Jackpine

As usual great info Steve. Was hoping for you that 16 Merc was a D! It seems you have found the sweet spot on sensitivity and reactivity settings for that site. I have mild soil here so am actually a bit jealous of what appears to be a site unlocker for you guys out west. 2 bar 81-85 is the worst I have to deal with and NO reports anywhere on the net of the Equinox in mild ground. That something about the target ID you mentioned, would it have to do with it staying stable/accurate even at high reactivity settings? Audio as in human intelligibility? The short time I had the Impact I found it to be a great audio machine but lacked in TID especially in co-locate situations. Tom

Very nice Mike. 18K is hard to come by so small or not makes it a great find!

One thing I appreciate about the 705 is its ability to tell most nickels from beaver tails and pieces by the audio and TID stability. At 18.75 kHz and equipped with elliptical coils in the 6x10" size range it's fast enough to give a varied response on aluminum shapes while nickels are more solid. Here's hoping the fast response of the Equinox will also let one profile Beaver tails in the same manner. Which brings up the question. Steve are you lobbying ML for for a 10" elliptical? I hope so. Tom

It's winter where I am so I'm not antsy to get one in my hands. So they can keep on tweaking and make it the best it can be whether in mild ground, Culpeper soil, black sand beaches or alkali ground. What would be cool is if they discover that tweaking for peak performance in one ground type has a negative effect in other soils, then have a download to suit your local conditions. If you travel to another area simply download the appropriate program.

Great video! Minelab IMO was wise to go with lower frequencies of 5 and 10 kHz on the Equinox vs the 3 and 7.5 kHz of the X-Terra. I never saw the need or advantage of 3 kHz for general coin hunting and why wisely, most manufacturers stay in the 6 to 7 kHz region for their single freq machines. 3 kHz may have an advantage in some circumstances but feel that would rare and for very specific applications as pointed out in the video. Tom

Thanks for that on the bottle caps Steve. However, the main question on my mind is how the Equinox handles iron for old site hunting. Not sure if you can answer for me as your coin site is vastly different mineral wise from my mild ground, but how is it handling rusty nails etc for you? Tom

Steve I believe I mentioned this before, but worth bringing up again, at least to me. Could you inquire about whether concentric coils will work on the Equinox? The 9" concentric on the 705 swings thru the water soo easy it's hard not to love. LOL Tom

Steve Thanks for mentioning hunting that particular park with the EQ. Saved me the trouble of PM'ing you. Tom

While perhaps not quite up to the GM1000 in sensitivity to the smallest nuggets I'd bet it will be a real blow to the rest of the competition.

Steve(g) It seems to me that Steve's opinion is not just speculation. You don't have to read between the lines because it's obvious Steve is well informed (read knowledgeable) on the subject. I am joining this fan club. Tom

Steve I can see why you're stoked over the 800's capability of running 20kHz and 40kHZ. Tom

Please let it have the advanced settings available at 20 and 40 kHz! Set tone break at say -2, adjust iron volume to suit and go prospecting! Tom edit: check out the bottom of the Spec sheets for the 800 and 600: http://www.minelab.com/metal-detectors/treasure-detectors/equinox-800?view=faq

High trash, low trash. I expected something better for an explanation of their function. Perhaps the manual will explain further and ML felt the wording fits for the casual use but I need MORE! Since the modes use different sets of freq's I had assumed that one mode, field perhaps, would deal with mineralized ground better. For now all we have is "high trash/low trash". meh! Come on Minelab we arent't casual users! Tom edit: My apologies if it came off like a rant. LOL I'm confident/hopeful ML will give better info eventually and in the manual. Like Steve an many others, I also want it to be a real advancement.

I'm waiting for the Flagship model with the Beam Me There button!

Nicely done video, I really enjoyed watching his live digs. Got a kick out of his excitement over finding the half too. He may claim to be a relative beginner but you can tell by the amount of targets he dug learning the machine that he has the right attitude. Good job! Tom

Steve The Fisher 1270 was like that. The volume control also controlled the gain. With the volume set high you could still get coin sized targets at good depths with the sensitivity set as low as 1. Also if the machine got a bit cranky at high sensitivity lowering the volume smoothed it right out. It wasn't just me that observed this behavior Keith S. also commented on it. Tom

Part of my beef with the 705 was the faint target response on 10"+ coins. They were there but oh so faint. Whether or not that was due to running the threshold at 7 or not I do not know. Now with he Mars 10x13" Tiger coil in place of the 10.5" DD ML coil and the new set up, targets in that range are clearly heard. Could be mostly attributable to the larger than stock coil or a combination of both. The end result is I'm happy with it as a deep coin hunter..

