Badger-NH

3 hours ago, relicmeister said:

I saw that you can get a full s-shaft replacement Kit for equinox For $75 made in Ukraine. ($25 shipping) 

will take few weeks to get from overseas but nice option if you want the s-shaft. Looks well made. 

Do you have a link?

37 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I put wax on my skis and snowboard to make them more slippery, I put wax on my surfboard to make it less slippery. Defies logic but works 🙂

Come to think of it, wax and silicone are both petroleum products and are made from the same basic thing.

Surf wax has sticky stuff added to it. You wouldn't want to use it on your snowboard. Nor would you put ski wax on a surfboard.

35 minutes ago, phrunt said:

That's a good idea, and will also stop the grinding plastic/rubber.  It'll get dirty and ugly but other than that it'll work well.

With silicone spray your coil can hold in position when put down, I demonstrated it with the coil bolts very lose not holding the coil at all.

I don't foresee anything getting dirty or ugly. 

I didn't get a chance to try the silicone. It still defies logic to me that lubricating the washers would improve their grip, but if it works for you, that's great.

.

I just discovered what may be the fix for loose floppy coils.

So the problem for me all along is that I want the coil to stay in place and not lay flat every time I set the detector down. What most people do is crank down on the bolt as much as possible but this can snap the bolt and possibly put stress on the ears.

For years I've been putting a piece of grip tape on the inside of one of the ears. This helps a little but I was thinking it could be better. So I took some surfboard wax and coated the ears and the washers with a layer of wax. Surfboard wax is extremely sticky. When I put the coil back on, I was amazed how well it worked. The coil stays put so well that I didn't need to crank down on the bolt at all. I don't think it even needs the grip tape. The sticky wax gives the surfaces plenty of grip, yet I can still adjust the angle whenever I need to. I'm very pleased with how well it worked.

Surfboard wax is cheap. Any surf shop will have it for a couple of bucks, or you can get it on Amazon.

Actually, any kind of wax might work. Even candle wax. Give it a try. Surf wax just happens to be more sticky.

2 hours ago, Joe D. said:

      Has anyone had coil ears break on any other detector,  besides the Equinox?? I may have asked this before, but i don't think i got an answer!!

The ears on the Fisher 11" DD coils break super easy if you don't use the rubber washers that come with the detector. The Fisher washers look like any other washer but the coil ears are so thin that even the slightest difference in thickness will cause them to snap.  I repaired mine with Gorilla Super Glue and it seems to be okay so far.

13 hours ago, phrunt said:

I freshly sprayed my rubbers now, and took a little video to show you the results, you can't get much looser of a coil than I've got in the video, the bolts just spin in place they're that loose, I'd never detect with them this loose but it shows it holds in place well even after a fresh spray.  Also the coil glides up and down when you put the detector down.

This just has to take a lot of stress off the coil ears.

Laying flat when you put the detector down is exactly what I don't want the coil to do. I like the coil to stay in the hunting position at all times. That's why I put grip tape on one ear. It holds the coil in place when I set it down but still allows for minor angle adjustments while hunting.

I've never heard of anyone having a problem with the coil being too tight but I have snapped bolts from overtightening. If I want my coil to be looser, I just loosen the bolt a little.

44 minutes ago, phrunt said:

What you're saying makes perfect sense, only it doesn't appear that way in practice for some reason.  Try it and see, you can have the bolts quite loose and the coil holds in place at your desired angle, even my 15x12" is loosely done up and doesn't move.  Where it takes all the pressure off is every time I put down and pickup the detector, it glides up and down where as before doing it there was a creaking noise sometimes putting it up and down from the rubber on plastic.  On my GPX the rubber was being eaten away doing that, now I've sprayed it problem solved.  I'm using the Detect-ED coil saver washers which are a bit thicker than the stock washers too.  It's not like an oil that leaves a big layer or anything, it's a thin little layer that allows for slightly easier movement with less friction.

