Chase Goldman

The thing about the elliptical is it gives you the larger coil ground coverage but at less weight than a 15" round coil, so that is the primary advantage with a slight depth compromise. 15" round gives you perhaps additional depth, but not so much that it is worth the extra weight. Another way to look at it is giving your 12" coil 15" ground coverage without all the weight. Small elliptical coils give you the advantage of being able to swing side-to-side in tight spots with only a slight sacrifice in depth vs. it's "round" cousin with a diameter the same as the elliptical long axis. Also some folks have the mistaken impression that the elliptical shape gives you more "separation". But target separation on a DD coil is determined by the width of the active coil area (which is the center spine of the coil whether it is round or elliptical) ignoring coil edge effects which typically only come into play with surface or very shallow targets.

Exactly! It's a 15" (round) ground coverage coil with 12" (round) coil depth. (i.e., about the same as the 11" round, depth wise). Great explanation.

Don't feel that you have to notch or play with custom tone breaks to be successful with the Equinox. Sounds like you are doing just fine. I have had the Equinox for 4 months and have not disc'd or notched anything above ferrous + 2 nor changed any tone breaks or tone pitch from their defaults. Thought I was going to customize the non-ferrous segments and all that for cherry picking etc., but 50 tones clicked for me pretty quickly and using the simple tools provided for target interrogation (primarily ALL METAL, Pinpoint, and quick switching to an alternate program in user profile) are about all I use now. I'll still dig pull tabs. There really is no magic bullet for them because I have found their VDI to be variable and unless they are bent, they are "round enough" to give a very coin like tone. But bottle caps and large aluminum (e.g., crushed cans) are rare now. And I pretty much can choose to dig big ferrous if in a probable ferrous relic situation (cannon balls, bayonets, knives, barrel bands - which are telltales of potential deep non-ferrous goodies) and can easily recognize small ferrous (nails). I prefer to run with no iron bias except when lazy and the odds of missing a masked target are low (e.g., when I feel like just running with stock Park 1 for casual coin shooting). Notching/custom tone breaks are a personal preference thing (kind of like running with threshold) and are only "necessary" if you want to cherry pick certain targets as Happa is doing with success or if that is your preferred style of hunting coming from another machine, or can't afford to dig trash due to site time constraints or don't want to dig that many holes due to landscaping concerns. You will leave stuff in the ground, regardless. I personally prefer to let my brain do the discriminating with the audio because the multiple variables that affect what VDI finally gets processed keep me from picking precise notch regions with the confidence that I won't cancel out a desirable target. That's just me. Oh, I will definitely leave stuff in the ground too. Not many of us can truly say that our coil sweep discipline is such that it is covering every square mm of ground, believe me.

I need to have numbers not blurry pics through a case. Lol. Frankly, even a clear pic wouldn't help because I am not going to count tic marks, too lazy. But point taken. Like I said, though, the Wars can be anywhere (even 15, 16, 17), and most of the gold I've found was 10 +/- so you take your chances with notch. But I think you know that and have decided to play the odds. Nickels are fun to go after. Glad you found my advice useful and I had to read it twice myself. HH

If you want to focus on mid conductors (gold, hammered silver, and relics) and small stuff go with Field 2. Go with Field 1 if you are looking for high conductors (silver) and deeply buried large objects or caches. Note that Field 1 is two-tone so adjust the tone number to your preference, if needed.

If you are sure it is iron with every sweep (can be confirmed in pinpoint mode) and not ground feedback (i.e., -7 to -9 VDIs when in All Metal which is telling you should ground balance), then you are in a bed of nails situation and I would advise against running any iron bias whatsoever because it will tend to keep you from hearing masked non-ferrous targets.

I was referring to the warranty replacement turnaround, I never said anything about a repair. Believe me, I know these are throwaway units after failure.

Well because I have now seen, first hand, two sets of ML WP phones that have registered 45 on a db meter and 2 sets that have registered 75 on the db meter from two different friends that have the Equinox WP phones. So yeah, that tells me something is amiss with ML WP phone quality. I do not dispute that overall ML has a wired phone volume problem with the Equinox, but that seems to be a function of weak amplifier design or impedance matching issues combined with subpar overall ML water phones design as you stated. But there are definitely defective ML WP phone batches being delivered out there to go along generally poor design ML WP phones. Just saying.

