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I have seen mention on various forums of being able to counterbalance the weight of the coil by fixing a power bank or appropriate weights under the armrest of the Equinox. I know from many years of detecting how important detector balance is (particularly as you get older!) My question is has anyone attempted this yet? If so, what is the best attachment method & What weights have you used? Any pictures and advice would be greatly appreciated. I am still awaiting my Equinox 800 & have gained loads of information from this forum. I now have to wait for that phone call from my dealer!!

Another youtube video of Gordon Heritage using his Equinox to find another Gold Stater + Hammered Silver coins + Roman coins. The sound quality on this video is not the best but the viewing is an eye opener of the Equinox capabilities. Enjoy it.

Last night I get a call from my local dealer. My 800 is in! Asked if he should ship it or if I wanted to pick it up. It is about an hour and a half round trip but it was a no brainer, hit the road in the morning and was back around noon. Had to run a few errands so I got the Nox charging a bit and went out in my front yard. First dig was a nail, 2nd dig was a wheatie. Ok I got this, off to my sons school that is about to be demo'ed, I have super top secret access so I get to hunt the main play field. I know at least 5 other detectorist had been on this field recently, I ran into one last week with his AT Pro, digging clad and a sterling ring. I only had about an hour and spent the first 30 looking for a time capsule that was supposedly buried in a back part of the school. No luck and had to stop because the mosquitoes where draining all my blood. So 30 minutes in the field and all I got was clad but it was all 6+ inches deep. I was amazed! It was interesting because the AT Pro guy I ran into said everything he was digging was about 3 inches down. He probably cleaned off the surface stuff but I was still impressed how clear I was hearing the signals, even with no head phones. My son was with me and he likes hearing the tones. Nothing great, just clad pulled 5 coins from one small area and the amazing thing was I heard them all before we dug. I told my son "I think there are 5 coins here" and bingo out came 5 coins. Also got a fun modern token. I have not been detecting in over 3 years, this machine is so easy and fun to use, can't wait until I actually get to understand it better. Was hunting in Park 2 with just a noise cancel.

Will be receiving my 600 in a few days and was wondering if you can submerge the unit without headphones and hear it, is it safe to do? I will be getting underwater headphones when available and intend to wade and snorkel with it, should be a fun machine.

Are any Equinox owners seeing the "shaft play" issue where the coil is misaligned with the control head and there is play in the shaft where the control head can be moved left and right? This issue is being reported in another forum: Link deleted since Findmall Forum update broke all old links

What number does it end up at for a barely audible tone? Please state you detector and headphone volume settings such as headphones wide open and using the detector volume control to set level. Probably just going down the rabbit hole with this but....