Interesting.  I will try it

Lubricating the washers with silicone makes no sense at all to me. It will just make everything more slippery requiring the bolt to be even tighter than would normally be necessary to hold the coil in place.

2 hours ago, Hardtimehermit said:

Are the coil ears being broken on land or because of use in the water? I am confused on this stiffener deal, i have been using mine in the river and on land. I mostly use my detector on land and probably do not need it, but i am wondering if people are also breaking coil ears on land. If i don't overtighten the bolts the stiffener seems fine. 

A friend of mine broke his ears and all he hunts is land. Mostly fields and woods.

I'm always afraid of overtightening, not only about the ears breaking but the bolt as well. I put a piece of grip tape on the inside of one ear to give more traction to the smooth surface. It's an adhesive backed tape that you put on stairs so that you don't slip. This way, I don't have to over tighten the bolt. I've been doing this for years on many different detectors and it seems to work. The coil is loose enough to move when you want it to but stiff enough to prevent it from flopping around. I started doing it because it bothers me when the coil lays flat every time I set the detector down.  So far I've never had a problem.

 I hope they don't add weight to the coil design just to appease the water hunters. That would leave all us non water hunters swinging a heavier coil. It's so easy to add a weight to the coil if you want it to sink. Filling the rod with sand would help as well.

From the title of the post, I was expecting to see a photo of Gold Canyon.  🙂

By quirks in pin point do you guys mean the 2 or 3 seconds of muted tone that you get after you push the button?

I've never seen that as a problem. I just wait while it adjusts itself to the target. Then it works fine. It doesn't seem to negatively affect the performance of the machine while in pinpoint. I find pin point mode on the Equinox to be just as accurate as my Explorer SE was and fine tunes itself to the target just as well. I use it all the time for in ground targets.

The reason why I don't care about the way signals sound is because I dig a ton of crappy signals from targets that are often at the very edge of detection. I usually run my detectors very hot to get as much depth as possible which on many machines makes the target ID unreliable. Just the other day relic hunting, I dug an 1835 Capped Bust Half Dime that sounded like junk. All I knew was that it was very likely non-ferrous.

3 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

Good to know! You've got me beat!!  And your still surfing; Awsome! You text like a man half your age!😂  I gave it up a long time ago! 🤙

Yup, I surfed today for three hours. It was chest high and clean. I hope I'm still surfing ten years from now. 

I'm 63 and have been detecting since '96.

24 minutes ago, phrunt said:

The 19KHz Fishers are actually quite good on the beach.  In their own marketing they've always said they ground balance right to salt.

I've run my Bug reasonably successfully on a black sand beach where my Nox also struggled.  I was surprised how well it ran as my T2 was unusable and also on the coral sand benign beaches it's got some good depth.

Sure you need to ground grab often as you move down the beach towards the water but they do handle it and for me it worked quite well on the wet sand and in the shallow water too.

To get the true depth on them you really need to run in all metal, disc mode hinders depth a bit.  That's why a lot of people find a flaw with the target IDs being on the speedometer at the top rather than where the big ground phase readout is when in all metal mode.  It's not as detailed/accurate on the speedometer as getting actual numbers and harder to see, especially in the sun.   Hunting in all metal would be much easier with the big Target ID's.  A wasted opportunity for an easy good improvement.  They seem to identify iron well from what I've seen and have a good iron audio.

I had a Gold Bug Pro with the Fisher 11" coil that did pretty good on the dry sand as long as the rain had washed most of the salt out of it. The depth performance diminished though as wet salt was introduced. Yes, it behaved well enough on the wet sand but the depth was terrible. If that's your only detector then that's fine I guess. I see people at the beach all the time with low performance machines. That's why I inquired about the depth that Joe was getting.  Maybe the G2+ performs better than my GBP did.

2 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

Badger,

   Much depends on what you are looking for! Sometimes the trash and ferrous targets will tell you much about what you are look for, and in which direction to continue!

