Jump to content

Search the Community

Showing results for tags 'minelab equinox'.

  • Search By Tags

    Type tags separated by commas.
  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • Metal Detecting & Gold Prospecting Forums
    • Meet & Greet
    • Detector Prospector Forum
    • Metal Detecting For Coins & Relics
    • Metal Detecting For Jewelry
    • Metal Detector Advice & Comparisons
    • Metal Detecting & Prospecting Classifieds
    • AlgoForce Metal Detectors
    • Compass, D-Tex, Tesoro, Etc.
    • First Texas - Bounty Hunter, Fisher & Teknetics
    • Garrett Metal Detectors
    • Minelab Metal Detectors
    • Nokta / Makro Metal Detectors
    • Quest Metal Detectors
    • Tarsacci Metal Detectors
    • White's Metal Detectors
    • XP Metal Detectors
    • Metal Detecting For Meteorites
    • Gold Panning, Sluicing, Dredging, Drywashing, Etc
    • Rocks, Minerals, Gems & Geology

Categories

  • Best of Forums
  • Gold Prospecting
  • Steve's Guides
  • Steve's Mining Journal
  • Steve's Reviews

Categories

  • Free Books
  • Bounty Hunter
  • Fisher Labs
  • Garrett Electronics
  • Keene Engineering
  • Minelab Electronics
  • Miscellaneous
  • Nokta/Makro
  • Teknetics
  • Tesoro Electronics
  • White's Electronics
  • XP Metal Detectors
  • Member Submissions - 3D Printer Files
  • Member Submissions - Metal Detector Settings

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start

    End


Last Updated

  • Start

    End


Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


Website URL


Facebook


YouTube


Instagram


Twitter


Pinterest


LinkedIn


Skype


Location:


Interests:


Gear In Use:

