Chase Goldman

100% agree.

Exactly, experienced, hard core detectorists generally couldn't live without those features (sorry, I do need my wireless phones on land, though) and/or settings, but many "casual" detectorists can be happy without them and even the "smaller" $250US price delta can be considered huge for those folks. ML doesn't offer the "in between" option, which is the 800 without the supplied wireless hardware, and many folks would rather then get the 600 rather than have hardware accessories "forced upon them" (this is a matter of perception for some, not an opinion I subscribe to) that they don't believe they need or want.

No it is not nutty to work with low sensitivity. In fact, that is the basis for one of the Deus programs called "Sifter" when working through dense iron. Don't underestimate the "power" of turning down sensitivity. Based on my limited hours on the machine, the defaults are great. As far as sensitivity is concerned I would keep it below 22 and above ~15. Lower it as necessary to either get rid of extraneous noise (after noise cancelling and properly GBing the machine) or to reduce how "hot" the machine responds to thick trash environments, especially ferrous.

Well not so fast. The key is making sure it can source enough current to cause the battery charge indicator to light on the Equinox AND power up the detector if you want to continue to use it. This needs to be done experimentally (i.e., by actually plugging in the power bank to the Equinox), since the paper "specs" on overseas mass produced giveaway promotional items like this tend to exaggerate the numbers. It SHOULD work to at least partially charge the internal battery of the Equinox since it is rated to source 1A at 5VDC, however, just because the battery is rated at 3.7 VDC, 2200mAH does not mean it will charge up the Equinox 3.7 VDC 5000 mAH internal battery to ~40% because there is a large capacity efficiency hit when charging battery to battery due to losses in battery internal voltage regulator circuitry and internal heating. Nor does it mean it can source enough current to simultaneously charge and run the Equinox which would be the point of having an emergency power bank. To enable this much current headroom to enable simultaneous charging and operation, you would typically want to have a power bank that can source at least 2A. If you just want to wait for an hour or so for a small partial charge, then you will be OK, but may not be able to run the machine while charging. If it does light the green charge light and power up the control head, you should be good for maybe 10 to 15% of the rated 12 hour run time of the on board battery, more or less, because you are sending current to run the electronics as well as inefficiently charging the the Equinox internal battery (provided the electronic current output is sufficient). These small "lipstick" power banks run for about $5 - $7, new and are often given away as promo items in bling bags, charitable contributions, or if you sign up for a new credit card at the store. If you paid less than $5, you got a good deal. Test it out when you get a chance before you head out so you know what it really can do for you in a detecting "emergency". HTH

If I could invest in an index "fund" that was based on the difference in sales numbers of 600 vs. 800 in the long run (i.e., the value of the "fund" would increase in proportion to the number of 600 vs. 800 sales for the long haul), I would likely invest in the 600 index.

I personally would either wait to sell my old gear or figure out a way to either trade it in directly for Equinox accessories, if possible, or donate it to a charitable organization where you can write it off at fair market value or, better yet, promote the hobby by giving it to a budding next generation detectorist, because it will likely just languish on a forum site (especially the older gear that will have a low demand signal). People presently are not being rational about selling off their old gear to either fund an Equinox or to just quickly dump old equipment they know will only collect dust post Equinox. While older MD gear will continue to naturally depreciate in value with time and as technology marches on, I would wait out the present lack of savvy gripping the MD marketplace with folks quickly dumping some rather attractive gear (Deus', AT Max's, CTX's, Excals, First Texas flagships, Whites V3i's) at insanely low prices while people continue to grab 2nd hand Equinox models off forum classifieds and auction sites at ridiculous markups. It is definitely a buyers market out there (for anything other than an Equinox, that is) and I would wait it out a little to let the Equinox "Effect" dust settle so that 2nd hand VLF gear prices return to some sense of normalcy. Make no mistake, Equinox has caused a step change lowering of legacy non-Equinox VLF detector values, new and used, that will never recover. But there is still just plain lunacy out there at the moment with prices.

Just don't spill coffee on it while you're in California otherwise the state will have to put a label on it saying that it may cause cancer.

Sometimes you have to put the BT headphones/earbuds in pairing mode not just powered on, for them to connect . For the Back Beat Fits, this requires you to hold the power on button on the Fits until you see red and blue flashing lights. If the Equinox is in paring mode as described by Dukester above, then they should pair. Test lag/latency out with a buried, small target (e.g. dime) to see if it is tolerable with non-AptX phones/buds such as the Fits. Significant lag will manifest itself as the target beep appearing to occur in two diffrent spots on the ground and an inability to establish a tight coil wiggle pattern over the target (i.e., for a solid target such as a small, flat coin, you should be able to just slightly wiggle the center fore-aft spine of the coil (i.e., the coil active region) over target edges and get a repeatable, fast beep). Bury the target so you don't experience coil edge triple beeps that occur with very shallow or above ground targets. HTH.

