Mike Hillis

I'm watching these higher frequency units from a micro jewelry viewpoint. Basically comparing how they stack up to the GoldBug II. I'm glad to see more challengers coming up to bat. GoldBug II Gold Racer, Gold Monster, Equinox 800 (had to re-read) and now the Gold Kruzer. Looking forward to hearing more about it. HH Mike

Looks good. Waiting on the operating manuals to come out. Carl set me straight on the minelab patents. I mis-spoke. HH Mike

HA! HA! The post title suckered me into reading a sales pitch. Way to go. I'm only looking at the Equinox out of curiosity as it doesn't offer anything that would help better identify non-ferrous treasure in non-ferrous trash, or see through walls better than others. In reality, just owning one would be a time waster for me, but hey, itches got to be scratched, right? The good news would be that one could scratch his itch and still get most of his money back afterwards if they moved early, unless of course it deploys with glitches. Will it continue to generate a itch or will it fade? Right now my itch is fading. What I really like about the Equinox though, is the way it is stirring the waters of detectorland. HH Mike

Charting is useful when you first start out. Chart everything. Treasure and trash. Chart every type of target identification feature you have available to you. Chart close, chart far away. But when you get through charting everything, you'll find that all you really need to chart are a couple of reference items. For me, I only chart nickels and dimes. Oh..I'll do depth testing with a quarter and a half and a dollar but in reality, if its a high conductor it doesn't really matter what the number is, it gets dug anyway, right? So the dime is the number I look at, and I want to know stable and fringe depth audio and number response. For low conductors I really only need the nickel number for a known reference point and then knowledge on how well it holds a nickel id at depth. Below the nickel is small rings, above the nickel is large rings. The only other thing I look at is the ferrous / non-ferrous break point. How soft is this boundary? Is it sharp or is it 6 numbers soft? But starting out is always best to bench test the crap out of a detector. And then the ground throws it all out the window, of course. HH Mike

I think Minelab patents are sewing up the mulit-frequency market. HH Mike

Thanks for the report. How does it air test a nickel in Disc? I recently acquired a 4 pin cleansweep as well but I plan to run it on a Tejon, which I don't have yet. HH Mike

Still looks good sitting there in the treasure chest! Congrats! Mike

I think they should all still go into the Treasure Chest, Strick. They all look nice. Yeah, if it doesn't have the weight, it isn't gold. Even white gold has the weight. Could be fresh dropped gold plate though. You got to it before it started to bubble and flake. Nice ring mn. HH Mike

That was yesterday. Today I just spent $600 for an E-Trac. HA! HH Mike

I'm really just frustrated with the tool, Steve. A 5" coil is too small, even if its is mounted inside a 6.5" hat when you need it to be larger. I don't need the hat to be larger. I need the thing inside the hat to be larger, or at least fill the hat. Whats more is that I'm stumping for Whites to give us a 7" concentric while all around me others, some with a reputation of knowing what they are taking about, are saying that a 5" coil in a 6.5" hat is perfectly fine, telling us to be happy and swing the hat, just forget and don't worry about the fact that the outside of the hat and the inside of the hat don't match, not even close. That is the hardest part of this industry. Getting them to make us the proper tools. We finally get a fantastic feature set and then we hamstring it with poor coil selection. That is one of the things I really like about Tesoro and First Texas: their coil selection. I wish First Texas coils would work on the V3 series. That would be a hammer!!!!! Anyway...I'll try to let it go..... I will let go. My last word and response to the matter.

Thanks for replying back, Monty. Getting to the meat....Normally the Transmit winding is the larger of the two coils, and is normally the diameter of the coil housing. Yeah, not exact but close. So an 8" coil form has a transmit winding seated close to the outside edge of the coil. So we are good with saying its an 8" coil. We don't pick on the 7.75 TX winding diameter. We understand there is a tolerance for seating the winding. So if the transmit winding is 5.3 inches in diameter it doesn't matter what size housing you place it in, its still a 5.3" coil because coil size isn't determined by the package its housed in, its determined by the transmit loop diameter. Now, if you really meant to say the 5.3 refers to the RX loop diameter, then we are talking different. Did you mean to say RX instead of TX? Or are you trying to say the 5.3 is the TX winding and that the RX winding is larger and closer to the 6.5" housing size? That the coil is built in reverse from most other coils with a large RX winding and a smaller TX winding? If the coil is standard concentric coil and the 5.3 refers to the TX winding diameter, then the RX winding is going to be 5.3 inches or less, maybe half. Maybe Tom Bodkin or Carl can jump in here and straighten this out. Whats the diameter of the TX winding Whats the diameter of the RX winding. We don't need exact measurements as if we were building the coil. Just close enough to answer the question. What size coil is the 5.3 coil? Bottom line, Monte, is that you are stating the exact same thing I have been saying. It is a 5.3" transmit winding in a 6.5" housing. Except you are ok with calling it and using it like it was a 6.5" coil and I am not. HH Mike

well....crap.....now I'm standing in line with money in my fist. Hard not to I guess with the more you learn about it. Thanks for answering my question, Steve. HH Mike

