejection vs. discrimination.

I think shifting Multi IQ processing on the fly in any mode is interesting, but that is basically redundant to the mode selection scheme if ML provides the VCO tone option for all modes as we discussed.  Right now I am content to toggle between disparate modes using the User Profile button on the 800.

48 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

I'll admit I don't see why you can't use the Gold modes in the salt water if they multi frequency like the beach mode, as you say you may have to tame it a bit to somewhat emulate the Beach modes.

Because it's more than just multifrequency, its how the multifrequency is weighted and the signal is processed.  That's the multiIQ part and is what gives each mode it's unique personality and capabilities.  In the case of beach mode, Multi IQ is tuned to run less hot (basically the opposite of gold mode) and to balance salt ground conductivity which just happens to fall in the Gold range.  Since that is where the Gold modes are tuned, they (and in fact most of the other non-beach modes) run terribly noisy and are unusable in wet salt sand and surf.  Ironically, this means the beach modes are generally less sensitive to gold than the "2" and Gold modes, but balance the tradeoff sufficiently to lower ground noise due to salt conductivity enough that you can still snag some decent gold  or platinum targets, especially if they are chunky.  Because Gold mode is tuned hot for gold and by default for salt, no amount of taming (lowering of sensitivity) would enable you to use it in effectively in wet salt sand because you would have to reduce sense too far for practical purposes.  You need to tweak the Multi IQ which is not possible for the end user and even then you are essentially turning it into Beach mode.  HTH

I think the VCO modulated pitch-like audio of the Gold Mode and true threshold are great features that are actually on my wish list for a future Equinox capability upgrade as settings options for the non-gold modes.  The unique gold mode audio which is similar sounding (but still different than) pinpoint mode, rather than gold mode itself, may be what you are finding attractive about gold mode for your freshwater hunting purposes.  Regardless, the fact that you can run gold mode in freshwater is good news for you.

It's just a smaller pin head.  Lol. 

Side-to-side across then DD active coil region, the center spine is approximately the same thickness, between the two coils, but obviously, shorter in length with the 6" coil. That's how wiggle off works similarly between the two coils, you just have to pull the six inch coil a shorter distance (3 - 6" heel to toe vs. 5 to 11") off the target.  So if you are oriented correctly, with the multiple targets lined up left-to-right in front of you will get the same machine gun effect with either coil due to the fast recovery speed of the Equinox.  The problem is when those same 5 or 6 targets are lined up front-to-back in front of you, then obviously more targets will be under the 11" coil active region giving you a "flutey" signal depending on their composition when you pass the coil center spine over the target line.  Whereas you may only have 1 or 2 under the 6" coil active coil when you swing across them giving you perhaps a cleaner signal.  In real life, however, targets are rarely lined up in a nice straight line but scattered in random shotgun patterns,  so that is where coil edge sensitivity comes into play as some of these random dense groups of targets will end up under the coil spine and edges giving a similar flutey signal (that is how coin spills typically sound).  The  6" coil is less susceptible simply because fewer targets can reside underneath it vs. the 11".

What the gunship side gunner from the movie "Full Metal Jacket" kept saying as he was ruthlessly mowing down anything that moved on the ground.

"Get some!"

No argument here.  That's pretty much the point of getting the 6" (besides using it in a restricted swing situation like corn stubble or in thick vegitstion).  Of course, I would scan the site with the larger coil(s) to cherry pick and scope out where the high density ferrous and nonferrous concentrations are.  That being said, I can get machine gun responses on the 11" coil too at high recovery speeds.  It's really a matter of having less targets under the coil to reduce coil edge effects from interfering than separation, though, strictly speaking.  Right tool for the job, yep.

Based on the gold I've seen recovered, with the 11" DD and 6" DD not sure it can be detected much smaller.  ML doesn't seem to show a lot of interest in developing OEM concentric accessory coils for its detectors, in general.

I see that you've visited the Equinox gold hunting threads here so you know what Equinox can do with small gold using the stock and 6" DD coils. Always trying to learn more about  MD tech. Please educate me on what more does concentric bring to the table for prospecting, presuming Equinox is even designed to be compatible with concentric round or coaxial elliptical coils?  Thanks.

I think the difference is I am walking a miles long shore line not a freshwater swimming hole, so yeah, as I said a constrained area the 6" would make sense.   Otherwise, the target density is MUCH lower in my situation so coverage matters.  And, no I am not satisfied with these targets but they were ringing up hard in the 7 to 12 range at various depths  without iron tone (I hunt without disc) so they had to be scooped.  All I am saying is you can hit small targets and separate from iron with the 11".  Higher density and of course 6" is the way to go and I would be staying put in a high density area anyway.

19 hours ago, Alluminati said:

If the conditions are ideal, the 6" is the best choice. Coverage is your enemy because conditions are ideal.

If the conditions are realistic, the 11" is the way to go. 11" is versatile.

Don't quite understand what you are getting at here.  Realistic vs. Ideal??  Can you explain further?

19 hours ago, Alluminati said:

Unless you want to look for boat anchors, don't use a huge coil unless you are willing to give up the sensitivity to smaller items. 

I know you are probably referring to the 15x12 here, but even shoreline work with the 6" unless it was focused on a specific feature or small area would tend to be frustrating to me.  As far as the 11" not hitting on tiny targets, well...I wouldn't want to be hitting anything much smaller than the targets surrounding the dime which were mostly recovered in wet salt sand or shallow water at the tide line.   Target recovery was, shall we say, an adventure...

I take it you are not planning on using gold mode on wet salt sand or surf because it won't work.  It will work on dry sand, though.

At the beach...Searching >All Metal - yes.  Pinpoint - no.  

Trying to cover a beach with the 6 inch coil would drive me nuts.  Maybe I would hit a specific cut with it visible from my entry point but I wouldn't carry it with me hoping I had the opportunity.  The small stuff the 11" coil sounded off on my last beach outing was ridiculous.  As Steve said, no need to go micro micro with the 6".  Recovery of such targets in the sand is hard enough since they sift right through the scoop like sand.

2 hours ago, Daniel Tn said:

Over time, the elliptical wording has been dropped.  Same with the CTX large coil, people refer to it as the 17" coil, although it too is elliptical at 13x17.  

Still worth it to remind folks its an elliptical IMO.  I know plenty of folks who mistakenly believe the depth performance on an elliptical is driven by the long dimension and who will argue about it until the cows come home.

Also, I guess I'm used to GPX's where you spell it out because there are 15" round coils and 15x12 SEF ellipticals (and even larger coils) and a variety of similarly sized coils with wildly different performance characteristics (DDs and Monos) and folks pretty much spell it out in conversation to make it clear what they are talking about. 

Agree there is not a need to be as specific on the Equinox since there is only one coil available with a 15" dimension .   My bad for being too OCD about it, I'll go back to my cave now.  Lol.

Gold Mode in fresh water perhaps but it is unusable in salt water, FWIW.

Actually, if they intended to make a 5x10, I would have thought they would have announced it by now considering they announced the 12x15 9 months ago and it's still not out.  Hope I'm wrong, though, because I would like to see that form factor.  I think the best we can say is, "Who knows".

Pure Platinum has a specific conductivity less than iron, but metal mass not just conductivity and of course total target alloy composition and orientation of ring targets will affect VDI and the latter especially can cause VDI variations during recovery.