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Wanted to thank everyone on the forum as I've learned quite a bit here over the last couple of months. I was recently able to "skip the line" almost everywhere in the world and had a friend buy me a Nox 800 in another country and bring to me in a Latin American country. I went to 3 different sites this past week, all with substantial colonial Spanish history as well as history into the late 1800s. Although I watched a lot of videos and perused this forum, I felt a bit overwhelmed with all of the options and settings that first day. I wasn't convinced that any of the generic Park 1/2 or Field 1/2 settings would suffice for the environment I was working in (I.e., high rusty iron concentration, sometimes mineralized soil, deep cobs and relics, etc.). To make it more challenging is that the thick jungle foliage doesn't work well with larger coils like the 11" Nox standard and all 3 of my spots have been pounded over the years by dozens of other detectorists (including myself a few times). All that said, I learned a lot over the 3 days of detecting and I had some success. I frequently experimented with all of the Park and Field settings to try to determine which would work best the first 2 days. By the 3rd day, however, I pretty much settled on Field 2 with the following modifications: I ground balanced manually often, sensitivity to 22, recovery speed down to 5, and iron bias up to 6. That seemed to work the best for me. Anyway, my best finds were a couple of Spanish real cobs, a 1/2 real and another cut cob that had probably been a 2 real before the cut. The 1/2 real rang up as a solid 12 while the cut cob rang up as an 15. My other find was this Nueva Granada army brass button that rang up a solid 18. Photos below.

I hunted the worse park I ever hunted for trash today. Honestly I could not lay down my pinpointer because it would beep no matter where I put it. I had so many 13 signals with every sweep it sounded like a phone ringing. There were bottle caps at least every foot and can slaw everywhere. I did manage to pull $1.65 out in clad. 2 quarters 10 dimes and 15 pennies. I got a didproportante amount of dimes because they were ringing up at 23 and I think other guys passed over them thinking they were pennies. It's a very old park and hunted hard. I had a lot of mixed signals that bounced from 35, 31, 29, 23 17 and all over which turned out to be bottle caps after 2 or 3 I quit chasing it. As soon as I hit the horseshoe I knew it was a bottle cap. I was using park 2 and it ran fine with no chatter or interferences. In one case I thought I had a good 28 signal and after I pinpointed I used my hand held and in a diameter of 6" I had 4 bottle caps and when I pulled them out the 28 signal was gone. I also had a deep 29 signal and pulled out a gold tab at 11" I will go back and try again but I do know what I am up against. I have a gut feeling there is some deep silver in that park because of how old it is.

This morning, I went to that same 1904 house that I hunted several times with the 3030, and then last week with the Equinox. I tried my darndest to find a gold ring, but it was not to be. HOWEVER, I DID manage to sniff out a few more coins that I had missed. It's getting hard, now...the Merc was buried in nails; I dug the plug FOUR TIMES (pulling out a nail each of the first three times, and with each one concluding that I must have just been hearing a high-tone nail false) before I finally unearthed the REAL source of that high-tone chirp I was hearing!! Steve

Finally, tomorrow I will have a Nox!! Betty from AKAU was great to deal with!! Very nice person!! Gonna hit some places that I have cleaned out ALL non-ferrous targets. I hope I get to see just how good this machine really is!! I have a 2nd 800 on order just waiting for the call. Gonna be a good year!!