Yeah, the weeping problem was with the stock shaft. Doesn't really help now and I know a lot of folks can't afford to do this, but for that very reason, I purchased a 600 as a backup to my 800 and as a dedicated water machine because salt water hunting is just tough on detectors. The price of the 600 with my dealer's loyal customer discount enabled be to get both detectors for less than I would pay for a single Deus. So I thought it was worth it. For salt beach hunting the 600 is just fine, and I can use the 800 for more challenging relic hunting situations where the extra features and wireless accessories are beneficial. If the 600 goes down vecause of a water problem then I can go to the 800 as backup. I really have no suitable "other" detector for wet salt beach hunting.

Understand, the price you were quoting was very high so I thought you were referring to the ML accessory, LOL, not to a generic adapter. My apologies for the prices, taxes, inferior product quality, incompatible accessories, and euro zone headaches, etc., and didn't in any way mean to suggest the UK should be a 51st state especially since we are ironically doing our annual celebration of our little colonial rebellion today on this side of the pond while you cheer your football team's victory over Colombia. Cheers and hope you get some beach hunting in this morning.

You got good advice above. You always take chances when you "play the odds" but I think this whole coin on edge thing is just way overblown. I recommend that if you DO get a one way chirp you use one additional tool in the Equinox toolbox. You never actually said what program you were using, but assuming you were using Park or Field 1 to optimize for high conductors (the modes that seem to "suffer" the most from the coin-on-edge tests, then simply switch from your main search profile (e.g., Park 1) to a mode that has a different conductivity bias (e.g., Park 2 or Field 2). The "2" modes have been shown to hit harder on the on-edge targets so if you still get a one-way chirp after pivoting, going to All Metal, and after switching to an alternate mode, you have even more information to make that dig/no-dig decision. The easy way to set this up is to save an "opposite" program in your user profile slot and then just select your "main" search program from the detect menu. For example, set up Park 2 with your preferred user settings then save it into the user profile slot. Do your field searching with Park 1 and then if you get an iffy one-way, you can instantly switch between Park 1 and Park 2 (in user profile) or vice versa if you prefer to hunt in Park 2 (or Field 2). Since each of the modes sort of emulate a different detector through the "magic" of Multi IQ, switching modes on the fly like that is almost like asking your hunting partner with a different detector to come over and swing their coil over your mystery target. If you are going to use this "switch modes" target interrogation method I recommended, you need to also make sure you noise cancel and ground balance (if necessary) the alternate search profile BEFORE you first use it during your detecting session, so it is ready to go on demand. Not only does the Equinox act like different detectors when the search profiles are switched, each search profile/mode needs to be treated like a separate detector when it comes to noise cancelling and ground balancing because these adjustments are dependent upon and unique to the MultiIQ profile of each mode. In the mean time, regardless, I agree the best way to learn what the machine is telling you is to dig it all until you get comfortable playing those odds. Some never get comfortable and go by the "when in doubt, dig it out" rule. And will only leave targets they are 100% convinced are junk in the ground. (I have never been 100% convinced of anything when it comes to metal detecting, lol).

I only have a couple of comments: First, I think its ok and to hear the iron too if you can tolerate it because that tells you a lot about the site, whether you need to do a ground balance (lots of "false" iron (as opposed to iron falsing) variable -7 to -9 vdi's on a sweep with no targets indicates excessive ground feedback and is telling you to GB the machine - I just do that regardless because it only takes a a few seconds, but that is one way to know you need to), and also whether you are swinging your coil over a non-ferrous target or a mixed ferrous/non-ferrous target indicative of rusted junk like a bottle cap. I will say that the way ML appears to be running the disc filtering on this machine that discing out the iron segment -9 to 0 does not appear to have any adverse effect on detection depth of non-ferrous targets and neither does notching out segments. In fact, I suspect the ML seamlessly incorporated disc and notch to have no depth effect on the non-filtered targets (on some machines if you run disc too high, then you will affect depth and the notch filters are typically just audio filters - ML does not differentiate between disc and notch which means there must be some post-processing done that does not affect "raw" detection depth for non-filtered targets). Iron bias on the other hand is a definitive tradeoff. You can use it to cut down on iron falsing (false high vid's and tones or wraparound on round iron or nail heads or big iron) but the drawback is that you will definitely lose unmasking capability to find keeper non-ferrous in thick iron, so I really have backed off on using iron bias other than in "safe" situations in low ferrous dense sites where I am cherry picking coins (not because I "like" iron bias under those situations but because i am generally just running Park 1 for the high conductors and am too lazy to change the defaults). That leads me to my next comment...but first a comment on your notching out from 14 to the low 20's. I get it but am adverse to notching anything just because I have seen keepers pop out of the ground that I never expected based solely on the VDI. So live by the notch, die by the notch. If you just can't stand digging the aluminum trash, etc. then of course play the odds, but discing out that range may keep you from digging the odd war nickel which has an unpredictable VDI due to variations in composition, thin tokens, obviously a number of gold targets (again depending on composition), etc. If you can live with that or if the pull tabs are just unbearable, then go for it otherwise you just may be missing out on the targets I described. Great program IF you goal is to snag nickels and "easy pickings" silver, as you have stated, but I would run with the exact same settings in Park 1 if you want to occasionally tip the scales to deep silver, and you will still hit nickels but not as deep as your Field 2 program. Also experiment with the same settings that you have programmed into Field 2 on Park 2, if you haven't already, to see what you think in terms of nickel snagging capability. For some reason (I mainly relic hunt vs. coin shoot with the "2" modes) I find Park 2 to sound "harsher" on non-ferrous targets and like to hunt in Field 2 but I wonder what the performance difference is between the two when everything in the user settings is set up the same and ponder whether the harsher sound just means Park 2 is hitting harder than Field 2 on the mid-conductors and therefore might be a little deeper, but I have not run any testing to confirm. In any event, I did not see any reason to switch to Park 2, but have always wondered what the difference is, Multi IQ wise. Anyway, if its nickels you want and the occasional gold jewelry, and of course silver targets of opportunity, your program appears to be a winner but you may leave some of the less common keepers in the ground (e.g., war nickels) based on your aggressive notching. HTH, HH.

Bummer. Hope they turn it around quickly. Was it mounted on the stock shaft or did you transfer it to an Anderson or something like that? It shouldn't matter but I have seen reports of water intrusion into the battery cavity area through the mounting notch hole on the stock shaft (plus the issue of water/sand collecting in the lower shaft as there is no accommodation for drainage) which shouldn't matter because the battery and internals are still sealed by double o-rings, but who knows what happens with corrosive salt water just sitting there in the cavity eating away at stuff where it can't be easily flushed without removing the control pod after each detecting session. Seems something might deteriorate over time. Re: the headphones, I have seen people receive several that are only putting out 45db and others that are putting out closer to 75 - 80db, so I think ML may have a QC issue with their h/P supplier. You might want to look into that with ML and ask for an exchange as part of your warranty repair.

You don't have to use the ML adapter cable to adapt 1/4" plugs to the WM08, most any 1/8 to 1/4" pigtail phono adapter (<$5US) will work even with the recessed plug on the WM08.

Actually, I still think the 800 detector itself is WORTH more than the asking price based on its performance compared to other detectors, ridiculous WM08 module prices not withstanding. Another (headache inducing) way to look at this is if you subtracted the WM08 and BT headphone prices (Total about $400) from the MAP price of the 800 that would be about $150 LESS than the 600. Yeah, that makes sense.

It is getting harder to find coins an d jewelry. That's why I focus more on the hunt than the kill (find). Beach hunting for me is relaxation. Of course I may chase a storm and look for cuts, but since I have limited time at "real" beaches, it is hard to be consistently successful. However, if it becomes work for the sole pursuit of valuable targets vs. the occasional serendipitous surprise find, then I will take stock in whether I am in it for the joy and relaxation of detecting or the self-imposed stress of producing "results". I get it it that for many doing the hard work necessary to be repeatedly successful at producing valuable finds, itself can bring joy and satisfaction, that's just not my objective. I like those surprise finds, valuable or not that make you say to yourself, "how the heck did that get here?" I do, however, enjoy the detective work that comes with researching the history of sites associated with relic hunting.

Nice features and light weight but only APTX not APTX LL (Low Latency) so the lag may not be tolerable to some users.

Great saves. Believe me this is different than any other Minelab detector that came before it. None had this level of recovery speed, and in trashy areas, that makes a big difference. Since you couldn't get your hands on one before Feb of this year, you really have not been missing out. You picked a great time to get back in.

