scoopjohnb

So SteveG your saying it’s going to be an awesome detector :-) I’m hoping it will achieve starfleet status,... Beep and Beam the target up into the palm of your hand. Just stand in the middle of a field, adjust scan radius, adjust disc to suit hit the beam button and the finds can be spotted in mid air hovering 4 feet above the ground. Now that’s cherry picking. OBSOLETE certainly got our attention. Anyway just a bit of fun and it will certainly add to the excitement in digging up that first pulltab with the Equinox.

We are entering the era of the modern cell phone. The electronics will be out of date and out of fashion before the hardware goes BumP.

Hi there everyone,... my name is Chris and I’m a Minelaboholic.

The Nox may weigh more than the Terra,... but it will be perfectly balanced. LOL The best mod I did to my 705 was a bicycle bottle strapped under the original stand. The stand is pretty useless anyway. I stuff it full with some rags, spare set of batteries. 1/4” to 3.5mm adapter and some earbuds. Last thing I add when I’ve got the coil of my choice mounted is 1oz fishing weights. And you can trim the unit till it’s got just the wright detecting angle. Because the counterweight is under your elbow it’s got a very natural swing to it. An extension of your arm. 25 years of starting chainsaws has turned my shoulder into mush. But wielding a heavy brushcutter doesn’t cause any discomfort. Swishing a fast Deus or F19 and it burns like H&//. So less weight isn’t always the solution, the brushcutter shuffle or the minelab jigg does the trick.

Most are swinging AT-Pro's or Ace's and go for the clean sounding high conductors. Racing over the beach cleaning the surface drops. Foil, they don't even go there :-) Get a little moisture and the sand goes all conductive on the surface and it's game over for them. See you next year. I prefer autumn hunts when the crowds are gone. Spring and summer is for fishing on a hard to get at beach. Now I'm generally a real social person,... till the other guy turns up!!

I've had one since they came out and 2 years ago it was standing there all sorry looking in the corner collecting dust. So I sold it. Guy who bought wasn't all that happy with it, Minelabs have a tendency to bash your ears if you let it. Guy couldn't handle the 50 tones. Ah well. But not having a CTX and all this talk about obsoleting this and that. Saw a nice CTX with a few miles on the skidplate looking for a second home. UPS guy delivered and a day at the beach was on the cards. This thing is the real deal, no questions asked. Just a lot of awesome RAW detecting power. Swings like a perfectly balanced boat anchor. Boy does it love high conductors. My settings for a moist windblown autumn beach. DEEP ON, LOW trash, Manual GB, Auto sens, 2 tones Ferrous with above 31 ringing Hightone. No need to complicate things. Treshold just below audible, Audio Gain at 5, etc. etc. This beach has seen hunters all summer long, so pulltabs, bottlecaps, foil galore. High conductors are just about gone. But there I was digging coins 2 scoops down on a windswept chilly autumn beach with a smile on my face like Garfield. Got a ring as well, just a shame it was a small little tire-valve nut. Thx Mr Herschbach, You really made my day. Thx Mr Minelab, You do know how to make the magic flow.

WOW! That is an awesome machine at an awesome price. Great thing about the X-terra is they normalized the ID around the 7,5 kHz coin hunter. When you switch frequency the finds get smaller or larger but it feels like it ID’s the same materials in the same range. And for each frequency you get the choice between concentric and DD coils in about each coil size. Great stuff.

They do draw nice graphs and state BBS/FBS will still have a slight advantage over certain targets. That’s the same as saying. We’ve gone and fixed its shortcomings. Now that just made me smile twice.

Thx, saw a few guys swinging one at the rally. They were mostly playing air hocky with it. Seems an awfull waste to use it as a frisbee on a stick :-) They allowed the ground to come in with the negative disc. Some info I got from Gary Blackwell on site. If the Nox doesn’t kick it, probably will be my third attempt at a Deus. Spoilt for choice at the moment.

Had a brief encounter with the HF coil at a local rally. Just a question for Steve, how would you discribe the threshold. Digitized sounding or smooth as butter? At the rally there were so much cellphones and EMI going on I couldn’t really tell.

Indeed a long winded response. Minelab states that it has potential to obsolete all single frequency detectors. It doesn’t say BBS, FBS, FBS2 detectors. They also state it is more orientated at low conductors and will handle the ground better. My CTX wasn’t the greatest low conductor machine out there, I haven’t seen any real performance on low conductors at the beach. When I use the SDC the low conductors are dead easy. No disc, but that is just what it is. You dig. The CTX isn’t the greatest low conductor machine in the fields either with the standard coil. And no-one in their wright mind is going to swing that heavy coiltek elliptical for hours. Or attempt a field with that tiny 6”. At the beach the trusty Excal has far fewer problems with the environment than the CTX. Even though it has limitations in terms of EMI and ground handling in respect to the CTX. So basically it’s CTX GAME OVER. They were giving the large coils away, they have dropped the price. Its a great machine, but it was a bit overengineered and underengineered at the same time. The GPS didn’t by a long shot have the same capabilities as a handheld. And Target Trace turns you into a screen watcher. Gaskets here and there turn it into a maintenance machine. They have learned, they have given us the Equinox. Which is being fine tuned ready for release as we speak. Can’t fault that.

I’m going to call mine the Minelab Equalizer 800. Has a definate ring to it, just like a Sovereign, Excalibur, Explorer, Musketeer. CTX, SDC, GPZ, E-trac, X-terra. We need real names for our weapons of choice.

Steve has just about summed it all up. There isn't much difference between this, that ot the other. But if you can be picky, why not indulge yourself. I've tried all the big names myself and in coin detecting I just keep coming back to the detectors I enjoy using. Minelab X-terra 705, Whites MXT All pro. These 2 machines have got all the tool sets I need and have delivered the goods more than once. And every time I go out they teach me a little more about their language. When both companies come out with something "better" when you see it evolving, when you just feel their new machine is just that little more on the "money". They will get retired, not sold, not given away, just retired. You don't part with a hammer thats strikes true, swings effortlesly and sounds just wright when you hit the sweet spot.

I may be banging an old drum, but 3.2 couldn't signal on a small piece of platinum jewelry in somewhat hot ground in tracking or with fixed ground balance. My E-trac hit it and my X-terra 705 hit it, both in tracking. Both with 0 disc. So I appologise for my lack of enthousiasm about their new offering. Minelabs let you hear the minerals, V3.2 is mineral dead. Maybe V4 will finally give me a lightweight mineralised ground jewelry digger,... but I'm not willing to invest in order to test. Having way too much fun with the other gear.

Indeed you don't sell the steak,... you sell the sizzle :-) Here are my thoughts on my hobbies. If I want to prepare a meal of fresh daycaught fish, I'm not heading out to sea with rod and reel. If I need some cash, I'm not grabbing my detector and hitting the local sportsfield. If I want a decent knife, I'm not wielding my honed to perfection damascus. If I need to get somewhere fast, not taking the 4x4 with all the camping gear. But when I want some quality ME-time, any of the above will do! Trying to get the kids into this game is like trying to take drugs from an addict. They first need to get their brains and emotions stimulated to mush in order for them to finally realize that a camp fire crackling in the dark is something to enjoy! Even if they hate you with a vengeance while doing it,... in time they will come to cherish those hours sat there just watching the leaves blow by and not saying a single word to each other.

Yep that's the one :-) So if it flashes every second whilst on,... the flash,... flow of current isn't detrimental to the detectors functioning. Because you can easily wiggle over a target giving audio for more than a second. Let's turn this gimmick into something we can use.

The flashing one on the coil,... can't remember what colour. Just the thought that comes to mind: "Why does it need to flash ocassionaly when nothing is happening?"

It's not new, Deus has got one. Just needs to be relocated and let those electronic wizards sprinkle their pixie dust :-)

The LED needs to be where you need it. Integrated in the coil just above the sweet spot. Disc controls the colour. Red disced out, Green is an accepted target. With screens you are always changing your focus, Coil, Screen, checking if the numbers are solid, looking how the target traces, rescan, etc. Simplicity, if it's above disc I'm interested and digging. Even if it's just trash removal, cause next time, less trash equals more goodies. The least talked about bit of gear in detecting is our most important asset. A Great Digger!!