April hasn't been kind to me regarding hunting time. Job, bad weather, taxes, two weekend funerals, a 6 day trip,.... Finally Sunday I got in 5 hours at my best yielding spot! This particular park is right next to a hospital and (apparently) the ambulance 2-way radios wreak havoc on the Eqx frequencies. Fortunately the farther I get from the hospital the less it's an issue. Still, I wanted to search a strip of grass next to a sidewalk which was close to the hospital so started there. No way could I get multi-freq to work at a gain even as low as 15 so I decided to find out which individual frequencies were being barraged. As it turns out the two extreme frequencies (5 kHz and 40 kHz) were the ones picking up the EMI. I decided to put all four of Park 1,2 and Field 1,2 in the other three, with Park 2 @ 10kHz being my main hunting mode. Definitely ground balanced all of these single frequency modes. I did find a Wheat penny about 5 inches deep at 10 kHz but the going was slow and I felt I wasn't taking as much advantage of the Eqx as I wanted so I reverted to a quieter part of the park after about 1.5 hours and switched to multi-frequency Park 2, 5 tones (custom breakpoints -- more below) with default recovery speed (6), iron bias (0), gain of 19 (to avoid EMI). I rebalanced ground cancel and off I went. I was primarily covering ground which I had hunted previously, mostly with the Fisher F75 but even some I already hunted in Park 1. Found one of the two nickels (below) early on in ground I'm sure I had passed a coil over 2 or 3 times previously. Then I hit the edge of the razed house footprint, possibly a region I had not hunted carefully before. Finally I went along the curb strip between sidewalk and street before having to head home for dinner. Since I never try to clean coins in the field I didn't know what I had, but was pretty sure there were some Wheaties since the Lincoln Monument on copper Memorials tends to show up easily even coated in crud. Arriving home I soaked the copper pennies separately from the nickels just in case an adverse chemical reaction might occur. Per Cabin Fever's suggestion I didn't add soap, just water. After a couple hours I was able to get a look and was quite pleased to see that I had found my first ever V-nickel (see photo below). All five coppers were Wheat cents, dated 1919, 1930, 194x-D, 1944-D, and 1945-S. (Still hoping the 'x' is a 3, which would make it only the 2nd known 1943-D copper penny, worth 7 figures. OK, more likely I win the Powerball buying one ticket....) None of the listed dates+MM is scarce but always glad to land Wheaties. One (typically) badly corroded Zincoln and one recently dropped clad dime, my only non-oldies, were not cleaned but are also shown in the photo. I still have less than 30 hours with the Equinox so it's difficult to reach much of a conclusion. I quickly got comfortable with the 11 in. coil which is a signifcant change for me since I've lived with 5 in. and 6 in. coils on my other detectors because of the serious iron. I still run in 'all metal' exclusively, and 5 tones. Can't seem to get comfortable with either discriminating out the iron or with megatones. (Never could get used to those with the X-T 705 or F75, either.) My custom tone breaks are as follows: top of iron = 0, 'foil' range (lo tone) = 1-->10, 'nickel' (hi tone) = 11-->14, 'pulltab' (medium tone) = 12-->18, high conductors (hi tone) = 19-->40. If something is jumping between zones (e.g. 18-19 could be an Indian Head penny) I can decide to dig based upon age of location. Same thing with gold rings, if I'm after those and in an area I think they could be then I'll consider digging the low tone region. One final comment. I've read people write things such as "nickels are solid 13" and "if you hear iron mixed with the high tone don't dig". Ditto "you need to get a solid, repeatable tone coming at the target from 90 degrees...". None of these things hold for my sites. For example, one of the nickels (don't know which one) read all of 11,12,13,14 (yes, mostly 12 and 13). One of the pennies hit 24 and 29 besides the numbers between. I think the main reason I'm seeing broader TID value ranges is all the iron in my sites. I'd say for this particular hunt, fully 75% of good finds still showed iron tones after I had dug and replaced the plug. The site speaks to you and you gain by listening.

I managed to get out a little while this weekend, nothing special.. just another learning experience making adjustments to both Park 1 and 2 plus refining my User Profile. One thing I did learn that is positive (depending on what tools you have with) is this machine goes DEEP!! Dang, a very small alumium screwcap at over 10"!! The detector was banging hard on it, ID was pretty good too. Anyway I experienced first hand the dreaded cell phone interference. I can't put mine in my front pocket at all and even in my back pocket I was still getting a little interference. Me being the dummy I can be at times, I kept playing with the machine..noise cancel, ground balance.. nadda. Finally I think about the Gigmaster video I watched where he was having the same issue. If I turned it off or on airplane mode it went away. Instead my one daughter was along so I gave her my phone. She was getting bored so the phone gave her something to do. After I got by that I was able to push my sensitivity anywhere from 23 to 25 before any chatter. This machine is very very sensitive. I personally prefer using earbuds plugged into the module over headphones. Great machine at a great price!

