Guessologist

Yikes, a 20% increase for a 900 is pretty spicy on top of what is already a significant premium over some more or less equivalent machines here.

This was me over the last six months or so, had an Equinox 600 with the 6" coil that I just about wore out and was bumping up against the limitations of it's recovery speed in my worst areas so I sold it, and waiting for the Legend to be released I picked up an E-TRAC for a totally different style of hunt. At this time I wanted to give some more in-depth target ID a go as I was beginning to find the Equinox single number system frustrating as good targets became sparse, and the Fe:Co system appealed to me. I knew I was going to under-perform in iron infested areas but I was burned out on digging nails for the time being. It was just what I needed, found plenty of new good targets in my usual grounds. After I'd given most of my usual areas a going over and good targets again were drying up, it was time to pull the trigger and decided on the Legend, I've had it for about three weeks now. I did consider getting an 800 fairly strongly, used prices are good near me but I found it hard to resist giving the newcomer a spin. Something that I didn't factor strongly into my decision at the time that reinforces my choice now is the Legend's Ferro-check, a nice little tool that gives you a bit more information if you need to make choices about whether to dig or not. I see it as kind of like having the two-number system of the CTX/E-TRAC but with one set being a visual indication instead. There's plenty of information encoded in the tones of all these machines of course but having a visual indicator is useful. Given how close in performance the Legend and 800 appear to be from other people's experience, I think I made the right choice for myself. For what it's worth, I'm having a blast with it and the Legend is finding plenty of good targets in ground I covered well with the 600 and the E-TRAC. Much of this could be down to myself becoming more experienced as time goes on, and just using a different detector on the ground regardless of performance differences. Only things I can think of that the Minelab might do better for now is a slight weight advantage, volume can be set lower on the 800 and the Legends screen material is made from the softest plastic known to science, put a screen protector on it as soon as it's out of the box even if you aren't fussy about such things would be my recommendation...

I've had a Legend for a few days now, coming from an Equinox and E-TRAC and that's my only real complaint about the detector. I don't use headphones while detecting as I like to keep my ears open to the environment, and like a fairly quiet hunt but the lowest Legend global volume setting would be close to 50% volume on the previously mentioned detectors by my ears. I've compensated a bit by dropping the tone volumes to about 6 but pinpointing a shallow target is a very noisy affair since it's not affected by that setting. I'd love to see some lower volume settings in a future update.

Here's a nice little self-contained set of finds, these came out of a 1x1m area on a small pushed up pile of dirt and rubble in a local forest reserve. I've wandered over this area plenty of times before, but only now did I snag a good target. I had a hunch there had to be something of interest here but I just couldn't make it work... There was a smattering of aluminium pull tabs dumped on top of the pile to cause distraction as well. Can't work up any more targets even with the nox set at F2-0, tempted to get the pick out there and turn it all over a bit. 1873 and 1877 pennies, an 1842 groat and a silver cufflink made in 1911.

Yeah the old bronze pennies are amazing with the way they hold up, and anecdotally it seems that the pre-1860 chunky copper British coinage weathers better than the more modern pre-decimal Australian coinage they are almost always in good condition. The goldies were quickly converted into fundraiser chocolate bars at work...

Got back to having a swing around my usual spots with the Nox 600 after a month's break, it's funny how targets grow back if you leave the area alone for a while: Also picked up $6.50 in modern coinage in one spill which in a way was more unusual than the old pennies - not much modern action in this old gold-mining area so pre-decimal coinage is the order of the day usually.

Thanks, I remember it being about 22-24 undisturbed, jumping to about 27-28 or so with a couple of inches of dirt off the top. Didn't check that one out of the ground but the couple of other .925 florins I've encountered were in the 31-33 range for sure.

Cheers, I'm normally posting on the Aussie forums but things can get a bit quiet over there! I'm currently working over my old demolished house sites with extremely detuned settings on the Nox which is quite interesting after running high sensitivity/reduced iron masking. All the good stuff is mixed in with nails, big iron and buckshot iron gravel, reading up on here about how others were dealing with EMI and interference gave me some good ideas. Taking some of Steve's comments about reducing sensitivity to heart and the extreme, I've dropped the sensitivity to 5, way lower than seems sensible, and just for giggles maxed out the FE2 which has been a winner. This combo's picking up near-surface iron masked coins that I've swept over many times before with no good tell. I haven't seen many guys running that low on the forums but the famous GT soils coupled with nail beds sounds calls for extraordinary settings I reckon. Best find recently would have to be the 1873 gothic florin in my profile, it was only 4 inches down in pretty forgiving soil, by all rights I should have found it a year or so ago but I try not to be too systematic with gridding my sites since I'd like them to last...sustainable detecting?

Hi all, thought I'd better sign up for an account as I've been lurking for too long! The technical discussions in the Equinox subforum keep me coming back, always interesting to see what new ideas people are coming up with to get the most out of their machines. I've mostly been coin and relic hunting for the two years I've been into detecting, and luckily have some unique permissions in an 1860's gold mining town that enable me to get onto what I think are some really interesting finds. The area's not really known for detectable gold so it's escaped a real hammering until I've got my hands on it! The soil's crazy mineralised so it's been a challenge to find settings that work, every time I change a parameter more finds leap out of ground that I've slammed before. My favourite finds are the chunky copper pre-1860 Victoria pennies and 1850's trader's tokens, I think they even edge out big silver for me...