  1. Out detecting on Sunday 10th June in roasting hot weather making it very uncomfortable and on the way home a horrendous thunderstorm. I had plenty of finds some very deep but only two or three of interest the best find was a Charles II of Scotland 1677 Bawbee ( Sixpence ) these are roughly the size of a pre decimal halfpenny and are quite rare.
  2. “I have seen some confusion on the internet regarding the differences between the Minelab EQUINOX 600 and EQUINOX 800. I think that the EQUINOX 600 is being somewhat overlooked because it’s not the “top model” but, in my opinion, it is incredible value for a remarkably low price. I hope this blog will clear up any confusion and, in the process, show why I think the EQUINOX 600 deserves a second look by some people…” https://www.minelab.com/anz/go-minelabbing/treasure-talk/equinox-600-vs-equinox-800
  3. https://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Receiver-Simultaneously/ (From the ad:) APTx LL, 10 hour run-time. Looks like you could pair 2 of these together for a build-your-own (Garrett) Z-link. What am I missing?
  4. Got out to Holbrook Arizona to hunt Meteorites with a few friends. Ended up with 168 Grams of meteorites, a few coins and items from the railroad. Eyeballed the meteorites, and used the Equinox 800 for the items. The Equinox 800 would hear the LL/LL6 Holbrook meteorites with no discrimination. As soon as I put discrimination on, I could not hear the meteorites. I could not hunt with discrimination off because of all the trash on the side of the railroad tracks... Dave
  5. Stopped at a friend's house for a night's stay, and his wife saw that I had brought a metal detector along on our way to move to FL. She mentioned that her husband had lost his wedding ring about 6 years ago while spreading mulch in the front yard. He had his son look one time, but he was using a cheap detector I guess. I tried swinging for about 15 minutes in the flower bed, but there was an iron border that was not playing nicely with detecting. I even got down on my hands and knees and just used my pinpointer to no avail. So, why not try the well-manicured lawn! I had the sensitivity lowered to about 12, and there were no signals when in the grass. I guess that's why the consistent ID of 15 stood out so much. After digging a small plug, the ring popped out on the first hole. I wish I was videoing his reaction... priceless. He had just gotten done saying to my wife that he would give me $200 if I found it. He actually cut me a check for $200, but I left it with him when we left. I told him to keep it as a token of thanks for letting me detect along the way to FL on our move. That's 2 gold rings that have ID'd at 15 for me, the usual number for pull tabs.
  6. I would like to understand more about what All-Metal Mode does. All the manual basically says is "this disables the current discrimination pattern so that all metal objects will be detected" I normally detect in Orchards using Park2 and Fields using Field2. My main interest is to find artifacts, Jewelry and Coins. My biggest challenge is the amount of farm-related trash such as horseshoes, odd bits of iron, etc. Often I will get a good steady signal in the teens in F2, or P2, only to find it is trash, so NOW my technique is to check it out with All-Metal as well and if I get the deep tones and minus signals I generally decide not to dig. Is this a sound technique? Ok I appreciate that if a coin is right above or below the iron then I may miss it, but I'm happy with that call. Specifically, I wonder if All-metal mode in Park2 gives different output compared to All-Metal in Field2, i.e. are the different algorithm weightings of the different Search Profiles (P1.P2,F1,F2...) still operating or does All-metal override all these search profiles and it does not matter which Search profile you are in? PS this is my first post. This is a great blog for the Equinox, I've been following it for months, well done Steve H.
  7. Decided to mod the 800 rod by switching out the straight middle rod to the White's S rod. I know a lot of folks like a straight rod but by switching it out, it eliminates the detector's handgrip from wanting to twist at the end of each swing. In a side by side comparison, both myself and a buddy with an 800 both like the feel of the modified version. The mod requires the middle rod from a White's DFX, or MXT. The rod needs to be drilled on the upper top end for the spring plunger and again adjustment holes need to be drilled on the bottom for length adjustment. The Lower rod from a Makro Racer or Kruzer is used as the lower rod from the Nox is larger in diameter. The top of the S rod also needs to be shimmed about .040" in diameter to fit snug into the Nox upper rod. Now it swings about as close to an F75 as you can get.
