Chase Goldman

I was talking about folks just opening them up to take a look or to see if it can be done in the near term. Or not reassembling them properly and causing loss of watertight integrity. Oops. Of course the battery should def outlast the warranty under normal usage. I wasn't really worried about the whole "sealed battery" issue in any event coming from the Deus.

Ok the pics in the link are helpful including showing how the O rings form the seal. Would still like to know if ML is going to cry foul if someone does this before the warranty is up.

First of all, still don't know exactly what you are showing us in the second pic (remember not many of us have the beast in hand, yet) but I do know those aren't pillows! (Lol). Second, for the non flyfishermen, before everyone starts tearing down their detectors, use caution on this as this may void your warranty and could also compromise the watertight integrity of your Equinox.

I have been eying those very phones to use with my GPX. Why did you decide to go with those vs. the stock supplied pair?

Really strange this page is down, still. Guess they didn't get it done before leaving for the weekend. Lol.

Great news Mike! Hopefully, just a one off gremlin.

Mitchel, I have a "beach" that is accessible on the bay with no wave action and plan to use the EQ to get wet but can easily dunk or even be deep enough to keep the control box submerged. On real beaches, I am dry/wet sanding it or waiting for a storm cut, too. So yeah, BT works just fine there. I also want to do some backwoods freshwater hunting also because that opens up some previously un-detectable (but wet) real estate for me. Trying to figure out how to hit those two areas that necessitate something other than the BT solution with no word on the WP headphones for EQ from ML. First things, first, however. I need an Equinox to show up. LOL. Thanks for listening and good hunting with your new Equinox. CG P.S. Since the BT headphones supplied are not even water resistant, having a "caught in the rain" solution is also a good backup plan that the WM08 facilitates unless I find some low latency water resistant BT headphones, The good news is that the Equinox is designed to give you plenty of possible audio solutions for various detecting situations.

Agree but if you are in the waves, the supplied BT headphones won't survive the dunk, that is why I am saying waterproof the the WM08 with a pouch and hardwired connector to a set of el cheapos that may survive at least a few dunkings. See this as a possible kludge The best thing would be a watertight pigtail adapter that allows you connect the CTX WP cans directly to the EQ control box. I see a few people working on some homebrews.

This is where I lament Radio Shack going away. Nice solution. You can plug that into the WM08 too. What you are showing is the pigtail type 1/4" female to 1/8" male adapter I was talking about. If you can find one with a mono straight in plug then you don't have to use the interim adapter plug, but the right angle puts less stress overall on the panel jack.

Yeah, for the mini to 1/4" mono adaptor you need to find a pigtail type adapter that moves the jack "shoulder" away from where you make the connection into the WM08 or control box similar to the unavailable adapter accessory available from ML.

Todd, nice. Do you have a part number for the "Equinox" threaded mini-plug end (and pigtail)? Is that an off-the-shelf item or did you make that yourself? If I can get that threaded plug and pigtail, I can easily solder it to a pair of amphibian Grey Ghosts I have laying around that have the unfinished connector end. Would be awesome. In the mean time I have come up with a kludge for the WM08. Since the WM08 is not submersible, what you CAN do is put it in one of those waterproof cell phone bags that have the mini-plug/jack pigtail inside the bag. It comes out to a waterproof grommeted mini-jack on the side of the bag. You can then plug in a cheap pair of waterproof or moisture proof athletic earbuds into the bag and voilia, a chepo WP headset setup using the WM08. If the headset plug backsell is molded tightly to the mini-plug on the headset, you should have a setup that can handle more than a few waves or dunkings. The only real drawback is that it will not work with the EQ control box submerged continuously as you will lose the RF signal between the control box and the WM08. Pic with a Deus control module standing in for the WM08 below (yeah, still waiting for my Equinox to arrive).

Adapter? for CTX WP headphones? Can you clarify? Thanks. I'm interested in your setup because I'm trying to figure out a way to hook up a pair of 3rd party WP phones to EQ when I finally get it so I can take it into some chest deep water with no horizon on when the ML EQ WP phones will be available. (Please correct me if there is some new news on EQ accessories).

Mitchel, For the noisy pier, you might want practice with and then try the 800-unique manual noise cancel mode to see if that helps you manually find a less noisy channel so you don't have to suppress sensitivity. Just a thought

Now I know where Norm gets his bottle caps for testing the Equinox. Hey, its 5 o'clock somewhere. Thanks for the chuckle. I needed it.

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.