As I have mentioned in various posts, I was on an early pre-order list for the E800… and I will remain on that list until my E800 is available. Based on several of the threads and comments by Steve H. and others, when an E600 came available, I had to act, and I am glad I did. Mostly due to the fact that I would be GOING CRAZY reading about all the early experiences from those that were lucky enough to get an E800 in the first two shipment waves. Yes, there are things that I will utilize on the E800 when I finally receive my pre-ordered machine, but I don’t feel like I am leaving any detecting power on the table with the E600. I have had the E600 in my possession for 2 weeks now, and have had it out swinging every day. Some days only 45-60 minutes as my work and family schedule would allow, and other days longer hunts. I have tried to target a few locations that I know like the back of my hand… a few older sites, and a few newer sites, but all I know what to expect from the ground… this is the best way I can measure the performance of the Equinox. Compare it against my numerous experiences on the same ground I have swung the Etrac, CTX, Explorer SE Pro, Tesoro Vaquero and even to some extent the Garrett ATX PI. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Equinox performs as good or better at all these sites than any of the machines I have mentioned above. My settings journey started the same as most new Equinox owners… Stock settings. Park 1/Noise Cancel/Ground Balance/start swinging. Then check targets with AM, or in Park 2… toy with Field 1 and 2… even take a few swings with the beach mode just to hear how it sounds on a target. The Equinox is a feedback machine. It started providing me information almost immediately. Over the past two weeks, I have gravitated to mostly using Park 1 with sensitivity between 18-22 depending on the ground, 50 tones, recovery at 3 (which is maxed for the 600 and equivalent to 6 on the 800) and iron bias at 0. Before I move on, I want to thank some of the early testers for guiding me to these settings, and being open to sharing their testing and experiences with us on the forum and in PM… Steve H., TNSS, SteveG, Cabin Fever, Tometusns to name a few… but not to slight all who share their information through the forum threads. Shout out to all of you! Along with a pile of clad... and more nickels by ratio than I have every dug... and mostly running in the Park 1 settings above, I have been successful in pulling wheats from areas that dried up to me and my other detectors a year ago. One location, I pulled 1-3 wheats from a 25 yard square at an old park in 5 successive days. Then went back and popped a 9.5” Aluminum Washington State Tax Token. It sorts through trash and iron and it goes deep. I should also say I planted a quarter at 7” last spring in this same area as a test. I was not able to hit it with the Etrac, the Explorer gave me a squeaky iffy signal on it, the Vaquero hits it in super tuned all metal only, and the Equinox bangs on it in stock settings. My first extended hunt (2 hours) also gave me my first Equinox silver. At another old location around an old ballfield, I got a solid 14 ID, that I nearly passed on, thinking it was probably a pull tab… but the signal sounded round and smooth… so I turned around, pinpointed, and dug a 6” plug to find a silver war nickel. Last night, I found myself at a school near my house which was built in the 80’s but is a good testing ground for my detectors… with clad down to about 4 or 5”… but last night, I wanted to test out the 2 tone setting. I went into the advanced tones settings and move the tone break up to 19. 18 and below – low tone / 19 and above high tone. I then set out for the trashiest part of the field, just outside the front doors of the school in the playground next to the basketball court pad. All kinds of aluminum targets littered throughout. I usually avoid that area because of the machine gun chatter or nulling from my other machines. Last night, my first target was a clear as can be high tone surrounded by low tones, but easily identifiable. 24-27 on the id. 6” down amongst the trash… 1959 Rosie. Why a silver coin was in a modern school that was orchards before, I can only guess, but the Equinox found it. So, my first “my Equinox experience” post is two fold. 1) The Equinox is for real. I’m not the first to say that, and I won’t be the last. But I share that opinion with all the rest that have said it, and 2) The E600 is a sleeper machine with 90% of the features but 100% of the detecting power of the E800. There have been many great posts outlining the differences between the two machines which are must reads. More important to me than “is the E800 worth the extra $250”… (and honestly, I feel it is worth the additional money for the E800… at least for me), but is it worth waiting for the E800 to become available when you could probably be hunting with the E600 by this weekend… each of us will have a different answer to that… and not everyone is able or willing to buy both like I have committed to doing. But if I had made the choice for only one machine, and opted for the E600 and have it now, rather than waiting for the E800… I would have absolutely no regrets, knowing what I know now having used the E600 for the past 2 weeks. Tim.

From the Minelab Equinox Full Instruction Manual, page 63 (click to enlarge)... Portions marked with asterisk are Equinox 800 only. Minelab Equinox Factory Presets

I spent the past couple days playing around with the EQ on some undug targets, some that I detected with the GPZ, then went over with the EQ. My observations in Moderately Mild ground of Sunny Yuma. Dropping the Sens down to 18 or lower didn't improve the bump falsing, but the targets disappeared. Raising the Recovery Speed to 5 or higher knocked out 75 percent of the bump falsing. If you raise the Recovery speed, you need to raise the threshold for low and slow or you won't hear the targets. At a recovery speed of 5, you need a pretty good swing speed to make the micro nuggets sing out. The smallest I found was .04 gram, the biggest was .48 gram. I can't be sure what I'm losing in depth with the higher recovery speed, most of these targets are 1 to 2 inches. Just like any new detector, it takes some time on the ground to get to know the nuances. For most of my ground, a Sens of 23, Threshold 8 to 10, Recovery Speed 5 or 6. On the hotter red dirt, Sens of 20 held up pretty well. Park 2 got the bigger nuggets just fine, Field 2 nothing. Bear in mind I'm concentrating on micro nuggets simply because there are more of them and I'm having fun finding something for my day out in the sun. I'm liking this detector more every day. One you electronic geniuses can tell us why the higher Recovery Speed setting knocks down the bump falsing.

I went out this morning and did a auto GB in a couple of places in my yard, one read 5, the other 6. Does anyone have bad dirt that they have GB'd in? I'd like to know what kind of numbers, really mild and some harsh soil reads come in at.