Hi Steve In disc with a wide open screen I set the threshold at 0 anyway for silent search. Using a stock or modified coin mode is were this helps being able to hear the blanking of the threshold. Re the Impact, I am not sold on it however, as it turns out I am getting the chance to test one here in a week or two. Word is the audio is at least somewhat better than the blendy/bleedy R2. It doesn't matter to me how well it performs if I can't adjust to its language. Tom Oh and by the way, the proper way to set the volume is to start low and increase it to a comfortable level. Try it, you will find it not set as loud vs the way you were doing it.

Very nice finds. Any idea how old the gold ring is? Tom

I had been running my threshold setting at 7 to get the slight hum in my phones and it finally dawned on me this is not an optimum setting for picking up deeper fainter signals since a setting closer to 0 should be best. Having always ran the detector volume control in the upper ranges and using the headphones to control the audio level, I decided to switch it around by setting the headphones to max and using the detectors volume control to set the overall audio level. This made a huge difference, now I can get that same slight hum with a threshold setting of 2. Subjectively there seems to be much less modulation on the deeper targets where now coins in the 10"+ range are much louder hits. I'm also running the detector volume control at 4 to 5 to get the same audio volume I was getting before with it set in the mid 20's. Tom OK so I decided to do some air tests to see what difference there is in audio modulation and on coin size targets there is a difference in audio the last few inches. First number is a full audio report distance (or as close as my ears perceive it), second number is the distance target lost. The difference between is the amount of audio modulation where the target volume decreases to the point the signal is lost. The first column is with the headphone volume at max and threshold audible at 1 setting (0 is silent), second column is detector volume at max with threshold at 7 (6 silent) Headphones max......................-... Detector max dime............. .............9" /10" ...- ..7" / 10" Buff nickel......9-1/2" / 10-1/2" ...-.. 8" / 10-1/2" IH penney..........10" / 10-1/2"....-....9" / 10-1/2" As we see there is no difference in detection distance between the 2 settings but a more modulated audio response with the detector volume at max. I also tried the dime with the detector volume at max with a 0 threshold setting and the results were a full volume report to 6" with a max detectable distance of 9", for a 1" loss. Because of this it is apparent that ML has designed the threshold level to follow the volume setting (7 equals 1) which would allow max sensitivity when the detector is used without headphones in cases where a high volume setting is needed to overcome ambient noise. The loss of response on the dime indicating a negative threshold setting because at this volume setting 6 is actually zero. Since these were coin sized targets and not tiny nuggets the difference could be even bigger when nugget hunting.

$3000.00+ for a machine that will beat the better single freq machines by an inch or two on a dime? I would not pay it! The cost benefit ratio just doesn't add up in my ole noggin. If you want to dominate the market with such a machine, IMO you have to take the opposite approach that ML has, $2400.00 for the CTX has always been a huge joke to me. I don't hunt salt water beaches or trashy city parks, I just want a machine that punches deeper in my mild to medium ground. It would not have to be waterproof to 3 meters either since I use single freq machines for fresh water hunting. Current multi freq tech has dominated the market for a lot of years. The return on investment to develop the tech must be huge for the manufacturers. I do not know how detector makers calculate ROI, is it 5 yrs or 7yrs, to break even? Or would looking long term to dominate the market with a price tag that beats ML style pricing be better? FTP, I'm looking at you. All this talk of be willing to pay 3 grand is silly! I would not pay a penny over $1500.00 for a better next generation coin machine. The ole Jackpine

Sweet ring. Going to brave it tomorrow at a local beach where the ice is out. Tom

IMO 630 Hz audio freq is just plain dumb. Us old guys need 750 Hz minimum. Listened to the audio on one of the vids and would not like it at all. Tom

Nice chunk of gold!

I have to go with Steve on this. While a nice top end machine that is capable of many types of hunting, it really isn't doing anything much different from what is already out there. I feel I have it covered with what I currently have and enjoy using all of them too. Tom