  8. Hey all, I know there is a thread on availability issues : However that is not what I'm addressing. We, subjective We, know that the EQ800 is under tight supply. The EQ600 is more generally available. There are differences in what is supplied by both units. The 800 has more user features and equipment than the 600 and thats disregarding frequencies that each can supply. Its those features, and whats in the total package, that I'm addressing. Audio adjustments that the 800 supplies but not the 600, equipment included with the 800 again not supplied, additional profiles provided with the 800 but not supplied with the 600. Package deals. Kind of sucks for many people not looking for the additional Freq's but looking for the performance and added adjustments, profiles and equipment that only the 800 package supplies. So What the Heck??? One has to pick up an 800 to get the wireless package? Or spend the extra money to make it so. Hrm. Audio tones, tone breaks, additional user profiles... all pretty much on the same board *electronics board* as the 800 for a 600. Hrm. Nope not real happy with that. And I doubt the dealers of these products are either. Why would I say that. Ordered one last month. Gave a callout to see where I was on the list... no definitive answer. Point of fact told, its June now, that March was the earliest. Next year. I put money down on an 800 for features and a package that did what I want... dont care about the Gold modes as I wont be using them here in the States... thats why I have a 7000! Minelab, my suggestion is get your stuff together. Its a popular unit. I'd rather own a 600 with the package: wireless equipment, profiles and audio adjustments: and skip the bling of Gold Modes in less time that it takes your factory in Malaysia to pump out 800's. Point is most of us general go getters would like to see our dealers have a good turn around and get the "Monkey Off Their Backs" ~ that's a direct quote from a dealer~ than have to sit in back order limbo. Personally I wait. I want to see the kinks worked out before I ordered. But I ordered. And will wait till whenever *not the dealers fault* for the package I decided on.... not that there was much choice in the matter!! Mate of mine got his in about 3 weeks.... shopping around from dealer to dealer and calling favors. That is BS. Waits are not hard for me... having a dealer or two give me the "Monkey" is BS. Where ever ya go. A 600 with the whistles sans Gold mode. To much to ask? Not updatable to such a requirement? Or just and ostrich with his head in the sand. Love ya ML, made a lot of money with your products. Maybe someone in marketing and one in research should get there heads together. DD
  9. Hi, I'm looking for tips about how to tackle high trash areas specifically when you get multiple varying signals in an area. Often I'm detecting in Orchards or pastures right next to farms that would have seen activity going back hundreds, maybe a thousand years. Or my back garden an ex-orchard in a rural village which over the years has been cultivated, had bonfires, lots of activity. In these areas I get many different signals all within a few inches of each other. Generally using P2 or F2, (I like 50 tones) and I prefer not to change any other settings, I dig out any stable solid figures/tones from say 7 onwards if they have no low tones/numbers when I test with All-metal mode. Having done that the remaining signals often are a mix of good signals, some good bouncing around, and negative signals. I'm trying to detect the "shape" of the signals, aiming to identify good positive signals that should be dug, but not sure about the rest. If I see a good solid signal say in the teens say with a -negative number when tested in all metal, should I dig in the hope of say a coin sitting over/next to ferrous, or should I leave alone? Often in the past, I've had a dig it all mentality to gain experience, but frankly in these areas that is not practical as I may just as dig randomly and see what's there with a pinpointer and not use a detector at all!
  10. Seems as of late there is as much focus on problems as benefits. I know it’s not true but I feel like I am on my own little planet because every time I take my Equinox out it just keeps getting better and better. So far there is nothing I have not been able to get this detector to do and do well. For a person like me who will this year be coin detecting, jewelry detecting, relic detecting, gold nugget detecting, and saltwater detecting.... I am still going with my opinion that no other detector will do ALL these things as well as an Equinox. You might beat it in any given category with a specialty machine that usually costs far more, but when it comes to running triathlons nothing beats an Equinox. But what else would you expect from Fanboy #1
  11. I've had my 'Nox600 for about 2weeks now & have taken it out 4/5 times to the beaches around L.A. Using Beach 1 & 2 with mixed results..... Have messed around with various settings with mixed results..... any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.... thanks ..... AlF
  12. I finally received my Equinox 800. First Impressions is that it is a deep seeking machine. The Garrett 400 is ideal at 4-5 inches, the 800 goes much deeper in my soil. Looking forward to learning the new unit on my "hunted out" yard. I will keep everyone posted on my experiences.
