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I got my 15" coil yesterday just in time for a planned hunt today at a fort dating back to 1851. The morning started off slow because I deviated from my plan and I kinda just wandered around for the first 3 hours without much to show for it. Around noon I finally went to spot and started gridding like I normally do and it started to pay off. The normal stuff began to come to light, percussion caps, lead, trouser buttons and a few odds and ends. At the end off the day I scored my first ever Dragoon button and within 20 minutes or so, hit my second!! I did manage a 3rd button, but I don't have a positive ID yet. It looks to be a one piece, which I believe predates the Dragoons. My take on the coil..... I found that I was hitting as small of items as I have with the 11" coil at this site which was impressive! The weight's not that bad, I kept the coil close to my feet and was able to swing it for 7 1/2 hours before switching over to the 11" I think If I would have stopped for lunch, I could have swung it the entire time. The extra coverage was a much needed bonus at this place as it's huge and the sensitivity to small items was icing on the cake. I'll probably use the 15" coil here more often than not as it performed wonderfully. My settings.... Park 2 15" coil 2-tones 6-recovery 0-iron bias 0-ground balnace 22-sensitivity Tone break -9 to +8 I tried running a recovery speed of 4, but, due to amount of junk I'd hit with each swing, I bumped it up to 6 which seemed to work just fine.

I have the Equinox 800 but do not have the 6" coil for it. I also have the CTX with the 6" coil. I am thinking of ordering a 6" for the Equinox. I am thinking more speed but maybe not because usually the 6" is for trashy area. Does anyone prefer the Equinox 6" over the CTX 6".

With the purchase of my new Minelab Equinox 600 (waiting for my 800 on backorder) I set out to find some needed but harder to find accessories. I made this YouTube video of the Deanos cover, which as far as I can tell is the Only United States based manufacturer and seller of protective covers for the Minelab Equinox 600 / 800 control box. I love this cover, very nicely constructed, heavy duty, and fits very tightly on the control box to it is highly unlikely you will get dirt, sand, or any other debris up under the cover and risk scratching your nice new screen/faceplate. I am in NO way Affiliated with the Seller of this product, I simply like to pass information along when I find products that will help others in this great hobby. Take Care and HH.

Has there been any updates on using this small coil in a trashy park area? My main concern is a combination of depth and speed. I'm sure the speed is there with the Equinox but depth on this small coil is a question. Being a fact that a 6 1/2" dime is a common occurrence in my area, depth is a must and I'll give an example. Years ago I bought and still have the 5" DD coil for my Fisher F75 LTD. I can easily max out the machine and can only get a slightest peep on my 6 1/2" dime that has been undisturbed for over 10 years and that is in fairly clean ground. I would guess the 6" coil could obtain more depth than a 5" just out of reason. Any experiences with this would be appreciated.

Big Brown Truck made my day yesterday. Much earlier than expected delivery from my dealer! Silly how some little things can make what was a trying day turn into dancing in the living room! ? Going out this afternoon to deflower the coil! Woohoo...!

I know I've seen some talk about depth gauge readings on NOX 800 but I never seem to have had any problems until yesterday. Hooked up with Grizz12 and his new 800 & 11" coil for his 1st hunt. Took him & my 800 with 6" coil to that same stretch of Lake beach I've been hunting since last March. Figured it be a good spot for Grizz12 to start, all kinds of targets so he can get to see machine work. So after Grizz12 got fired up ( Park 1 ) I started looking for that ring I know has to be somewhere on beach in the low water conditions. Using Park 1 myself I started my hunt, I've done the update on machine, & using my 6" coil it seemed my depth gauge was way off, targets that were reading 2 to 6 inches were more like 12" or deeper, what am I missing ? Trying to shake the cobwebs off & get going for this season. Any ideas or thoughts ??? Grizz12 had a good couple hr.'s, found normal trash & 13 cents, I still had a good couple hr.'s myself finding a 1961 nickel ( Oh Yah !!!! ) & an unreadable dime. But the depth gauge was killing me !!!! Help !!!!!!

I found out the EQ has the same problem as the CTX when it comes to the headphone jack. If you plug a stereo cord into the Equinox, it will not kill the sound coming out of the machine. I used the cord that came with the headphones and I had bought a 1/8" to 1/4" cord to run my own headphones. Well, I'm here to tell you it looks like it needs to be a mono plug, damn it!!! The WM08 uses a stereo plug, but not the EQ itself.

I got my 6 inch coil for the 800 back in July. I was so anxious to use it I went right out to the beach rather than wait for a gold trip. I found 3 rings that trip. Now today after having gone on a gold trip and still not having found a gold nugget with the 6 inch coil I decided to go back to the beach and leave it on. I think this is the first time since July! Well, at the end of my gold trip I had tried to use the 6" in gold mode to find a meteorite. (I can't hear them in any other mode.) What I had found in my experiments was I could eliminate many of the hot rocks if I just rejected #9. I could swing and hear a meteorite I had already found with my 7000. What helped the sound was to make the machine quick (6, 7, 8). I had this in mind when I went to the beach. It started slow and as far as good targets was concerned it stayed slow but I had fun! I'd say the thing I learned today was that I can swing the little coil fast (zipzip), on a long shaft (next to the last hole on the handle) in all metal and still hear deep targets. I was digging targets down to 10 inches in some little patches. They did not start out with a good ID but I could hear them. Some of the pennies were at 10 inches when measured by my 6" coil and my 6" basket digger. The bucket handle was down over 10 inches. Perhaps my most impressive 10 inch deep dig was the little hook. It is iron (I've turned the volume up on iron a bit) but it also had a solid shape sound to it. It was fun swinging a stick with a little coil on it and hearing a zip zip. Try it. Mitchel

I'm more of a coin guy, but, I've been wanting to hit this spot because my buddy has taken out a couple of Dragoon buttons. I met up with a couple of guys today for a relic hunt at a fort that was occupied from the early 1850's to the early 1860's, unfortunately one guy had to cut his hunt short due to a plumbing problem. He did manage to score a couple of nice relics before he had to head out. I started out using the CTX, but, due to the excessive amount of iron, I ended up using the Equinox which performed wonderfully. This was my first time to hunt here, so, I wasn't sure what to expect, but, it turned out better than I thought. Ended up with a nice assortment of finds, the better ones were the Eagle button and the medallion thing with the guys face on it. Not sure, but, we think it may have had a ribbon attached through the eyelets on each side. I believe next time I'm back, I'll use the 6" coil on the Eqhinox to try and work through the iron a little easier than the 11" I'm also going to take a magnet, some of the bits of wire and iron were almost too small for me to see without my glasses. I was amazed at how well the 800 hit the small items among the iron debris. 90% of the targets hit between 10 and 15, a couple rang higher, the brass rivets and the 3 ringer hit between 18-22. The thing with the guy on it hit at 10-11 solid. My setting were as follows: Park 2 2-tones Tone break at +8 thru 40 Sensitivity 22 Recover 7 Iron bias 0 Ground balance 0 No disc used ran it wide open

Is it possible for saltwater, or any water, or beach sand to get between the screen protector and the display when the Equinox is used submerged?

Happy New Year! This is a follow up of my previous post about finding a couple Mercury dimes in a row with the Equinox. There is important information there about ground conditions and so if you have not read it already now would be a good time. I was stuck in a race against time because I got a final hardware/pre-production version of Equinox just before freeze-up hit here in Reno. Prior to that I spent very little time having fun detecting - it was all development type work. Once I got the "close to final version" of the hardware I suddenly realized if I wanted to go detecting with Equinox I had better get with the program before the ground froze. With time running out what you are looking at is the results of less than a dozen outings to local parks, maybe 3-4 hours at a time average. The ground actually froze a few weeks ago and so I saved this post just to have something to show during a period of time that I figured I would be out of action. I am not trying to prove anything per se here, but what I saw convinced me Equinox has that little bit something extra I have been looking for in a coin detector. It is not purely a depth thing but a combination of depth and speed that seems to pull silver out of places where I had not been having much luck for three years with quite a few VLF detectors. Anyway, I figure everyone is starved for somebody to post something of a positive nature and this is my New Year's gift to you all. Click for larger version. I wish now I had kept the trash to show because I was cherry picking targets, and that being the case there was very little trash dug for this pile of coins. Way more coins than trash. I mostly just targeted the copper penny/silver range to maximize my time but did go after some nickel signals. As far as I know the target id numbers are locked in now, so I will mention a couple. Nickels hit hard at 16 and for copper/silver I was digging anything that gave me a 28 or higher. Corroded copper, Indian Head pennies, and zinc pennies will generally hit lower than that in the 24 - 27 range but like I say I was cherry picking. (Jan 2018 edit: the numbers have changed - nickels now at 13 and copper pennies/dimes at 25 and higher.) So we have a large pile of recent vintage coins. Junk jewelry and keys in upper right. There are 52 "Wheatback" pennies or wheaties as people call them. We all love wheaties, not because they are worth much these days since so many are in poor condition, but because if you are finding wheatback pennies then silver can't be far away. The oldest coins in this batch are in there though - 1911, 1913, and 1918 pennies. My favorite was a 1930 penny found at less than 2 inches next to a picnic table where each swing revealed a couple dozen targets. Literally a carpet of trash. There is stuff hiding in trash and not all that deep at times. A nice little squeak revealed this particular penny in the midst of the dense trash. The silver though is what grabbed my attention. One of the first places I went was smack in the middle of a picnic table type location that by all rights should have been hunted clean of silver ages ago, and I kind of thought it was using the machines I tried there before. So when a 1936 Quarter popped out almost immediately I was surprised. Every outing I was digging quite a few wheatback pennies, and on nearly every outing a silver coin or two showed up. The 1916 S Barber dime also showed up early, only the second one I have ever dug, so I was pretty thrilled with that. It also was a learning experience because I also found a 1916 S Mercury dime. Until now I had no idea both series were minted in 1916. The one that really blew me away was the 1945 S Walking Liberty Half Dollar in excellent condition. Again, right in the middle of a picnic area. I got a nice high tone and not all that deep up comes a round lump of clay with a white ring showing around the edge. I thought it was a bottle cap, and so gave the lump a twist and the half dollar popped out. The coin is really in great shape and much to my annoyance I seem to have put a small scrape in the middle of the coin when I twisted the lump of dirt off. Just a great coin though with halves being a rare find these days. What puzzled me is why it was there less than 8" deep in a location that has no doubt seen hundreds of detectors if not more over the last few decades. I hit that immediate spot hard of course, and it developed that there must have been an old pipe there that had corroded away to nothing. There was a linear zone that wanted to produce quite a few high tone ferrous wrap signals, which tend to hit around 39 very consistently, well above the 28 - 36 range where copper and silver normally hits. I suspect others have detected that half dollar before but wrote it off as a false signal or maybe it was just ferrous masking. Whatever it was, Equinox found it easily. That is what is weird about this machine. I will be shocked if people do not end up making similar reports where you are just shaking your head and thinking "but that coin should not have been there"! Obviously I found a few more Mercury dimes and some Roosevelt silvers. There is a 1942 P "War Nickel" from when they made nickels with a high silver content since nickel was a strategic metal during WW2. And a 1920 Buffalo nickel. They both hit hard at 16, which is surprising given the difference in composition. Some nickels hit at 15 or 17 but the vast majority are real tight at 16. Equinox is going to be a cherry pickers dream. (Jan 2018 edit: the numbers have changed - nickels now at 13 and copper pennies/dimes at 25 and higher.) Anyway, there it is for whatever it is worth. No doubt a few people are thinking "big deal" and that would not surprise me. The only reason I am impressed is the number of hours I have spent with quite a few of the latest and greatest in these same locations, and nothing like this was happening. The main thing I want to communicate is I was not doing anything special, like chasing lots of iffy signals. These with few exceptions were all nice solid, clean signals. Obviously pushing the edge of what the machine will do in this ground, but good signals nonetheless. Anyone that detects a lot gets quite familiar with their ground and what detectors can do in that ground. We all miss targets, and nearly any ground will give up some good targets to a determined detectorist. The thing is I was no less determined with those other detector models. I only look to prove things to myself, and this little bit of detecting over a couple week span is what convinced me that there is more going on with Equinox than meets the eye. I really am looking forward to others getting these detectors and reporting in because if they give Equinox a chance, I am convinced others are going to have similar experiences. Just remember that Equinox can't make coins appear where none are left to be found. If they are there however, Equinox is going to be the machine I grab from now on to find them. When a detector puts silver in my pocket as easily as happened with me and Equinox, I can't help liking the machine! This post has been promoted to an article

