Chase Goldman

Any detecting day is a good day.

My point was it's not a 15 inch round coil. Folks were not adding "elliptical" so 15 inch coil (implying round) and 15 inch elliptical coil are two very different coils from a depth perspective. Just wanted to clarify that. I think the 15x12 is a great compromise between depth, coverage, and weight. Would like to see a similar elliptical at the low end too, like 8x12 or 6x10.

ML yellows are Piezos so are much quieter and do not have great sound isolation (compared to the Pelso's). The Pelsos require me to turn down the volume as the Dan said. Not so with the other WP headphones I tested. To be fair though, the others being Piezos will work better if you are detecting with your head submerged or diving, which is not what I do. I am looking for heaphones that will survive a dunking but I am generally keeping my head above water. Pelso fit the bill. I did a side by side volume comparison test linked below:

I like how everyone is calling it a 15-incher - It's a 12x15 elliptical, so don't get too excited if you are hoping for it to be much deeper than the stock . Great 15" coverage but at 12" wide, it is only going to be marginally deeper than the 11" round perhaps by an inch or two max.(i.e., slightly deeper than a 12" round) and it will be heavy for that marginal depth increase. If its swing coverage you want without the weight of a full on 15" round coil, then you will be happy. Just call me Debbie Downer. Lol.

And as Alluminati alluded to, try lowering sensitivity. It may just be the site has a lot of nails. But it this IS the case, lowering sensitivity a tad may help. The good news is that if you don't like and can live with the previous version, it's a snap to roll back.

Great find, Andy!

Already updated! I like it!

What Steve said. 600 or 800 for pure backup. Best value bar none versus the alternatives discussed below. I am into value. Don't be fooled that just because the Equinox is is a jack of all trades, that it is not a coin and relic master. In my opinion it is a master at detecting those targets. That being said, there is something to be said for employing detector tech diversity in your arsenal. Therefore, I recommend Deus (HF or X35 Coil) or Multi Kruzer for tech diversity/backup. Multi Kruzer has the edge if water hunting or wet salt beach hunting is on the agenda but I think EQX 600/800 still beats out the Multi Kruzer in this regard. Though more costly, Deus has the edge if primarily terrestrial hunting. Look for a value, used buy from someone bailing on Deus to go to EQX or is just ftustrated with it. You can probably get a deep discount on the legacy Deus LF coils but I would prefer to pay the premium for the investment in the far superior X35 or HF coils. 11" x35 for max depth and coverage or 9" round HF for great all around and kight weight performance or the 9.5" elliptical for pinpoint-like separation and restricted swing situations. HTH.

Agreed. Go with Sinclair's advice on lowering sensitivity. Increasing iron bias only increases your chance of completely missing a partially masked non-ferrous target amongst the iron. I don't really like filters of any sort in thick trash. Lowering sensitivity in thick iron (also called sifting) will lesson the tendency of Iron to overwhelm the detector and may make shallow, partially masked non-ferrous keepers to pop out of the muck. One thing threw me in your description, you are running all metal but you must have iron volume turned all the way down if you are "see[ing iron] silently appearing on the display as -9, -7, -3 etc." Sometimes the iron audio grunts clue you into a mixed ferrous, non-ferrous signal which can help you make a dig/no dig decision on a target with a questionable audio signal. If you can't hear the iron then you lose that vital piece of information. If I am bothering to run all metal, I may lower iron volume but I still want to be able to hear it. Seeing the iron TIDs flash across the screen without the corresponding iron audio does nothing for me FWIW. Happy hunting at what appears to be a great permission. Enjoy.

Bottlecaps are easy to recognize especially at the beach after you get dome swing hours in. The only "trick" I use is searching in AM. The bottlecaps are then pretty obvious with their weak, flutey tone and the accompanying iron grunt as I swing the coil edge off the target. Pull tabs are hard, but at the beach it just takes a few seconds to scoop 'em and move on. Otherwise, if the CTX is so much better in wet sand (I actually doubt that statement when it comes to gold jewelry), that's great, no one is forcing you to use the Equinox. The fewer Equinoxes I see on the beach the better as far as I'm concerned. HH.