Wow, beauty Seated Half.

Steve H? I missed that one. Did not know Steve had the opportunity to use anything other than the stock coil. At least that's what I remember him saying a while back when asked about whether ML had given him the opportunity during testing. Would be great info if he is,at liberty to discuss it.

The control module internals are sealed behind the audio jack so there should be no water intrusion into the electronics even without the cap or a fitted, sealed plug inserted. There is a concern, however, that salt water intrusion into the audio jack itself may cause corrosion of the jack contacts so the plug or insertion of the proper mating plug from the ML custom wired headphones provides some protection against contact corrosion. You can attempt to flush the jack after submersion in salt water without the plug, but the jack cavity is tiny so it is hard to get enough water flow into the jack to guarantee flushing all residual salt water out of the jack. You also don't want to attempt to dry out the jack without flushing because the evaporating salt water will leave behind the corrosive salt residue. I would say avoid frequent salt water dunking without the protective plug or compatible wired headphones plugged in, though the occasional splash or even dunking is probably not a problem, provided you rinse the control module off afterwards. There is obviously much less of a concern with freshwater submersion depending on the cleanliness of the freshwater source. I would not completely stop using the unit in salt water, but be cautious about it. HTH. PS If you know someone with an 800, you can borrow the plug off their WM08 because I can't see that to be very useful other than as a dust cover since the WM08 cannot be submerged or wetted.

I too was using the android version. Little background, the developer did not write the code but farmed it out to a software guy to create the app to the developer's specifications. One of those was that it should be a native android app. It took a long time to port it to iOS and the developer may have had to pay extra for the effort so that may explain the difference in price.

The good thing about clad sites is that they typically replenish. Been hitting a local sports field for the last year and a half and have pulled $50+ in clad and some silver jewelry out of it. The fresh drops are practically all that remain, but they are productive. Just had my first session finding two separate multi quarter spills with the Equinox. Always fun to find those...

The key here, as Steve said above, is there is no one size fits all answer. Site environmental and trash conditions play a key role. In my mineralized ground and especially in thick iron, the higher recovery speeds are preferred for BOTH depth and separation by decreasing ground noise and increasing overall signal to noise ratio. Need to refer to Steve's conveyer belt analogy. Iron Bias plays a different role to balance falsing and separation, another, different signal to noise ratio tradeoff.

Of course depth is affected to a degree (actually it is more signal to noise ratio as I mentioned previously, you are trying to minimize ground noise but not to the extent you minimize the signal to an inaudible blip). But the affect is so slight, I have seen very little reason to go below 4 myself and usually keep it at 6 or above, but that is just from swing experience, I have not done exhaustive test garden demonstrations with various recovery speeds and of course have not encountered every possible situation in the field. Again, my reference is Deus where you want to hang out at 2 to 3 where the setting goes from 0 to 5. ML has seemed to favor the high end of the range, at least as far as the defaults are concerned. I guess my situations call for more separation than depth. Nuke's situation seems unusual, but there is a reason ML did not make 4 the minimum recovery speed and Nuke seems to be the poster child for that reason, so I am glad he is able to put those low settings to good use.

Reactivity is an XP Term and the term ML was originally using as a synonym for Recovery Speed which is the more commonly used term.

I did not realize you were running recovery so low for depth - first you mentioned your recovery settings in the thread. Good thing ML saw fit to provide those low settings, you are one of the first I have seen where it has markedly increased depth performance, so glad that is working for you. Check out various iron bias settings and see what that does, too. HH.

Nuke you should run tests to convince yourself and not take my word for it, but you really don't have to make that trade with this machine, quite honestly. I recommend using the defaults on recovery and iron bias based on my personal experience, but you have to convince yourself of that. And I emphasize again, that iron bias has no effect on depth but does affect ability to unmask (separation). Still haven't sussed it all out yet, though, with respect to "optimal" iron bias settings, if there is such a thing. And recovery has little if any affect on depth. It really just affects signal to noise ratio. If you want a higher signal to noise ration, then go with the higher speed.