  13. My Sister-In-Law who normally uses a Minelab Sovereign, wanted to go metal detecting at the beach with me over the weekend at a real sanded in beach, also lots of black sand. I figured one of my PI's would be too frustrating for her to use so I let her use my Equinox 600. I set her up in Beach 1 sensitivity 23, 5 tones, iron bias 1, recovery 3 (equal to 6 on the 800) and GB 0. I used my GPX 4000 since I hadn't run it for a while. We hunted the wet sand about 25 feet up from the water line. After about an hour I had dug a few pennies, a nickel, some lead bullets/sinkers and some shallower can slaw. She walked over to me and said she really hadn't found anything but foil and pieces of aluminum, which didn't surprise me because all of the coins I had found were 12 inches plus deep. So I suggested that I would go ahead of her and mark some targets and then have her go over them with the 600 and see what to listen for. I had about 8 targets marked and told her to start going over them and we would listen to the signals. Some of the targets she couldn't get a signal at all, which I expected since I was using a PI. But I told her to go ahead and dig them because I knew something was down there. Of the 8 holes she dug 2 pennies, a nickel, a piece of copper wire, a spark plug, a few pull tabs and a small 18k ring. She was impressed at how much deeper the PI was vs the 600. Now the interesting thing we found was that on these really deep targets, the Equinox could get some of them but they were usually one way signals and read much lower that they would out of the ground. For instance the pennies were reading in the 6-8 range. On the small 18k gold ring the Equinox was coming up with a erratic 1-2 and she said that's what the foil had been reading so she stopped digging it. I told her to dig it anyway because it was too deep to be foil in my opinion. Boy was she surprised when it ended up being a gold ring. From the size of the hole we figure the ring was about 10-11 inches deep. BTW the ring read a solid 6 on the Nox out of the ground. This was a good reminder to me that as with most detectors, when targets are at the fringe of the detectors depth capabilities, we really do need to dig everything at the beach or we're going to miss gold.
  14. I cashed in my clad at coinstar this afternoon. I have had my 800 for 6 weeks and my 600 for about 3 weeks. I cashed in at coinstar for a total of $172.66.. I had quit counting what I had after I knew I had almost $100 but never dreamed I had as much as I had. I have to admit I hit a cpl awesome parks and even though they had been hunted recently I cleaned up. I actually believe there is more at the one park but in an area I gridded I only found about $3 in two hours. In an area the other guy missed I found $9 in clad in a 30' x 30' area bordered by a sidewalk. I also hunted 3 other areas that I had hit really hard with both my Etrac and V3i. One soccer field that I took over $100 out of the past cpl of years I must have really cleaned it out because I found 3 cents. Another area I had hit hard with the Etrac before i got the Equinox. That area I found 40 cents. The last area which was a park that is hunted all the time I found 70 cents in 3 hours. I hunted an old soccer field yesterday and everything was deep.I had been there with my Etrac and only found a cpl of dimes and a nickel. Everything I found was 8" or more with the exception of a cpl surface pennies. I pulled out $3.48 in about 2 hours.. I have a cpl more places on my radar as well. I like hunting parks that others have hunted because it makes me feel the Equinox is superior to other detectors but in reality I think it the person that was detecting didn't know his detector very well. I also have 2 silver rings and a silver pendent.
  15. I had my first hammy yesterday with the 800 . Cracking cut quarter . It was well over 6 inch . I was in field 1, sen18 , 5 T , RECOVERY 4 , iRON BIAS 3 . Rang in VDI a solid 10 . I was in all metal . Target tone 1 set at 1 . So the iron is in the threshold I am hard of hearing set at 11 . The sens was 18 reduced to knock out falsing area .
  16. My number has finally come up! My 800 being shipped today! Should be pretty easy to learn the additional features over the 600 that I've been using for the last two months. Ordered on March 13th, and my dealer is shipping today. Bought with Minelab's full Military Discount. Thank you Minelab for recognizing those who have served, or are serving their country!
  17. Contemplating getting the Garrett Zlink module, since it has the same latency as the WM module. Anyone using it? If so so, any compatibility issues? TIA
  18. Finally got my Nox 800 and have spent 2 days in the local parks trying to learn it. I'm getting frustrated because it seems like there is not much of any tell tale between iron trash and a coin. Occasionally Ill get that sweet 31 or 32 for a quarter but otherwise it seems like it is chirping constantly and when I do dig a weak 12 or 14 its a dime, nickel, or penny only 3 or 4 inches deep. First of all it seems like a coin that shallow should jump out more in the tones but its always a weak signal that I just have to decide to dig or not. What am I missing? Secondly, 3 different parks and the thing seems like it is chirping constantly, I cant distinguish a good from a bad signal. Im running park 1 and park 2 doing the noise cancel.
