schoolofhardNox

I have limited use on a TDI, but did notice that getting depth on the TDI SL I used was more about getting the ground balance right and getting the pulse delay to operate as close to 10 as possible. Before getting a new coil maybe PM some users and see if they are willing to give some settings out. I know I watched a bunch of you tube videos and one guy got excellent depth with his. I usually use a GPX and it has taken me years to get the depth I now get from it. You may consider binging on some videos one evening, and watch who is getting great finds and see what kind of coil they are using. Just some thoughts.

Great hunt Mitchel. I too find the signal to lock on for silver and gold targets. I just found a nice 14K ring that locked on at a number 8. Just a nice solid sound to it . Sometimes when there are very few targets I get impatient and dig a lot of iffy shallow targets, hoping for that gold ring. But when you actually come over one, it is not iffy at all! Congrats on that beautiful chain and silver ring!!

Sweet coin. Are you sure that scratch is from you??? Usually if you nick a coin, the inside of the scratch is a very bright silver. Yours looks like it has toning inside the scratch. Or is that just lighting I am seeing?

A broken Tungsten Carbide pin maybe??

Welcome Ken from western MA. Good luck detecting this season

Is that a mono coil or DD? Indestructible little devil isn't it?

Continued this same beach but used both the GPX and Equinox. Most silver found with the GPX. No gold this time either. 8 silvers, a buffalo, hand full of wheats, and possibly a tiny silver earring. A little bit of clad to round off the hunt. Fun hunt, all while getting some good, head clearing exercise. Beats work any day

I'm using the 12.5" Detech DD coil

Most gold rings of any substance, I find will ring very well on the Equinox, giving a wide solid signal. Scraps of aluminum read a bit different and aren't as consistent as solid rings are. Pull tabs are another story, as they ring well. Some of you may be able to tell the tonal qualities between the two, but for me I find it quicker to just dig those targets. The area that I run into that is harder to tell, is the fine small gold jewelry (or pieces of). It's the thin, stamped gold pieces and odd shaped pieces that will not sound as big as a ring and may sound similar to aluminum, beach can slaw. So I just dig it all. In a park my dig it all process is suspended. I would cherry pick and concentrate more on the nuances of the tones. I guess my advice is to always try and guess what you are digging and have a reason why you believe you have guessed what it is, and then just see if you are correct. Repetition will eventually give you the confidence to be as accurate as possible, with just a few mistakes.

Finally had a chance to get out to one of my better silver beaches. With the extreme cold about a week ago, and along with the high winds, I missed some of the record low tides in my area. Wednesday was the first time out and I was hoping the now normal tides didn't wash too much sand back on the beach. Lucky the sand was not frozen, so I was good to go. I had the GPX set up the best I could with all the train interference, and took breaks when the EMI was just too much to handle. Managed these goodies. No gold, but enough of silver to make the trip worth while. 2 quarters, (SLQ and Washington), 9 dimes, (Mercury and Roosevelt), 19 Wheats and 6 copper Memorials, and a '29 Buffalo. The layer I was able to get into was around the early 50's to 60's. I was itching to get out and hunt, so I really didn't care what I found. I did dig a lot of other targets as well, including 3 silver plated spoons (a common beach find) that were 18+ inches deep. They were a reminder that I have to get back to my other duties, as I had just picked up 2 full pickup loads of spoons, forks, and knives for my small recycling business and I needed to work on them. Weather was great, and coin size targets were at reasonable depths of 8-12". Finally nice to see the waves and breathe that (cold) shore air

It never hurts to try another set of headphones and power cord as suggested already. I have lost signal threshold because of both of those. But if your issue is depth related then a call to Minelab may be in order. Let us know how you make out. I often worry since My GPX has put up with rain, cold, and just the other day a taller than usual wave that found the control box . So far so good. The other thing that comes to mind is that you bought the unit used. Did you verify that it is a genuine Minelab unit??

Not that I would ever get that call , but I would pass. I bet it requires a lot of time and I would be very disappointed if I found an area that needed improvement and they just ignored the suggestion. Plus the extra time needed to do the social media would kill me. I'm not patient enough to respond to the flood of inquiries that come your way. Everyone wants to know everything about the new machine and you can only tell them vague, watered down information.

Use the CTX/Equinox first on an area that is not too polluted with iron, then use the 5000. I have great success with the GPX 5000/ Equinox combination. The Equinox finds most targets decently up to 10" on my types of beaches and the 5000 cleans up the lower depths well. When the wind or waves remove more sand, I do that same combination over again. So far, I have not seen a better combination out there. Maybe there is one, but they are not talking about it

The engineers were smart enough to include single frequencies for those rare situations that may occur. They also may have considered the fact that there are detectorists that will want single frequency control as an option, for better or worse. I don't know if you posted your question in humor or not and I'm wondering if you have an Equinox? I am one of those seasoned detectorists that is happy to dive into the machines I use and appreciate the ability to control my own destiny with a new machine. I think Minelab got the electronics correct, but not so much on the cosmetics (stand, cuff, shaft locks) As far as marketing goes, it has been discussed here before and most detectorists decide for themselves how good a machine is, with no thought given to the marketing hype.

Thanks Steve for the insight on the gold modes. I may try that on the beach and see if that system works there. I really want to try gold 2 and get it stable on the beach.

Wonder if beach 2 was increased to be closer to beach 1 or was beach 1 reduced to be closer to beach 2???? I remember some posts on other forums where they complained how the nox was chattery on the beach. I'm always leery of updates because you never really know what was changed. Only Minelab and the software engineers know the full extent of the update. Many times even the manufacturer does not know what side effects will occur with an update. (think Microsoft - lol). I have not updated for fear that the sensitivity to small beach gold will diminish from the original version. I'm pretty happy with it other than the ghost pinpoint I get sometimes.

I bought both the 11" and a 12.5" Detech coils for the GPX 5000. They are waterproof. Minelab does not make any waterproof coils, so I found and love those coils. I once did try the Minelab 11" mono coil on the beach, but was unable to figure out a decent setting to match the mineralization of the sand. It just kept falsing with every swing. I lowered the gain and other settings, and I wasn't happy with the results. I'm not a fan of mono coils for the beach. Double D's run smoother and offer a little bit of shallow iron discrimination. The more I use them, the better I get at identifying the very deep silver coins that are at this particular beach.

Without knowing your beach situation, it will be hard to get the correct settings. I use the coin setting, but it may be too hot for some beaches. Sharp may be a better starting point. It's fairly deep and sort of forgiving. EMI is your greatest threat. If you have very little, you will be able to use the deeper timings. Keep your Gain fairly high (12+) and your target volume around the same. For hunt I posted, I tweaked the machine a lot of times, but gain, target volume and stabilizer on at least 10 are the most important. Use the biggest DD coil you have. Go SLOW and overlap about 1/2 of the coil size. I deal with a lot of chatter because of close by EMI, but ideally you want a smooth, quiet machine. The balance between those 3 settings are the most important for my conditions.

My goals are to do my best and not be lazy (how can I be, I have an Equinox- LOL) dig it all machine. My other goal is to dive deeper into chemical cleaning of my beach silver and start to display the gold and silver rings. Generally to group, clean organize and label my better beach finds. Also on the list is to visit some new beaches and venture out a little bit farther. Also to sell a lot of equipment that I do not use and repair the equipment I do use. Some deep woods cellar hole hunting is on the list but not mandatory. I want to learn to enjoy the time detecting more and not be worried if I don't find much that day. This year is year 49 for the number of years I have been detecting, so my goal is to not get hurt before I get to 50

Thanks. If you look around and verify that you have a real GPX, you can get a good deal on one. I think I paid around $2460.00 on E bay. Are you in the states or Canada? I'm in western MA. If we are close enough we can hunt a beach and you can try it out. We can share the Pringles

Last week I visited my favorite gold beach and hit an area at the end of the day that produced 5 silvers, a couple of war nickels and 8 wheat pennies. Much better than the limited amount of clad I found the first part of that day. It was posted in the Equinox forum under Equinox and EMI. Today I hit that same area with the GPX instead. Being a holiday, I figured there would be limited train runs, and for most of the day that was the case. I ran the GPX as hot as I could handle and put on the 12 1/2" DD coil to get the most depth I could get. It worked! Had a great hunt. Some oddities for the day included a nice old Ford key, a twisty tie (bread tie) that fooled me for a bit, as it is the brightest gold foil that I have ever seen. Thought I had a gold chain But the oddest thing I found (or actually re-found) was a deep (18+ " ) remains of a Pringles potato chip can. I found it a while back and the chips still looked like the day they were made. I never took a picture of them and left most of the remainder of the can and chips in the hole. Well, today I came across it again and took them home. Unbelievable what they label as food these days! As for the goods, I found 21 Wheats (one wrapped in red cloth from a change purse?), a bunch of silver coins including some war nickels and a W/L half. The best find of the day was the unmarked gold ring. Gold beach gave me some yellow today! As for depth on the coins? Nothing was shallower than 9-10" And 2 of the Mercs came in as a repeatable ground mineral signal. If you use a GPX you will know what faint ground variations sound like, I dug a lot of those today and most disappeared when you took some sand of the top. But 2 of them got louder and I knew I had a small fringe target. What I was surprised at was, that both of those dimes came in at a measured 18". I used a pin pointer to locate them and dug the last inch by hand. I wanted to make sure I did not drop the target back into the hole while digging deeper. I needed to see just how deep this machine can go with no EMI present. I am still in awe of how good that GPX 5000 is. So, a great start to the New Year and hopefully I can count on the GPX/Equinox combination to handle any beach conditions I come across.

One of the reasons I come to this forum is that it is not like all the other forums. Maybe most are dying a slow death, but I feel an upswing in real forums for 2019. Eventually the glitz of the mob mentality you see on those other forums, designed mostly for profit and not content, will wane this year. I myself am tired of being forced into believing someone else's version of how to detect and what machine to buy. Enjoy you machine, and especially your time detecting. Eventually age gets us all and I would not want to be having regrets later for not doing what I wanted to do. Thanks for having this forum Steve!!! Good luck to everyone this coming year. I look forward to you stories.

There' s a fine line on having the right sensitivity to hear the deep, iffy targets. Also having some luck in hitting the target with the best, most responsive part of the coil helps. Add moisture, EMI and minerals into the picture and it's no surprise that we can find deep targets in places we pounded. You must have just had the best balance between low sensitivity and too much sensitivity. I've always pushed my machines into the red a bit, and like hearing a bit of chatter. But too much and it makes it harder to hear the real signal. I always thought the E trac was a great deep seeker. It really made old pounded parks come alive for many. For me, it did rather well on colonial cellar holes.

I guess there is a price to pay for stability. One of my biggest disappointments is by the time I really get to know a machine, they come out with a better one. Then I have to re-learn all the new ways to get maximum performance from it.

So today I visited my favorite gold beach. It did not comply with my requests What I did notice today is how the EMI from a very close train effects the performance of the Equinox. I was using Beach 1 and usually run my sensitivity at 22. Before, during and after a train passing I have to drop sensitivity to 20. It then quiets down enough to hunt....BUT, quiet as it is, I believe the depth is affected very much. I hunted from 8AM to 2PM (lots of train passes), as that is the bulk of the commuter and cargo runs. The second picture shows some clad. That was all the good targets during that EMI cycle (6 hrs.). When the trains start to have large gaps between runs, (from 2-4pm), and there is no major EMI emitted from the rails, then you can see in the first picture the results. Lots of wheats, some copper memorials, 2 war nickels, and 4 silver dimes and a silver quarter. Most of those coins were 8-12" deep. So today it seems that my depth and ability to hear the deeper targets with EMI present, is very compromised even though the machine runs smooth. I always new EMI cuts performance, but to see it first hand is an eye opener.