In my 30 years of detecting I have never seen so many people with one as now . I can't go to my old town with a population of 5000 without seeing young or old even walking beside footpaths with one . 90% of the time I only do night hunts unless I see a new cut out at a beach then I focus on nothing else and don't care who sees me or listen to any smart alic comments from passerbys . I wanted the Equinox to attack parks as I never did them because all the junk annoyed me . Now this is where the Equinox is helping me outsmart the other park hunters . I set park 1 user profile to just ping those $1 and $2 coins and bingo that is what it's doing . The thing is most surface ones are gone but the Nox is getting them 8" down ( hubby not happy AGAIN as bit harder to go away with a neat hole left ) I also have a problem of wanting to tell all about it but don't want too many Noxes in my spots just yet . Hubby is hard to impress but he keeps saying " I just keep under estimating how deep this thing goes " Good job Minelab

I was starting to wonder if Brandon fell in a hole he was digging with Equinox and could not climb back out!

This has been the subject of much debate and I thought I would weigh in with a little this versus that to help offer a little guidance. I think Minelab was caught off guard by all this because the whole conversation from their perspective was supposed to be about AT Max versus Deus versus Equinox. Yet the majority of the debate is about this Minelab versus that Minelab. I guess that is a credit to Minelab but at the end of the day I am not sure they are too worried about what Minelab you buy as long as it's a Minelab The Minelab Sovereign and the Excalibur introduced the world to Broad Band Spectrum (BBS) which was Minelabs term for their first generation multifrequency detectors. The Sovereign and the Excalibur are tone based detectors with no screen and so are for people who hunt by ear. They act like very low frequency detectors and because of this are very strong on silver coins. They also do relatively well on gold targets though they are weak on the smallest gold targets. They are very well behaved detectors that handle harsh saltwater environments well, making the Excalibur perhaps the most successful underwater detector made. The BBS detectors are strongly biased against ferrous targets and better ignore ferrous than any detector I have ever used. Ferrous is almost invisible to a BBS detector. This comes at a cost however. The processing speed is very slow and combined with the strong bias against ferrous target masking is a problem with these machines. That is not to say you cannot find targets in ferrous trash. You can. It is simply an area where BBS is very weak. The next generation introduced Full Band Spectrum (FBS). The Explorer, Safari, and E-Trac further refined BBS and without getting into details the big addition was a two dimensional target id display that locates items on screen with a combination of a ferrous number and a conductive number. This dual target id combined with a screen added more refined discrimination capability to a detector already very well suited to people that hunt by ear. Anyone talking about the Explorer and silver will usually mention the great tones it makes on silver. The frequency weighting is very much in favor of low conductors and the Explorer series became famous for the ability to extract silver coins from park type scenarios i.e. turf hunting. A faster processor speed improved the situation with masking in dense targets to a degree, but the FBS machines still lag single frequency detectors a lot in this regard. The FBS detectors again are excellent at identifying and rejecting ferrous targets. The Minelab CTX 3030 introduced FBS2 which further refined things. I am being purposefully over simplistic by saying the CTX mainly added an even faster processor, color screen, and the ability to be submerged to 10 feet. FBS2 appears to be a little hotter on small gold items but the main strengths are still in silver and in ferrous rejection. The color screen added new features like target trace that allow more than one target to be displayed at once for world class discrimination capability. The BBS/FBS series have been extremely popular around the world and are to this day. However, the detectors faced competition in three main areas. They are relatively expensive detectors and they are relatively heavy detectors. And even though they can find good targets in dense trash they also leave a lot behind due to the slow recovery speeds. The Garrett AT series was revolutionary in creating detectors waterproof to ten feet that only weigh about three pounds and at a price so low it really turned the market on its ear. These detectors have been immensely