longbow62

Chase I always get consistent GB numbers in the areas I hunt. If I go to a certain park and GB in PARK1 the GB number is always really close every time I hunt. Same with Park2. If I go to the mildest ground I hunt which is almost pure sand and GB in Park1 and Park2 the numbers are always lower in the sand than in red clay that's in the Park. I think there is a correlation between low numbers being low mineralized ground and higher numbers being higher mineralized. How else could you explain getting greater depth in the sand vs. red clay? If ground tracking is on and you are swinging over a iron rich area I have seen the GB number go up way higher than what I initially GB'ed to. Maybe that's a good thing? Not sure, but if I re-GB right there where I noticed it drops back down close to where it was initially. I saw on a video early on after the Nox introduction with a guy in the UK doing a Nox school. He was telling the students to leave tracking off, and not to use it. I have noticed also if you swing over a target numerous times it changes the GB and it's not super fast at dropping back down although it eventually will. I thought ground tracking was only really recommended for prospecting. I do not trust ground tracking when I can just do a auto GB when I think I need to.

I always do an auto GB first thing. I have forgotten to do it before and noticed the detector seemed off somehow. Did an auto GB and like magic my Equinox starts acting the way it should. I'm a firm believer in proper GB on the Equinox to get the most out of it. By that I mean best I.D. and best depth. I've hunted some ground that the GB in Park1 was high single digits. When the mineralization is that low you can probably just get away with running 0. When you GB and are getting in the 50's I think running 0 would be a serious disadvantage. I do not like the ground tracking feature and never use it. I have been detecting and noticed ground track is on by mistake before and been like I just wasted ever how long I have been detecting. I GB multiple times a hunt.

Any thoughts on if the Deus II FMF will be as deep as the Equinox Multi-IQ? I wonder what the optimal coil size would be? I find the Equinox very deep, and I.D.'s are even pretty good at max depth.

Hey don't y'all think it's odd you can't find a new Etrac to buy at the bigger detector sites. Same can be said for the Safari and X-terra. Equinox and Vanquish are not sold out and those are the Minelabs biggest sellers. CTX is sold out at some places. It's not proof by any stretch, but makes you wonder if those sold out detectors are being phased out. Maybe I'm just wanting to believe a new release will be sooner than later.

I purchased my 800 in early Nov. 2018. I have a gazillion hours on it. Never had a coil ear break and hope I don't. I have 2 800's now plus a Coiltek 10x5 I am leaving on one one of them for now. So I have 2 11" coils in case I do ever break an ear. Weird some people break ears on multiple coils and some folks never break any!

I hope it's not another year before they put out a new flagship detector. I had been keeping tabs on the stock inventory on the big sites that sell detectors. The Etrac is out of stock every place I look. CTX sold out in several places. Could be COVID parts shortage related or the increased sales have just depleted stock. I was hopeful it was due to a phase out of those detectors due to a introduction of a new top of the line detector.

I worry about it's depth too. It's a nice coil though. I hunted with it behind the stock 11" coil and it did well. I found several things going back behind the 11". A silver ring and an IHP that I really can't fathom how I could have missed. Not only that, but my buddy swinging his Etrac also missed them. They were solid signals with 10x5. Not iffys at all. Had I just walked away from with the 11" or not heard them at all? I definitely like it better than the Minelab 6" coil by a lot.

Mine seems to work fine. No issues so far. I'm satisfied with mine thus far. I found a nice selection of old coins, relics, and a silver ring this past weekend with mine.

How much depth loss with the Coiltek 10x5? Does it handle EMI any better?

I just got an email from Serious Detecting saying they were in stock. I ordered one. We will see if it was worth it or not. I kind of have my doubts.

You've had 3 pod replacements in how many years? I had one within the first couple of months after getting mine 2.5 years ago. Since then no issues and I have put very serious use on mine. I did trade for another 800 lately as mainly a backup because I got rid of all my other detectors. Were your issues water related or something? That seems like a lot if they just died. With all the use I have put on my original unit the battery seems to have held up well. I don't let it get very low before a recharge.

I like their products, and I had an Impact as my first detector when I decided to get into detecting seriously. It's a good detector, but when I got the Equinox 800 in 2018 the Impact went straight to backup detector status. I ended up selling not to long ago after getting a second Equinox 800. I even got rid of my Etrac because overall I found the Equinox to be superior. At this point the only company that I am super interested about any new releases from is Minelab. Sure I would take a serious look at what Nokta/Makro has to offer, but at this point it would have to be proven to outperform what I am presently swinging.

I don't think it's cell phone related. I think it's electrical. I guess I could try that, but like I said I think is caused by electric lines or equipment.

I posted this on another forum other than Detector Prospector also. I feel Detector Prospector tends to be a bit more technical oriented than the other forum so I posted it here also. I am 100% all in on the Equinox. I like it so much I have 2 800's. My biggest gripe is how susceptible it is to EMI. Some of my best spots have EMI so bad I have to turn the Nox down to like 15 or below. I used to run a Nokta Impact in 14kHz as my main detector before I got the Nox and it had EMI issues also, but I don't remember it being quite as bad. I think the Nox is a much hotter detector than the Impact is. It's sure a lot deeper than the Impact. I don't have the problem everywhere so I know it's not a detector problem. Running a smaller coil helps some, but not a lot. So I've had an Etrac and never once did I have any audible EMI issues. Is it Multi-IQ that is susceptible or what? Do power companies check for EMI issues like bad connections or transformers that may be the culprit? Most of my issues have been in the older parts of towns where the power infrastructure tends to be much older. How many other people with the Equinox notice EMI is worse on it more than other detectors they use?

This question came up on another forum and you would think these days detectors like the Minelab Equinox would not have any fluke units where one was better or worse than the next. Back in the day I'm pretty sure this was not true with analog detectors where electronic parts were probably procured at the cheapest price the manufacturer could procure them, and substitute parts with differing tolerances were probably used. I have read where people will have a vintage guitar amp recapped with new in spec capacitors and the amp loses the great tone it had before. Actually that's why certain guitar amps back in the day of the same model might have a few that sounded unbelievable compared to the rest. I would think old school analog detectors would suffer from in or out of tolerance stacking much more than today's units.

I use F2-0 always. Using F2-0 lets you sniff out masked deep silver better. The higher the Iron Bias the more good targets I'm going to miss.

I use both wired and bluetooth. I have never used the WM08. I use stock bluetooth headphones most of the time for the untethered experience. I have a pair of wired headphones that are much better quality than the stock Minelab bluetooth headphones. I use the wired headphones when I get real serious about iffy targets and hearing deep targets.

Hey not that this means anything, but not long ago a dealer was selling his CTX demo unit. I thought about buying, then I got to thinking why sell your demo unit? I started looking around and at the big seller's and they have practically no Etrac's or CTX's in stock. Might have been a bunch sold at Christmas and no new restock shipments yet, but maybe they won't be restocked.

Does EMI not enter from the coil itself? Seems like with the 6" coil on it's less affected. I tried EMI shielding tape on the head unit and got no EMI relief.

I think the Equinox 800 is a incredible detector, but being a gear nerd I'm hoping Minelab releases a new high end coin machine soon. I personally think the Etrac and CTX are probably still the top notch machines for strictly searching for and identifying silver coins. They are both getting long in the tooth, and are both kind of clunky in their form factor. My guess is their sales have decreased dramatically since the Equinox was released.

All I know is the beauty of the Nox is the ability to switch modes to find the one that works the best. Plus the ability to tweak each mode to see if they can be improved further. I have used Park2 as my main mode for a long time, and for example the park with the clay soil it seems to be best for me. Had I not experimented with Park1 at the site with the sandy soil I'm positive I would have missed some finds. I found silver with Park2 there, but once I switched to Park1 I found more and deeper targets.

I wanted to try Park1 today with a higher Iron Bias setting at this park I find really deep dimes in. This is not the site the Walker came from where I have been finding most of my silver lately. That site is pure sand. This park is heavy clay. So in Park1 with iron bias low constant falsing on deep nails. Turn up the iron bias and no diggable deep signals I could find. Now this will have to be explored further at a later date when I have more time. Anyway being short on time I went back to Park2 re-GB'ed, iron bias F2-1, recovery 6. It seemed like immediately I started hitting a few deep Wheat cents. It took awhile but I did get over a deep silver dime signal. Before I dug this I should have tried it in Park1, but I didn't even think about it. It was not quite as deep as I normally dig them so it might not have been the best to compare Park1 and Park2 with.

Thanks I will up the iron bias number in F2 and see what happens. I still can't figure out why in the Park I was talking about Park2 works better or appears to work better than Park1 on the deep silver dimes. Today my only silver was this Walking Liberty half dollar. Park1, F2-1, Sens. 22, Recovery 5. GB 12. Very impressive depth.

I know two guys that have an Equinox other than myself. One guy is very easy on his detectors. He uses them a lot, but they all look brand new and he detects a lot. He is not rough on detectors. He broke ears on the stock coil fairly quickly. I'm not sure of the circumstances. I never had an issue with the stock coil ears breaking and I bet mine has more hours of use than most do. Weather starting out the morning freezing to temps in the 90's. Actually probably 100's if you count sitting in the back of a truck. The other Nox owner I know has all three size coils and has yet to break a coil ear with no protector on any of them. His Nox has seen a lot of use too. I did put one of the protectors on mine last spring just in case. Other than an obvious lack of robustness I'm wondering what those folks breaking ears are doing that the folks not breaking coils are not? I put an aftermarket carbon shaft on soon after I got mine. Which of course does not have the side to side flex the stock shaft has. I wonder if the stock shaft flex could have any bearing on ear breakage?

Both guys find a lot of silver normally. One guy is a stock program guy. The other tweaks his machines a lot. He runs his Etrac hot. Both used stock as well as larger than stock coils on this site. They swung over many of my targets and a few of the silver. They either could not hear them or when they could it was not a tone or numbers to lead them to dig. They both are for the most part tone hunters. When they tried to dig most of the time they were digging iron nails. I found so many Wheat cents I quit digging them unless I was getting numbers bordering into the silver range. They on the other hand only found a few. I run with Horseshoe button engaged all the time in 5 tones with bins set up to my liking. Soft sweet short beeps were the rule and the majority of my coins were over pinpointer deep. Some several inches deeper. My GB in Park1 was low teens to upper single digits. The site is large but most of the silver came from a pretty tight area of about 100'x100' and all three of us were back and forth across this area constantly. I found two quarters a SLQ and a Washington. Wheat pennies and dimes were the majority of the coins, but while running Park2 the first day I found 4 Jeffersons 1948 being the oldest and one Buffalo. Switching to Park1 lowered my nickel finds after that, but let me hear high conductors better I think. We also hunt another site where they both thought they had cleaned out all the silver. When I got my Equinox 800 I started finding deep silver dimes there. All Mercs, Wheats, and nickels, never any quarters. The depths I find these coins they had never dug coins there that deep. Here Park2 works best for me. Park1 seems to give me more iron falsing issues where I am constantly having to check falsing iron high tones . Park2 GB's in the 30's-40's there. It's heavy clay soil, not sand. Neither buddy can pull another silver from there and I have found at least 12, and two Mercs just recently. There is a fine line to dig or not dig at this place. I have gotten pretty good at knowing when to. Should Park2 be better in hotter soils? Does Park1 actually hit silver better? Would turning iron bias up in Park1 alleviate some falsing on deep iron without crippling hearing deep silver? My Iron Bias in F2 is usually left between 0-2. Mostly 0.