OK, I need to post this video and maybe it has already been shared? If so please delete my post. Many newer EQ owners out there now and some of the great info and posts are pretty deep. One of the most ocurring phone calls and emails I get from new 800 customers is on how to sync the wireless headphones to the detector. Here is a video that makes it so simple. Hats off to this young gun Matty for a fine, easy, short informative video.

Dear fellow hunters, I am running my new Nox 800 for about 2 months now. Trying to go out nearly every day for 2-4 hours. I did find some nice coins and other cool stuff and some not so cool stuff. Learning the detector is fun. I found a several times when being in AUTO ground tracking the machine got a little loud/unstable. When I looked up the ground tracking it was telling me a number in the 90ies. Switching off AUTO and do manual tracking (pumping the coil) the machine went quiet at 12. I was expecting the AUTO ground tracking to be "up to date". Did you make similar experiences?

I’m looking for input about these three machines on what you like vs dislike on each of these detectors. Me, personally since I do not own or even seen any of these detectors will even give my own likes vs dislikes. GM1000 - I like how it is a very hot machine capable of finding small stuff and how I hear it is a turn on and go detector with only a ferrous/nonferrous indicator. I don’t know how it reacts to hot rocks or if there is away you can avoid them. The best part about these three is I hear it’s the simplest to use(thinking about my dad who is interested but doesn’t have the patience to learn machines if he ever wants to use one of mine) Equinox - again I like how it is hot on small gold and even more with the new 6” coil. I hear it’s water proof? I don’t know how complicated it can be to learn this machine or if it can read the ground for search a good spot to run a sluice. Whites 24k - pretty much if it is hot on small gold I like the idea. What I really like about this machine is it’s ability to track black sand for a possible prospect. I like the option to cancel out the iron on both the low reading numbers and the high reading numbers. I’m thinking this might be a little complicated for a newbie with all the functions but I really like the controls the machine has. Bottom line is I am trying to decide which new detector I am gonna buy next year and want to hear your likes and dislikes about each of these machines. Minelab Gold Monster 1000 Information page White's Goldmaster 24K Information page Minelab Equinox 800 Information page Minelab Gold Monster 1000 vs White's Goldmaster 24K vs Minelab Equinox

Hi everyone, New here based in the UK about to start this hobby. Looking at getting the equinox 600 or 800 for its underwater capabilities. One question I have which I have struggled to find an answer to... How do the waterproof seals handle the pressure on air travel? Is there a pressure release valve? Also is it recommend to detach the control box and take on carry on luggage? Thanks in advance and looking forward to being part of this community Bruce