  19. I got a second Equinox and that gave me a coil I could mess with since I now have a backup. I have not done this before and so can't vouch for this per se until I use it some more to see about longer term durability. I started with Lexan Sheet - Polycarbonate - .030" - 1/32" Thick, Clear, 12" x 12" Nominal from Amazon $6.89 delivered. I was quite tempted to use 1/16" instead but Lexan is tough so on this first go I went with the thinner 1/32" to keep the weight down. Outline with marker to create bottom cover slightly larger than coil itself - side protection for coil. Cut out with fine tooth jig saw.... I chose E6000 as a sealant / glue because I have used this in the past for bonding plastics other glues won't bond. Still, I am not sure this is the best choice, but there you go. Scuff up the smooth plastic surface (after removing protective film) then run a bead over all the coil bottom contact areas. I ran an additional bead around the little shelf created by the skip plate being about 1/8" larger around the exterior than the coil. Extra bonding plus a "bump cushion" against side blows from rocks. Here is is after a little use. Smooth running, light - but does collect debris topside. Happy I did it so far.
  20. I have an older set of wired Bose QuietComfort 15 noise-canceling travel headphones and stumbled onto a clever, low profile Bluetooth upgrade for them. I just bought the BTunes Wireless Bluetooth Adapter on Amazon for $59 a couple weeks ago. They sound GREAT, have a better than the advertised battery life of 10+ hours (I'm on 12 hours now), easy to charge and best of all they sync up with my Minelab Equinox 800 in AptX low latency mode!!! I got the Bluetooth upgrade specifically for air travel but I figured some of you may want to know about this. Highly recommended! https://thebtunes.com/
  21. So I headed to the hills yesterday to get acquainted with the Gold Mode of the EQX 800. Equipped with ear buds and the WM08, I used Gold 2, and only deviated from the factory presets by adjusting the volume to 5, the tone volume to 5, and notched in the 0 segment on the discrimination scale. The ground mineralization was a little too hot to run max sensitivity; backing it down to 20 quieted the ground nicely, but still allowed the targets to really pop. I chose an old thrashed patch that I’ve worked with many detectors in the past, including the Gold Monster last summer. Seems someone had been detecting the area recently , as they left their excavations open. I powered up the EQX, and performed a noise cancel and auto ground balance. Not 5 minutes into it, and the Nox got a nice hit in the bottom of one of the shallow dig holes; scraping out an inch or two revealed a bright little nugglet. Just a few feet away I got another good response, this time in virgin ground. After removing the overlying carpet of moss, the target was still in the ground and much stronger. Digging another inch or two into the weathered quartzite bedrock, and the target was out: another golden bit.? After hitting a small patch of tiny foil bits, the ground yielded one more yellow goodie. During most of the hunt, I was running in all metal, unless I got into a healthy patch of hot rocks. They read a consistent -7,-8,-9 on the EQX display, whereas the nugglets were at 1 or 2. Iron falsing on square nails and such was much higher at anywhere from 11 to 35, and was easy to identify because the numbers weren’t consistent and wouldn’t pinpoint. All up, 0.25 of a gram.
  22. I did a thread recently where I was hunting local park areas and wanting to experiment with "cherry picking" settings that would net me the most coins the fastest without bogging down into overly serious detecting. I normally hunt 50 tones with no items rejected, which works well but which requires me to work slowly analyzing targets sounds. Time is limited so I wanted to get out and cover some area. The settings worked well enough to get a pile of coins out of some trashy modern park settings. Park 1 - Multi-IQ 50 Tones Iron Bias 0 Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7 Auto (Pump) Ground Balance Sensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMI All items from 21 on down rejected except for 13 For nickels I was being really picky, just digging good, solid 13 readings. I do know nickels can also read 12 but I did not want to recover too many pull tabs so kept this very narrow. And I have to note - I am experimenting!! There is nothing magic about these settings, just something I am trying in modern trash. Anyway, it worked halfway well and I was able to readily skim coins out of a modern trashy park area with minimal trash, and nearly all that being square tabs that read 13 like the nickels. Very little high end trash. I was getting quite a bit of ferrous high tone squeaking but only a couple that tempted me enough to dig