Daniel Tn

It is no secret I have a huge dislike for most people in general.  The more nosey they are, the bigger my dislike of them.  I figure I mind my business, and they should mind theirs.  But that is often the opposite of what most do.  One day I had a crazy idea and the even crazier part is, that it works, and works extremely well.  I have an old park close to my house that I like to detect, but it is popular with snobby people that walk/job the walkways around the park.  They will give you the stink eye big time.  The crazy idea was...I had noticed the local city workers usually wear a hi vis safety vest when they are working, and nobody even seemed to pay them any mind or attention.  So I bought one and gave it a try while detecting.  It works so well I will never go hunt a public area without it.  I guess people just assume you are doing cleanup work or some kind of maintenance and leave you alone.  

If you are a fisherman, you will get this and if not, it will be Greek to you.

The setting adjustments on the 600 vs 800 remind me of a 5 speed trolling motor vs a variable speed trolling motor.  On a 5 speed, with each "click" movement, it jumps quite a bit over the previous setting. You have 5 of those speeds and the biggest one is top out speed.  The variable speed motors have a rolling dial...the max and low end speeds will be the same as what is on the 5 speed.  The difference is, you get to control those "in between" speeds instead of just jumping from one to the other.  A person can get by with a 5 speed, but once you go to a variable, there is no going back.  

In trolling, I've seen it to where fish seemed to key in on baits at a certain speed...say 2.5 mph.  On a 5 speed trolling motor, one setting may be 2 mph and the next be 3.2 mph. So you'd end up not catching those fish that a variable speed trolling motor would have let you key in on.  On the 600, that's what you are getting...the equiv to a 5 speed trolling motor.  Whereas the 800 lets you get those inbeween settings for finer tuning.  In a lot of places, you may never need it.  But there will come a day when that slight difference can make all the difference in the world.

The explanation of the Beach mode stability and performance in mineralized ground was put to me, in this way: is a combination of it using lower transmit power and the frequencies are lower weighted than any of the other modes.  Lower frequency machines have traditionally done well in mineralized ground.

For results in the air, the other modes do detect coins and jewelry better. But that comes with a cost in being bombarded with false signals and noise in mineralized ground. A good signal can simply get lost in the noise. On most forums, particularly the Nox forum at Findmall, when people ask for setting help for freshwater, 99% of people will say "the beach modes are designed for saltwater beaches. You will get better performance in the Park or Field modes".  I guess better is a relative term.  If I can use the other modes with stability, I will but it looks like in some freshwater places...probably on land too...where the beach modes seem to do a great job.

Just my opinion but I think a big part of the Equinox mystery is that there is so little hardcore factual info about what makes it tick. I'm always looking for an edge and keep an open mind toward listening to what others say and or their experiences/data. I currently have all the little books/guides on the Equinox and every one of them is filled with hearsay and guesses as to how this or that works.  Not at all what I was hoping for.

Take the detect modes for example. On most other detectors, those modes are nothing more than saved programs that have different discrimination patterns and tone options. It's no big deal to jump from one to the other and you can know you probably aren't missing anything unless that particular mode has it discriminated out.  It's different on the Nox, because each mode acts like a different machine. The only clues to how to utilize the Multi IQ and the modes, are found in a few short words in a chart from Minelab.  Everything else at this point...books included...are just guesses/theories.  A lot of us have had this machine for over a year now, and speaking for me personally, I still haven't wrapped my head around a full understanding of the machine.  Sure, I have found a lot of stuff with it but I'm always doubting myself with it, wondering if I have missed something by not selecting the optimal mode.  This almost always leads to me rehunting the same areas with different modes and a lot of mode flipping while I've got a target located.

It is nice for a change, to read someone's direct involvement with the product, to begin explaining a little more of what this or that does instead of it all just being mysterious and educated guessing.  I find myself in the boat of always wanting to learn. Based on what I've learned, I can take that and apply that knowledge to helping me make a more solid choice in finding optimal performances for me.  Maybe even making a light bulb click on, to something I had not given any thought to.  

In my case for recovery speed, I personally experimented a lot with that, and still do from time to time.  Over in my world, in more severe mineralized soil, I found I get better target response by using the faster recovery speeds.  However I admit, I have actually never really experimented much in Park 1.  Most of my hunting has been done in Park 2 and the Field modes.  I have dabbled into the Gold modes some due to some claiming astonishing performance in mineral vs the other modes for relic hunting.  I can't say that has been my experience with those particular modes.  I seem to have better success in the regular modes and opening the whole disc screen (horseshoe button).

Now, a great example of something I would have never thought to try:   I discovered this a couple weeks ago at a badly mineralized freshwater beach I hunt.  This particular beach, a machine like the CTX 3030 would null continuously due to the ground being so bad.  That particular machine wants to run single digit sensitivity there.  The Nox is extremely chatty in the Park and Field modes there. In fact, all machines I've had there are that way, some are useless at it.  Nothing is deep there, so the way I always hunt it is to just lower the sensitivity down to extremely low levels and scoop the solid hits.  This helps but does not eliminate the falsing on the Nox.  I read on one of the forums where another person was experiencing this, and had tried the Beach modes and they said their machine was quiet as could be.  By my understanding, the Beach modes on the Nox are just for salt beaches and salt water.  Everything you read on the forums say to use the other modes for freshwater.  Well guess what.  I gave the beach modes a try and the Nox is insanely quiet on this beach now. I can run my sensitivity up to 18-20 and not hear a sound until the coil is over something worth scooping.  See, I would have never figured to even try that since the books and manual says it's designed for saltwater use, and that there is no way to ground balance in it. 

That is awesomeness!  I swear though, I know her doppelganger; she is an archery shooting friend of mine.  They could pass for sisters for sure.  

GB_Amateur -- One site in particular made me take note as to hunting in different modes.  I was hunting a Civil War camp and hunted about half of it in one of the modes. I can't remember which but I did do a video of it and the following hunt. Anyway...that first day I recovered several minie balls and larger pieces of camp lead, etc.  I came back the next time and finished the camp area...then kinda skimmed through it in a different mode.  During that skimming process, I realized I was going to have to rehunt the entire area...cause now I was finding small brass, buttons, etc that I had somehow missed.  Sure enough, I think the 2nd hunt produced a half dozen buttons, smaller bullets, etc whereas the first one was mostly .58 cal bullets and 1 button.  Oddly, I have NOT hunted all that much in the Field modes. In my particular testing, I have favored the Park modes.  

Currently, I admittedly have been using/testing the Tarsacci MDT detector more than the Equinox.  Except for in the water.

I had the luxury of being able to go back to some of these swim areas when the water level was dropped this past fall/winter, and recovering all/any targets that remained after hunting all summer and early fall. It was clear to see why these had fallen through my scoop. Just a short list....small split shot sinkers, .22 LR bullets, swim trunk drawstring eyelets, etc.  These were all mostly single digit hits on the Nox, with some venturing into the 10-11 range.  I didn't find any jewelry doing this, althoughI was hoping to. I use a Stealth 920 scoop, so it does have fairly large holes.  I bought a scoop with smaller holes but find it more trouble to use because it keeps too much in the basket...rocks, clay, etc. Takes a lot of digging to find what's in the basket. The only effective way of using it was to actually make a floating sifter out of pool noodles and dump all the scoop contents into it. That grew a little annoying to me, so I reverted back to the Stealth scoop. If I realize that what I am scooping is falling thru, I just move on now.  