   There are many examples, but a few that come to mind are relic hunting, and fleet treasure hunting! If you can picture a ship breaking up on a reef, or a battalion of soldiers fighting or retreating in a battle, and the potential trail of objects that is left behind! Then you begin to understand how the "junk" targets fit into the picture!👍👍

Sorry but that makes no sense at all to me.

6 hours ago, Joe D. said:

   The G2+(Pinky$299) is no Equinox($899), but it works great at the beach! The poker chips are just a way to secure various targets to a solid, non-conductive base! And can be color coded to your liking! I adopted the chip idea, when using the Nox, because it can give you information overload! They help your "muscle memory" learning, and interpreting the signals it; or any detector, gives you! I can combine any number of chips to identify, or partially mask a desired target as i see fit! In any soil condition's I'm working in! Hope that makes it clearer!!👍👍

I just dig any target that might be non-ferrous. The only thing I avoid digging is iron.

I don't need to know the subtle differences between various non-ferrous targets because they could still be gold or silver no matter what they sound like.

Depth and the ability to identify iron is all that matters to me.

30 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

Hey Badger,

  I have not done any depth testing yet! I've just been using it exclusively to get acclimated to the sounds and setup! Which so far, have been pretty intuitive! I've been using it in dry and wet, and to some extent, over very shallow water! Beyond that, it tends to overload! Not a surprise, since it's not a water detector! As long as you keep the coil above the sand or water, it runs fairly quiet! And the signals are very distinct, especially for iron!

    I'm in the process of creating an extensive set of testing poker chips to use on any detector! I have an old, limited set i got from Whites, and just wanted to expand on it! Than i will play with the depth tests on my three coils! Gotta get some cool weather first, as it's been to brutal for testing! I'll only sweat my a$$ off for actual hunting!!😂👍👍

**Far from the complete set, but here's what the junk targets look like so far!!

 

What is the purpose behind the poker chips? I'm not familiar with that type of depth testing. Why test junk targets? Do you not dig non-ferrous junk?

The G2+ was designed to hunt gold nuggets and relics near iron. That's why I'm asking about the depth on the beach. It's not a beach detector. I would guess that the salt in the sand would severely limit depth with that machine compared to multi frequency detectors.

Forgive me if this has already been discussed.

What kind of depth are you getting with the G2?  Have you done any tests?

Are you sticking mainly to the dry sand?

Those Tarsacci covers are very thin and brittle to begin with. I went through three of them in the short time I had mine.

27 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

What would anger me (and plenty of other folks) is if they didn't include them and then I would have to pay their ridiculously inflated accessory prices to obtain them .  If ML did not include those accessories and subtracted the cost to obtain them separately ($398!) from the price of the Equinox, then the 800 would actually cost LESS than the 600 by $150!  So don't be angry, just sell them if you don't need them and defray the cost of your detector. 

I would have no interest in buying those items separately. Few people would, especially at retail prices. But they can sell tens of thousands of them if they include them with the detector and still make a good profit from it. It just shows that it costs them practically nothing to manufacture this stuff. We are paying for it no matter how you look at it. It's also very wasteful to sell people things they don't need. Just more plastic for the environment. But they don't care as long as they make money.

1 hour ago, Goldpick said:

In the past I could never understand why coil covers were sold by some detector manufacturers as an accessory and not included with the actual detector - a real penny pinching exercise in my book.

White's was one company that did that. 

Now some companies are starting to include things we don't even necessarily need, like the headphones and WM08 Module that come with with the Equinox. That actually angers me a little. They are afraid that if they don't include them with the detector, people might not buy them, which is true I suppose. 

20 minutes ago, midalake said:

Epoxy and Goggle are your friend!!!!! 😄

HH Dave

 

Goggle?

I have to agree. Using a cover is not a big deal. The advantages of using a cover outweigh any benefits of not using one, at least with Minelab machines. Thanks for all the opinions.