Related question Steve, noticed the OP was on the beach. I was speaking with Minelab repair tech trying to troubleshoot chatty NOX 800 on my Florida Beaches and he mentioned Minelab had disabled the ability to auto or manual ground balance in Beach 1 or 2. The controls still work and it looks like it is doing it but the setting is locked by ML? Can you comment on this for beach mode? Best regards

I finally took the plunge and bought a 6-inch coil for my Equinox 600. Friday I had a chance to hit a park before work that has been thourougy searched many times. Second target of the day was a dateless SLQ! AWESOME! I also managed to pull a ‘53 wheatie before I had to start my workday. Today I had more time to spend with my new toy. And, it paid off. I visited three sites, all places with concentrations of ground trash, trees, boulders, etc. I ended the day with six wheaties, ranging from 1921 to 1957, a 1912 s Barber dime, and a junk pendant - plus $1.35 in clad. This coil ROCKS! Glad to have it in my arsenal. It won’t be my everyday coil, but it definitely will be well used.

Here is a photo of the finds that I had mentioned in a previous post. Nearly all of these finds were found on one small ridge that we had come to think of as being hunted out (using a variety of non-minelab detectors). Thanks for looking, MT

I wanted to update some of you who do not take your handles apart. I mean the handle grip that has the control pod attached. If you detect in salt water like I do, then you'll end up with fine sand particles between the upper and lower handle pieces at the mold seams. This is expected so don't freak out and it is still 100% waterproof. But what you may not realize is the salt in there is not good for it and needs to be rinsed/washed. I personally take mine apart after each trip I do, as I know how corrosive salt is to metal. Good luck on your next hunt.

Hi, I couldn't wait to get the Equinox 800 to Arizona for some gold prospecting especially since the area in Colorado where I live is frozen pretty solid. The first site I hunted was in the Little San Domingo Wash area which has been pounded by lots of people for over a hundred years. I used the Nox 800 exclusively in Gold 2 with the 6" coil due to an abundance of human metallic trash, with sensitivity at 15 to 16 (falsed over those settings) with -9 to -4 discriminated out, iron bias 3 or 4, recovery speed 4. Hot rocks were hitting in the -9 to -6 range and also sometimes in the 12 to 14 range with the classic boing sound just at the edges of the coil and almost nulling in the center. I dug every detected metallic target in roughly a 30'x40' area. Iron targets were consistently in the -9 to +16 range depending on depth, size and amount of oxidation. Many of them jumped that whole range depending on direction of swing. When I was not using the horseshoe (all targets accepted mode) the iron targets would have very brittle, broken, clipped sounding audio and would be easy to identify just by sound alone. 100% of the time I checked those targets by pressing the horseshoe button and iron was suggested with -4 to -9 numbers included in the very jumpy target IDs. After digging each of these targets, (60 or so) iron was confirmed. I detected 19 non ferrous targets which all turned out to be lead, brass, aluminum or steel bird shot. Small lead, aluminum and shot gave beautiful evenly rounded tones and target IDs in the -1 to 4 range which were very steady and repeatable even after checking the target from a different direction. Larger lead and shell casings came in between 8 and 20 consistently with even, repeatable tones and solid numbers. The two nuggets pictured were both found near other targets, which is probably why they were missed. The .5 gram nugget was 4" deep with an iron target about 2" away and above the nugget. I never heard the iron initially. I only heard the classic zip-zip with a solid 3 target ID. When the horseshoe button was engaged I could hear and see target ID evidence of the iron target too. The two targets were clearly and separately defined and easy to identify as ferrous and non-ferrous. I was really exited to find that small nugget attached to caliche in that situation! The 4.5 gram nugget was 5" down, up against a large piece of hot volcanic tuft/basalt bedrock. The Nox 800 gave soft boings on the bedrock in several places near the nugget but the nugget screamed out a fantastic round signal at a rock solid 14. I thought it was going to be a 38 cal. or bigger slug. I was really surprised when I saw that first bit of gold peaking through the dirt!!!!! I lucked out on one other tiny picker at this location too during final clean up with the XP Deus. I also got to detect near Stanton on some placer/pegmatite deposits with tons of hot and cold rocks, huge prickly pear cactus and my least favorite----cat's claw bushes=OUCH. I completely shredded a virtually new pair of gloves on those things along with my hands too. I didn't find any gold with either my GPX 4800, XP Deus or the Nox 800. The GPX 4800 is one deep machine and hunted beautifully in this rugged area. I dug several up to 1 foot deep, less than coin sized lead, iron and tin targets that could have easily been gold with a NF Sadie and stock 11" mono coils. Any thing bigger was just not very practical since this was a boulder strewn, thorny area with very little open ground. The Deus with 9" HF coil at 54kHz handled the hot and cold rocks fairly well and was reasonably quiet in Gold Field. It always gave excellent audio responses to detectable targets and gave a predictable horizontal XY graph line for buried iron targets and very angular zig zags on near surface iron. Lead targets had more of a rounded, almost cursive writing indication on the XY graph which looks a lot like gold responses. The Nox 800 with 6" coil in Gold 2 again gave very clear indications of what to expect from the targets under the coil and after digging, those indications were confirmed every time with no surprises. There was some nasty hot magnetic schist, cold ironstone and unbelievable amounts of magnetite which sometimes confused the Deus and especially the GPX 4800. The Nox dealt with them very consistently with the magnetite giving iron signals, the magnetic schist reading in the 12 to 14 range and the cold ironstone high pitched VCO screaming at 39. Special thanks to Bill Southern and Tammy and also Rob Allison for their guidance during my fruitful trip. The Equinox 800 proved to be an outstanding and very trustworthy prospecting detector! Jeff