Well, that sucks. While you send them back for replacement, you can plug some wired phones into the WM08 module and remain untethered from the detector, at least. For future reference, the number is on the quick start guide included in the box. 630-401-8150

Not clear when this is going to happen, though. ML has been dutifully collecting data on known bugs such as the User Profile settings reset issue, but has also been mum on any timetable for a factory-based or user-released firmware update. Since there do not appear to be any fatal performance-based flaws out there other than what can be characterized as annoyances (from ML's perspective, not necessarily the end users' perspectives), and taking in consideration a thorough and robust firmware test period so ML can assure the "fixes" solve the issues and don't introduce other unintended consequences, it could be fully several months or a year or more before a firmware update is released for production units and/or for user installation.

It has a depth gage? Seriously, though, yeah it's a feature that's been pretty much panned by those who actually use a depth gage (coming from a Deus, myself, I never missed the feature since I never really paid much attention to it on that machine, either). I find I get a lot more information about the target when I go into pinpoint mode. Detect mode on the Equinox has very little audio modulation that you can correlate to target signal strength. Pinpoint mode is a non-motion pitch mode with depth based (actually target signal strength based) audio modulation and it can be used to get a ballpark idea on target size and depth. Try it out on some test targets. It is a little wonky (sometimes locks up so you have to toggle in and out) but works well once you get used to its quirks and is a decent workaround for the EQX depth gage. HTH.

Are you sure they are powered on and connected wirelessly (Is the bluetooth symbol and plus sign visible on the control pod) and you are not just hearing the control pod speaker? Also, if you plugged them directly into the unit vice using them as wireless phones, the volume control on the phones will not work because they are operating in passive non-powered mode. If they are connected wirelessly and you still cannot control volume, reset the Equinox to factory settings and try wireless re-pairing the headphones to the control pod again.

Hold on, when you go single frequency, then it doesn't matter what mode you use (for Park and Field - all user settings being equal) because what really differentiates those modes in terms of the target preference (what I like to refer to as mode "personality") Steve just described is based solely on the unique MultiIQ profile for each mode. Since you lose the features that depend on Multi IQ (e.g., Iron Bias doesn't work in single frequency, and I suspect GB is not as forgiving without MultiIQ) so all you have left are the discrimination patterns, number of tones, and recover speed. Set these to be the same and then there is NO difference between Park 1, Park 2, Field 1, and Field 2. Beach modes are N/A because they can only be operated in MultiIQ and Gold modes are completely different because they are VCO (pitch) vice tone based and can only be operated in single at 29 and 40 kHz. This was the basis of my single frequency "Thought Exercise" here: http://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/6621-thought-exercise-single-frequency/?do=findComment&amp;comment=69029 So just use whatever mode has the discrimination pattern, number of tones, and recovery speed default setup closest to what you desire, tweak those settings as you see fit and go with that. If that is Park 1 and 5 tones works, then you are all set. If you want 50 tones, you can go with Park 2. Either should work the same from a performance standpoint if you are just using single frequency and disc and recovery are where you want them. You can validate this by using The User Profile button to set up one mode (say Park 1) in this manner and shifting between Park 1 single frequency and Park 2 single frequency with ALL the other user settings adjusted to be the same to see if you notice a difference. I have NOT verified this by experiment, yet, but once you have removed the Multi IQ-based mode "personality", I believe this to be the case.

To me the whole pumping thing was mumbo jumbo divining rod type stuff (just sweep the coil a few inches off the ground, same as most any detector) with the only real "tip" being using all metal which is the reason why ML smartly made the Horseshoe button easily accessible in the first place. Another tool just like pinpoint to aid in target recovery decisions which has been discussed repeatedly on this board.

Did you try posting this in the general coins and relics forum? This seems to have less (nothing?) to do with a specific detector (in this case the Equinox) than coin recovery efficiency, so you might want to get ideas from more than just the Equinox detectorists that reside here. In other words, don't limit yourself to one group of detetor users. Unfortunately, other than the suggestion above, I am of no real help on this topic because this is about 180 degrees opposite from how I approach this hobby. This sounds like a work efficiency study (e.g., maximizing production while minimizing time) which is exactly what I am trying to get away from when I go detecting. To me it is all about relaxing and not turning it into a lean event, six sigma exercise which just introduces stress AFAIC. More power to you and hope you get some more great tips on how to do what you want to do since quantity of finds is what motivates you. And there is something to be said for that. That is one of the things that is so great about this hobby is that there are so many ways you can approach it, so many different environmnets in which you can practice it, so many different objectives you can achieve, and so many different discoveries you can make. HH.