them anyway, and got a couple nails. This weeked I wanted to try an area I had cherry picked before for copper/silver range targets, but my ear is better tuned now so wanted to give it another go with more open settings than above but still not wide open full tones. I employ different levels of intensity in my hunting that varies by location, time constraints, and my mood. Sometimes I want to recover all non-ferrous targets. Sometimes just copper/silver. And sometimes varying levels of in between. This next round I opened up the discrimination a little. Park 1 - Multi-IQ 50 Tones Iron Bias 0 Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7 Auto (Pump) Ground Balance Sensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMI All items from 16 on down rejected except for 12 & 13 This time however I rejected everything from 16 on down except 12 & 13. The goal here is zinc pennies read 21 and since I hate them it makes for my regular cutoff point in areas from around 1930 and newer. However, in older areas there are two things in particular to pay attention to, assuming you still want to reject some stuff. Indian Head pennies overlap the zinc penny range. New zincs come in at 21 but corroded ones will read lower. Indian Head pennies can read in that same "high teens / low twenties" range. Also, a $5 gold coin will normally read at 18. Ground and age can pull readings lower, and so I decided on 17 on up as being good, but 17 is debatable. I will decide on that later after digging enough 17 targets. But 18 on up has to be open because I am determined to find a $5 gold coin with Equinox. I also wanted to open up the nickel range as older nickels seem to hit around 12 and newer ones more in the 13 region. Again, just experimenting! I also need to note that I am using Park 1 - target id can vary depending on mode and frequency. I told myself I would skip shallow zinc signals but I have a real problem passing on clean sounding targets, and so dug most of these since they are shallow and easy to pop. I did finally make myself stop though as it is a time waster - zinc pennies were the most common "trash" target followed again by some square tabs. Like I noted, I detected this area before, so once I pulled the about 20 zincs aside I ended up with 10 copper pennies, 4 dimes, and 3 nickels, none all that old. However, I got three special signals. The first was as nice a 12 reading as I could hope for, just a nice clean, mellow tone. And down about 8" appears my first ever Liberty or "V" nickel, a 1909. Some time later and maybe 100 feet away another identical, mellow 12 reading - I just knew it had to be another nickel. This one was down under a tree root at about 8" and popped out of the ground dry and green - another V nickel, 1898 this time. My first Liberty nickels, and two in one day! Some time later, with time running out, I got a messy 19 reading. It was trashy sounding but just good enough to get me to dig, and my first Indian Head penny pops up next to some ferrous trash. So after 45 years of detecting, why am I only now finding my first old coins of these types? I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and lived there my entire life up until 5 years ago. Anchorage was founded in 1915 and most of that area is paved over core downtown. Most of the town is far newer. I considered 1930's coins to be the great old finds, with only a couple ever from the 20's, and never anything from the teens or earlier. The bottom line is these types of coins just did not exist where I lived. And then I got into nugget detecting...... So anyway, a couple firsts for me, and that alone made it quite fun. I used some cleaning tips mentioned on this other thread (steel wool) on the 1909 Liberty but left the other alone as cleaning it would probably make it worse. The IHP has a couple weird corrosion blobs on it so have not messed with it. Anyway, opening up the extra notches did not get me into too much trash except for the zincs I did not resist digging. The big lesson is that deep Liberty nickels, or at least these two, were the most wonderful mellow 12 signals one could imagine. So my current working theory is newer nickels will tend towards 13 and older ones 12 while in Park 1 mode.
  23. Page 48 of Equinox 600 / 800 manual I have highlighted. I am not sure what they are saying here? Tying to absorb all these settings and still not there yet.
  24. My first time nugget hunting with my Equinox 800 - full story here:
  25. I was hunting today with a rain/dust cover on the Nox, in 100-101 degree temps with the sun directly overhead. After 20 minutes my audio starts cutting out and sounding erratic. I notice my screen is looking bizarre, as you can see, every icon was lit up and there was no way to see a VDI at all. My first thought was the cover was acting like a greenhouse and causing the housing to overheat. After about 10-15 minutes of taking it off, things began to look normal once again, within 30 minutes, completely back to normal. I have a Zagg cover on the screen, so, no dust cover for my machine during the summer months.
×
×
  • Create New...