Chase Goldman

Yep. I know and agree. That's why I ensured that I said "not saying the service center should not be doing that" The service center is doing the right thing. My point was that beside the Cabelas thing that is another sucking sound against the small number of produced and delivered units, so far, that makes it harder for ML to meet it's latest promise to fulfill all preorders by end of March. Sad, not mad (well except for the Cabelas thing, lol). I am hoping the ML allocation to the NA service center is separate from the sales allocation and does not count against the overall number of units FB receives for fulfilling preorders because having to quickly turn around turned-in failed units may quickly overwhelm and deplete the service center's repair stock. That is because it is commonplace for new production runs of sophisticated electronics to have a high incidence of "infant mortality" ("dead on arrivals" and failures after very short periods of operations). It is an electronics thing (there are always a given number of failed electronic components in every batch and the number goes up as the device becomes more sophisticated and uses a high number of discrete components) and not unique to Equinox or even ML. Plus the inevitable coil failures (which might be the above issue). This is going to really test the service center like never before. Fortunately, I know Keith and company are up for the task.

I really don't mind waiting, I just really want a fair and even playing field and that has gone right out the window with this Cabelas thing. That is what stings.

I'm still pulling for a Feb 22 delivery for ya buddy! That should soften the sting of humiliation. Plus net me a new scale.

Actually, Cabelas technically did not "get" any. They have them drop shipped from a ML distributor apparently (their website says shipped directly by manufacturer). That explains why none are in any stores that I know of. Since this is the case, looking on the bright side (ha!), I will monitor Cabelas Equinox page to see when it will go live again because that could be the canary in the coal mine as to when the second batch is shipping as Cabelas' drop ship allocation at the mysterious distributor will have arrived. We'll see.

You might want to make sure it is chattery at other sites too, you may just be picking up some local source of EMI the 600 cannot cancel out using auto NC. Also, make sure you are letting the NC do its thing with the coil in the air and away from the ground. Not sure it would make much difference, but the 800 has the option of manual NC which may be more effective under some situations. One thing you could try is going into single frequency mode and try the various single frequencies to see if a certain frequency is more susceptible (not that you would want to hunt in single freq, but it might be enlightening to see if it has any positive effect). Just a thought.

My Cabelas story is double humiliating. A good friend decided last week to jump on the Equinox bandwagon on a whim and ordered from Cabelas. Having been a "victim" [I was testing the system and knew it was snowball's chance that it would go through] of the initial January false start online order fiasco at Cabelas, I told him (via public forum post) the 4 - 7 day direct shipping timeline appeared to be a boilerplate timeline applicable to when ML had production fully up and running and to expect a backorder notification from the Cabelas shipping department with a more realistic availablity (similar to what happened to me in January). After all, I said, there is no way ML would ship to a seller who does not take preorders when hundreds (at Kellyco alone) are waiting for their preorders to arrive. Instead, he got an immediate shipping notification and tracking number. UPS delivered his unit yesterday, 7 days after his order. As soon as he had shipping notification, the Cabelas website showed sold out, so I couldn't even cut and run. So here I am still waiting since an October preorder and looking like a fool for telling him to have realistic expectations of delivery. ML sure knows how to really stroke its loyal preorder customer base. Priceless.

Great so those still waiting for their units are behind Cabelas customers and the stockpiled units at the service center for initial failures. Not saying that the service center should not be doing that, it is just something that makes a long committed but still waiting Equinox buyer sad.

Wow. Can't make that determination yet since I haven't yet had my opportunity with the Equinox. But knowing what I know so far and seeing what I have seen, and hunting what I hunt, I think I could easily get away with three detectors (GPX (deep relics in highly mineralized soil), Deus (travels lite, low profile, and ultra HF operation to 80 khz for thick iron and mid conductive relics), and Equinox (water, beach, and general purpose) to easily cover all my scenarios. After I get my Equinox will do your "If I could only have one" thought exercise and it will come down to either Equinox or Deus (GPX is too specialized and cannot be used at all under certain conditions, perhaps similar to the GPZ). We'll see which one it is in Culpeper this March (whichever one does best in thick iron with high mineralization will be declared the winner for me). But I'll still keep all three, lol (just like you plan on keeping the GPZ, Gold Monster, and Equinox, plus one or two others).

Hey. That's my twenty! Nice hunt. Good tip on iron bias tweaking.

Source please. Thanks.

Thanks. Good to know. Wish it was 20 though (for my sake). Lol. Glad you may be in the next batch. Good just to hear 2nd batch delivery reports, frankly.

And that number was...