successful in creating a high value combination of features at a very low price and with decent performance. This combined with top notch marketing makes the Garrett AT series very popular especially in the United States. The XP DEUS came out of left field and in Europe took the market by storm. These detectors are both extremely light in weight and extremely fast in target response and recovery speed. These two factors alone mean that a detector rally in the U.K. will be almost nothing but Deus detectors with a smattering of other machines. Deus does also focus on low conductor performance, as the recent addition of high frequency coils reveals. Remember that small thin silver items like hammered silver and cut silver coins actually respond as low conductors. Minelab saw this happening but the truth is coin and relic machines are a far distant second when it comes to profits compared to the gold machines. Any company only has so many resources and the GPZ 7000 development in particular was a major lift even for Minelab. Still, the company knew it would have to address the situation with detectors that did exactly what the Garrett AT and XP Deus did, which was target BBS and FBS where they are weakest. Price, weight, recovery speed, and low conductor sensitivty. Equinox does all this while also adding the latest twist on their multifrequency technology; Multi-IQ. The intent here as Minelab has made clear was not to replace the BBS/FBS machines but to augment them with another line that is specifically better in areas where BBS/FBS fall short. Again, weight, price, recovery speed, and I am going to add sensitivity to small low conductors to that list. I had a CTX 3030 and loved it. Yet I rarely used it. Why? My type of detecting. BBS and FBS favor people who hunt high conductors and typically favor people who hunt in mild to moderate ground. I do just the opposite. I hunt low conductors, gold specifically, and in highly mineralized ground. It is hard for people who do not hunt highly mineralized ground to understand how much it impacts detector performance, but seeing overall VLF depths cut by 50% or more is not unusual. Target id also suffers a lot in bad ground as does target masking from hot rocks and the ground itself. I know a lot of BBS/FBS users have a hard time grasping this, but in my ground there is no major benefit to BBS/FBS except for the fantastic target id capability, especially as regards ferrous rejection. Depth is easily matched or exceeded by the best single frequency detectors, which however suffer in their own way with unreliable target id. And the fact is multifrequency has always been weak on gold - not even Minelab suggests that BBS/FBS machines should be used for gold prospecting, although people can and do find gold nuggets with them. Still, you can't beat BBS and FBS for being well behaved, easy to operate, and in having top notch target id combined with best of class ferrous rejection. Arguably the worlds best machines for hunting silver in turf. Everything in designing metal detectors comes in the form of a trade. When you gain one thing you tend to lose something else. In general putting the fine details of Multi-IQ aside I think the Equinox acts more like a single frequency machine in some ways than what people are used to from BBS/FBS detectors. In particular we have the lightning fast recovery speed and extreme sensitivity to low conductors. Multi-IQ put simplistically adds the target id accuracy that single frequency machines lack in bad ground. In my opinion people coming from hot VLF detectors will take to Equinox more easily than people coming from BBS/FBS detectors. I love hot VLF detectors for what I do so Equinox is a natural fit for me. The move from the more stable well behaved BBS/FBS machines is more jarring for people I think because they are stepping into another world - my world - where they are perhaps less comfortable. People who hunt low conductors, especially in bad ground, and those who hunt non-ferrous in bad ground know that the ferrous/non-ferrous divide is an area fraught with danger. Reject too much ferrous, and you lose the non-ferrous. It appears impossible with current technology to get a clean ferrous/non-ferrous separation. I mean honestly, all I want is a detector that beeps on non-ferrous and shuts up on ferrous and does it with near 100% accuracy. This would seem simple given the difference in magnetic properties between ferrous and non-ferrous targets, but to this day flat steel, washers, hardened steel bolts and screws, bent nails, nails on end, broken square nails, etc all present problems for all metal detectors. It is a huge fuzzy area, and in the end it appears we have to make an unpleasant trade. Equinox in targeting the BBS/FBS weaknesses regarding