Another thing I failed to mention is that the Nox can make it somewhat difficult to decide what to use when it comes to what mode to use.  Nobody is absolutely clear as to what the "secret sauce" does between the modes....say Park 1 vs Park 2.  When all other settings are changed to make them match...disc, iron bias, tones, etc...there is still a difference in how each mode handles/responds to particular targets.  I have all the books written on the Equinox, have read lots of posts over the year too, plus my own trial and error testing.  At best, everyone is still guessing as to what is going on, based on Minelab's description of the algorithms and weighting. But here's the thing in a nutshell as it just happened to me a couple weeks ago...just one example.  I was hunting a freshwater swim area looking for a ring that a young lady lost over Memorial Day weekend.  I had pretty much cleaned this beach out last yr of all trash and such so any signal located meant that it was a recent drop, which is exactly what I was looking for. Well, as far out as I could get while keeping my head above water (not diving). I hit it with Park 1, because to me, it runs quieter and I was looking for a recent drop.  I was finding a few recent coins out in the water.  But no ring.  I hunted for an hour and covered most of the suspected lost zone...the area she said she was in when she noticed it missing.  I had actually turned around and was rehunting it from a different pattern direction (thinking maybe I had missed getting the coil over it) when I got a scratchy one way hit.  I kept going over it and over it.  Down in about thigh deep water I could see a round shiny object on the bottom that looked suspiciously like a ring. Something told me to try Park 2....flipped over to it and that signal was high tone, loud and clear repeating every sweep over it.  Park 1...broken up. Hmm. Checked disc...it was the same (everything positive was accepted, 50 tones, iron bias at 1, recovery speed the same) and  Scooped it and there was her ring.  I decided to just rehunt the whole area in Park 2 just for kicks.  Found a lot more small junk but also found 1 more ring and even some more coins that took me a few scoops to get (meaning they were deeper).   The catch there is...I was also able to get out deeper than I could last year.  Last year it was unseasonably wet...rained pert near all summer.  So water levels were higher than normal.  This summer has already started out dry and I noticed I was able to get out considerably further than I could last year.  What would have been 2 feet over my head in depth last yr, is now just around shoulder deep.  Anyways, Park 2 is typically more noisy overall for me but did respond better to this particular ring.  Ring had no stamp in it for metal type.  The young lady said her father had made it to fit her and that it had a lot of sentimental value to her.  Whatever the case...it was just one recent example of many like it that I have personally saw over the past year. I like having the versatility at my disposal but don't like how easy it is to pass right over and dismiss a good target as trash in one mode but then it turn into a no brainer "dig me" in another mode.  Especially in an area when something good could turn up all across the metal size and compilation spectrum.  It truly is like having multiple detectors in one. When time has allowed, I have often hunted an area in one mode, then rehunt it with a diff mode to see what turns up.  I have been surprised by this several times now.

Haha I didn't even have to mention a name and ya'll got the reference.  For me, it is more of the over posting fatigue that gets me. I can't stand a whole lot of talk that doesn't go anywhere.  Like spinning tires. Asking questions for the sake of hearing yourself talk. I'm definitely interested in the new machine but until I get one in hand, I don't have anything really to say about it.  A lot has been fretted over due to an imaginary price...I really don't care.  I say, the people that want one are gonna find a way to get one. If it does what they say it does, it wont take long of seeing their buddies who have one torching them every hunt...they'll find a way to get one too.  Some people also just need to swallow their pride and come to grips that they can't afford everything they want in life.  I love to fish. Would love to have a new 18 foot aluminum boat with a 60 hp 4 stroke on it.  Those are about $25,000 now. I drool over the Trackers every time I go to Bass Pro Shops.  But I can't afford one of them right now. Maybe some day. But right now my budget is more inline with a sit on top fishing kayak haha.  I'm good with that though. I'm not on the manufacturer's forums whining about how the price should be more inline with my budget.  

My take on the GB issue is simple.  Test it for yourself and go with whichever gives you the best results.  I have areas of mild ground and areas with severe ground. In every place I have tested the "leave it at 0 vs ground balance" on actual targets, it has widely favored ground balancing.  Your area may be different.  It's a simple test to do and a setting to change back to.  In my opinion,  that is better than just relying on what you read or what others have said.  If I took to heart what people say on the internet forums, then validated 12" Fisher CZ machines and only Ireland made FBS machines can find silver coins. And or, a Tesoro Mojave can do everything these other machines can do.  And if you go by what is said on YouTube channels and social media...the Garrett AT Series is the pinnacle detector series of the world.  