MSRPs would be good

Thanks for the update on the Kruzer, perhaps we should consider changing the title of the thread...Kruzer looks like a worthy detector but sticking with the EQ. Cal, I know it’s disappointing, but a majority of folks (like me) are in your shoes, glad everyone is not posting sour grapes like comments...or perhaps they have honestly moved on. The following may throw more fuel on your fire, though. Supposed to be sharing info on possible 2nd batch shipments in this thread so here’s a data point. A former (lol) detectorist friend of mine was successful ordering (no preorders) and receiving shipping information for this week from Cabelas when Equinox reappeared on their website as “in stock” last week. Now indicating “sold out”. When it shows “in stock” again may be a leading indicator of when Minelab is ready to ship the second wave. Just a guess.

That tip in the last sentence of your post is solid gold. Coming from Deus, you can’t adjust pitch when in the 50 tones equivalent of the Deus so it was indeed hard to wrap my head around the EQ procedure. Now I get it.

Pretty clear this is going to change the face of wet salt beach hunting since you won't have to make that big an investment for a VERY CAPABLE machine (600). The thing that scares me most is the sheer number of 600/800's that are now going to be on the beach vacuuming up targets this summer once the production gets going full steam.

50 tones is a little different because you also can set a tone pitch gap setting in 50 tones so that the lowest non-ferrous tone is much higher than the highest ferrous tone so you can more easily distinguish between a low conductive non-ferrous target and a ferrous target (whose actual visual target ID's may be close). That tone gap setting makes the tone pitch and breakpoint adjustments a little different for 50 tones (p. 48 of the posted online manual). HTH.

Thanks. Thought it might be something like that (rf receivier). Glad you posted the info. ML implied they were using a pulse-width-modulated scheme. If all those frequencies are being transmitted simultaneously into the coil, the resulting radiated frequencies will be a function of the duration of each of the fundamental frequency pulses which, as you noted, we can't predict without knowing the modulation scheme but can observe the resultant output (which doesn't refute that the fundamental transmitted frequencies are not indeed 5-40 khz). The really interesting finding from your spectral analysis, is that the output spectrum IS THE SAME REGARDLESS OF MODE. I agree then, the secret sauce that defines the search mode behavior/target optimizations is in the way they PROCESS the return signal from the spectrum generated since the output spectra does not appear to vary as a function of mode. Theoretically, however, there may be a number of different ways the fundamental frequencies can be modulated to result in the given spectrum. I doubt, however, that they are doing that. One advantage of not varying the output spectrum, is that it makes it easier to normalize target ID for a given target type regardless of the mode you are using (except if you switch to single frequency mode). I can't recall if there has been verification of target ID consistency between Multi IQ operation and single frequency operation across the board. Great stuff. Thanks again Wayfarer.

Congrats, Judy. Can't wait to hear from Oz.

Interesting. How are you capturing the frequencies (i.e., conducted or transmitted using an antenna and rf receiver)? And in the Multi IQ spectra, what about the prominence a few clicks under 20 Khz?

Iron Bias was a new setting added to both models. And I think there were tweaks to the default programs overall to add this iron bias default setting and to provide slightly different setups for the two profiles of each detect mode. Also, perhaps as a result of the overall Multi IQ tweaks associated with the above, final target ID impacts were not finalized until very late in the game. IOW, the "last minute" changes were not just limited to the Gold Mode profiles of the 800, both models were affected. HTH.

Actually, an Equinox recovery setting of 3 on the 600 is equivalent to a recovery setting of 6 on the 800 because they are based on two different scales. See p. 51 of the user manual.

Let me put it this way, wouldn’t it be nice if ML had an 800 option that eliminated the wireless accessories and subtracted the ML price for those accessories from the bottom line? Actually, wouldn’t it be nice if ML just published the price and availability of accessories? Also, I would like to use my GG’s but untethered to the detector and can only do that with the WM08 module. So yeah we can play that game all day. But point taken, you can look at the 600 as a capable, less expensive detector where you are not paying for accessories you don’t need. The value is all a matter of perspective based on the needs of each end user, so the value of the 600 vs. 800 will certainly vary from user to user.

Though that value is diminished somewhat if you factor in the cost of the wireless hardware (Aptx phones and WM08 module) included with the 800 vs. the 600 wired phones.

Although the software builds are somewhat different, the 600 and 800 are physically and electronically identical with the exception of the physical user profile save button which exists only on the 800. That makes it not possible to 100% replicate the functionality of the 800 on the 600 simply by flashing 800 firmware on the 600. I am certain that ML has put interlocks in place to keep people from inadvertently or intentionally doing that at the hobbiest level of expertise (though the cell phone industry shows us that it is practically impossible to stop determined hackers). This means that ML does not appear to have a planned upgrade path for 600 users to get to 800 functionality simply through a future software upgrade (paid or otherwise). Now as far as people with nefarious motives, well we have unfortunately seen plenty of counterfeit detectors out there ripping off all the manufacturers and users alike.