cudamark

On 9/1/2022 at 7:13 AM, King-Of-Bling said:

All this talk about power is really just that : talk , until it's out and we get to use it. But a full charge takes 7 hours in this day and age ? That is disgusting. Call me ridiculous , paranoid or whack. Here's all I know. In California , our great governor in this crazy heat has told us to not charge our EVs and 1 week prior said in the next decade no more new gas vehicles will be produced or sold. Also to turn up our thermostats as in don't run the A/C because it will cripple the power grid and cause blackouts. More insanity from these people. And all I can think of is why no one has made a solar powered detector yet. Lol

So, you want to carry a solar panel too? Where? on your head? 😄 That option may not be as attractive for those of us who hunt a lot at night.

17 hours ago, Dancer said:

So, I've been hunting since 2002.    I got an example         How doe's someone make a decision to get rid of a proven expensive   machine for almost a clone of the machine they got rid of.      Say the Deus 1 vs the Deus 2    (Just a example I've never even seen any Deus)  Can the D2 improve a hunters finds enough to make the switch? Even when most guys dig  the  iffy signals anyway.      Not picking on Deus, name most any other company and they have Clones of machines that have been around for many years.           So 3 of us wade Panama City for 2-3 months in the winter.   It can be quite perky in there most times.    One guy beats the 2 others most years.        He's younger, can hunt deeper and longer.   He hunts a 20+ yr. old Excal.     I run a Tarsacci other pal a Nox 600       Fairly new machines.    Huh ?    How would he do with our machines?  About the same I bet.     He can find holes out just a little too deep for us two.     This guy tries his best to share his spots with us too.  A real good guy.  So because he can get out to the sweet spot he can out do us with his machine    or ours.   

IFor good results        #1  It's  the Site    #2   The hunter   #3    The Machine             I don't see how you can get around it. 

This is just my opinion based on 52+ years of detecting with dozens of different machines. The tech has come a LONG way since then, but, almost all machines made in the last 20-30 years can still be competitive depending on the venue and the competency of the user. Will an Ace 250 find the same targets that a Nox, D2, and Legend find in mild ground or dry sand at the beach? 90% of the time, yes. It's that 10% we're fighting to get these days. That little extra depth, stability, tone/I.D., and/or processor speed to get those tough-to-find targets in worse than average ground. Having a higher end machine that can be adjusted to the conditions will sometimes get you that extra 10%. Naturally, experience on a machine is key, but, all things being equal, someone with the proper experience using the better machines will out perform the same experience with a lesser machine at certain venues. In some cases, it's much more than a 10% increase in finds, sometimes it will be virtually 0%. Will that same Ace 250 find the same nuggets that a GPZ 7000? Not a chance....more like a 90+% advantage for the GPZ. At a nail infested home site? The Ace may reverse those odds for an experienced user. As for your list on how to get good results........you need to match the site, with the machine, with an experienced detectorist to have the best success. It's not necessarily one more important than the other.

3 hours ago, Unipin said:

We dig everything, this is not beach hunting 😉

We dig everything too (non-ferrouswise) at the beach. We generally don't find square nails at the beach, but, having better iron I.d. will help us avoid sketchy sounding junk iron that we really don't want to bother with.

5 minutes ago, midalake said:

Except for all that internal coil bracing in the picture. Which is gonna really suck in the sand. Fields too. 

That will leave the door open for someone to design and market a solid skid plate and/or a clam shell coil cover to keep things from filling the "bathtub". Wouldn't work in the water, but, that should work good on land.

The specs look pretty good to me so far. We'll have to see how they pan out. They just added 6 feet to the underwater rating. That in itself indicates they've done something to improve the waterproofness. 10 preset and 10 user programs are welcome too, as well as the enhanced EMI rejection.....which is really becoming a problem in some areas with powerful WiFi signals. I guess we'll have to wait until the other shoe drops to get a price.....

1 hour ago, King-Of-Bling said:

It looks like they've solved the obvious problems we have suffered on the beach with this thing. But I'm really interested in the internal guts. Looks like the numbers will be spread out more. But the numbers have always been a bit jumpy. Other than the solid line targets away from all the trash , those are easy. But I recall being possibly the 1st to talk about digging a -5 and pulling out a honker gold ring from 16" deep. It read normal once out of the ground. People slaughtered me for that , calling me a liar. I didn't care and thought more for me ! Eventually more started chiming in with the same results. Bottomline was I still ended up digging about 90% of my targets. Not much different than my PI. I sure hope this new ML has some amazing new technology. 

It's interesting that you mentioned the -5 readings you were getting. It's a common thing that I find here in our black sand polluted beaches. I'll get a deep non-ferrous reading (sometimes a pretty sketchy one), take a big scoop, resweep the target and get a -5, -6. Lots of people I know would figure it's deep rusty iron and refill the hole. Not me.... I continue to dig until the target is out of the ground. Almost all the time it's a non-ferrous target once out and on the surface. 

I wonder if they finally ran across one of my complaints about coil design? I've been advocating for years that the "ears" should be on a replaceable yoke at the bottom of the shaft, and not on the coil. Being someone who hunts the beach and large fields often, I'm drooling over seeing that (supposedly) 15" coil! Time to fire up that credit card! 👍😀

Agreed. salt water is a whole different venue over fresh water. If you want to find tiny link gold chains in salt water, use a PI machine. The D2, Minelab BBS, FBS,  Nox, Legend, etc, will find chains if they have big enough links, and/or shallow enough, but, they're rather limited in their salt water modes in comparison to what a PI can do.

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Miscommunication between Aussies and Yanks is legendary, and not to be taken seriously.  

What's the expression......Two countries separated by a common language? 😄

Yeah, not the greatest beach video. We'll have to wait until someone who knows what they're doing on a salt water beach to show us the real "scoop"! Speaking of scoop, he didn't even show us what was found let alone use a scoop to do it. Not as stable as I would hope it would be.....at least with his settings. It would make it a chore to ferret out those deep targets amongst the chatter.

Nice set of videos Steve! Well done! 👍

Include a 12 Gauge shotgun type pin pointer and you'll be all set! 😄

23 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I believe the majority of coil ear breakages and all coils are from either over-tightening, or leaning on coils, or both. Yet you never see a single person ever admit to either. 

I'm sure that contributes to the problem. In my case, I've owned at least two dozen detectors, and probably twice that many coils in my 52 years of detecting. I've never broken a single coil until I got the Equinox 12 X 15" coil.....and I'm on my third one so far. Same tightness, same wear, same use. You would think that Minelab, after getting many warranty claims on broken coil ears, would take a good look into their design and make changes to thicken or gusset the ears so that doesn't happen. What, it might cost them another $.02 in plastic? That's got to be cheaper than having to supply a new coil and shipping.

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

 People that go slow, coil to the ground, and have an ear for whispers, find the gold.

 

That applies to more than just gold nuggets....👍😀

So far, it's WiFi signals that give me the most fits.

18 hours ago, Rick N. MI said:

I use the Gold Kruzer relic and jewelry hunting and it can be a noisy detector. I am thinking the 24k could replace it and the Gold Kruzer could take a break.

The 24k is quite an incredible detector. It runs quiet.. The Gold Kruzer can drive me crazy sometimes. I want to know if the 24k would work as a relic hunter. I know it is nugget detector and is extremely sensitive to very tiny targets. With the Gold Kruzer I set it to disc out nails and dig targets above foil when relic hunting to eliminate those tiny targets. I assume the 24k can do this too. Am I right?

I like using a nugget detector for relic and gold jewelry hunting plus my other detectors. The Gold Kruzer has incredible separation and I assume the 24k does too. 

I also use:

Equinox 800, Legend, Xp Orx, Gold Kruzer, Vaquaro and Tejon.

Looks like you have an Equinox 800. What's the problem using that?

12 hours ago, PeterED said:

But who has 10 detectors or more?

Me, I currently have 15, so, I guess I'm terminal. 🤪

2 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

 

I tried to make this testing as fair as possible and well within the limits of what these detectors can do. I could have fabricated some extreme situation and made them all look bad........but I was not trying to make one detector look bad or another look incredible. I just wanted to give readers that are interested in these detectors, especially those that have similar ground mineralization, a good look at what they can do on normal depth (surface to 10") typical USA coin sized targets. 

