Help With Equinox Ground Noise

[rf1]

67GTA, I've experienced the same exact thing one a few properties in central NC. One in particular is horrible.  Almost constant soil noise and when you go over a rock it's even worse.  On this particular site, it's impossible to quiet it down by ground balancing...it just wont balance.  It's an odd soil type, different from most of my sites (which are generally pretty crappy difficult clay) and it's very difficult to search in.  Can't seem to dig anything deeper than a few inches.  I've tried upping recovery, all of the 1-2 modes, ground balancing, and can not really tell any difference.   One thing I have not tried that I saw mentioned in this thread is one of the single frequencies. 

I manged to dig a musket ball the first time I visited the site (sounded mostly like iron) with my buddy who runs my old ATP. The ATP was running as normal, so I buried the freshly dug musket ball about 5-6 inches to see if we could pick it up.  I managed to get a little bit of iron grunt swinging over the ball, and the ATP actually signaled a bit better than the Nox with a non-iron tone.

So, next time I try this horrid place, I am going to try the single frequencies to see if it will quiet it down.  Might be a while, but I'll report back once I do.

[Khameleon21]

On 2/17/2021 at 3:55 PM, 67GTA said:

They aren't repeatable signals, but usually show up around -9 to -3. Most square nails are around -3 to -6. Guess I could notch out to -3 and still hear the iron. Just got about 5 inches of snow, so it will be a few days before I can try beach mode. I've tried all the park and field modes, and run sensitivity as high as possible. Turning down the sensitivity doesn't help much either. Never thought to try beach mode. That might make a difference if it is mineral/salt related. Hunt a lot of rural areas with crop fields and pastures. Could just be a lot of fertilizer in the ground. I run into a little red clay every now and then, but it is usually pretty quiet.

Just curious.  What sensitivities are you running?  In my experience the NOX is a chirpy detector.  If I run it above 22 in my areas it can be very noisy.  I had a hard time in the beginning getting past the noise and dug many holes to nowhere (even stopped using it for a year or so).  With time, I felt more comfortable running it on a high sensitivity and just filtering out the ghost tones with my ears. 

You mention that changing sensitivity doesn't help much.  How low have gone?  I would be concerned if your NOX was still behaving this way with a low sensitivity (below 15).  You probably don't want to detect down there, but it might be a worthwhile test for troubleshooting. 

There is one YouTuber I can't remember their name, but he does 3-4 hour live detecting.  He mostly uses the NOX.  All I can remember is he detects in NYC.  Watching his videos gave me the confidence to trust my NOX despite the chirpiness of the detector. 

Have you played around with iron-bias?  If so what are your settings?

[Jeff McClendon]

On 2/18/2021 at 7:17 PM, CalReg said:

67GTA, I am having the same challenges you are facing...and I thought it was just me! At first, I thought the shafts weren't tightened enough, but when that didn't fix it, I decide to try other things, I ground balanced then tried to manually try to eliminate some of the falsing, but to no avail. I currently run on park 1, with sensitivity at 22. I do the noise cancelling and ground balancing. I have tried switching to different modes, but still nothing. I am only one month into my Equinox and I'd sure like to find an answer!

CalReg, rf1 and 67GTA, I live and often hunt in a suburban/urban area with tons of EMI and moderate to high mineralization. No amount of ground balancing or noise cancelling will eliminate it completely if one or the other or both in my area, are really bad. Ground balancing here is a moving target and the auto noise cancelling could best be called possible auto noise reduction. That is a sign of how sensitive to a full spectrum of target signals Multi IQ is.........

There is EMI from above ground and below ground power lines, EMI from Wi Fi/ethernet/Bluetooth, Broadband, there is EMI from traffic signals and even from wireless municipal sprinkler systems, airports, law enforcement and military installations, and from normal tv and radio signals. So I don't run my Equinox at a pre-set sensitivity. I run mine depending on the ground and EMI conditions. Sometimes that means I can't go over 18, sometimes I can run it at 20, very rarely do I have the luxury of running mine at 21 or 22 and I have never run it at 24/25 within 50 miles of a large city. If I tried to do that, I would not know a real target from ground noise or EMI and my numerical target ID display would never read --  -- but would be constantly changing with numbers throughout the target ID range including -9 and +39/40 and in 50 or 5 tones my ears would be bombarded with noise.

Despite this situation, since purchasing a Nox 600 in early 2018 and an 800 a few months later, I have mostly only been able to run sensitivity at 20 or below while finding over $3,000 in modern clad, over $4,000 melt value in gold jewelry, almost a pound of silver jewelry, 48 silver US coins from the 1850s to 1963 and silver Canadian coins, too many V nickels, buffalos, wheats and indians to count and several really nice Plains Indian Wars US Cavalry relics from the mid 1800s. Many of the best finds were deeper than 10" and some were at 14" running below 22 sensitivity, just with the stock 11" coil and all of those deep targets had numbers and tones that let me know they were a low, mid or high conductor non-ferrous target. I was able to correctly call most of them before digging them. The Equinox is that good even at 18 sensitivity.......

I am not spouting off, bragging or blabbering to get attention with those figures. I am just trying to help you. Running sensitivity so high that ground and EMI conditions prevent hearing good, shallow or deep signals is totally counterproductive. Des Dunne who died recently, bless his soul, was one of the pre-production field testers that asked Minelab to cap sensitivity on the Equinox at 20. The areas he did his testing in just had too much EMI and/or mineralization to run it any higher. I'm glad that Minelab left it at 25 but for instance, I rarely drive my cars over the safe speed limit even though one of them has 120mph on the speedometer.

So, feel free to run your sensitivity as high as you want..........but you may be bombarded with so many ghost signals that you won't know what to dig.

 

[Dances With Doves]

I like hearing about your success.It should motivate people to have their own success by  hearing others who have had it.    

[67GTA]

Usually run sensitivity between 20-23. My soil is pretty mild in most areas. Have gone down to 15-18 to try and get rid of the "ground noise". If I'm in heavily concentrated iron, I will run 12-15.

[Badger-NH]

 

If your soil is mild, why would you have ground noise?

 

[67GTA]

Not sure. That was the main reason for starting the thread. It has me scratching my head. I haven't had a chance to test the theory because of the weather, but someone mentioned fertilizer as a possible cause. I hunt a lot of rural areas. 

[Badger-NH]

That's right, I remember now. I must have lost track of the topic. I have too much snow here so I can't get out to test either.

 

[GB_Amateur]

7 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

...Very rarely do I have the luxury of running mine at 21 or 22 and I have never run it at 24/25 within 50 miles of a large city. If I tried to do that, I would not know a real target from ground noise or EMI and my numerical target ID display would never read --  -- but would be constantly changing with numbers throughout the target ID range including -9 and +39/40 and in 50 or 5 tones my ears would be bombarded with noise.

Great post, Jeff!  Did you notice any improvement (less sensitivity to EMI) with the software upgrades?  I thought I did with the 2.x software release, but EMI is such a moving target (varying in both space and time) that I was never sure about that.