I hunted some roman sites with a couple of guys last year. They flew over a whole field in a matter of hours with their CTX on automatic, still had mine so to be contrary I whipped on the17" coil on an iron infested site. Hadn't been done, but it still gave me a few buckles in one width of the field. Not enjoying the earfull my CTX was giving me, switched over to the X-terra with the 18,75 kHz coil and managed a few pieces of silver and old coins in their tracks. So 3 hours later the field was "done" and they had a lot of big high conductors and I had a few keepers amongst my trash. I covered only 5 percent of the area they had "hunted out". For me, I'm happy to just be there. Out in a field, on a beach, in a park with the sun just waking up. So we didn't get along because they felt I wasn't doing my part, wasn't covering enough area. Or maybe it was the silver I scooped from behind their tracks. Anyway there is nothing like a new detector or an "old" one which hasn't got turn on and go settings. It forces you to calm down and set it up just wright. Or maybe people should take a little more enjoyment out of their hobby in stead of trying to compete.

Still learning the machine,... but very eager to get to know each other. They redid our roof 2 months ago, we moved so been working day in, day out. So my new yard is full of small snippets of lead, copper nails, copper roofing nails, iron nails and the usual trash. What better place to learn a new machine and in the meantime get to know the precious owners. After half a pouch full of trash decided on some cherry picking, turned up disc, dropped the sens in order to battle the small tin. And away we go. Half an hour later got a faint hit, but positive TID. Pulled out a coin dating 1938, from amongst the trash. Way to go MXT and 10x6" Eclipse coil! Son pulls up with a shot tail-light bulb, so that ends my small hunt. Anyway, who needs an I-Tector when you can hunt with an All Pro :-) Cheers and Happy Easter!

Nothing like a "new" detector to get you out and about in shimmering light and the cold of evening with just a shirt on your back. First impressions. Don't drop it on your foot, you'll break a toe :-) This thing isn't your plastic weightless flimsy French Baguette. The heft of it just oozes confidence. And it doesn't fall on its side like a fainting girl. Just love the way how it signals a target well beyond the coil, so you can home in and ID. Essentials are right where you want them. Will report back when I've managed some decent hours on this precision instrument.

Should arrive today. I'll keep you guys posted.

The 705 has superior tracking without a doubt. But you need to turn it off in disc mode when hunting for those deep targets and still maintain a very accurate ground balance. Several occassions I've had the slightest whisper of a target in disc mode, thinking it was a false. But there is no such thing as a repeatable false in exactly the same spot. Switch to prospecting mode and it tries to track the target out. Then you really start to doubt yourself. But they do exist. My settings for max disc depth on the 705. 2-tone, disc pattern all accept, threshold 1 point below audible, max volume, tracking off, sens just below falsing, GB spot on "actually listen to the minerals to get a really clean spot", noise cancel. And a little party trick, put a crosshairs on your coil. Not a hot-spot, but a real crosshairs N-S E-W. You will catch targets with a correct non-ferrous audio and no TID, you will catch targets prospecting mode will try to track out,... you will need a deeper digger!

On the E-trac and the CTX there is a lot more modulation between your set threshold and max volume. If I remember correctly the E-trac even has a specific control to adjust it, called variability. The 705 lacks a bit in that department. It is calibrated from 0 threshold to max volume. So when you drop max volume everything sounds just as large. Hunting in disc you can't really connect and paint a picture what is going on beneath the coil. As much as the 705 is my pet detector, I'm in dire need of something with superior modulation in disc mode. And which suits my shot elbow. Can't handle machines which need to be swept fast. Anyway the prospecting mode on the 705 is a work of art. More than deep enough even when hunting low sensitivity and a buttery smooth threshold. And you shouldn't reserve prospecting mode just for the 18,75 kHz coils. Try those 7,5 kHz coils and just walk away in amazement at the depth and sensitivity this little Minelab can achieve. But then again don't believe me, I'm an official 705 addict.