phrunt

Yes, yours was from the second batch my dealer received, Only the very first batch had the problem. Shipping from NZ to USA went smoothly and quite quick for you The first batch I'm talking about appear to be a small very first batch Coiltek made, they only went to Australia and NZ it seems, all other's received a later batch where they'd made the hole the right size. I imagine the very first batch with the problem was quite a small batch. That's the punishment I get for being an early adopter I guess 😉

It is a good coil, and I like it's sensitivity to small gold at the tip and tail, not near the depth of the 11" on coin size targets but you wouldn't expect it to be of course as it is a lot smaller of a coil. I'm pleased to hear they've fixed the coil bolt issue, my 10x5" is one of the first batch and the ML bolt does not fit it.

I'm happy with entry level detectors, and a very large percentage of my finds could have been done with them no problems, I regularly fire up my Ace and others for a spin, I really enjoy using them, they're great fun and do remarkably well, I think the difference between high end and low end is very exaggerated, especially in my ground for coins, jewellery and so on. It's more time behind the detector that dictates how well you do around here, more so than what detector you use.....

Enjoy your trip Steve, good luck on the gold and have a ball with your new detector! Chase will keep the spammers at bay I'm sure 🙂 So just go de-stress and have some fun in your happy place.

I would think if tracking is disabled on the Equinox and no ground balance is performed then that's how the Vanquish would handle the ground? Possibly in beach mode as people think the Vanquish is almost the Equinox running in beach mode. If that is the case and your Equinox works in those conditions where you typically hunt then the Vanquish will be fine, and as Jeff said, accurate target ID's are what the Vanquish excels at for me too. As a beginner nothing is better than having accurate ID's to get you enjoying the hobby.

Adapter has been arranged for you 🙂

Send me a message when you get a chance, I will help with a solution to your adapter issues.

We've never had a Nel dealer so I've always bought mine direct from Ukraine, they ship free anyway so it's just the annoyance of warranty if you had to send it back, although that'd only be about $30NZD, highly unlikely to happen though, has anyone ever had a faulty one? This is the Nel/Cors dearer that's direct from Nel. https://www.ebay.com.au/str/valerius1906nelandcorscoils?_trksid=p2047675.l2563 I've decided just to wait and see what Garrett comes out with before investing in anymore VLF's, and hopefully Nel will make coils for it.

The shortages won't affect many other brands detectors either, many are using 15+ year old chips no other manufacturers of any product would want 😉 You can bet it's hurting Minelab just as much as those wanting to buy it, they're the ones not getting the sales so you can bet it's not some deliberate stunt. They just don't have them to ship.

That's a very good point, I wonder if the Garrett 24k+ coils will work on the legacy 24k. The 24k was never on the market long enough for the aftermarket guys to make coils for it, I'm sure they will for the Garrett version. I'm a bit focused on the aftermarket coils as I really love the Nel Snake. That and the Gold Bug 2 small concentric are my two favourite gold prospecting VLF coils.

I honestly can't wait for the higher end version of the Apex to come out, thanks for your review on the Apex, I've resisted it as I just know they have to be working on a better higher end model and my collection is already too big to fit in my cupboard. Things are looking up for Garrett, fingers crossed, and I have my fingers and toes crossed they stick with their current policy of allowing aftermarket coils. The Apex does sound like a good detector when it's been positioned at their low end, and people are comparing it against their AT Pro/Gold/Max higher end models. I'm very happy with the look of it, and the screen is awesome, hopefully they stick with that design. I look forward to hearing how you go with it over time kac, so far it's sounding promising and I love that these entry level type detectors from various manufacturers are starting to get attention, it helps bring the prices down of higher end machines making them more accessible for people. Garrett is starting to become competition again.

And here was me thinking the 22" Concentric X-coil is a massive coil People looking skyward in Central NSW might think they've seen a UFO if they catch a glimpse of the state's newest mining tool. It's an Aerial Electro Magnetic array called the 'X-cite' - and the exciting part is it's finding gold way out west.

Yes, I have difficulty understanding bad conditions 🙂 I think If I had to detect where you guys do I'd be lost and not have a clue what to do 🙂 You are forced to be hardcore detectorists by your ground. You need to know your machines a lot more than someone in my ground. I'd really struggle in bad conditions as I've been so spoilt with benign soils. They need to make a fully auto Equinox 1000 just so people like me could stumble into bad ground and use the detector without getting a headache.

Yup, it does appear the Vanquish only shines in milder soils and I completely understand the desire to have a lot of settings when the conditions don't allow the simplicity of a detector like the Vanquish and I am sure the Vanquish is not near as good as the Nox in bad soil conditions. The GPX 6000 is basically fully auto replacing a detector the GPX 5000 with a billion settings. I wonder what will happen with the Equinox 1000 if they will continue the push forward to more simple detectors. I personally really like simple, I believe the detector would be better at setting itself up than I would as I'm the first to admit I'm not a settings guru, especially when it comes to staying on top of the settings as conditions change. Geosense may make an appearance on Multi IQ in some form, automatically setting sensitivity, EMI channels, settings, detect modes and so on and if I did I'd be quite happy. While fully auto may not be the best 100% of the time, if it does most of the time I'm good with that. I hope if they do make the Equinox 1000 fully auto they still give some choices of settings on the higher priced Equinox 1200 though for occasions when auto just isn't doing the job right.

It's a prime example of why people will never agree on detector performance though, as conditions vary so wildly between hunting grounds what works well for one won't work for another. What works for me may not work for you and so on. If someone who lived near me was in the market for their first detector and only wanted to hunt coins in parks and fields I'd tell them to buy the Vanquish, even if they had money to burn as I genuinely think they'd do better. Maybe some hardcore detectorist that likes to fiddle and tweak to work out the optimal settings for each location may do better with the Equinox, maybe not. Minelab seem to be currently trying to automate their detectors are much as possible to give people the best settings with minimal user input, and I think that's a great step forwards, and suits people like me, I'm not interested in fiddling with settings to make the stars align for each hunt I'd prefer the detector do it for me as I'm not a settings expert and don't want to be but again, others do want to be. Minelab took it a step too far not having ground balance on the Vanquish though, not for me, but for others they did.

I always thought they just put the apprentices and trainees on making the pinpointers, and the ProFind 35 is a prime example of that. I doubt the same engineers working on the SMF are working on the pinpointer, you've got to give the fresh graduates something to work on too. I'm interested in their new pinpointer, hopefully it's something I want to buy as I still haven't found my ideal pinpointer yet, and it's not for lack of trying.

I've just been mucking around in my yard comparing detectors and coils over a couple of targets to try find a way to demonstrate what I'm constantly seeing in the field, I didn't do test runs before filming to know how they'd perform against each other, I didn't fiddle to try make one better than the other, I put them into the settings I thought were best and let it rip, El Nino suggested some Equinox settings to try and tweak the Nox better to hit the target as the Vanquish was doing better on the deeper target to the left, I did another video trying to make the Nox equal the Vanquish but it couldn't. I knew what the results would be as I've used the Vanquish and the Equinox to dig hundreds of old silver coins, over time you start to realise which is giving you the most stable ID's or revealing these targets at depth the best. I don't find a few old deep silver coins a year, I find a few a day and hundreds a year so it's quite easy to work out which detector I'm doing best with, I'm now starting to think the CTX I just recently bought may take over the Vanquish as my coin hunter, as with a fair bit of messing around I've now made it perform very well. When I first bought the Vanquish and took it over one of my good spots I was surprised how many coins it was finding that I'd missed with my Equinox, and this continued and I largely put it down to having to lower the Nox sensitivity due to the EMI and I was able to keep the Vanquish up high. The Vanquish had the EMI advantage as I've always maintained the Vanquish handles EMI around my area better, on the deepest of the two targets (the left one) the Vanquish was not giving good ID's with the small coil often but gave the best audio giving the target away. The Equinox ID'd it as iron and the audio reflected that. Put bigger coils on and the same results are mirrored except the targets need to be even deeper. 🙂 On these same targets with bigger coils the Vanquish gave the most stable ID. The small coils video is the best one as they all struggle the most on the deepest target with small coils. All I'm trying to get across is in my very mild soils the Vanquish can often outperform the Equinox on deep coins and nothing I've been able to do with the Equinox settings gets it comparable to my Vanquish, I put it down to the Vanquish being better with EMI. I'm not making it up 🙂 If you have some magical settings that you think will help the Equinox I'd be happy to try them, and beach mode certainly isn't the secret sauce to depth on coins, quite the opposite. Be gentle, I'm sure I'll get picked apart, this is just what I'm experiencing in my soils and if there was a way you could tell me to make my Equinox perform as good as my Vanquish I'd be happy. Now of course I don't expect this performance out of the Vanquish for everyone and for most the Nox is likely the best, obviously with no ground balance in bad soils it won't do near as well. I never have to ground balance detectors to calm any ground response in park type areas, I do it anyway sometimes in hope of better performance but it's not necessary to operate, so I don't think the ground balance of either is causing the depth increases, I think it's the EMI handling. I just think Minelab had worked something out between making the Equinox and the Vanquish and whatever it was is in the Vanquish software, and maybe it's not going into the Equinox software until the Equinox 1000 comes out and my wild theory is something to do with the 4kHz 🙂 The 4kHz came out of nowhere and was quite an unusual thing to add in a firmware update don't you think? Their explanation of why 4kHz was added it also a bit strange 🙂 A new Single Frequency of 4 kHz has been added to the existing 5, 10, 15, 20 and 40 kHz options. This new 4 kHz frequency enhances the detection of large deep targets, particularly those found in parts of Asia. As a result of optimising for these conditions, this new frequency may respond differently for users compared to the other single frequencies.

I don't think the sensitivity on the Vanquish is wound back at all, in my mild soils which are ideal conditions for depth you'd think the Vanquish with v8 8x5" coil gives a better Target ID response on a deep target than the Equinox with Coiltek 10x5" coil with them both maxed out on sensitivity.

I think the frequency weightings are different on the Vanquish mainly due to it handling EMI better than the Nox. I think 4kHZ is in play more than 5kHZ on the Vanquish, 4 is fine with EMI here where as 5 is troublesome, the Nox behaves like 5kHZ is being used where as the Vanquish feels like 4kHZ is being used. I maybe wrong of course, this is just a gut feeling but my Vanquish is better with EMI than my Equinox.

Here is a video of a nugget dig that happened today with the 22" Concentric coil. A decent size nugget out of the hole too. Unfortunately it was not my gold find 🙂 I wish it was. The ground here is a bit frozen at the moment, It hasn't got above 0 for two days now where I live, I'm very overdue to go find some gold though and videos like this make me want to get out there 🙂

strick needs to X-ray one 🙂 I love his coil X-rays!

I'm still in awe of how good my GPZ is, it shocks me the depth I'm getting little tiddlers. This doesn't change just because another detector comes out, a few months ago everyone was very happy with how their GPZ was performing, this doesn't change now, it's still performing the same and that is incredibly well 🙂 I would like to do side by side comparisons between the two but I'm sure if I did my results wouldn't be the same as someone else's results somewhere else, we all hunt in vary different environments with different soil types so it makes so many of these opinions from others invalid for my situation, and my opinions invalid for theirs so when I do this it's going to be for my own benefit, not others. It's rare I would see a Youtube video and think yep, my results mirror that. People have shown videos of a nugget they've found and are carrying on how deep it is and no other detector would have found that, flogged ground and all the other usual sayings, and I'm thinking my Equinox would have got that, the joys of mild soils 🙂 Oddly it appears I'm one of the least concerned about the new kid on the block being a GPZ destroyer. It's a great detector I'm sure, I have no doubt about that but I'm just not bothered by how good it is maybe as I'm extremely happy with what I've got now, I'm satisfied. I'm in my happy place at the moment and I have my dream of small coils on a very powerful detector, my little 8" is my dream coil and without the small coils available on another detector I wouldn't be in my happy place and I don't want to go through that all over again, it would be a step backwards as without a small coil I'm missing a lot of gold as I can't get my coil to the ground in many places, fact! This isn't to say I'm not interested in the 6000, I most certainly am and I'll be watching it very closely, I just wish it wasn't limited by the coils once AGAIN. It's too early to say I guess maybe they'll let someone make coils for it. What's best for some isn't best for everyone, it's absolutely fantastic Minelab just keeps pumping out the new best thing though, bring it on I say, where would we be be without their innovation. I just think it's not worth getting all worked up over which is best at this or that, they're both exceptional detectors. 🙂

Outstanding hunt, it doesn't get much better than that, I bet you had an absolute ball, thanks for the post.

I often wonder if the manufacturers of these fake detectors factories are contracted out to make parts for genuine Minelab detectors, like arm rests and housings and so on. The reason I wonder this is when I was talking to the manufacturer of the QED and why he insists on using 3D Printing for it's components even though they're weak and a big downfall for the quality of the detector and it all came down to cost, a simple little part was going to cost him $60,000 or something to get the molds done up and get even started using that part, and he'd need many different parts making it just not viable for a small production run detector. These Chinese cloners seem to be able to bang out injection molded parts for anything they want, anytime they want in any quantity they want. If you look on the Chinese sales platforms they sell all the different parts for the GPZ from lcd screens, chargers, batteries, shafts, arm cuffs and even the front button panel with screen cover, basically any part you need, they can supply it. Maybe it's just because there is a big market for the clone detectors in some countries, but I doubt it, for example a clone GPZ would quickly be rejected by an African prospecting trying to find gold for a living, it's not like the performance is even remotely like the real thing so I can't imagine sales of these fake detectors is all that high to justify making the injection molded parts. It seems they are likely already making them officially to make it viable. I was given a replacement shaft for my Equinox when I had the shaft wobble from Minelab. The paperwork for it said it was made in China. Chinese factories are known for having a backdoor where they make products under contract for the client and give them their order and keep the run going to make more to sell out the backdoor. It just seems logical this is what's going on with a lot of these clone detectors, or at least parts of them. This one is a bit of a mash up of various models all slapped together to make a "super detector" 🙂

Yes, I was confused trying to locate a shotgun pellet with it, took me a while to work it out as I kept digging with my scoop in the wrong place, after doing the video I had much more of an idea how the coil works so it made pinpointing tiny targets easier. So you can see the difference in hot spots here is the standard GPZ coil with the same test, same pellets.