One of these gents has boatloads of Etrac time using too. http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?p=2939670#post2939670 http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=260423

Hello everybody my name is Malcolm and this is my first post. I am a new Equinox 600 owner and have a couple newby questions about my Nox. My first questions is the pinpoint mode. I am having problems getting it to pinpoint to within 6 inches of where I think the target should be. I swing one way to mark and then swing 90 degrees to cross reference the target. I then have a what I think is a good starting point to use the pinpoint mode. My problem is that my holes turn out to be wide enough to actually put the coil head down into and still am not finding the target in most cases. Some of these holes are near 2 feet deep. A lot of these signals are fairly strong and in the 18 to 25 TID range using park 1 mode. I am ordering a hand held pinpointer as soon as possible, I am spending up to a half hour trying to locate the target if I find it at all. Sometimes I can't locate the target and in frustration give up on it and fill the ugly voids back in. I am sure the hand-held pinpointer will help tremendously but it seems that pinpoint mode is just getting me in the ballpark area of the target? I use to have another detector so I am not a neophyte, but am having problems with targeting. I am sure it's me but could use some "pointers." The other question I have is about Auto Tracking Ground Balance. On page 41 of the Equinox manual it mentions that "Tracking Ground Balance is the default and recommended method for Gold Mode and can also be useful when using Beach mode 2 underwater at the beach in salt water." Is there any reason not to use this in other modes like park 1? Happy to be here, and hope to contribute in the future. Thanks for any and all replies.. Malcolm

'Day to the Clan.. Solid 12/13 VDI about 6" deep & underwater...

I was going to wait until the 6" coil came out to hunt this spot. My buddy and I decided to go ahead and take our Nox's out and give it whirl anyways. This is one of the most iron polluted places I've hunt with the Nox and it did very well considering we had the 11" coil where you really need a much smaller coil. This was my buddy's second outing with the Nox and he actually did a great job adapting to it under the circumstances. I was running Park 1, 2 tones, recovery speed 7, iron bias 0, tone break set from -9 to +8 with low tones assigned to this bin, high tones from +9 and up. Ground balance set to 0, sensitivity set at 18. I was using a new pair of APTX earbuds that was more than fast enough with no lag at all. This machine is unreal in the iron, I had zero problem with the iron giving false signals, which I think it had to do with the iron on or near the surface and the soil was bone dry. It may be a different story if I ever hunt it after a good rain. Even though there was a nonstop barrage of low tones, when I did hit a digable target there was no doubt about it. I was surprised at how well the Nox hit with consistent VDI's, not that I was going by the numbers, but, it was rather impressive anyway. My buddy and I both noticed that we were digging deeper hits with the Nox than we did with the Etrac or the CTX in this spot.

I really hadn’t got a chance to use my new EQ much as I’ve been doing some spring construction at the house. So yesterday, I took it out to the backyard where the Gardner removed some bushes and plants in the garden/flower beds and tried the new Equinox out. After all of one minute, I got a repeatable signal and numbers and thought it might be a coin. When I dug it up, it looked like an aluminum twist cap with a gold foil wrapped around it. On closer inspection I was floored with what I was holding in my hand. My gold wedding band that I lost over two years ago while in the garden. This last time was the third time it was lost (loose fit) and not being able to find it with the detectors I had then, I’d given up. I never did replace that lost ring with a gold band but instead purchased a gold plated stainless steel one to wear while I saved up for a nice wedding band. Finding that band goes a long way in offsetting the cost of the 800. Very Happy!