target masking and low conductor sensitivity is making this trade. The machine steps back in a way and favors those who hunt by ear. Most of the commentary I see about target id spread and the potential limitations there fly over my head because I prefer to hunt by ear with a wide open screen in 50 tones mode for general park and beach detecting. If you are a BBS/FBS hunter this should be familiar to you and yes, you get something pretty close to familiar Minelab tones with Equinox. For field hunting (relics) or nugget hunting in dense trash I am more likely to go to a two tone type mode just due to the sheer number of targets but two tones does make a person more susceptible to ferrous squeaks tricking you than 50 tones where the nuances are more apparent. There is no right or wrong here because people seriously do tolerate this kind of stuff to a largely varying degree and so to say 50 tones is a magic bullet is just plain wrong. We all have to find the balance that works for us personally. Just remember there is a reason many Deus users tell people to stick the controller in their pocket and forget about it. Deus and Equinox favor people who hunt by ear. I apologize if this oversimplifies things but that is what many people need right now. I am leaving price and weight off the considerations below and just talking performance. BBS - only current model the Excalibur. For people who hunt by ear, great in saltwater, great on silver, very good on gold, superb ferrous rejection. Main weakness slow recovery speed, target masking. Moderate depth in highly mineralized ground on low conductors. FBS - current models Safari and E-TRAC. Basically same as BBS with marginally improved recovery speed, main addition target id screen with dual ferrous/conductive id offering very high resolution discrimination. Great on silver, superb ferrous rejection. Main weakness slow recovery speed, target masking. Moderate depth in highly mineralized ground on low conductors. FBS2 - CTX 3030. Slightly improved recovery speed, slightly improved sensitivity to small gold, color screen, target trace. World class discrimination. Great on silver, superb ferrous rejection. Main weakness slow recovery speed, target masking. Moderate depth in highly mineralized ground on low conductors. Multi-IQ - Equinox. World class recovery speed, world class sensitivity to low conductors in mineralized ground. Very good on silver in highly mineralized ground. Weaknesses are less visual target id resolution compared to BBS/FBS, weaker on silver in low to moderate soils, ferrous handling more akin to hot VLF detectors than BBS/FBS detectors. Unknown yet but may exceed or at least match BBS/FBS in saltwater environments. Again, I am purposefully oversimplifying things here on purpose. People including myself have a tendency to wander into the weeds with this stuff and get lost in the fine details. The bottom line is BBS/FBS and Multi-IQ are complementary technologies, each strongest where the other is weakest. For a certain type of user (me) Multi-IQ does indeed replace BBS/FBS. In my ground and on my targets including silver I see no benefit at all to BBS/FBS except the ferrous handling. Yet I know that is the price I have to pay to get the performance I want. On the other hand, people hunting silver in lower to moderate ground conditions have the edge with BBS/FBS and if you hate digging any ferrous at all these machines are best of class in rejecting ferrous. I hope that helps. I have to note again in closing this was never really supposed to be about this Minelab versus that Minelab but when it comes down to it Minelab is really happy to have that discussion. Equinox was specifically designed to compete with the competition, not Minelabs own detectors. Maybe a future version of Multi-IQ will give us the best of BBS/FBS and Multi-IQ in one detector but for now both offer their own strengths and weaknesses. And while Multi-IQ as currently available in Equinox is not perfect, it would be crazy to ignore the weight and price issues. They matter - they matter a lot to some people. Equinox in my opinion offers bang for the buck value that cannot be ignored, and for that reason alone it is going to be a sales juggernaut no matter where our little online debates lead us. And for you who love BBS/FBS - nobody is taking them away from you. Go detecting, be happy! Disclaimer - all the above is just my outlook and personal opinions and do not represent Minelab in any way, shape, form, or fashion. It is based on my own experience plus reports coming in from other people that I trust but should still be considered preliminary information/opinions. Nobody including me is an Equinox expert yet and no doubt its use will be refined as more people share tips and tricks.

