schoolofhardNox

I use a 12.5" DD coil on the 5000. It has proven itself as the best all around coil for my beaches. It rarely falses and some better coil control on my part would get rid of that falsing. It does pick up emi fairly well, but the is probably due to the fact that I run my settings... let's just say, not the recommended settings from the manufacturer. 😆 I may hit a heavy emi beach next visit so I may try the 14DD again to see how it does on completely dry sand. If it does not work well, it may end up in the dead coil, time out pile 😉 Thanks, I hope you lose a couple of feet soon, although I bet there are still a lot of targets that are really mixed up in that 8-10 feet. I wonder how much tiny gold (studs, chains, charms) are in that mix? For sanded in times, I would use the Nox and try for micro gold. You should try it. Any chance to get some time in with your machine is good for the soul. I do some serious research. Here is what I do..... Get in car, take machines, spend all day on a beach, dig like crazy 😄 Works for me.

So, my beach season hunting has officially started. I was going to shoot for two days hunting but a wash out on Thursday made me change some plans. I had reserved Thursday for the GPX 6000 and the 14” DD coil, but had to settle for trying the 6000, 5000 and Equinox on Friday. I changed beach locations too and ended up at the less EMI beach for the day. Started out using the GPX 5000 for clearing out some of the recently deposited junk in an area that has produced silver before. I thought the storms that ripped through the previous day would remove some sand, but it was just the opposite…. sand deposited along 3/4 of the beach (top to bottom). Also, high tide reach to the highest point of the beach, so I could only hunt where the waves did not constantly reach up top. The 5000 did well considering the beach was really sanded in and gave me my first silver of the season – a 1955 Washington quarter. The rest was clad, but for 2 copper pennies. Some junk jewelry, and maybe some iron shot or just a ball bearing, - it measured .75 caliber. The big spoon was found at 20” and I thought I was going to get a beer can or some big iron, so that was a nice surprise. Hunted with the 5000 for 6 hours and decided I cleared enough to try the 6000 in that spot. The EMI was a bit more than usual but not really bad. I’m still not sold on that 14” coil. I tried both ground settings, as well as both Salt mode and EMI mode. I tried auto, auto +, manual (full) and manual (setting 1) and some in between. I just could not get the 6000 to not false on the sand. It was partially damp, as high tide receded a while ago, but with a sensitivity of 1, I would have expected a smooth clean machine. IDK maybe the coil is not good. I did not bring the 11” mono as I really wanted to see if the salt mode would work on the 14” DD. Being a bit disappointed, and after trying all combinations of settings, I called it after around 10 minutes. So, the tide was getting as low as it was going to be, so I hunted for 3 hours with the Equinox and traded my spade for my scoop. I didn’t use the Nox much last season as the 5000 was killing the silver, so the Nox sat idle. But I wanted to see if the heavy waves dropped anything on the beach along with all that sand. There weren’t many targets, so I dug everything to get a feel for all the numbers. The hairpins and tiny wire all read a steady -2, -3. The Nox did well for the short time I used it and if I wasn’t beat from the hunt, I would have stayed in the area that was producing some coins. It was the best machine for the day to give me a chance at some gold. It felt really, really good to get out and just walk the beach. Next week all 3 machines will be at the crazy EMI beach. I will have the mono coin and the DD to see if this beach (dry sand) will be ok for the 14” coil. Can’t wait!!!

I remember even though I had a new White's, probably every 2nd new model that came out, we were still pestered by those Compass guys in the parks. They seemed to match or exceed the White's depth limits sometimes. So Dan, once the parks have be Explorer'd out, does that mean you going to Nox the socks off of them guys? 😱

And to add insult to injury, these new machines were pulling from the deep layers. So the coins were Barber and Seated with a couple of masked or on edge newer silvers. These were the coins that made you feel like you were king of that park.... and these new guys are pulling them out like they are weeds. 😄

When guys come over to me while I'm digging craters on the beach, they always want to hear the next signal. So I try and find the faintest signal I can with the GPX, and then I watch them struggle to hear anything, even ground noise. That's the devil in me 😈 😄. Comparing signals for me, has been around for as long as I have been detecting. It is useful if the losing person takes the time to try readjusting their machine. But most of the time it turns into a competition of some sorts. It also breaks egos and hearts. Nothing like spending a lot of cash on a machine and see someone hear a signal that you can't. I almost never ask to hear a target that someone else has flagged, unless someone is teaching me the ropes in their area. If I traveled out of area, I would appreciate the lesson. It does pay to let those guys with cheap VLF's on the beach watch me dig deep coins. They usually jump in front of me and clear the first 6-8" of junk targets 👍

Welcome aboard Jeffree. Hope you like the place. We have some really talented detectorists here and a pretty vast collection of information. Post some finds if you feel like it.

Welcome aboard Tim. Not much drama here but lots of great detecting information. That's one reason Ii like it here.

Joe, I always know when you are quiet for a while, we are in for it when you get back 😄 Awesome pile of goodies and definitely magazine cover material. Minelab misses out by not exploiting you 😉 The things dreams are made of. Well done Joe.

6k dollars has a lot to do with trying out a GPX 6000 no matter what it does 😄

Very unique thimble. Never seen one that looked like that. Great dig!

If we are still talking about the Equinox in parks, I am all ears on how well it is going to do at depth for silver or any deep non ferrous target. I had an E Trac and it's one machine I really regret selling. I am a fairly accomplished detectorist and I hate competing, but I will try and drive you into the ground if you make me compete 😄 But seriously, the E Trac changed the rules when it came to deep silver in the parks. In New England, it crushed the previous machine (any brand) and I was fortunate enough to be shown that in person by someone who had figured out how to use it in trashy inner city parks. I literally had a teacher show me exactly how to program my machine and what to listen for. We had a friendly competition that day and he won easily, even after he helped me. So with the Equinox, the challenge is to try and recreate the settings that mimic the E Trac but with the technology and controls that the EQ has to offer. I'm just starting to try and match up the settings. I really think the Equinox has the potential to be the winner since it should be able ID better at depth. I'm not a fan of random park challenges since the variables are all over the place. The only way to truly compare machines is if you become well versed in each machine and you run them through the paces. Putting a second person in the mix only adds error to the comparison. What if someone is slower in digging than the other person? What it they get the bad section of land and you get the not completely hunted to death section. It's just a waste of time boasting about who's better. Chase said it best that detecting is a pleasure, and I feel that we only get for a set period of time. Target run out, laws against it are passed, and our bodies finally give out eventually. Personally I'm excited to see Raphis post about his results in parks. He has proved over the years that he is a solid detectorist, so I much rather hear about his newest adventures with the EQ that to hash up old days arguments. Right now I'm in beach mode but if I do any park EQ hunting I'll post my results.

I agree. The CTX and also the E Trac had some very redeeming qualities. Sharp, solid tones, ability to spread the scale apart (tone wise), ways to change the signal (long tones, etc) all lead to great park hunting for deep silver. You could actually tell a silver dime from a clad dime on the E Trac. A lighter, deeper E Trac I would have jumped all over.

Nice job. Deep finds are hard to do at trashy parks. Speed is your enemy 😄 Since you found Seated and Barber, you already know there is another layer lower than most people can figure out on how to get to. The constant renewing surface trash is slowly making it impossible to hit that Barber layer. It gets harder and harder every year to finds a clean enough section to punch deep. Looks like you are hitting that '50's layer solidly. Great selection of rings too. You need that bulldozer guy to scrape off 6" for you. 🦺

India loves their gold! That was a smart move on their part. High Karat gold at that. How they got around the battery thing is another question? If it's the same old battery then you need to buy 4 of them to do a good days hunt 😄 If it's Lithium, then maybe there will be a new version after all? Wonder what happens when it leaks.... who will fix it?

I hope everyone is able to recover from their losses. Prayer can be a soothing way of coping with this. Sending prayers and strength their way. I'm guessing most of us feel comfortable in our homes and we generally do not worry about losing everything, unless we live in an area that is in the direct path of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flooding, etc... But sometimes it comes knocking at even our door and it gives one a real sense of how quickly our lives can be changed. Those pictures make me wonder how I would feel if my house was one that was lost. Nature is unpredictable and uncompromising. I wish them all well and hope they can rebound. I guess that is why community is so important...so you don't have to go it alone.

I think companies buy out other companies for a couple of reasons. Technology is obviously one, but I think another lesser one is to prevent others from getting the technology and updating it. Maybe they did not want someone else having the TRX and updating it (like waterproof) and doing a better job of advertising it (like Minelab maybe??) Any ways that's my thoughts on it.

So many, many years ago when I was a lot younger I found a nice silver love token. This tokens was made from a silver dime (probably Barber or Seated) from a local vendor. being as it was engraved on both sides, I often wondered if the young man was successful in wooing this young lady. I remember thinking this must be old because no one these days names their daughter by that name, at least not in New England anyways. I often wondered who this lady was, what did she look like, was she a nice person??? Fast forward to this weekend and my heart and prayers go out to the people of Louisiana and the surrounding areas that are affected from hurricane Ida. I hope you recover and have not lost any family. I guess the hurricane answered my questions about the young lady. I hope that gentleman ran like hell from her 😲 😄 The pictures tell it all. Stay safe everyone.

I do a lot of beaches during the winter (off season), and the silver far outranks the gold. I have used many different brands over the years for all my hunting locations, land and sea, and can tell you that: location, patience, endurance, understanding your machine, and being at the right place at the right time, are all crucial to finding gold. I have had days where I found 3 gold rings at the beach..... right place at the right time. Many trips - zero gold. Last season I found a small amount of gold and a large amount of silver, mostly coins. This season???? Who knows, maybe nothing 😄

For me it was just one of those machines that I passed over for no apparent reason other than my money was already invested in one of their other machines 😄

If it's new it should look new and have both serial numbers in it. Unless it fell out at the factory before it was sealed. I don't think Garrett sells "B" products. I read your description and I can interpret it a couple of different ways so I'll just tell you what I know about the AT propointer (orange one). Is yours the orange or is it the black pinpointer? A proper functioning pinpointer goes from silent to very slow beeps to moderate beeps, to fast beeps, to a solid continuous tone when you approach a target. But also remember that the pinpointer responds from the side of the pinpointer body as well as from the tip. Also, moisture and the changing soils as you go deeper have a tendency to false and produce a signal. Try running your pinpointer on level 2 instead of level 3 the most sensitive setting. I've learned from experience to try and figure out what I am doing or interpreting wrong to make sure it's defective before I go and send it in for repairs. Most time i was me not using it properly for the area I was hunting. Also I've caught unknowingly holding down the on button while wearing gloves and trying to pinpoint an object. 😄 Anyways, let us know if you get it figured out.

Thanks Chase. That is what I was going to try first. Run it to cancel ground/salt and take what it gives me for EMI mitigation. If that doesn't work at all, then I'll try EMI cancel, hopefully that will be better and deeper than my 5000 in cancel mode. It won't take too long to get some settings chosen, since the combinations are limited by options available. On the 5000 you could spend your whole life trying all the possible combinations for maximum performance. It took me a quite a while to get the right combination of settings for deep silvers at these beaches with the 5000. With the 6000 it will either work or not, but at least I will know reasonably fast. As for Minelab, it could take years before some very smart people can figure out how things work. Until then I believe it's healthy to speculate about what we think is going on. No shame if we are wrong as far as I'm concerned. I think Minelab does this on purpose and gets a kick on watching us squirm and strain our brains to try and figure out what is happening inside their machines 😄

Thanks Chase, So they are running opposing currents.... Hmmm that's interesting. I did try running in EMI and in ground cancel and I'm not sure which one I stuck with. I think once you shut the machine off it reverts back to EMI mode, so I can't tell anymore. I was just happy that it ran smooth. I have 2 more land hunts planned before my beach season starts. Then I'll be playing a lot more with ground / EMI modes. Back to the current thing.... so if that is how the machine works when you put the DD coil on, then those opposite direction currents run in both EMI cancel and ground mode, or just EMI cancel mode??? If they run that way for both, I should be able to run ground cancel for the salt on the beach while still getting some benefits of the EMI cancel. That would be my go to coil for some beaches for sure.

Yep, I agree. Some of the coins in my area are breaking off from the edges. Other older colonial coins are wiped clean....Slick Rick as we say 😄

Great idea...patch it just like a car or canoe.

So I had my third hunt with the 6000. It was a short hunt at another native site that was not inhabited for very long, and a bit newer than the village I'm used to doing. 1637 vs 1723. So targets will not be as plentiful as the other site, even though it's the newer site. I picked this area because it has some fairly hot electrical lines running along side it, as well as the Acela train fairly close by. Both of those gave my GPX 5000 problems when I got near them. I started by using the 11" mono coil, since it performed better at the previous location. It did not handle the EMI well at all, even on 1 bar sensitivity. So I reluctantly switched to the 14" DD to see if the EMI cancelling would be better here than at the previous spot. Since the EMI was way more noticeable here, I did not expect much. To my surprise, it handled the EMI extremely well. purred like a kitten 😄. I'm not sure why that happened but it did. I also noticed that running ground difficult at this site was detrimental to getting a clean signal but normal picked the target up clearly! Again, opposite from the previous site. Even though the sites appear similar in soil and vegetation, and were relatively close to each other (about a mile apart), they responded completely different. The only similarity between the two sites was that I found quite a lot of small targets that the 5000 missed. These were shallow targets in the 1/2" to 7" range mostly small lead shot, 22's and their casings, and some thin scrap brass. A couple of nice rose head nails sounded loud and clear as well. The 6000 is showing me that I should have experimented more with other timings on the 5000 to try and get these small targets to respond. All and all I'm still more impressed with the 6000 than I thought I would be. Next week, if all goes well, I'll be at a Rev war site project to see what I can find for their project. I hear this guy detecting there is a very good detectorist, so I'll be bringing the 5000, 6000 and EQ800. I love a challenge 😉