Chase Goldman

Thanks all for the kind words. It feels good to finally be able to contribute with some actual Equinox operational experiences like you folks who have already had the opportunity to do so with lots of fantastic info. Now I feel like a full fledged member of the fan club. Hope all those still waiting get their machines soon. Couple of things I forgot to mention. First - I cranked sensitivity to the max for the beach run and other than my cell phone induced noise which I ultimately corrected, Noxtradamus ran pretty quiet. Second - I used the pinpointer frequently for deep targets, for finding the extracted deep targets in the dug sand pile, and for locating those tiny targets that slipped through the the scoop screen. Shallow "normal sized" targets I just eyeballed with a coil wiggle and scooped. The pinpointer accuracy and functionality was great. However, I did notice the "low volume" effect on the several occasions. It usually kicked into "normal" volume while positioning the coil over the target, but occasionally it would not kick in and would just stay at the diminished volume level. There was no rhyme or reason for this behavior that I could ascertain. It was really a non factor because I could just disengage and reengage the PP to get it to respond normally but I mention it for completeness. Someone else noted that the PP peak volume seemed louder than target tone volume (i.e. , when directly over the target) contrary to the description in the manual. I perceived this to be the case also but I did not find it to be so loud as to be uncomfortable. Again, though this was a non-issue, I thought I would document my observations. Bottom line is the pinpointer worked great for my purposes while displaying some quirky behavior that did not detract from overall functionalty.

Cal, Been looking forward to your first Equinox relic hunt post for quite awhile. The way things were going, wasn't sure either of us were going to ever get our machines. So far, folks experiences relic hunting with the EQX have been positive. I had a great beach run today and am looking forward to my first relic hunt soon. Those bronze nails are amazing. When I first saw them I thought they were annealed cut iron square nails. Keep the reports coming.

After some button mashing in the back yard and a quick ball field hunt that netted me an earring and some change, I felt like today I could hit a local beach park primarily with the intent to try the beach modes and learn more about the Equinox 800. This local park is hunted extensively and in the off season the pickings are slim so I did not have any expectations that I would find much of anything. In fact I was willing to dig trash because that would just help me continue to learn the tones and get used to the routine of initializing the machine (mode select, noise cancel, GB if necessary, etc.) and get used to the routines associated with target ID, interrogation, and recovery. The beach is nice because target retrieval is easy, just dip the scoop in the sand, shake, grab the target and move on. Little did I know what I was in for. With my multiple test garden runs and short park run, I felt comfortable navigating the menus and doing the routine things needed to run the machine. Ergonomics: I set out for an hour or two hunt, but it ended up being almost 4 hours. I really had no trouble at all swinging the Equinox for four hours straight. I have made no modifications but being short the Equinox is shortened for me and does not have a great lever arm that torques me so I am comfortable with it. I have not even counterbalanced it AND I keep forgetting to install the arm strap. Despite that, the Equinox was really a dream to swing AND that is coming from a Deus guy. I guess I can go all day with the Deus if necessary, but I feel with the Equinox I can do pretty good all day, if I have a nice lunch break. Performance (Beach Mode): I put it in Beach 1, noise canceled and did nothing else to modify the program and started swinging away. I intended to stay high mostly on the dry sand to see if I could pick up old drops near the beach entrances. First target was a pencil (hit the eraser holder). I next hit foil juice pull lid. Third target sounded solid and was jumping a little but oscillated around 10. Dug it and boom. Gold in the sand. It was a small, gold Christ figurine from a crucifix that looks like it became separated from the cross. I could not find the cross. But yeah, Equinox scores gold on the third beach target and I thought well this was worth the trip and I don't mind digging trash the rest of the way. I did not hit much more trash or keepers other than a dime and some fishing tackle and then a few pennies on the high sand. I encountered several random noise bursts throughout my walk and wondered if it was nearby traffic (the park is adjacent to the main thoroughfare across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge). It was weird and I could not figure out the source. I u-turned and started heading back at the tide line but was not going to get myself or the Equinox wet at 45F and a steady 15 knot wind. The tide line is usually a sparky mess for the Deus but I can still hear strong coin targets above the din. Equinox, not a peep except for those noise bursts. I finally figured it out. I had my phone in my right hoody pocket which put it in close proximity to the control head. Moving the phone to my left pocket got rid of the random EMI. I never thought it hindered performance, it was more just weird and a little annoying. Anyway problem solved. As my made my way up the tide line I got a jumpy low 30's signal. Though jumpy, the tone was repeatable and said dig me. I honestly did not think I was going to find anything much on the tide line, just wanted to test the Equinox stability. All I had was my dry sand scoop so digging targets in the wet sand tide line ment I would just have to take several two handed scoopfuls of wet sand out and periodically check to see if I got the target out of the hole. This sucker was deep. A good foot plus and it was still sounding off. I figured I was chasing a phantom until the damn thing finally ended up in the pile. Boom, clad quarter. This scenario repeated itself several times up the tide line for quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Each time I pretty much knew I was digging a coin and they were all 7 to 15 inches down. Got fooled once with a sinker. The nickels hit just as hard as the high conductors and tells me this thing will hit some deep gold at the beach. I never worked so hard for a dollar plus worth of clad and never enjoyed it so much. I even dug a wheatie. I know these coins have been sitting there for awhile on this pounded beach and have been missed by a lot of folks because of their depth and proximity to the salt water line. The water hunters don't bother with this area and the sand people's vlf detectors don't work so well at that interface point and now I know what the Equinox can do. Also, lesson learned: always bring my water scoop for the wet stuff, there WILL be deep keepers found with Equinox. Lol. The other thing that was exciting were the very tiny targets that the Equinox had no trouble hitting (but I had a lot of trouble recovering, lol). An earring fastener, a small gear, small small pieces of mid-conductive metal, probably aluminum. These are the types of targets the Deus only hits when using the HF coils at 28khz or above. Very cool. [Note it is even more impressive to think that these tiny targets were mostly mid-conductors hit by the second least sparky program on the Equinox, i.e., lower frequency biased Beach 1. The magic of MultiIQ at work]. Trash was not really a problem, pic of some of it. Expected to dig the pull tab stuff but it was either 12 or 14/15 not 13. Ha! And the "All Metal" iron grunt trick does work on the crown caps. Color me impressed. Up next (hopefully) some colonial era relics in central Virginia. Thanks for reading. Chase

Another advantage of the self-contained control head design from a ML manufacturing and assembly standpoint is that it would seem a pretty straight forward proposition for ML to offer the EQX with either a straight or S-shaft at some point and S-Shaft retrofit kits obviating the need for a third party S shaft option. This could help with swing balance somewhat without significantly affecting weight. That would be another innovative marketing approach that could further set the detector marketplace on its head. Personally, being a short guy, my setup with both shaft length and armrest placement has given me no issues with respect to weight and balance and I'm coming from Deus. May add a power bank pouch under the armrest as a small counterweight.

The lack of any comms by ML on the availability or even price of the coil or WP headphones is almost as frustrating as not being able to purchase them. It triggers my PTSD from the whole ordeal on obtaining the machine itself.

Hard for me to tell the situation because you did not (thankfully) list the VDI of each test war nickel. Where they mostly clustered around 13 with a few scattered between 15 and 24 or did you hit every single number between 13 and 24 with the 15 sample nickels? Presuming the former (i.e., most clustered around 13 - 15) , then if you are going to cherry pick, then by definition you are playing the percentages and by definition you are going to leave something in the ground. If that is going to happen then just keep a narrow range (e.g., 13 -15) and be content with the fact that a few outliers are going to fall outside that range and will still be there. Otherwise, what is the point if you start digging a bunch of unwanted targets just to catch those two or three outliers. If they were hitting just about every VID number between 13 and 24 then, yeah, it seems fruitless (pun intended) to cherry pick, because you are really no longer cherry picking. Just my thinking, anyway.

I bet a lot of Honeymoon Gold and Silver is sitting on that table. Poor newlyweds, what a way to start.

Don't forget the post release firmware update and leaking faceplate "psuedo" recall issues with the "venerable" MX Sport in '16. Whites was pretty much given a pass, especially by Whites fans. Minelab is no better or worse than any one else when it comes to executing this rollout (i.e., units delivered into the hands of users per unit time). Ironically, they are a victim of their own success. By taking the worldwide detecting community by storm with a highly capable AND affordable detector they are cast as the villain and a failure when they cannot meet unprecedented demand. It is just a ludicrous situation compounded by Minelab's semi-tone-deaf marketing bravado (no one wants to be told they are currently swinging an obsolete detector) and less than stellar PR skills. A recipe for torches and pitchforks, no doubt. Lol.

Diversity in detecting characteristics between detectors is the reason I will keep at least two or three VLF detectors around even with Equinox. No one detector (or Detectorist for that matter) will find it all at a given site and although the way the multiple detect modes on the Equinox are implemented does a great job of emulating multiple detectors, there are some things other detectors will unquestionably do better. That is why I think of the Equinox as complimenting the best detector in my arsenal rather than replacing or obsoleting it. Don't get me wrong, though, the herd will definitely be thinned.

Who knows, but if they don't last for 10 hours and run out of their own juice you can always plug them into the WM08 (or directly into the detector) via the supplied wired connection cord and run them passively so running out of audio juice does not seem to be an issue at all.