NUGGET SHOOTER JOURNALS Published on Feb 12, 2019 - In this video I am using the Minelab Equinox 800 in "gold 1", sensitivity "16 to 18", Multi IQ, and auto tracking. Rest of the settings are stock. It amazes me what this little beast if a VLF detector will do in hot ground (minerals) and finding the smallest bits of gold for the operator. Beautiful area with lots of Agate and other cool stuff just laying on the ground.

My brother and I are having issues with Field 2 and what is apparently ground noise (constant low level grunting). So much so that I have to find a clean spot for ground balancing in Field 1 and then switch to Field 2 to balance. I am assuming that our soil here in Mississippi is mild. On our last hunt I was running sensitivity of 20, Iron Bias 0, and a recovery speed of 3. The site is not overload with trash and iron. In "all metal" we are getting constant grunting. Switching to Field 1 clears the background noise up and allows us to hear just the iron. Is there anything we can do to reduce the ground noise in Field 2? Thanks!!

I started off last year running the 800 until about Sept. and went back to the CTX until this week. I picked up a 600 and a 6" for hunting trashy sites instead of struggling with the CTX. I plan on using the CTX for my deep trolling and the Nox in the water and in the trash. I went to a WW1/WW2 dump site we've been hunting on and off for the last month, this place is loaded with iron and other debris you'd find at a dump. I set the Nox on Park 1, 2-tone, tone break at 18 with the volume off from -9 to 18, recovery speed set to 3 and iron bias at 0. I'm sure I missed some stuff in the lower range, but, time was an issue and I knew what I wanted to find, The 600 and the 6" coil worked exactly as I hoped and I started finding desirable targets from the beginning and until it was time to head home. I was able to find some nice relics with a couple of coins, a merc and a wheaty to top off the day. Thanks for looking.

How small in inches does the EQ collapse down to, with coil on?

I just picked up a 600 last week and I have a question for you experienced users. Which mode is hitting coins on edge the best after the update? I haven't used a Nox since the update. I'm going to be hunting dirt piles this weekend and I'm sure that the coins are going to be anything but flat. Thanks for the time and the information you guys can share.