I know all that to be hog wash...but point being, test it out for yourself.  I've had an Equinox since April/May last year and it gets the most use of any of my machines.

I had to come here for a break and a breath of fresh air.

All the current detector threads on Dankowski have been taken over by one individual....everything related to gulf side Florida beach hunting with the Equinox, MDT 8000, and now the Impulse has to go through him for approval or so it seems. I've got fatigue from his posts.  I feel sorry for LE.JAG cause everything he posts over there, this individual hits him from all sides when he does.  

I am very interested in this detector.  I live 8 hours from the nearest saltwater beach and may only get to the beach once a year for a few days.  My thought process is a bit different than others though; I want to try to make the best of my time while detecting at the beach for the time that I am there.  I don't want a machine that I can just make do with.  

I sound like a broken record by now, but before the GPX got popular at the Culpeper, VA hunts, most of the people were using the Whites MXT, Fisher T2/F75, and the Whites 5900.  Those people would often heckle the few pulse users by saying they were crazy for spending that kind of money to hunt relics a couple times a year, when their machines could do just as good in the right hands. They were playing this up to be an experience thing...that in the hands of a skilled user, the VLFs could do just as good. This was proven to be incorrect, and it didn't take long for it to catch on. Now I dare say 95% of the people use a pulse machine of some sort, with most having a GPX.  I never doubted nor heckled...I was one of the first to get one to be honest.  And thus I will be when the new Fisher hits the market.  

Since I don't live close to the beaches, I don't have the luxury of waiting for the perfect tide sequence, or for the big storms to erode the beaches.  I have to make due with the conditions while I am there. They may not be the most favorable but I hopefully will have the machine in hand to give me the best chances at finding gold while I'm there.  

The problem here is, there is no clear cut answer to your situation and conditions.  I've been in some soils that shut down most VLFs to a depth of around 4 inches max...that the Equinox could handle pretty well, and get down to 8 to 10 inches in.  I encountered some dirt last week that I was digging dropped Civil War bullets left and right with the GPX...and when I saw I had walked into an unhunted Civil War camp, I got excited.  Stuff wasn't deep and it was everywhere, and mixed in with a lot of iron.  I was having trouble with the iron and the GPX so I swapped over to the Deus that I had with me, and this ground completely shut down a Deus, and I had both 11" X35 coil and a 9 inch HF coil.  I tried every setting I could think of for it, and still could not get a bullet beyond 4 inches with it.   I came back the next day with the Equinox and was confident it could handle the site decent.  Just on the east side of this same farm, I had done extremely well with the Nox back in the fall.  The west side of the farm is where I was this go around...and the dirt is vastly different. Another big difference...is that this side of the farm has had cattle on it some 60+ years.  I'm talking about hundreds of head of cattle.  I fired up the Nox, got my favorite relic program, ground balanced and started hunting.  It was so noisy I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with it.  I was getting constant 1 and 2 signals.  I finally put the thing down and fired the GPX up til I located what I was pretty confident was a drop minie ball.  Lay it down to signal check with the Nox and BARELY got a one way signal that bounced in the teens.  I circled it....played with iron bias and recovery speed settings, and the different modes. I couldn't ever get the signal any better but could make it worse.  I was hoping and praying that I was wrong and the signal was actually iron or a piece of junk.  Nope...it was a dropped minie around 6 inches.  About 10 yards away, another signal on the GPX....same thing on the Nox...one way hit.  If I pressed the horse shoe button to fully open the whole disc range, I could hear it iron grunting most of the time.  Another dropped minie.  

