Official Minelab Vanquish Ground Balance Info?

[phrunt]

5 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Too many variables to make any definitive apple to apple conclusions re: mode equivalency (what Equinox mode do you think the Vanquish modes equate with?), “hidden” or hard coded Vanquish settings for equivalent Equinox recovery/IB, etc.  Were you recalling anecdotal situations or doing a scientifically controlled A to B comparison?

I've just been mucking around in my yard comparing detectors and coils over a couple of targets to try find a way to demonstrate what I'm constantly seeing in the field, I didn't do test runs before filming to know how they'd perform against each other, I didn't fiddle to try make one better than the other, I put them into the settings I thought were best and let it rip, El Nino suggested some Equinox settings to try and tweak the Nox better to hit the target as the Vanquish was doing better on the deeper target to the left, I did another video trying to make the Nox equal the Vanquish but it couldn't.   I knew what the results would be as I've used the Vanquish and the Equinox to dig hundreds of old silver coins, over time you start to realise which is giving you the most stable ID's or revealing these targets at depth the best. 

I don't find a few old deep silver coins a year, I find a few a day and hundreds a year so it's quite easy to work out which detector I'm doing best with, I'm now starting to think the CTX I just recently bought may take over the Vanquish as my coin hunter, as with a fair bit of messing around I've now made it perform very well.  When I first bought the Vanquish and took it over one of my good spots I was surprised how many coins it was finding that I'd missed with my Equinox, and this continued and I largely put it down to having to lower the Nox sensitivity due to the EMI and I was able to keep the Vanquish up high.

The Vanquish had the EMI advantage as I've always maintained the Vanquish handles EMI around my area better, on the deepest of the two targets (the left one) the Vanquish was not giving good ID's with the small coil often but gave the best audio giving the target away.  The Equinox ID'd it as iron and the audio reflected that.  Put bigger coils on and the same results are mirrored except the targets need to be even deeper. 🙂  On these same targets with bigger coils the Vanquish gave the most stable ID.

The small coils video is the best one as they all struggle the most on the deepest target with small coils.

All I'm trying to get across is in my very mild soils the Vanquish can often outperform the Equinox on deep coins and nothing I've been able to do with the Equinox settings gets it comparable to my Vanquish, I put it down to the Vanquish being better with EMI.  I'm not making it up 🙂  If you have some magical settings that you think will help the Equinox I'd be happy to try them, and beach mode certainly isn't the secret sauce to depth on coins, quite the opposite.

Be gentle, I'm sure I'll get picked apart, this is just what I'm experiencing in my soils and if there was a way you could tell me to make my Equinox perform as good as my Vanquish I'd be happy.  Now of course I don't expect this performance out of the Vanquish for everyone and for most the Nox is likely the best, obviously with no ground balance in bad soils it won't do near as well.  I never have to ground balance detectors to calm any ground response in park type areas, I do it anyway sometimes in hope of better performance but it's not necessary to operate, so I don't think the ground balance of either is causing the depth increases, I think it's the EMI handling.

I just think Minelab had worked something out between making the Equinox and the Vanquish and whatever it was is in the Vanquish software, and maybe it's not going into the Equinox software until the Equinox 1000 comes out and my wild theory is something to do with the 4kHz 🙂  The 4kHz came out of nowhere and was quite an unusual thing to add in a firmware update don't you think?

Their explanation of why 4kHz was added it also a bit strange 🙂

A new Single Frequency of 4 kHz has been added to the existing 5, 10, 15, 20 and 40 kHz options. This new 4 kHz frequency enhances the detection of large deep targets, particularly those found in parts of Asia. As a result of optimising for these conditions, this new frequency may respond differently for users compared to the other single frequencies. 

 

[mh9162013]

This an awesome thread and such a fascinating read...

[phrunt]

11 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

This an awesome thread and such a fascinating read...

It's a prime example of why people will never agree on detector performance though, as conditions vary so wildly between hunting grounds what works well for one won't work for another.  What works for me may not work for you and so on.  If someone who lived near me was in the market for their first detector and only wanted to hunt coins in parks and fields I'd tell them to buy the Vanquish, even if they had money to burn as I genuinely think they'd do better. 

Maybe some hardcore detectorist that likes to fiddle and tweak to work out the optimal settings for each location may do better with the Equinox, maybe not.  Minelab seem to be currently trying to automate their detectors are much as possible to give people the best settings with minimal user input, and I think that's a great step forwards, and suits people like me, I'm not interested in fiddling with settings to make the stars align for each hunt I'd prefer the detector do it for me as I'm not a settings expert and don't want to be but again, others do want to be.