Hi all, dropped my daughter off at her part-time job this morning then went for a short hunt at a nearby beach with my new partner's son. As with a lot of beaches around, it was a bit sanded in so wasn't expecting much.. A couple of low areas only produced ring pulls and other light trash so I moved over to some exposed rocks and got a diggable signal...I couldn't believe it when this showed up in the scoop. At first I thought it was junk as it had that 'plastic' gold look to it. My eyes aren't the best without glasses, so when we got back to the fourby I used the magnifier on my phone....and there they were. Two stamps....AJD (American Jewellery Design I think), and 916. First gold ring for the Equinox is 22k....wooohooo! It's been so long since I found gold....can't get the smile off my face ?. (Oh yeah, the men's silver ring was found a few minutes later).

First thing today after work, put it together, charging and waiting.. too long.. LOL. Anyway I got the headphones paired and out to my front yard I go. First the history. My house was built in the 1850'S and had a bar right next to it. I have pounded this very small section ( maybe 45 feet by 30 feet) with many explorers, Etracs, Deus's and CTX. Mainly the Deus and Etrac. I have pulled dozens of indians, largies, 2 centers, v nickels, buffalo's, wheats but mostly indians. I have cleaned this ground so dry that the non-ferrous targets are gone or at least I thought. Alright I had no more than 10 minutes to spend today swinging in this iron infested ground. Very first target, one way jumped out at me.. dig me! The other direction it sounded bad but consistent. So I dig, 4 to 5 inches. Bam! I guess you guys weren't kidding after all!! It's gonna be a good year!!

Published on Apr 21, 2018 - Metal detecting a hoard of medieval hammered silver coins!!!

Need a little help . Been out with the 800 3 times for approx. 2 hrs each hunt. I am in a great spot land being cleared for pavement. But back in 1848 a Russian named Peter Doroshin came through area & American Settlers came later all using this area to move up river & rivers. So a lot of old camping & hunting & gold camps in area. Been using Park 1 factory settings, and trying out All Metal & Pinpoint settings, a whole lot of trash as in cans of all types and metals, trying to see past this trash and get a good TID, I am a learner but slow ( Blonde, German, Old I'm Screwed ) So the project is moving along would like to detect area before all is buried for EVER !!!! Manaul says Park 1 good for trash areas and all I am digging is trash and the #s are reading from 23 to 30 on unit. So what am I missing ? time is not on my side at this site. !! THX

Hello , Some of the beach find with the great nox . Here all the gold is 18 k . I regret to dont have the nox more soon , i missed the good conditions beach of the winter , april is not good , but finally it's not so bad !! This is the result of approximatively 30 hours of hunt .

I have seen positive and negative comments online regarding submerged coil drag with the Equinox stock coil. Haven't taken a dip yet, so was wondering what the experienced water hunters think about it. Thanks.

Minelab will be the death of me yet ? 3rd beach hunt yesterday and I'm just amazed at this machine. I wasn't ready to drive a couple hours to get to a beach and take a chance at not finding much, so I brought the GPX to hopefully get some silver. That way my hunt was successful and I could go home knowing a had a good day. The GPX delivered about half the silver coins pictured. But when I pulled the Equinox out, it started finding targets right away. First bits of chains, then a 18K gold cross, then silver dimes, then 2 other (junk) chains, although the religious metal attached is sterling, then a beautiful 925 Italy chain. Also hit a small locket which has writing I can't read, but I believe it's gold. Also a 10K Signet ring and finally a 14K marked earring. A total of 4 gold on this hunt and I think 19 silver coins. I didn't want to leave, but after 10 1/2 hours I was spent! Minelab you are killing me ..........with gold ?

Been super busy at work recently so my hunt time is basically down to 0 these days. I am currently in a rental house (long story about floods goes here :-) ) and I had not hit the backyard yet. Had a 30 minute break between meetings (I work at home) and decided to try out the backyard for a bit. 1st target was a penny then the next target was this nice .925 silver ring! First silver with the EQ, rang up just like a dime at 27.