Long story short, I dug 30 something dropped bullets, some carved bullets, 3 large round balls, and a button, plus about a half pound of camp lead.  Had I been hunting solely with the Nox, I dare say I might have dug 6 to 8 bullets tops.  Had I continued with the Deus and either coil, I would have walked all through this camp and not found the first thing.  I believe it was 9 mineral bars on the meter for it in most places.    

My theory is a crazy one but here goes.  I think with all the cattle that is on this farm in this one area...the cow poop and pee has altered the soil and made it very salty and acidic.  You figure, 60+ years of over 100 head of cows on average.  You can't hardly walk across the field now without stepping in piles of poo...and I've always noted that cow poop will make a detector false.  I did not try salt modes on the NOX....may try that next time I go down there.  It was down hearting enough that I listed my Deus for sale and sold it.  

I swear I looked and searched this topic and somehow missed that thread. Haha.  Good info in it.  

I have tried aftermarket battery systems but always go back to the stock battery.  I wish the smaller Minelab one had better battery life.  I'm not buying one that only lasts a few hours at most.  

With all the newer transmit/receiver style units out there now I was wondering if there was an update for anyone that has made the jump to wireless for the GPX and how it is working out.  I have tried two systems so far and not bee  happy with either one.  Detectnix (sp)  unit with their headphones....it worked but there was interference pending on where the unit was located. One video on YouTube showed putting it in a specific spot on the control box and it helped...but still got a lot of signal dropouts and static sound, there is also a delay in audio.  

I went to a newer low latency Bluetooth dongle and synced my Equinox wireless headphones to it.  It too works, but still has the static sound to it.  The signal doesn't or hasn't dropped out yet and there is only a very very slight delay in the signal.  It is useable but I'm wondering if there is something better out there.  I see Gray Ghost has a set of headphones and dongle for the Minelab machines.  Also wondering if the Garrett Z-Lynk headphone kit would work well with the GPX.  Minelab has the ProSonic but is the most expensive of them all and reviews are not what I hoped to see as far as the GPX goes.  

That was the point.  If I understood the question, it was if the lack of recovery settings on the 600 limited/hindered me in bad soil.  My answer was no, because in the end, even though my buddy has an 800 with more settings, what he found to work best and what I found to work best, are essentially the same setting.  There might be other places where he can go one setting above or below where I can and eek out an edge, but I personally think the three settings in the 600 are all a person will need.  I've not ran into a situation where I felt outgunned or longing for a faster or slower speed.  

Now when it comes to audio options...that's where I sometimes wish I had an 800.  If I can find a used one for a decent price I am gonna snag it anyway but I'm not gonna buy a new one just to play with tones.

Not really.  My buddy has an 800 and brought his12x15 coil to test. He had saw a video somewhere that said the recovery speed setting made a huge difference in depth with that coil.  On bullets I/We found at this same site, I saw no real difference between how his 800 hit them and my 600 hit them. There were none of them that he could detect that I couldn't.  He went thru his recovery speed settings to try and find the best one for him.  I think he was on 4 on his 800 when he settled on it and my 600 was on 2.  

On 1/5/2019 at 10:27 PM, Mark Gillespie said:

I know most hunters might argue the point, but I've always wanted a true, motion all metal mode like gold 1 and gold 2 with one small  addition, 2 tone option, one for iron and the other for non-ferrous.  Even better would be an adjustable tone break.

Years ago I hunted with the Fisher F75, in motion all metal mode and found a lot of super deep targets that the other discrimination modes could not pick up. 

 

 

Yes sir!! I truly wish they would have made those an option for the Gold modes! Especially a tone option for it.  I've never liked VCO audio.  

That was one of the reasons I originally sold the 800 and kept the 600. I wasn't going to use the Gold modes.  Now that the price has settled down on them and they are available anywhere, I think I will pick up an 800 again just for the customized audio part.  

I think a $499 price for it would have been more ball park for what it is. $899 is too high for what I would spend on one.  Then again I wasn't really wow'ed by the Deus and think it should be more of that $700-800 price range for the full package, remote, headphones, and your choice of coil.  I would like to retry one with a HF or X35 coil with the higher frequencies.  Was supposed to get to borrow one with HF coil from a buddy but haven't yet.  