Nice report! I wouldn't mind seeing what each of them can do on the real deep and/or iffy targets. I don't want to paint any of them as second rate either, but, in some areas (especially ones that have been hammered over the years) finding good items on the fringe of detection is important. Finding a machine that does the best at that can be a game changer. Naturally, site conditions will vary and one or more of them might be better under condition A, and another might be better under condition B. With enough feedback from various soil/sand conditions, we can make an intelligent choice in detector, coil, and settings for our hunting sites and conditions. Thanks, well done.👍

I guess I'll throw my two crusty zinc cents worth of opinion on this subject too. I have both the 800 and D2 at this point. I have thousands of hours on the 800, but, only a couple dozen hours on the D2, so, admittedly this isn't a totally fair comparison until I get many more hours on it and get used to it's differences and quirks. These are just my initial impressions of the D2, and what I like and dislike.

Like:

1. the weight

2. the collapsibility

3. The adjustability and number of canned programs as well as the extra custom slots.

4. More robust waterproofing

5. Turning on/off the detector also turns on/off the headphones

6. Not having to mess with any cables, which will make coil changes (whenever they actually have a 13" one for sale) even easier

7. Coil mount/bolt/tensioning design....at least so far, although I'm not a fan of a rear mount.

8. The depth seems very good with a stock 9" coil. Can't wait to see what a 13" one will do!

Don't like, or like less than the 800:

1. The menu tree....more like a forest than a linear tree. Not very intuitive IMO (ie. the number of tones choice is under the discrimination expert heading? WTF?) 

2. No threshold tone available in anything except in Pitch. (I like full tones)

3. Having to use 2 different buttons to use the pin point feature...one to turn it on, a different one to turn it off. Idiotic...

4. Turning off the machine erases many current settings unless you save the program

5. The need to stop and add the antenna to walk into the surf

6. No depth meter

7. I can't seem to get as close to playground equipment or metal fences as I can with the 800, even with the 9" compared to the 800's 11" or 12 X 15". It seems to be much more sensitive to large nearby iron.

Things I'm undecided on, or, on the fence about:

1. The tones/sounds....always hated the original D1 sounds. The square tones are a real improvement, but, still not as good as the 800 or many other machines I've owned. They might grow on me over time

2. The backphones. I like the weight and the tone quality is good. They just don't feel right yet.

3. Silent search. I have always used a threshold tone and feel "naked" without it.

4. The D2 seems a bit less sensitive to tiny mid conductors at depth than the 800. Still testing that though.

5. The flexy lower shaft is actually a bit worse than the factory 800.....didn't think that was even possible! Doesn't really bother me, though I would prefer some nice light and stiff carbon fiber. On a side note.....some taller people (I'm 5'11") will find that lower shaft a bit short. I have it all the way extended and it's adequate, but, not much more than that.

I'll add more as my caffeine deprived brain triggers more thoughts.......

15 hours ago, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

I must be a lazy hunter. I like turning the machine on and hunting. I'm reading about all of these adjustments to all the new machines.. I may as well be blind for I have no clue.

That's one good thing about the Excalibur.....put a brick on the gas pedal and hunt! 

The targets that give me the hardest time are the cut coins at a turfed site. Those suckers sound like a GOOD deep target. They have the good target I.D., deep reading on the meter, and the faint signal that usually indicates a deep desirable target. It's only after popping the plug and chasing the sliver of a target with a pin pointer that you get your heart broken. Anyone know of a way of telling the difference between one and an actual good deep target? I have one old park I like, but, they have a real sharp lawn mower that has strewn coin shards everywhere. Makes it a real chore to hunt.

From what I've seen over the years, it's currently about a 10:1 ratio men:women, up from 50:1 years ago. This is for general metal detecting at parks and beaches. Relic hunters are more like 30:1, and prospectors even higher. When it comes to divers, I have yet to see a woman doing it. I'm sure there are some out there, but, just never ran across one.

Maybe Jeff Mc...  and Gerry Mc... would be a good choice if Steve bows out.

2 hours ago, Sandheron said:

I will be detecting a beach with EMI most of the time, so I need the SMF to counter the salt. Catch 22 for my situation. I guess nobody else will be able to deal with it (emi) either so nobody will have an edge. It will be a competition of  who can tune it the best. 

Here's where using a different detector, such as a BBS machine, might hold the edge. In my area of the U.S., BBS machines do better with EMI than the Equinox. There may be others even better, but, when you need MF for salt water/sand, you're rather limited with choices.

You might also check with Nokta/Makro since they're in your country. Maybe they have something that will work for you or they might have a local referral. Just don't tell them it's for an Equinox! 😄