Minelab took it a step too far not having ground balance on the Vanquish though, not for me, but for others they did.

[mh9162013]

8 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Minelab took it a step too far not having ground balance on the Vanquish though, not for me, but for others they did.

Yeah, not having the ground balancing is a problem in my moderate-high mineralized soil. 

I'm curious as to MInelab's decision not to have it in the 540 (or any of the Vanquishes). I understand that if you give the 540 too many features, it'll became the 600. But I wonder if the ground balance feature made such a big difference, that Minelab felt the 540 become too close in performance to the 600 for too many users.

Regardless, trying to figure out what's really going on with our machines matters to me. Like you, I appreciate the automation, but I want to know what's going on to make a more informed decision when comparing different detectors.

P.S. it's great to have you back and I have appreciated your recent posts and contributions.

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

Maybe some hardcore detectorist that likes to fiddle and tweak to work out the optimal settings for each location may do better with the Equinox, maybe not.  Minelab seem to be currently trying to automate their detectors are much as possible to give people the best settings with minimal user input, and I think that's a great step forwards, and suits people like me, I'm not interested in fiddling with settings to make the stars align for each hunt I'd prefer the detector do it for me as I'm not a settings expert and don't want to be but again, others do want to be.

Generally it’s not because people want to fiddle with settings, it’s usually because the environment forces you to optimize due to high EMI, junk targets, or, perhaps most importantly, soil conditions.  If you are lucky enough not to ever have to deal with nasty soil then it might be hard to understand why having the ability to tweak can make the difference between getting skunked or finding 5 keepers.  But frankly, I don’t do a lot of tweaking.  Compare Equinox to setting up that CTX.  Night and day.  Simply having the ability to have Equinox appropriately compensate for off nominal ground conditions and give a reliable ID at depth in hot soil is huge and is the reason why my Vanquish has a new owner.  

[phrunt]

Yup, it does appear the Vanquish only shines in milder soils and I completely understand the desire to have a lot of settings when the conditions don't allow the simplicity of a detector like the Vanquish and I am sure the Vanquish is not near as good as the Nox in bad soil conditions.   The GPX 6000 is basically fully auto replacing a detector the GPX 5000 with a billion settings. I wonder what will happen with the Equinox 1000 if they will continue the push forward to more simple detectors.  I personally really like simple, I believe the detector would be better at setting itself up than I would as I'm the first to admit I'm not a settings guru, especially when it comes to staying on top of the settings as conditions change. 

Geosense may make an appearance on Multi IQ in some form, automatically setting sensitivity, EMI channels, settings, detect modes and so on and if I did I'd be quite happy.  While fully auto may not be the best 100% of the time, if it does most of the time I'm good with that.  I hope if they do make the Equinox 1000 fully auto they still give some choices of settings on the higher priced Equinox 1200 though for occasions when auto just isn't doing the job right.

[Jeff McClendon]

I must be a hardcore detector user with lots of desire for features............

Actually my detecting areas usually are hardcore and I need those features.

There are two detecting scenarios where I would not hesitate to detect with a Vanquish 440 or 540 with a 10" or 12" coil if I an Equinox was unavailable. Mildly mineralized ground conditions hunting for coins and non-micro sized jewelry on a sports field or park that did not have closely spaced shallow aluminum and steel bottle cap modern trash......so an area with widely space targets, and on a mildly mineralized fresh or saltwater beach (not the surf) that also had widely spaced modern trash targets. Even if there are some really deep targets at the edge of detection, the Vanquish could easily handle those conditions and using an Equinox/Vanquish to me would be a toss-up. To me those are not hardcore detecting conditions which is just what a high quality entry level detector like the Vanquish series were made for.

Otherwise, for any other scenario, I need at least an Equinox.

[phrunt]

Yes, I have difficulty understanding bad conditions 🙂 I think If I had to detect where you guys do I'd be lost and not have a clue what to do 🙂 You are forced to be hardcore detectorists by your ground.  You need to know your machines a lot more than someone in my ground.  I'd really struggle in bad conditions as I've been so spoilt with benign soils.  They need to make a fully auto Equinox 1000 just so people like me could stumble into bad ground and use the detector without getting a headache.

[EL NINO77]

Simon ... you're right ... under mild detection conditions, Vanquish will detect excellently ... ,, but in more mineralized terrain, its detection properties may no longer be sufficient ..,
- there will simply be missing here, for example, a better setting of the recovery speed / ground filter / and the possibility of debugging such a demanding soil using ... ground balance ..

[palzynski]

It would be interesting to know the percentage of users detecting on mild soils and those detecting on mineralized soils , this over the world. In Europe we have mostly mild soils . In the US and other continents I dont know ...