I just received my detector yesterday (yay, finally) and was looking closely for this issue. I initially had some play between the upper and mid shaft upon initial assembly but discovered I needed to further tighten the upper cam lock. Problem solved. It is rock solid and not behaving at all like mental detectorist has described and demonstrsted on video. So I appear to have a detector that is not exhibiting the issue...yet. Obviously, something is going on with some units, so in the interest of troubleshooting and discussion thought I would throw a couple of thoughts/theories out there: I am relatively short (5'8") and have the lower shaft inserted 3 or 4 clicks into the mid-shaft, so a taller person may have the shaft more fully extended which puts greater stress on the entire assembly with every swing than a less extended lower shaft which may be introducing more wear related play into the cam lock assemblies over time. The above could be exacerbated by significant unit-to-unit variations in the tolerances in the interlocking shaft mechanisms to account for variances in machining tools during assembly. If you get a unit that combines the largest possible shaft holes with the smallest possible spring pin size, that may overcome the ability of the cam lock to fully eliminate play. The above described theory could explain why some folks are seeing the issue while others are not. It is also a common issue encountered in early factory mass production runs and something that gets tamped down over time as tooling performance becomes better quantified through quality sample testing and as machining tolerances are adjusted over time in response to the sample inspections. It also explains why ML can't just flip a switch and crank out a million units on day one. The production has to ramp up slowly to shake these kind of assembly bugs out of the system. You can cheat a little in favor of production rate and open up your tolerancing on the get go to provide greater assurance you won't manufacture a pin too large to fit in the smallest hole, but then you can run into the issue we're seeing. Not saying this is the answer but putting it out their as one possible explanation.

So when you say "notch" you are not using it in the traditional sense of a notch filter but narrow un-masked "segments", correct? Otherwise, I found the above discussion a little confusing because I was equating notch to blanking, masking, or discriminating.

Good advice.

Guess I should have put a smiley face on the post so it could be taken in the humorous context that was intended. Anyway, you did capture the moment.

I'm sure you stood up and announced to the girls, "Hey mind if I snap a pic?" rather than just sitting there in your beach chair pretending to be reading something on your phone.

The only reason I am not selling my F75 is I like having a capable detector that has a concentric coil option.

"My iron cross test". Ok it is getting really ridiculous now.

On the solar panel, forget my last question. The more pertinent question is perhaps how much the solar cell can at least partially offset the "drain" from trickle charging the EQX while detecting on a sunny day. Hmm.

Exactly. "Bug!" LOL.

Actually, I consider that a bug and hope they release a firmware update to fix it as soon as possible. BTW on the solar panel/battery pack: How long does it take to recharge the pack from 0% from solar power alone? Those solar cells look pretty small and don't appear to be contiguous. Thanks.

The hottest mode on a wet salt beach sounds like it would be a show (you can't get much farther out on the hot scale extremes than Gold 1 and Beach 2), but I guess we'll find out. There is a reason that ML designed beach mode transmit power to reduce automatically. But again, I have found out there is no such thing as conventional wisdom when it comes to metal detecting so we won't really know the answer until someone tries it. Lol.

They make a frikken Dive Machine (Excal II) so I find this hard to believe, but, hey, facts don't lie.

Thanks, BD. You got that comedy of errors thing right. The wait until this week was nothing compared to having it sitting 3 miles from my house doing nothing but sitting in a truck with two Sunny 50-degree detecting days going to waste! Ha. (Not so fast Deus, get back over here, you're not going anywhere...yet). At least I have a known end game and for that I am thankful. A lot of folks still don't know anything yet. The thing is, all these stories are not about corporate greed per se but when it really comes down to it, just consistent abysmal customer service across the board from a lot people who apparently just don't give a damn. I find myself profusely thanking the few competent folks who actually handle your issue in an average manner because it comes across as them going above and beyond, when in reality, they are just doing their job in a competent manner but because the bar is so low, it somehow looks exemplary. That is just plain sad.

Mine arrived at my local Fedex depot on Friday night. Showed up as "out for delivery" Saturday AM on tracking but is actually just sitting in the truck cooling its heels for the weekend and will go out Monday. Tried calling customer support to see if I could just pick it up. By the time I got a human being on Saturday afternoon, they said, yes this is possible. Your depot closed at 3pm, though. I initiated researching contact info and calling at 2:40 the CSR gave me the good news at 3:05 and the Fedex depot is 10 min from my house. Two wasted weekend days I could be learning and hunting but no Noxtradamus for me this weekend. Thx FEDEX.

Wow. Yep, like I said. A kco issue. Just wow.