cjc

Got this running the "Undertune" program---9 GB, Sens 19 seems to make things more orderly.  2 Tone, Non Ferrous Pitch 25, really makes the gold jump out.  Jury still out on the upgrade--I run it fast 5 or 6 especially if you want to traverse parallel to shore with fast water. It's 18k 34.9 gr. 

cjc

On 10/1/2019 at 1:49 PM, Flowdog said:

 running F2@9 sounded like I had cotton in my earphones. 

Well said but it's doing a remarkable job up at the high settings--killing even alloyed slag.  Looking at Steves chart didn't realize that it was an expanded range on both ends = better drawing of targets out of iron???  My intital "cap beater" F26+ range tests (In 2 tone to liven it up--take the cotton...) were impressive and seemed to offer a good solution for those brutal slag and cap infested beaches.  Much as I like to complain I open my mouth and nothing comes out...!!!

The sense I get with this upgrade is that you could draw two "bias curves".  The F--is lower and flatter--not quite beginning to break up the range of caps--but there are fewer consequences.  It also attempts to bring them into the center of the ID scale for a more defined ID.  F2  is a steeper curve that does get the entire range of caps but carries with it your typical high bias tradeoff--sluggishness around iron and alloys as all this filtering takes place in software.  At the higher levels Recovery Speed does not seem to do nearly as much.  While its pretty good at higher levels on "clean" metals such as high kt gold, just as with any "power curve" there is still a loss of overall effectiveness at the higher ranges--where the audio becomes a bit corrupted--the bias takes up a lot of the machine's "work" capacity.  Where you are trying to tame diverse fq's to begin with--adding the muting of a scattered type of target (caps) has got to involve "dialing back" the machine's ability to detect all targets.   I think the way to get the most from this upgrade is  to run a low setting but then--practice speeding up the sweep to knock out a higher range of caps and iron.  It's great to have this additional tool to run extreme high bias but there are for sure some tradeoffs to be managed. 

cjc

seems pretty good to me especially when you get up around 4 or 5.  it's the part with the tradeoffs....seems like  clean, smooth bias though--a clean signal does not seem to suffer that much at least at those mid settings. 

cjc

On 9/14/2019 at 1:12 PM, Ridge Runner said:

The only thing it showed me is he is walking faster than the ground he can detect. It looks as if he’s out for a afternoon stroll 🚶‍♀️not detecting.

 C.Scope is a new one to me but  what part of the world they from?

 I’ve seen that name before and I believe it came from Kellyco .

 Chuck 

Eric Foster worked with them on some of their boards the CS6--A very sharp PI circuit.  In fact when I ask some of the best bench techs I know what they are working on several have said that their projects have this platform as a basis. 

cjc 

On 8/1/2019 at 12:46 PM, Johnnysalami1957 said:

More Minelab drama. Yay!

https://www.minelab.com/usa/vanquish

...more bearded guys...running around.....

...oh brother...

cjc

This is a great and interesting topic that encompasses a large number of the things that the Equinox does.  To address this problem --there isn't a single "tweak' it takes a full understanding of detector basics and then specific knowledge of how to apply these basics to the Equinox.  The  main culprits are high salinity, bottom contours (including inclines) and fast water.  There are some good tips in the manual--a faster Rec. Spd. as offset by more sens and Ground Balancing with a side to side "boost."  I've also used something that draws from my Excal days--recognising that there are three distinct "zones" in many salt environments--the high "draw", the "lower swish" and the lower flat--each with different balance points.  To move the coil while you balance is really just bringing in more randomness.  Making for a higher balance point.  It's not a bad idea to balance for and hunt these three "zones" separately--so as not to be over balanced for the less challenging  levels.  I've done a fair bit of testing with the Rec. Spd. dynamic and while some of the speeds I see suggested here (3,4) are pretty low, when you do go up higher there is a risk of depth loss.  This is more of an extreme measure--good for hills or rough bottom terrain.  How increased Gain factors in here is a tough call--conditions dependent.  Trying to get more depth by clipping down a high powered signal doesn't really make sense when you look at the "bitty" audio that signals the Equinox not handling fast or deep salt.... 