Saw this listing. The prices for all Equinox coils was set at zero until recently but seems now a price is reflected on the smaller coil. Don't know how much stock to put in this here, but thought I would share. https://www.bigboyshobbies.net/minelab-equinox-06-double-d-smart-coil https://www.bigboyshobbies.net/minelab-wm-08-wireless-audio-module https://www.bigboyshobbies.net/minelab-equinox-bluetooth-headphones

Book Excerpt: "Iron Bias" (Settings X 6 + long press, “+” or “-“ to adjust, “Detect” to exit).The need for an Iron Bias setting on the Equinox derives from the operating characteristic of a high gain detector. While the Equinox’s sophisticated electronics act to inhibit inconsistent responses like iron, at the same time because there is so much Sensitivity going down into the ground there is still the possibility of iron falseing taking place. This involves iron objects that have very unusual properties such as a spike nail upended, or something large enough to mimic a non-ferrous response by overwhelming the machine’s circuits and coming in at the top of the discriminate range (termed “wraparound”) While these are usually recognisable by target testing (cross sweep for one), at the same time there is a need for a control that regulates the level of consistency in a target which is assigned the audio (rougher or broken tone) of iron. This feature is also useful to relic hunters or anyone wanting to hunt for coins in dense iron. You have the choice of trying to knock the iron out by way of the Equinox’s software, or opening up the machine to get cleaner, fuller responses on iron in order to hear what’s mixed in with it. In effect, “Iron Bias” is a filter. Whereas the ground’s signal represents a large, unstable, response, a good target can be seen as a small, narrow and consistent response. “Iron Bias acts to mediate the “line” where this distinction is made. This doesn’t just include iron—but any object which contains multiple metals. So “Iron Bias” can be used to change responses from bottlecaps, corroded coins—anything that’s not “clean” metal such as silver, copper aluminum or gold. It’s worth noting though that with some targets that are comprised of both iron and non-ferrous metal, “Iron Bias” may act to “clean up” the signal—making it sound better. This is similar to the way that many rusted targets will sound better after several passes of a BBS detector (Sovereign / Excalibur) coil. The machine’s built-in bias is removing the inconsistent parts of the signal. Conversely, a lower setting can emphasise the alloying of an unwanted target--effectively “breaking it up.” It’s worth noting though that because all metal in the ground “mixes” with it’s signal (corroded or not), using high levels of “Iron Bias” acts to reduce detection of all targets. Understanding how “Iron Bias” works is an important lesson in how detectors work. In effect, they don’t just “punch down” though the ground to detect a metal target. Instead, what a detector does is to assess both the ground and any metal that’s in it and then separate the two—based upon this consistent / inconsistent scale. This is the scale that an “Iron Bias” control operates on. “Iron Bias” can also be used a tool to moderate the effects of “black sand” by changing the machine’s response to the large, scattered inconsistent response it produces and promoting any “clean” metal targets that are mixed in with it. It also has the potential to stabilize the detector in “black sand” by reducing the Sensitivity to this erratic signal. This may require a higher or lower setting depending on the conditions.When many hunters want to get the maximum depth with the Equinox, they take the “Iron Bias” right down to “1” or “2.” With this setting it’s generally agreed that frequent “Ground Balancing” of the machine helps to reduce the response to iron. The “trade-off” here though is that you will still be “fooled” by more iron false signals. From: "The Minelab Equinox: From Beginner to Advanced" by Clive James Clynick Thanks for a great forum Steve! cjc

Yyesterday, for the first, i had a danger pictogram in my 800. In the high To the left on the screen. the Id was something To 25-27 ,the sound was huge. I think this is a big target. I didnt dig that thing. I was in the beach on beach1. It was anything like that: ⚠️ Anybody know what is mean?