Iron Bias Strategies for Relic Hunting - My Take After 30 hours of Equinox relic hunting this past week I developed a hunt mode strategy involving iron bias (some of this is written up in my Culpeper thread but I am addressing mainly only the iron bias strategy here): In a nutshell, Iron Bias is another imperfect tool in the detecting toolkit that is Equinox. I don't say imperfect because it does not work well or to be derogatory, I merely mean that there are trade-offs which is essentially what metal detecting is all about. Managing trade-offs. Lower iron bias to zero and you are in "what you hear is what you get" with respect to the tones, including iron falsing high tones on bent nails, nail heads, and large and/or round iron targets. You can up the iron bias to reduce falsing, but I have been paying attention to some published test results that show that this lowers your ability to unmask non-ferrous hiding amongst the iron. For hunting in open fields where the occasional small and big iron would be encountered I used the Field 2 default settings across the board except that I increased Iron Bias to 6 (similar to beach mode) to mitigate falsing on small nails, bent nails, and nail heads. It wasn't fool proof but it did cut down on falsing and I felt that chances were low that I would encounter and pass over a masked target. When I was in an area of thick iron, I used field 2 with iron bias at 0. Took the brain damage of constant falsing but used other tools such as two-way hits, 90 degree turns, and pinpointer to interrogate the high tones and make a dig decision. After awhile I also incorporated Gold Mode 2 into my thick iron, high mineralized soil strategy because I could get a better bead on target size due to the VCO audio and could make an educated as to whether I was swinging over large farm iron (plow blade, horseshoe). Bolts, nuts, and other types of round iron were still a problem. Not sure you can do much about that even with iron bias. Since I was getting a better bead on the size/depth of the target with Gold 2, I kept iron bias at the default of 6 tp mitigate falsing but would switch to field 2 0 bias (which I kept in my User Profile slot for quick recall) for big iron targets to see if anything was getting masked and still found some non ferrous hiding in the iron. Ran out of time to see how it would do with a lower iron bias setting so more to come on that when I get a chance to swing the Equinox in Culpeper again (soon). In summary mineralized soil relic hunting: In the field with widely spaced iron targets and small probability of masking, I liked running Field 2 with defaults and iron bias at 6 to minimize falsing and would call up Filed 2, 0 iron bias from my user profile on select iron targets to see if any non-ferrous was hiding. In thick iron areas (high mineralization), I liked the one-two punch combo of Gold 2 mode with Iron Bias 6 and Recovery 6 or 7 and switching in Field 2 with Iron Bias 0 and Recovery 7 for large iron target interrogation for masking.

Higher iron bias can actually perceived to be "slower" because you cannot separate ferrous and non-ferrous targets as well. There is NO EFFECT on depth, per se, with iron bias settings. And very little impact on depth with higher recovery speed settings. Lowering iron bias merely means you will false more on small iron, bent nails and nail heads and possibly on large and/or round iron. For beach hunting in low iron target density areas, I see no reason NOT to have iron bias as high as the default; set it to 0, only if you fear missing an iron masked non-ferrous target. In thick iron, you can "pick your poison" so to speak. Run iron bias up high to minimize falsing but run the risk of passing over a masked non-ferrous target or run it at zero and take the falsing but also increase your chances of hearing a masked non-ferrous keeper target. That's how I see it. Regarding recovery speed, this beast is designed to be run fast, so run it fast. Stick with the default as a minimum and go faster if you want to in high trash areas to increase separation. There is very little adverse impact on depth running recovery speed 6 or higher. I even increase the recovery speed from the default of 4 in Gold Mode 2 and crank it up to at least 6. But I am not hunting nuggets in Gold 2, I am looking for mid-conductive non-ferrous in high mineralization and high iron trash environments. HTH

I think you may be getting iron bias and recovery speed mixed up. Lowering or raising iron bias should have no effect on speed of the machine.

I agree that an in-line probe does not provide a whole lot of value on typical beep-dig single target recovery situations. However, one niche area where a tone ID probe would come in handy is in tight quarters detecting such as in a pit or trench where you are digging out a large hole for relic recovery. In that case, it is more convenient to use something like a handheld probe or pinpointer to cherry pick keepers from amongst the hundreds of iron nails and tin ration can pieces that will set off a typical pinpointer. Since XP did not come through with discrimination for their wireless pinpointer, I am relegated to using the Deus and elliptical coil as a sort of pinpointer on steroids in these situations to comb through the removed dirt pile "tailings" for keepers.

Same process.

Equinox is compatible with any BT earbuds in the sense that it will connect to them. The thing you have to watch out for is lag or audio delay with bluetooth which can be up to 250 ms (1/4 sec) which can be noticeable when swinging over a target as it makes the target look like it is in 2 different places as you get a beep up 1/4 sec after the coil actually passes over the target. To minimize this delay, Equinox prefers use of APT X Low Latency headphones (APTX LL) which have minimal delay (40 ms). Even APT X (delay 100 ms) may be acceptable. If looking for compatible BT earbuds check the specs and make sure they are at least APTX compliant or, better yet, APTX LL. Search this forum using the search term APTX and you will find numerous threads with headphone and earpbud recommendations. As an alternative, you can plug wired earbuds into the WM08 module and go wireless that way, stuffing the WM08 into your front shirt pocket or clipping it to your belt or upper body, for best results (minimizing drop outs that have been reported). HTH

Sample Tect o Trak screen shot: