maxxkatt

Ok, use the 800 in gold1 mode with six inch coil to pinpoint area of boulder where gold was located. Knocked off this portion of rock and expected to find gold signal in the main rock or portion I knocked off. It was neither. smashed up some of the smaller pieces that came off and panned them. no trace of color. The 800 with the same settings did not show any gold in the main rock or pieces knocked off. so any ideas what was making the 800 indicate gold with 1 & 2 on the TID? Seems like it disappeared. Was there not gold there in the first place? I think that is likely, but what was the 800 sounding off on?

when my boys were growing up 8 and 15 we spent two years gold hunting in an area around Dalonegha, GA. yes we always found a little gold but my best find was an 1800 hand forged mining pick. I was using a fisher gold bug and when I swung over the pick it sounded like a buried volkswagen. This is one of my finest finds. In addition my older son found a 400 year old fully intact alt alt point. The memories of our hunts are more valuable than the gold we found.

well I hunted the tailings pile and found shotgun shells, 22 shells and a spoon. Walked to the mine entrance and there were several large quarts rocks with the equinox using the 6" coils gave sold 1 and 2 in gold one. Well this rock was 30 lbs so could not find much bigger rock. Decided to hike back to the car with my detector, back pack, lesche shovel, gold pick, Nox and this 30 lb rock. It was a little over a mile. That was quite a chore for me. at home put it on a plastic tub and it still is giving 1 and 2 reading. I don't think there is any foil in there. any suggestions other than break it up with my big hammer and a chisel? Just start breaking it in halves and keep going after the gold signals? I am new at this so don't want to mess up by not knowing what to do. here is a pic of the quartz rock. looks like lot of iron staining shows where I broke off a small piece.

I am going to a permissions on an old gold mine from mid 1800's. There is a tailings pile about 4 feet high 20 x 30 feet that is a mixture of dirt and white quartz. I am using an Equinox 800. I will be using gold 1 settings. my question if a quartz rock indicates gold do I break it up in the field or bring back home to do it carefully. I have to walk back about 2 miles to the tailings pile from where I park my car. also can you distinquish between a hot rock and white quartz with gold in it? thanks for any help. last time I hunted gold in streams was using the fisher gold bug to find buckshot and black sand and then dig and pan the gravel. That was pretty easy. This seems a little more complex.

very good to know. I was a software developer for many years. One time we sent out an update to our 3,000 customers and within a week all 3,000 want to go back to the previous version which was MS-DOS. The new version which didn't work very well was our first attempt at converting to the first version of MS Windows which was Windows 1.0. Boy was windows 1.0 very screwed up release of windows. The engineers rushed out windows 1.0 to compete with Apple. So it is good to know we have a rollback option. I was planning to wait a week or so to see how this Equinox update did not screw up something else which is always possible.

if you are hunting in a creek, then find those shotgun pellets with your detector and you will likely find black sand and gold since those lead pellets are heavy. At least that worked for me in hunting gold in North Georgia. This is how we located gold bearing areas in the small creeks to dig for our panning. another thing i do with my nox 800 and six inch coil when looking for gold is to take a small nugget in vial and bury it in the gravel and adjust my settings to get the very best response from that small nugget. Because adjusting settings on a known target in the area you hunt gives you the best settings for the hunt that day. This is because your detector is measuring the difference between your target and the ground that you are actually hunting.

Here is my air test on the Equinox 800 comparing the 11 inch stock coil to the 6” coil. Did a factory reset and set sensitivity to 21, recovery speed to 6. Iron bias of 6. Setup and methods: I set the coils on an all plastic child’s picnic table to eliminate any metal. Swept the table to determine there were no metal objects in the table. Use a yard stick butted up against the base of the coil. My depth measurements were taken when the TID numbers for each metal object started going from a strong signal to an iffy signal. My hand sweep was done to replicate the normal sweep of a coil passing from left to right and back over the metal object. I am a relic hunter mainly interested in Civil War items and only had three three ringers to test along with some silver coins. The results below are only for the .57 caliber. Not much difference in the slightly smaller calibers. Below are just some preliminary tests and not the whole combinations of different items on all different hunting modes. 6” coil .57 caliber bullet at 4 inches rang up a 19 in the park1 mode. .57 caliber bullet at 5.5 inches rang up 16-19 in the park2 mode. .57 caliber bullet at 6.5 inches rang up 16 in the gold2 mode. 11” coil .57 caliber bullet at 8 inches rang up a 16 in the park2 mode. .57 caliber bullet at 10 inches rang up 16 in the gold2 mode. 6” coil Standing liberty quarter 4.5 inches rang up 29 in park2 mode. Barber dime 3 inches rang up 21-22 in park1 mode Barber dime 6 inches rang up 22 in park2 mode 11” coil Standing liberty quarter 10 inches rang up 25 in gold2 mode. Barber dime 7 inches rang up 21-22 in park2 mode. Barber dime 8.5 inches rang up 21 in gold2 mode.

I agree with Norm S. With my new Equinox 800 I am in the learning phase and dig more targets to educate myself. But I am finding as two months go by on the 800, I am calling the targets better and having to dig less trash. I probably am losing some good signals on the iffy targets and most likely rings since they ring up in different areas of the TIDs. Also I have had 2 hunts on the 800 with my six inch coil and find myself in my familiar parks and woods and going into the brush jungle more often because I can and am finding some things others have just not had their coil over. Then there the factor of spending a nice chunk of change on the 800, 6" coil and other accessories that you just want to justify your investment decision. Especially when you wife always ask about what rings did I find.

hard to imagine that the 13 stars so not represent the 13 colonies.

Any idea of the weight of the equinox 6" coil?

try historic aerials and google earth. some old parks and baseball fields just show up as green spaces. On both platforms you can go back to prior year images.

just wait til your long time hosting company decides to get rid of their good old home gown American customer support staff and move it offshore to Asia. I was hosting 7 book review web sites and soon after they moved support offshore and things started going wrong that never went wrong in the previous six years. And they could not fix some of them or even explain what happened. Fortunately I had my own backups and immediately started moving to another hosting company. Really fun trying to understand their broken english and waiting for them to flip through their support pages or bumping me up to a higher manager with the same broken english. admin, i know this is a little off topic so you can remove it if you wish and I won't feel bad.

Here is what I think about the 800. People who are somewhere between beginners and intermediate users in terms of skills find the 800 perplexing. People who are pros especially with lengthy experience with Minelab detectors understand the 800 and appreciate what a great detector for the price and many features it offers. It really does replace multiple detectors. But only if you know how to use it properly and understand how to effectively set it up for different ground matrix conditions. A typical user, lets say an AT Pro or AT Max user (there are tons of them) tends to pretty much use their metal detectors only in one environment and in Pro metal mode or some other mode. So they may have 500 hours on the AT Pro but it is all the same experience. They guys who really know what they are doing tend to have the $2,000 + type detectors and know how to use every feature effectively. So when a typical beginner or intermediate AT Pro user gets the Nox 800 they simply don't know how to use it and become bewildered and complain on the forums or on youtube about this and that. They hear a lot of hype about the Nox series on the forums and youtube and when they get it they find it won't do miracles for them because they don't know how to use it. A beginner or intermediate detectorist will not learn this remarkable machine in a dozen hours. I include myself in that category. If you want additional detail information on the 800 get Clive James Clynick's book "The Minelab EQuinox series - from beginner to advance book. It is only 111 pages but packed with very specific information on the Equinox 800. There is very little fluff in this book. He does remind you of some maybe forgotten like target ID techniques and specific examples of setting up your 800 for different ground matrix situations. He also give you hint how to start easy and learn the sophisticated metal detector and not jumping into the complex settings abilities. If you are a beginner and only hunt in the standard modes eg park1,2 field1,2 etc then you are only using half of the capabilities of the 800. Take the time to really learn to understand and use this remarkable machine. And it does take study and field time, there are no shortcuts.

I am a Garrett AT Pro and carrot user for 3 years. The one thing I could not stand with the carrot was having to recycle thru six settings to change from say 3 audio back to 1 audio since you had to cycle thru the vibrate only settings. Yeah, I know some tout that silent vibrate only feature to help avoid alerting curious by-standers with the tones. Heck when they see me with my metal detector, Predator shovel and earphones they kind of get curious and ask me if I found anything. I don't think a beeping pinpointer made them any more curious. The minelab pro-35 is much easier to use, just up or down. The ferrous mode is also helpful.