My strategy is just to bring up the TB enough to assign more ground noises down.  (1 or 2)  I've also experimented with some overtuning methods (Manual -9) that seem to help as well--producing a general smoothing effect with good responses standing out more.  I also run 2 Tone--to simplify things.  An alternate for the 800 is to use the "Pitch Gap" in 50 Tone.  These two methods allow decent Gain settings and let me avoid this constant chasing of half sounds.  Sweep speed gives some lee-way to respond to changes instead of some high Rec Spd.   Too many hunters think that the  Equinox will "quick tweak" for any situation--whereas no detector can.  It  takes trial and error and a broad based approach to tuning to address the demands of a fast, varied salt environment. 

cjc

cjc

Sorry about the abbreviations--I hear others calling them as such and do it myself without thinking.  Not on Geotech here wherein I would be the one asking for clarification....

cjc

On 6/24/2019 at 7:34 AM, midalake said:

 

I am guessing both of you have read my saltwater report card a few topics below?  It is not just a "falsing" problem, but a significant lack of detection problem as well working in moving salt water. I had 100's of targets disappear when moving water was present, not to be heard again until the beach drained out.

During the times when water is moving on the beach slope it just seems the Nox is seriously crippled by this water wash. 

I am going to work harder in July to crack this problem. I highly suggest not progressing your movement on the beach until the water has drained off.   

If anyone thinks there is an answer, I am all ears!

Dave 

 

Dave's Salt Water Report Card was an accurate and well written account.  I bookmarked this as kind of a "problem set" for future projects in the NOX.  Never liked the "bitty" quality that the audio takes on in fast or deep salt or where there are inclines.  The overprocessed signal removes you from the feedback that needs to be responded to by way of coil speed and tuning.  I guess this is why there is the low TX shift--so new hunters would not be at a total loss.  There's also the problem of ground noises jumping up.  Best thing I've found is to run B2 in 2 Tone with a massive   manual undertune (-9!).  This gives more of a solid barrier--and cleaner assignment of targets. It can also be run in All Metal this way to make good responses stand out.  You also have TB to clean up the signal if needed. Not my first choice as a deep salt water machine but it works and is accurate.  

cjc

On 6/10/2019 at 9:26 AM, Daniel Tn said:

Great post, Daniel you certainly pay a price for those high fq's in the amount of small stuff that gets your attention.  In G2 hunting fresh I sacrifice everything under "6" to get off these.  CTX does have more pun ch in salt but does not like fresh water black sand at all.  Any disc you add kills the depth.   Nox has that nice sharp audio--very  nimble that way but theres always a tradeoff.  This is wy I promote a broad-based approach to signal selection with the NOX-- it's a great consistency checker of you take the time to  et it deliver. 

cjc

Editor note: split from https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/9945-my-salt-water-report-card/

 

I agree with ya on some of your points and grades.

After a year of using the Equinox, I can give a fair assessment on where it ranks and how it compares to other detectors for the uses that I do.  If I were solely a beach hunter, I would personally feel more confident with a CTX 3030.  I personally feel it has more depth to it in that arena.  Even in freshwater, I put a good season of water hunting in with the CTX and all last year with the Nox.  I found more rings last year with the Nox but I also found triple as much small junk that slowed me down...stuff that fell through the scoop, and or just disappeared.  This alone has me wanting to snag a good used CTX.  

On saltwater beach...this is an even stronger feeling of favoring the CTX to me. I personally didn't mind the weight of the unit. I find the screen is easier to see on the Nox, particularly in direct sun light.  I even like the feel of the Nox.  I just feel from what I see, that the 3030 has more muscle to it in that area. I can't ever remember having a target that disappeared/vanished on me once I scooped a hole while hunting with the CTX.  I had some I almost gave up on cause they were so deep though.  The Nox will do the Houdini act in salt sand and in dirt....it doesn't like open holes at all.  

When it comes to hunting in mineralized soil and coin/relic hunting back home...this changes big time. Even though the CTX is revered as a great coin machine, it is handicapped a lot by red dirt.  The Nox runs circles around it there.  Like night and day difference.  Hunting in iron...same thing.  Heavily favored to the Nox.  This leaves me in a split mood.  Most of my summer hunting IS in the water for jewelry, albeit freshwater.  The Nox will find the same rings as the CTX...but it also wants to lock onto those small pieces of crap that fall through the scoop. I need to figure out a way to have both and hope the wife doesn't find out ?

Ya, I really like this product too.  These kinds of situations where a perfect signal is wedged in coral or hardpan need this device.   The more I test it the more I see it going deeper in ground.  That down on the belly work is super tough--especially in current. Guy who saw this post on my FB showed me a PP'er with the same extension--he feels for the vibration up the handle.  

cjc

I would say in air small tip 4 -5 " large tip 6"+ but one thing that Bill Lahr tells me all the time is that a pulse will go deeper in ground--especially salt. Seems pretty powrfull compared to some of the other PP'ers I've tried especially with the dive coil.  Seems to reach out pretty well on larger targets too.  Really like the sound and in-ground performance. 

cjc  

A Quick Look at The Nokta / Makro Pulse Dive

I was fortunate enough to field test a prototype of this amazing device and was immediately impressed by the Pulse Dive’s rugged, professional feel.  The solid “heft” of the device made all other pinpointers I’ve tried feel like flimsy toys.  It’s also a great, practical concept—a waterproof diving detector with a deep 5.5” (14 cm.) coil for that converts in a second to a regular pinpointer.  The Pulse Dive features 5 levels of Sensitivity adjustment, selectable vibration, light and tone alert and can be paired with your headphones via a built-in wireless module.   The production model features yellow detail for easy visibility underwater and comes in a sturdy case.  The Pulse Dive kit includes covers for both coils, holster, lanyard, spare gaskets, charge cord and manual.  There's also a second, louder endcap for land use.  This is an extremely well-thought-out device—great not only as a deep, full featured standard pinpointer  but also for quick area searches of  dwellings, stone walls, enclosed spaces--and even as a security wand.   My tests showed the Pulse Dive to have great sensitivity to small gold—even chains.  It also had nice depth for coin hunting on land.  Picture shows a ’32 cent and '38 nickel—my first two finds pinpointed with the Pulse Dive.   A great addition to any serious inland or shoreline treasure hunter’s kit. 

cjc

no it was like the clips wore and let water in upgraded gasket or not.   it was an old model.   seems pretty good now but will do some time in the tub before i trust it in salt.  cjc

ya, I had a new bulkhead cell and clips put in and it leaked right away (mismatched clips?) right up into the control pod and would not boot but ML did me a very nice turn and gave me some seconds clips snap very nicely now looks pretty good.  hope they do in fact have their act together with this one--great machine these minor things gave it a bad name amongst many and almost me too.. 

clc

On 5/19/2019 at 7:40 AM, dewcon4414 said:

The EQ can be a chatty machine in the water near hardpan..... better in fluffy sand out there.   If the Box and coil is under water its not EMI as much as the salt/minerals.   The deeper you go the more effect the salt has on the machine.  I also find it a bit irritating that the machine wraps around in the lower gold digits.... rather than the higher digits out of my way.   That means you have to play with 5 tones or 2 tones.... 50 tones seems to work better for me to ID targets from that wrap around falsing.    You can always turn down the GB...... but in hard pan your will really notice a depth difference since the machine is already working with reduced power.    You can also turn up the RS.... but that kind of chops signals... and you still have to reduce sensitivity with to much chatter.   IMO they need to play with the salt balance a bit more.   I agree Clive its not CTX or Xcal in PP mode...... they seem a little more refined out there and can be deeper if you have to do a lot of adjusting to the Nox....... BUT the smaller shallower gold the Nox seems to pick up.

Always appreciate hearing your spin on things Dewcon.  It is amazing just how much of this low end wrap this detector has--thats why I have no hesitation in running the TB up a bit to shut it up and reduce these partials.  Amazing that these will not even be iron just seabed.  Some will be way up at 9 that's too high.  Ive been testing an "undertune" (-9) prog that works well at making good responses stand out well.  Chase is right on with suggesting not straying too far from the stock settings especially RS--as you say it either flattens or chops.   Hunted with the EQ as a pro last week and although the coil went  it did quite well.  Taking some early notes for a V3 and realize that V's 1 & 2 did not address these issues nearly well enough.  You really need to have a good grasp of how Sens, GB, RS and Bias interact to get performance from this detector in deep salt water---especially if you want to hear any faint targets  over this "racket".

cjc

Chase--that's pitch--takes some getting used to but it's the most distinct.  I typically run the TB at around 2 --not really expecting any micro gold well worth the trade off in stability.  Cant be heard underwater--real flaw IMHO---just no volume.  

cjc

As much as M/L wants to portray the EQ as "turn on and go" these machines with a complex, highly processed (modulated) signal are finicky and there's a fair bit to learn in order to get consistent performance--especially around salt.  Keeping the Sens within a manageable range is the only way to really learn the machine.  Another good method is to crank it and get used to picking responses out--then when you turn it back down the audio is easier to recognize especially the faint range. cjc

On 3/8/2019 at 8:22 PM, Chase Goldman said:

Congrats on the 50th here is a DP page with a number of resources that explain the basics, theory, physics and technology behind metal detectors.  HTH

 

Here is the Equinox Essential Information Thread:

 

Here is a link that explains Multi IQ

https://www.detectorprospector.com/magazine/best-of-forums/minelab-multi-iq-technology-details-explained/

Chew on that awhile and if you have more questions than check back.  TBH - As an engineer myself and tech geek, I think you may getting yourself into the weeds too soon on the theory of operation stuff and it appears you might have the wrong mental model of receive and transmit as far as a metal detector is concerned that may be a source of confusion for you.  You are looking at it more like RADAR and it is more closely coupled like a transformer (see discussion below) because we are talking about detecting small changes in magnetic fields not reflected radio waves where there is little influence between the transmitted and received signals.  I would separate your intellectual curiosity about how the detector works from understanding how to operate the detector save for a few basic concepts.  But to delve a little bit into this, the detector is basically acting like a big transformer with a transmit coil (which one "D" the left side of the coil loop) as the primary and a receive coil (the other "D" on the right side of the coil loop) as the secondary and the target acting as the "core" of the transformer and the most "sensitive" region of the coil loop being the center "spine" of the coil loop where the two "D"s overlap in a back-to-back fashion .  Different metallic makeup of the "core" (target) will cause the electric signal passing through the transformer system to be altered in ways that can be measured such that the target shape and electromagnetic properties such as conductivity and inductance can be inferred and passed on to the user as visual and audible target information.  The transformer analogy as I described is incomplete and imperfect but it gets the idea across, hopefully.

Multifrequency helps better cancel/account for ground effects and enable the different transmission and excitation properties associated with different frequencies to be simultaneously applied to the target.  Higher frequencies excite lower conductors like like gold, aluminum, brass, and lead and small targets better but cannot penetrate as deeply into the ground.  Lower frequencies penetrate deeper and excite high conductors like silver and copper and high mass objects  better than high frequencies.  Ferromagnetic targets like iron have different, known. response properties than non-ferromagnetic targets and can therefore be readily identified and discriminated.  There are drawbacks to multifrequency operation, two of the biggest being, minimizing transmission power loss to extent practical (the transmit energy has to be divided between individual frequencies if you are actually transmitting them separately and simultaneously, rather than using more elegent methods such as square waves, pulse width modulation, or other methods to take advantage of harmonics that are produced when two or more signals of different frequencies are combined) and the processing power required to extract the information from the received signal.

Equinox also brings adjustable, fast response to the table (known as recovery speed) which helps with being able to detect multiple targets in close proximity to each other.  But as is true with all aspects of detecting, there is no free lunch.  Run recovery speed too high and deeper target signals will begin to become clipped such that you may not be able to hear them with the practical effect that you are actually reducing detecting depth.  Run recovery too low in an attempt to increase depth, and you risk increasing ground noise because of the need to swing slower to get a good signal whichnis also counter optimal performance.  For the 800, the sweet spot for recovery speed is around 4 to 6 leaning a little on the high side.  There are more in depth discussions of recovery speed on the Equinox Essentials thread page I linked to above.

One of the mantras I use to optimize Equinox setup is to stay as close to the defaults as I possibly can and to maximize the signal to noise ratio.  Avoid doing things that raise the noise floor along with signal sensitivity (like cranking sensitivity too high or lowering recovery speed too low as mentioned previously).

Let me know if you want to go into the different properties of the various modes (Park 1/2, Field 1/2,. Beach 1/2, etc.) and what conditions and targets they are optimized for.

HTH to get you started.

Chase

Great rundown and instruction, Chase.  I especially like the part about letting the machine operate within its pre-set parameters.  Very good advice.  Thanks clive

My spin is this:  with a single frequency machine there's more of a tendency to be noisy in fast salt.  With  the EQ--targets are more in the background.  There's also a "bittyness" to the audio when it's not handling well.  Ive done okay with it in B2  2 tone with the NF tone at 25 and if  its making noise the TB jacked up to above zero.  Also I've been testing an "undertune" prog that keeps the GB way down at -9.  Seems to make targets stand out a little better.  Its no CTX thats for sure.   In ground where a pulse would be noisy no VFL gets off scott free--there's always a price to be paid whether you notice it or not.  Certainly not thrilled about a machine for the water that can't be heard  underwater...  cjc

In looking for silver what I like about this machine is that as you adjust the high tone break there's a nice high tone that comes in initially but then drops out if the signal is below your setting.   So you are still getting stuff in close to iron but can use the coil to tell what's what.  You hear both ranges at once. Gotta get some more practice upping the high tone--pitch and volume.  I know there's going to be a lot of silver this year.  Its also shocking how many good signals are coming out of nowhere at the same sites I'd given up on. 
cjc

There's a lot going on with the bias and gain--more tones is too much initially.  Once you understand the iron response though--lot of potential anywhere.  Killed my worst site the other day..a Victorian grove where they worked on cars later on.   Kind of a cleaner, sharper signal than any of the multis--none of this "doodley boop" or bittyness....the Anfibio is raw--but stable.   Feel like it's wide open now --got an 1870 dime there a while back. 

cjc

M/L, Harolds (with a jumper from CTX), GG 
Amphibians (not terrible) and TE's (best).

cjc