The site in that video is going to be a subdivision soon.  All of it will be gone.  I have been back twice since that video.   In the video I found 41 civil war bullets. My next trip, we were mainly marking bullets to test the new MDT 8000 detector and did not hunt hard for bullets. I think I found 12 that day.  The last trip resulted in 21 bullets.  My buddy that hunts with me has got about the same...so all in all, 3 trips have produced around 100 or little over that, bullets.  Still plenty more of em in there.  I always used this spot as a testing area for new detectors. Gonna be sad to see it gone.  Other relic hunters in the area have recently found it and have been hunting it some.  The Nox does fairly well there for a VLF.  It is not a pulse machine but does better in disc mode than any other VLF on the market that I've used.   

Sounds like similar conditions to a civil war camp I hunt too.  A high tension powerline runs right thru it.  I have not found a magic setting on the GPX to allow one to hunt there.  I have tried small coils, AI coil (11"), Cancel mode, and various other tricks.  I tried hunting thru the warbling and motorboating and did pull some bullets and burnside casings out of my camp but nothing deep.  I hunted it with a TDI and could get closer to the lines but not under them. I hunted the edges really well though.  In my case I haven't had a VLF that ran smooth there either but the DST mode F75 in all metal seemed to work decent and was deeper than the GPX running throttled back.  Have not had an Equinox on that camp yet but have ran into emi with mine in other areas so I figure it will be hard to hunt there with it too.  Gonna give it a whirl though this week.

From the outside looking in, I think the Orx has more than enough features to satisfy the average to advanced detectorist.  My take on people in general is that a lot think they are smarter than they actually are. ? This hobby is no different.  That's why they can run a machine with limited or automatic controls and then get themselves way over their head with a machine that has a lot of manual settings.  8 out of 10 will use a Deus and never venture outside of presets. 

The pricing does come at a surprise.  But then again if you break it down, it's not so bad.  Used Deus with LF coil, out of warranty generally sell for $550-600ish.  You could buy that, but then you'd need the HF coil to match the Orx's operating freq. Those are $425 new. That puts you at $975 and no warranty on the machine itself...and that's if you can find one for $550. That's about the cheapest I recently saw one sell for.  At least with the Orx, you get the 5 yr warranty and the $425 coil.  For somebody like me that has been curious about the HF coil performance but don't wanna drop $1,500 on a new Deus...that might be the route to go.  Easy to sell if I don't like it cause it's new and with lots of warranty left.  

Yep it's still a single freq machine but those do have applications where they are still the best tool in the box.  

I'm a Park 2 guy for most applications, including relics.  

Just my opinion...I feel the power cord that goes from the battery to the detector is the weakest link in the whole detector system.  You can just breath on the thin metal around the plug prongs and bend it.  

The factory Minelab ones are super fragile. If you barely bump them on something, they are going to bend.  Last week I was hooking myself up to go detecting and the cord end hit the ground.  Not pavement mind you...just grass and dirt.  I picked it up and saw it had bent it!  I luckily had a pair of needle nose in the truck and was able to halfway bend it back in shape to where I could hook it up but I was worried about it breaking.  This isn't the first time this has happened with previous GPX models.  Anyway...I decided to go after market on the cord.  I bought a CoilTek and it came this morning.  To my dismay...it too is very thin and came out of the shipping package bent!  Why can't they make those things a little tougher!??  Such a critical part that is made so flimsy and cheap.  I know a lot of guys go to the Gold Screamer pack and eliminate the big cord all together.  I tried one and did not like the sound quality so I went back to the regular setup.  I don't even mind being tethered to the battery...just wish the ends of the power cord were beefier.  I was at a DIV one year where a guy dropped his cord in the hotel parking lot and he bent his so bad that he couldn't straighten it well enough to use. His hunt was shot because of a small incident.