I had a good hunt today -- best one yet, with the Equinox. I acquired permission late last fall to hunt a home built in 1904 in town, and have been there several times, with the CTX. During those hunts, I dug a couple of Barber dimes, a Merc, a Rosie, a number of wheats, a few tokens -- plus a few interesting relic-type items and some clad. However, finds had started to taper off, and so I hadn't returned in awhile. Today, armed with the Equinox, I wanted to see if I could pull out another keeper or two. My focus was actually on hoping to find a gold ring -- so my intent was to dig a variety of tones in the sub-nickel to pull-tab range. So, I arrived thinking "gold ring," and my very first target dig was this large men's SILVER ring (not gold, but I'll take it!) A short while later, this showed up (I'm almost sure I must have made a rookie mistake, as I think this was in the same plug as a Barber dime I recovered on an earlier hunt with the CTX -- OOPS)... A 1927-D Merc. Then, I got a rather odd, deep tone, but it sounded good enough to dig... These were in the same hole -- the first one on-edge, I believe, and then the second still in the wall of the plug. While recovering these two coins, the husband and wife who own the home happened to come over to see how I was doing. They got to see me recover the coins, one at a time. When I pulled the first one (1904), I could see it was the most beautiful Indian I'd ever dug, with a gorgeous verdigris pattern -- and also in exceptional condition. The homeowners were really excited to see me recover the coin, and when I told them what year it was, they said "wow, that's the year our house was built!" So, I knew at that point that the owners needed to have that one -- so I offered it up, which they hesitantly but excitedly accepted! They plan to frame/display it, as part of the history of the home! I then recovered the second -- and all three of us were shocked, as it was dated 1864 -- a Civil War-era Indian! After talking with the homeowners for a bit, I continued on. I dug another Indian Head (1900), sandwiched between two V-nickel digs (1897 and a "dateless" one). Finally, to end the day, I got a deep signal amongst some trashy lower tones, that I could coax a rather consistent low 20s ID from. I thought maybe it was another deep Indian Head, but the Indians I had dug were generally upper teens, so I was not sure on this one (especially hearing the other nearby trash/iron). So, I removed a deep plug, and sweeping the side of the plug, I could now hear a good high tone, with 25-26-27 ID numbers. SILVER numbers! From about 7" or so, I ended the day on a silver note! 1912-D Barber Dime! I was REALLY impressed with the Equinox on this hunt. I know for CERTAIN I passed over the hole with the two Indian Heads, as well as the 1900 Indian Head, and also the Barber Dime, with the CTX (because I carefully gridded the rather small area they were found in), and for whatever reason was not convinced to dig. I also missed the nickels, but that doesn't surprise me, as I still have a hard time with nickels on the CTX. NOT SO, with the Equinox. The ring was shallow, and a penny-type signal, so I probably just ignored it, thinking "shallow Memorial." Overall though, a very, very good hunt was facilitated by the Equinox, in an area I thought was "petering out" after being hunted multiple times with the CTX. Since 90 percent of the hunts I've taken with the Equinox have been to my local park that I've cleaned nearly "bare" over the past 7 years, and thus the good coin finds with the Equinox from there rather sparse, getting into a rhythm on this hunt with the machine and digging good targets repeatedly/consistently was a great confidence builder with the still-new-to-me machine. Thanks for reading! Steve

Noxday was cut very short with the ground still frozen and sleet coming down. Managed to use my X-terra armcup with my bicycle drink bottle. A bit of weight in the bottle balances everything out nicely. Straight out of the box settings, Park1, conservative sens, GB-ed, Multi-freq and out pops a 0,5gr target next to iron. That's a nice surprise for an 11in coil!! Nox is charging, time to read the manual in earnest.

After reading and rereading all the comments of the forum, decision for model 600, I think that for my needs, that is enough for me. I arrived yesterday and did a little test at home, since Steve has said many times that he does not have the gold program but that he can do equally well in other programs. This test is in park 2 mode and sensitivity to 12, since I am inside the house