Yes, I've been working on it a few years. Its amazing how many good solves there are to the poem that don't end up with the treasure in hand. Great fun. HH Mike

Steve, Is there iron discrimination in the multifrequency gold mode? From yours and Jonathan's pictures its clear the Equinox is able to hit micro gold jewelry. But there is still a need for a ferrous rejection with jewelry hunting, even when its micro jewelry hunting. HH Mike

I suspect it helps deal with flat iron, steel, tin, etc. HH Mike

"Weighted". That is the key word that needs definition. What does "weighted" mean for the multifreq programs? On a V3i, running multi freq Best Data, 'weighted' would mean strongest response. On V3i running multi freq Corrolate, 'weighted' would mean that two strongest frequencies responses agree. On the Equinox programs, "weighted" could mean Best Data responses from the program's focused frequency selections but with an additional correlation. So maybe it does broadcast all 5 frequencies but only processes the results of a particular program's target frequencies (which should be giving the strongest responses), say two or three out the five, then correlate them. Not averaging but correlating the 'sameness' of the strongest two. I dunno. But that is what I'm hearing when I read Part 3. If so, then an Equinox program is basically running in both Best Data and Correlate at the same time. HH Mike

I may have said this before but I'll say it again. I really like First Texas Product's coil selection. They have one of the best, if not the best, OEM coil offerings on the market today. 7.6 and 7.8 kHz concentric coil offerings include the: - 4" round concentric - 7" round concentric - 8" round concentric - 9" triangulated concentric - 10" elliptical concentric - 11" triangulated concentric 7.6 and 7.8 kHz & 19 kHz DD coil offerings include the: - 5" DD - 5.5"x10" DD - 11" Biaxial DD 13" kHz concentric offerings are: - 3"x6" elliptical concentric - 10" elliptical concentric. 13" kHz DD offerings are: - 5" DD - 5.5"x10" DD - 11" Biaxial DD - 15" round DD. These are just the OEM offerings. This doesn't include the myriad aftermarket coil manufacturers. I say kudos to First Texas Products for giving us so many coil options to help us be more successful in our detecting pursuits. If I could just get a 4" x 18" DD coil out of them for sports fields I'd be a truly happy 1st Texas treasure hunter. HH Mike

Hi Monte, Show me the windings inside a 5.3 eclipse coil and then tell me that its a 6.5" coil. There is a reason its called a 5.3 and it has nothing to do with 6-1/2 inches. 5.3" coil, then a big jump to 9.5" . Now I often prefer and use DD coils but for some types of targets with the V3 the concentric work better. A true 6.5" or 7" concentric would be a wonderful addition and would fill the gap between the 5.3" and the 9.5". HH Mike

Nice Ring! HH Mike

Yeah, I hear you Mark. Especially with a stable F75. It is such a joy to use. What I find is the other models become specialty units dedicated to specific tasks or targets. For example, the F75's lowest gain is still too high for small jewelry detecting in turf. But the F5 does that task very well. HH Mike

Hey GB_Amateur. On the Xterra 705, my ground balance number was a 2. Some places would get better at a 4. HH Mike

I mentioned this on Tom's site too, but thinking what a + could add. I'm guessing along the lines of something I'd like on the F75. I'd like a variable tone break option in the single and two tone options where I get to select the pitch of the upper tone. You can select the pitch today but I'd want it to carry over to any variable tone break option too. That would be useful. Most of the time I run the F75 in JE mode with the Delta Pitch audio selection with max disc with the Foil, Nickel and first Tab segments notched in. Usually running a sensitivity setting of 0, sometimes as high as 25. Sweet. A Variable tone break would let me dip my foil notch down to about 12 or 13. That would be helpful to me. I could do the same thing with the disc setting but I like the Disc setting on max and use the notches. That way if I need to dip backward into the zinc range a little I can without having to bring in the whole range. Anyway, just talking in my hat as I have no more info than anyone else. How about a 4"x18" DD coil. Now that would be a sweet heart combination on a F75. Kind of hard to improve upon the F75 DST models without going to totally new tech. They are just solid performers. HH Mike

I found this a little while back with the Omega 8500. I don't use the Omega very much but I had it out standing behind the door for some other activity and it was the one I grabbed when I headed out the door. Not very big, only 4.05 grams of 18k gold. Took the picture with my Fire tablet so the detail isn't the best but hey, we all like looking a gold even if the detail is a little fuzzy. HH Mike

Hi. Lots of good info to help you out here for just about anything. HH Mike

G, my tip to you.... the Xterra has a slower response than most other units. A larger coil is not going to be your friend. If you really want to keep up with your friend's find count , turn your sensitivity down so you have less false signals to deal with and hunt shallow. That will increase your ground coverage and increased ground coverage will increase your good find count. You would find that you would be coming closer to your buddy's good find count. If that is the goal. HH Mike