schoolofhardNox

Funny, the same thing is happening at the New England beaches too. Weird

Anyone who offers you up a chance at finding Dragoon buttons gets my vote What a great hunt. You found a nice assortment of finds, enough for a nice display case. Nice quality finds. You must have dug a lot of holes. That is the only way to get used to the Equinox. Sweet hunt!

Thanks. The silver count was a nice bonus to a really great day. I usually can ID the wheats, with only a few exceptions. This hunt I did not separate the memorials vs wheats. I did remember that I saw only about 5 wheats, with the majority as copper memorials. I think only 3 zincs in the bunch. But this hunt is a example of how layered the beach really is. Most of the coins were probably lost early to mid 1960's. Some newer coins were found close by and there is always a crossover in layers. Because of that layer, I got more silver than usual. Move up just 10 years and the silver count would drop, as well as the wheat count too.

Wow I go to work and all hell breaks loose LOL. Chase, I didn't mean anything by saying what I said about returning the item. I would of course return any item I could verify proper ownership. But there is really not enough info there to satisfy me. I did Google (actually Bing) it, but I think I remember reading search engines give priority to most popular and not most accurate word search these days. So if someone posted they lost it, that would probably be on page 1000. It did not turn up any results for me when I searched it, but I did not spend a lot of time going deep into the pages. I have returned 2 nice rings but both were known losses and I was able to find them for the owners. As far as the booing part, I took it as a light hearted joke and not a serious jab at you. All is good I hope

Thanks everyone. My wife informed me that if that ring had actually fit her finger, it would be hers right now So far most of my rings have been small The Mercury dimes were in a constantly wet area. They develop this huge black crust all over them. We call them "cookies" around here. They continue to disintegrate from the inside out until there is nothing left of them. When you crack them open you can see the imprint of the coin design on the part that breaks off. Eventually they just degrade to nothing. Chase, if I put out a message showing that chain, I would have a hundred people a day telling me that those are their kids names . Unfortunately it would be hard to find the real owner. I finally gave up trying to return the half carat diamond ring I found that had a serial number on it. Zales said they do not keep track of those numbers....it is the buyers responsibility to contact the lab that engraved it. In other words they don't care, just buy another ring from them. Sad but true.

A couple of weeks ago during an extreme high tide, I put aside 2 days to hit two different beaches to see what I could get at low tide. Those visits are a good example of how not to plan your hunt rigidly. Both days I focused on the wrong thing and at the end of each hunt I found a patch that helped save the day. One of those days was an area that I re hit yesterday, some 2 weeks later. It produced 2 silver rings, silver earring an pendant all in the last hour of the hunt. Yesterday it was sanded in a bit more, so the targets were deeper, but focusing on a productive area rather than having a master plan, payed off. What I wasn't counting on was that every hole I dug was in an area that was packed with a sand and cobble stone mix! Solid as concrete. I use a pointed spade and the only way to dig was on your knees with raking the rocks out of the hole. I slept well that night I dug 134 holes trying to focus between the silver signals and possible gold signals. I abandoned the small gold which reads #1 on the Equinox because this beach has a lot of black rocks that also read a solid #1. Since digging was extremely hard, I opted to ignore most of them. So here are the results of an all day hunt. I remember a post about nickel ratios in parks vs gold, so I'm including my ratio. It is way off of what a park gets and what some other beaches get, but if you hit the right area, you can get these results. 20 nickels dug (including 1 silver war nickel) vs 3 pieces of gold. Most of those nickels dated early 60's and older. This is why beaches can not give you the expected ratio as this will not be repeatable every time out. It's beena little while since I hit gold and I was starting to give the equinox the old "stink eye" look. But it's back on my favorite list now The chain hit at #2, the ring at #8 and I think the stud at #3 or 4.

I want to get an XRF so bad but just can't justify the cost. The ones I've seen start at 15K and go up from there. I wanted to get one for my scrap metal business as it grows bigger. But secretly, I want it to test all my detecting finds

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.