I picked up my 800 last Friday, Monday I did about 2 hours at a very difficult local small park. 60 x 120, railroad tracks with bed slag on one side and alkali dirt on the other side. I dug 5 wheats and was pleased with that but did not feel I had the thing working smoothly. I went back this afternoon and gave it a try again, paid attention to the set up and slowed myself down. This thing works! I dug 4 wheats, 2 mercs and a SLQ, all were surronded by other targets, I am sure I have had my Gold Bug and T2 over these coins as I have detected this park alot over the last 2 years. I ran Park 2 with no changes except sensitivity when I got closer to the tracks. I think I believe the hype.

Today I spent some time on the beach in a little bit of rain with the 800. It was a pretty good day because there were 3 Osprey troop planes overhead and a couple of helicopters carrying the President. Meanwhile on the beach there was next to nothing again with about 4 miles walked and only one little patch. This patch was both at the beginning and the end of my hunting of about 3 hours. I tried hard but the waves today were only about 1 ft and that was after a storm. There weren't many surfers out but that is not what this post is about. I found a few pennies and tried for better targets before returning and gridding the area. I gridded by overlapping my swings to locate all possible targets and then I heard the pennies which were only 3-4 inches. I had it on all metal and just kept digging and listening on Beach 1 standard but maybe 22 sensitivity. Then I heard an iffy target. I'm still learning so I dug. I dug some more and then down at least 12 inches was the earring. It was quite rusty but there is non-iron also. At the bottom of the hole it was wet. There was a layer there deposited from another time of bigger waves. This sand layer had built up over it. Time to grid more. I extended the 'patch' but overlapped my walking and went back over a hole I had dug a penny and it still had a target. Down I went again to that same layer, 12-14 inches deep. Out pops the other little earring. A bit of copper on the end with the wire. This is seeing real deep with a bit of a slower swing and knowledge that there is a layer. Those were the interesting finds. The other stuff is there too. Mitchel

An interesting interview on all metal modes podcast march 12 show...wow Listen to "George "TEX" Kinsey pt. 2" on Spreaker.

The manual shows how to do auto ground balance. do we have to do an auto ground balance before we put it in tracking ground balance or can we just do a noise cancel and then put it in tracking GB?

I am soliciting suggestions on A. whether to seal the coil cover on the 800, and B. if yes, what shall I use. This is the amount of sand in the coil after an hour at the beach. It is like this each time I go and I don't mind cleaning it out but I'm wondering if this is the way to go or not.

This has been reported by a few people and appears to be traceable to cell phones in pockets seeking a signal or some such thing. If you have a cell phone on you and are getting short periods of strong interference try putting the phone in airplane mode.

I charge mine with a motorola 2 Amp phone charger:

Has anyone compared Park 2 with either Field 1 or 2?

I made this video to address these concerns:

Just a heads up... Seeing a few of the charging leads coming apart at the head. Could be a batch problem as some I have seen look 100% OK and have had some use... Others seem to have started showing problems - see the 3 pics of my 2 charging heads AND the last pic.. (not mine) is at time of un packing; and was almost separated... One of mine is not crash hot and the other could fail with a little push. A simple weld will fix the problem, but will be e-mailing ML service to let them know.

I was hunting an old abandoned ball field today, Park 1, running 2 tones, recovery 7, iron bias 0, 0 disc, tone break to accept 19 and up, full volume from -9 to 40 and 1 pitch from -9 to 18. I only had a couple of hours to hunt this morning so I was cherry picking high tones only. I had recovered 9 or 10 pieces of clad from the trash, shaking my head each time I hit a coin, because I know for a fact I had covered this same dirt 3-4 times with the CTX. I started chasing some iffy semi repeatable high tones just to see what was in the ground. I got a scratchy, but a repeatable high tone if I wiggled the coil real fast in very short sweep. The first hit was coming in at the mid to high 30's and I figured it was deep iron, I scrapped away 5-6" of dirt and the signal improved but the numbers were unstable, bouncing around the upper 30's. I was down about 13-14" when I found what was sounding off, part of an old aluminum can. I've noticed aluminum likes to bounce somewhat if it's irregular in shape and size. I made another pass and got an almost identical type of hit and very close to the same VDI's only they stayed in the low 30's not bouncing into the mid to upper 30's. After scrapping 7-8" of dirt, I rescanned the hole and the signal cleaned up and was more of a mellow sounding, unlike the aluminum hit, this time staying around 32-33. At 10" I popped the target out, a shell casing from almost a foot deep :super: I know it's not a silver coin or gold ring, but, that hit gave me a surge of confidence, that this dog will hunt!!! Later in the day, I headed to a vacant lot that had surrendered some stuff over the last 3 years to the Etrac and CTX to see if the Nox could sniff out some stuff. I was running the same setup and started chasing iffy signal from the start. There used to be an old house here at one time and it's nasty with nails, brass, copper chunks and bits and pieces of aluminum everywhere. Every signal I dug was right next to trash or had iron in the hole with the target. I dug 2 wheats, the lipstick case and the good luck token in the trashiest part of the yard. Needless to say, I am more than pleased with the Nox and can say it has surpassed what I was expecting, hands down!! I've been off for the last week and picked the most polluted places that I've hunted in the past with the Etrac(small coils) and the CTX(6" coil) My goal was to take the CTX out on these hunts to cross check signals, but, after hunting with the Nox, I lost interest in bringing the CTX along. Not only that, it's a big time waster and a hassle to switch back and forth between machines. Actually, I was having way too much fun with the Nox to even care.:smile: