GB_Amateur

To drive home your distinctions, there are three audio setting menus for the Eqx 800 (not in the order they show up in the menu...): 1) Tone breaks, 2) Tone volume, 3) Tone (audio) frequency. For landlubber coin hunting (I don't get in the water...) I come very close to sharing your breaks, Tom. -9 --> 0, 1 --> 11, 12 --> 13, 14 --> V, V+1 and up. ('V' means variable because it can be as low as 17 and as high as 21, depending upon my expectation of finding Indian Head pennies). I run 'all metal' (no blocking out any metal range). 12-13 is the US nickel sweetspot and I assign both high audio frequency (just below max) and high volume. Higher than V are the high conductor (copper and silver) coins. That zone gets max volume and max audio frequency. The three 'trash' zones have tone volume and audio frequency set from low to medium. For example, lowest bin (iron) gets lowest tone frequency and lowest tone volume. 1 --> 11 ('foil') gets a bit higher in both. 14 --> V (poptop, Zincoln) is assigned a bit higher in both, but well below nickel zone. I haven't yet been to a site where I thought I might find gold coins, 3 cent pieces (either kind), silver 5 cent pieces. There you need to be in jewelry mode and open up everything from high single digits up.

Ok, I have Sunray Pro Golds and they work with my WM08. Here is the ($5 US) adapter I use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000068O6B/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The Pro Golds have two switches on the earcup where the cord is attached. I put both in the 'up' position. That gives the highest volume.

Nice find, and it looks like you're already having fun trying to identify it. Here are a couple sources: https://www.pcgs.com/prices/ https://www.ebay.com/i/153222067374?chn=ps In the first (PCGS page) look under 'Colonials'. There are photos there as well as other info. The Bowers book: Whitman Encyclopedia of Colonial and Early American Coins by Q. David Bowers apparently was never printed in softcover, at least my quick search didn't find one. New hardocovers are in the mid-40's in cost. I linked to a used copy on Ebay. Also, I looked on Worldcat site and they show a copy at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford, so if that is closeby you could search through theirs. Of course it could be a foreign coin. That might require an even more exhaustive search to identify. It's ineteresting that the coin is not round. That could be due to abuse, but it also could be to crude minting methods. I hope it's the latter since that could mean it is quite rare, at least if it was minted in what is now US or Canada.

Interesting thought. Large non-ferrous (desirable target) not particularly deep doesn't require a lot of gain. But gain can be your enemy when nearby (including deep) iron is present. Sounds like my standard sites, and until I got the Eqx with 11" coil I fed off the small coils with all my VLF/IB detectors. I've done well with the Eqx 6" in the few hours I've had it. Now I have two sharp tools in my toolbox! Thanks for showing your finds and reporting your settings, and particularly for experimenting out-of-the-box. Several (Steve H. being one) have said the Equinox is far from understood given all its 'knobs'. You are covering nearly virgin space.

US Buffalo nickel? You almost beat me to it (found 3 this summer but only one with a date). They were quite vulnerable to the loss of date as yours shows. There is a chemical (Ferric Chloride?) which will pull out a ghost view of the date, but even if a rare one it would still have no numismatic value. See if there is a mintmark (-D or -S) on the reverse under and between the E and C in "FIVE CENTS". Is that Shilling silver? Where is it from?

The only thing better than the gold in your hills are the beauty of the landscape. Most iron alloys (including stainless) will yield to a file. Did you check your unknown specimen with your PI? It's harder to fool them.

I've even wondered about highly corroded 'Zincolns'. Given that corroded Indian Heads read similarly in TID, I'm going to go back through my Zincolns (I don't throw them out and no one will redeem them) to verify. One easy way is to check the weight. IH's when freshly minted (since 1864+ when they switched from copper-nickel to bronze) have a mass of 3.11 grams. Zincolns, on the other hand, 2.5 grams. If the coin is partly missing, then it's almost surely a Zincoln due to the galvanic process of zinc-copper interaction eating away at it while in the moist ground. But if it's just so highly surface scaled that you can't see details, either is a candidate and weight will reveal the identity.

From my observation, very few 3rd party aftermarket coil manufacturers make closed coils. The exceptions that come to mind are the Cors Point (5" round) and Shrew (3.5" x 6.5") -- same as NEL Sharp and Snake. Other than that...??? With the expected sales for Equinox coils, though, I doubt they would hesitate at developing a closed eliptical of the 5-6" X 9-11" size. If I get into gold hunting (finding out soon) I'll buy one.

You can say that again. JW's looks like he puts it on the grinding wheel nightly but his has survived untold hours scraping the schist. Maybe you ought to buy from his supplier. 😉

Wow! Coming from someone who doesn't exaggerate I can't wait to see it.

Purpose: to filter electromagnetic interference (EMI). It's not always clear that these are necessary (or even help). You can buy them for ~$1 and attach yourself. I've tried this before and it didn't improve things in my case. It may also help to minimize the interference generated by the detector (that might bother other nearby devices, particularly other detectors). Bottom line is having one attached won't deteriorate the performance and if you don't have one and would like to try, it's a very easy mod.

Glad you didn't spend that $30 on the two big lotteries (MegaMillions pays $1 billion; Powerball about half that this weekend). 😁 Rough conversion: 0.7 * silverspot*$face is silver content value for 90% silver. So in your case: 0.7 * $14.67 * 0.5 for each 90%-er (45 of those) and 4/9 of that for the 40%-ers (15 of those). 45*$5.13 + 15*$2.28 = $265. Actually the 0.7 should really be 0.68 (harder to do in your head...) so take off about 3% ==> $255. On top of that, wear to the coins reduce the amount of silver so just call it a nice round $250 for your $30 investment. I'd be excited!

Not particularly cleaner. But instead of tone+dead hits I get high-tone+low-tone hits which I find are easier to register. Further, I can hear nearby iron tones and I also can pick up when iron tone and high tone are co-located, such as what you sometimes get with nails. I know some people who use discrimation (threshold in particular) will switch that off when they get an iffy signal, but I just find it easier & faster to keep it off in the first place. In high trash I've gotten false high tone hits halfway between two iron hits. Maybe there are ways to figure this out when threshold discriminating. Another thing I sometimes do is to dig up the offending iron hit in order to get a better location for the good hit (and often that clears up the TID of the good hit). Knowing there is something nearby from the start makes it easier for me. I really don't have much experience running discrimination except for back in the old days when there wern't multi-tones (Garrett Groundhog in my case). I just got comfortable listening for all tones when I learned to detect with my Gold Bug Pro, which is simply 2 tone, but IMO 2 is a lot better than 1! Apparently some detectorists let the site determine which way to go, and probably that's better if you're confident in both methods. All my life when I learn a way to do something I just stick with it and try to learn something completely different rather than spending the time to 'improve' something I already know how to do. Can't say that's the best approach for everyone, though.

Well done for just a 45 minute hunt. Interesting that it hit mostly 11-12, not the 12-13 of typical US nickel 5 cent piece. I wonder if the TID was pulled down by the surrounding trash you mention. Those who despise lone beavertails (not I) wouldn't have even dug it. 😄

Thanks for all the 'likes' and comments. I'd post if no one ever spoke up but it is confirmation to receive appreciation from others, particularly those who themselves are excellent chroniclers of our pasttime. Pardon me for not responding to each of you, but I certainly appreciate (and read with great interest) everything you say, both in response to my post but especially elsewhere on the forum. I can only hope that my reports give you 1/10 the inspiration that yours have given me.