Unless you are really using complicated notch settings or customizing tone breaks which I don't bother with as I use 50 tones, primarily, the only other settings that you might fool with are recovery speed and iron bias and even then you are maybe adjusting them a few clicks off the defaults at most. The default settings are pretty good, in general, so there really is not much need to change and document settings in my opinion. Plus it's easy to get individual programs back to their default settings since each mode can be individually reset back to its factory default without disturbing your other mode settings.

I wasn't offended, just reinforcing the fact that people shouldn't be comparing absolute dB numbers between posts,as you stated. People appear to be doing it anyway even though I tried to be clear that was not the point of the post. We are in violent agreement. Lol.

I made it pretty clear in my post the readings were not calibrated for the actual dB numbers but merely for side-by-side comparison purposes using an identical setup for each pair of phones I tested. User to user comparisons of actual dB readings should be avoided for this very reason (variability in test setup, hardware, and software used).

Thanks. You cleared that up for me. I have had no problems with my Equinox version Pelsos. Great all purpose/all weather/all terrain phones. Not for detecting while diving though.

Remember thst since it is a 15x12" elliptical you are not going to get extensive depth over the 11" coil because the depth performance will be primarily driven by the 12" dimension (though as an elliptical it will get slightly more depth than a 12" round). The 15" dimension determines coil swing coverage more than depth. HTH.

They are still available for sale on their website and they have not contacted buyers that there is a problem. So...?

Yes it ye True as long as ML cooperates and gives Mars the tech info they need to make a compatible coil.

I think there are some technical challenges associated with such a wideband coil (one that can operate from 5 khz up to 40 khz) that they may not have capability to produce them independently without understanding what ML does to enable this.

True. That works best on dry sand though. If there is any kind of mineralization, lowering recovery speed and associated swing speed increase ground feedback noise and limit the degree to which you can increase depth in this manner.

Do they make multifrequency compatible coils? All the VLFs mentioned are single frequency detectors and the ML Equinox coils are also chipped. Thanks.

Ed, Thanks. I agree with you and understand what you are saying. I don't dive or intentionally dunk with the Equinox when water hunting preferring bay shallows and surf so I just want a pair that will survive a few unintentional dunkings without corroding out or failing outright. The fact is I spend 99% of my time hunting with my head above water and the surf and other ambient beach noise make that type of hunting practically impossible with the piezo's, especially with the poor ambient sound isolation of the ML Koss phones. When I am underwater I am concentrating on getting back out of the water rather than listening to tones, lol. I can see where these would not be good for snorkeling or scuba with something like an Excal, but that is not what I do. The Pelsos perform well enough that they would be my preferred foul weather phones too since the wireless phones are not weather resistant.

Here are some screenshots from a sound meter app I used on my phone. My phone has mics on both ends of the phone so I just placed it between the earcup on each phone set. I waved a gold wedding band, penny, and dime across the coil (with pauses in between) and recorded the resulting audio graph. The phones tested were: The ML wired phones that came with the 600The LS.Pelso WP Phones from KellycoThe ML WP PhonesCustom modified GG AmphibiansResults: LS.Pelso's best volume, sound quality, sound isolation, and comfort.In terms of volume the rankings were: LS.Pelso, ML 600 Phones, ML WP Phones, and the GG Amphibians bringing up the rear at about 15-20 db below the Pelsos on average. dB numbers on the graph are not calibrated and should just be used for the purpose of side-by-side comparison under identical conditions.

Steve, the only potential issue I see with your lower shaft plan is you knowing what the ID manufacturing variation is on the ML middle shaft which can negate all the effort you put into the precise dimensions you are using for the lower shafts you are making for others.

You should definitely do this if you can. Archeological metal detecting is great fun.

Your wife wont know the difference betwern the two detectors if you get a 600. Seems more cost effective than two 800's to me and the fewer settings would be less confusing to a newbie.