NCtoad

Nice find!  I've gone over areas I've pounded with the 11" coil and that little 6 incher will still make a good find.  If one can be patient and slow down and not worry about the coverage the 6" will find the goods.

Awesome find!  Nothing like finding gold....especially 18k and heavy!

Mine worked!!  Looking forward to trying F2 in some old home sites.

and he needed to confirm my address to ship my repaired compadre back to me.  I sent in my compadre, I think it was last October, for warranty work.  Then, two days later I read that they had laid off all their employees.  Hadn't heard a thing since and wasn't overly distraught since I hardly ever use the compadre and I had a new equinox.  But, out of the blue yesterday Vince calls and says he put a new disc pot and a new coil on my compadre and is sending it home.  So if anyone else here had shipped one for warranty work and thought they might never get it back because the company went under there's still hope.  It seems he's still working on making good on all the warranty claims as long as they were made before they decided to call it quits.  I'm actually now looking forward to getting that little compadre back!  I never did use it a whole lot, but it has found me two gold rings.

Got to use my new ls pelso phones for the first time today at a creek swimming hole.  Didn't find much of anything, but I do like the headphones.  Plenty of volume, the tones are good enough...the low tones don't have bass like they do with the wm08's, but it's a non issue for me.  As far as build quality, they're very nice and stout with a nice long cord.  I didn't dunk them, but did dunk my nox for the first time!

4 hours ago, MCH2 said:

Work well; nice and loud.  The cord is long enough to plug straight into your machine without your headphones being pull off your head.

Thanks guys!  I like the price and had seen the LS Pelso phones on Kellyco's site, but wasn't sure if these were the same or someone just copying them.  Looks like they're $95 shipped with 3 day shipping from Hungary.  I won't be diving, but only creek wading and submersing my nox control pod in the deeper areas.  

I really don't want to spend $150+ on a set of  waterproof phones since I don't do a ton of water hunting.  

Anyone tried these:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/LS-PELSO-WATERPROOF-HEADPHONES-FOR-USE-WITH-MINELAB-EQUINOX600-800METAL-DETECTOR/273858263213?hash=item3fc33978ad:g:CIQAAOSwIbtb6pHb

On 4/8/2019 at 12:35 PM, Happa54 said:

Good post Mark

I find Park 1 to be the best mode for me too. Learned the FBS waggle from A Sabich Safari handbook and use it on all targets. I use to use a 6" coil on my FBS and it is excellent in the trash. But, the 11" stock coil is awesome too and I stay with it on all my hunts. The one thing I like about the waggle is that those initial faint squeaks become magnified after a couple of seconds of waggling through the target. I've pulled many deep faint squeakers from the dirt this way. 

This.  The nox just seems to home in with the wiggle if you catch that good tone on your regular swing.  I don't how many times I hear just a bit of a high tone and then go back to investigate while wiggling the coil and after a few seconds that signal gets clearer and clearer and I just know to dig.

I would guess $200-$250 with tesoro going out of business.  I have a vaquero also, but I'm going to keep it as a backup to my nox.  I hardly ever get it out since I got the nox, but when I do use it, the fun factor is pretty high.  

There may be a difference in the audio of a gold ring verses a pulltab, but let's face it, to get that tonal difference etched into our memories, we have to dig a lot of gold.  But that just doesn't happen.  If gold rings were as plentiful as pulltabs I'm sure I could note a difference in the signal....if there is a difference.  I don't believe air tests cut it on how it sounds in the wild.  I've done air tests on gold rings and pulltabs side by side and just can't tell a difference in the audio.  

13 hours ago, Bhogg said:

Hi All 

I’m just wondering if there’s anyway to tell the difference between gold rings/ jewellery and trash eg pull tabs as it all seams to come in around the same numbers!.

 Cheers 

No?   Seriously though, I've found three gold items with my nox.  The first was a 14.6 gram 10k class ring that was the third target when I first got my nox.  It rang up 20/21 and sounded really nice, but zinc cents come in at those numbers and sound the same to me.  The second item was a solid 14k, 2.9 gram pin of a hand holding a baseball.  It wasn't round, but oblong and it rang up a solid 10.  The third was a 14k, 5.65 gram wide women's wedding band.  It rang up a solid 17.  

Congrats on your first gold ring!  It's a nice one too being 14k instead of the lowly 10k stuff?

Another advantage to lowering the sense is that you'll get some nice modulation on the deeper stuff.  Just going from 20 to 17 will do that and it still goes very deep.

Wow, that barber's in great shape.  I just found my first one about week ago and it's not nearly as nice as yours.  Congrats!

I've had signals that were clipped while using no disc (all metal, horseshoe button engaged) and while doing a 360 degree swing on the target, I'll hit an angle where the signal will be a solid high tone.  This in park 1 or park 2 with iron bias at zero on both.  At almost all other angles of the my 360 degree swing, I'll hear iron and see negative numbers.  I'll just get that one sweet spot where it'll high tone (5 tones).  I think every time this has happened it's been a rusty old nail.  Now if I do a 360 degree swing and get mostly high tones  with just a few iron grunts, it's usually a coin with iron in the hole.  

I haven't heard anything, but I'd love to see a small (6"or 8") concentric coil come available.  

10 hours ago, Nakky said:

Left has more material under the bolt.
Nakky

I like the looks of the one on the right, but the one on the left looks like it has more clamping surface and looks like the camlock itself is beefier.

Forgot to add:  Does your rod use the OEM cuff or do you supply your own?

4 hours ago, steveg said:

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

NCtoad -- yes, that was the whole idea for the design...to design/procure a cam lock that was very strong/stable/secure, and thus permit the elimination of the button/pin and hole design as was included on the Minelab stock middle shaft.  YES, my design permits/provides infinite adjustment length -- again, a huge part of why I designed it the way I did.  I got "spoiled" from years of swinging Explorers and, now, the CTX -- and I grew to LOVE those secure clamping cam locks which allow infinite adjustment ability at the simple "flip of a lever."  I wanted to emulate that, with the Equinox.  ?

You asked about pricing; I'm thinking at this point that there are going to be a few different options of shaft available (with customizable options of course, but I'll just ignore that, for now).  Here's what I'm thinking for rough pricing for the more "standard" options...

I'm thinking that my "standard" shaft will come without a threaded butt-end of the shaft to accommodate the future, optional counterbalance system. This will be just an upper shaft with cam lock, plus holes drilled for the arm cuff and the control box, and a non-threaded "end cap" on the upper end.  Preliminary pricing for this "standard" shaft will be $75-ish plus shipping without the lower rod, and roughly $119 or so plus shipping, with the lower rod also included.

For the same upper shaft, but with the inclusion of the threaded butt-end of the shaft (for future compatibility with the planned/optional counterbalance system), and a threaded end cap, $85-ish plus shipping without the lower rod, and $129-ish plus shipping with the lower rod included.

As I said, the shaft is designed so as to NOT require the button holes.  However, the lower rods already include the spring buttons, so it's easy to allow the shaft to also utilize that spring button, just by drilling appropriate holes in the shaft.  As such, any customer who WANTS the button holes included on the shaft for any reason, will be able to request that as one of the custom options.  For that option, that would add $5 to $10 to any of the above prices.

This is kind of what I'm thinking at this point.

Let me know if you have any other questions...

Thanks for your interest!

Steve

 

Thanks Steve!

That looks awesome!  I take it without any holes for a pin to set into, the shaft is not only stronger, but infinitely adjustable in length.  Any idea on the pricing?  

Thanks, just ordered it.

I have the first book and would like to order the new one.  Where do I order one from?

I used my 6" coil yesterday at the only cellar hole I've found near where I live.  I've been through this place with a few other detectors:  F70, mojave, compadre and my nox with the 11" coil.  My nox has the updated software version.  

So yesterday using the 6" coil I got quite a bit of falsing with VDI's in the zinc penny range (19-21).  This also happens to be indian head penny range and the only coin I found at this site was a 1906 indian head, but I found it with my tesoro mojave.  

I would get some solid zinc signals in one direction, but always iron grunts in the other and sometimes iron grunts with the zinc signals.  I dug these in hope of an indian head with a nail next to it, but it was always a nail and there are tons of nails at this site.  I was running park 1, sense anywhere from 16-23, iron bias anywhere from 0-9, recovery speed anywhere from 5-8 and 50 tones.  

I'm another fan of the stock headphones.  They've held up well and the case is really nice and protects them  while traveling to the hunting site.