Nokta Legend And Equinox 600/800 After Tons Of Hours Used

[Jeff McClendon]

9 minutes ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

One question for you about nickels: what numbers are you hitting for them with the expanded target ID range?

Most of the time US modern nickels and V nickels have been 25/26. The only common aluminum target that I regularly find with those numbers are beaver tails broken off of ring pulls and the occasional bent/damaged square or oval pull tab.

[Bill (S. CA)]

2 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Most of the time US modern nickels and V nickels have been 25/26. The only common aluminum target that I regularly find with those numbers are beaver tails broken off of ring pulls and the occasional bent/damaged square or oval pull tab.

I'll try to have that stick in what's left of my brain. Thanks, buddy.

[Johnnysalami1957]

3 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Most of the time US modern nickels and V nickels have been 25/26. The only common aluminum target that I regularly find with those numbers are beaver tails broken off of ring pulls and the occasional bent/damaged square or oval pull tab.

Hate to say it, but none. I have a torn rotator cuff. So no swinging for me for awhile. But I remember usually bent square ones.

[glacialgold]

15 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

24 minutes ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

One question for you about nickels: what numbers are you hitting for them with the expanded target ID range?

Most of the time US modern nickels and V nickels have been 25/26. The only common aluminum target that I regularly find with those numbers are beaver tails broken off of ring pulls and the occasional bent/damaged square or oval pull tab.

Yeah, same here for modern US nickels. If I get a solid repeat signal centering around 25, I'm almost certain it's a Jefferson. My range for digging nickel signals is 22-27, but the targets get real dicey towards those boundary numbers. More likely a pencil eraser clasp or can tab, but sometimes a nickel on edge or fertilizer/rain pollution zapped. 

[oldcoinhunter]

Jeff, when you updated to 1.11 did you find that you had to run the sensitivity lower than when using 1.09? Also was there any "learning" curve after the update? 

[JCR]

I have one site in boggy ground that is really hard on non Silver coins. I have dug a lot of Buffalo, Liberty Head/V and Shield Nickels there at depth that were  22 TID. Some really deep at 20.   Same with Copper Cents. Some as low as 36.
 Condition wise they aren’t worth digging but of course I do anyway. Part of the reason for the low TIDs is from using mostly M3. The point is that in bad conditions TIDs will suffer. In better ground 25/26 is almost always a Nickel just like Jeff states.

[Jeff McClendon]

24 minutes ago, oldcoinhunter said:

Jeff, when you updated to 1.11 did you find that you had to run the sensitivity lower than when using 1.09? Also was there any "learning" curve after the update? 

I have not noticed any anomalies after updating from 1.09 to 1.11. 

[phrunt]

I haven't given the Legend a chance, in fact I've avoided buying it as the Simplex really put me off Nokta VLF's, so many were saying how great it was and I find it terrible, I understand it's a low end detector but so are the detectors I'm comparing it to when I say terrible. 

A lot of bang for the buck if performance isn't something you care about on deep targets in mild soil unless you don't mind digging everything.  Then a friend tried a Gold Finder 2000 and was bitterly disappointed in it's performance compared to the detector it is similar to in many ways, then I bumped into a guy with a Gold Kruzer and had a play with it and was disappointed in it by comparison to the machine I was using at the time when I did some side by side checks.  I just don't seem to get along with Nokta VLF's for some reason so all of this combined is why I never gave the Legend a chance. 

The last but not least thing that's scared me off is just how many of them appear for sale for significant discounts off their original price in the local market, so few detectorists yet so many Legends go up second hand.    It's rare a Nox goes for sale even though they were very much the most purchased detector in our market and even now with the new models more Legends pop up for sale than old model Noxes, there is even one for sale now for many hundreds less than the owner paid for it so it's been tempting to buy a second hand one for sure, especially with the many glowing reports by respected people.  I'm certainly torn on it 🙂

Nel coils in the future would be enough to sway me I think 😉 I've been desperate for a higher frequency detector with a Nel Snake coil, as now I've only got it on my Gold Bug Pro.

Thanks for your report Jeff, you've certainly put the hours in, our conditions couldn't be more different though so that's got me wondering if it's going to be a bit like the Simplex, an under performer in mild soils but more satisfying perhaps in hot soils?   I've asked a few people selling them why they're selling and it's always they don't have time to use it or other sorts of excuses that I don't think are the real reason, it's not like they're going to say to a potential buyer they didn't like it.

[Jeff McClendon]

Simon, I have owned and subsequently sold a lot of Nokta Makro detectors including the Racer, Racer 2, Gold Racer, Multi Kruzer, Gold Kruzer and the Simplex. Those detectors always came up just a bit short of their competition even though they had plenty of good qualities. Most of all for me anyway, I did not like their unstable target IDs in the soil I hunt in most and the really sparky audio tones of these detectors which during a long hunt would give me audio fatigue. However, that dislike for their audio is just me and should not be taken in anyway except purely subjective on my part.

So, I have been totally surprised by the Legend. So far, nothing about it has come up short for me or is unpleasant aside from the jam packed user interface which I navigate very ungracefully. Instead I have had just the opposite experience compared to the other Nokta Makro detectors I have owned. The Legend has far exceeded my expectations. If it hadn't, I would not be wasting my time with it or wasting yours reading about it and I would have simply sold it long ago. On the contrary, I like the Legend so much that I recently bought a lightly used second one for use as a loaner at group hunts and for my family members.

It really is so similar to the Equinox 800 in the way that it detects, that I took to it immediately and have learned to really trust it.

[StarVatrex]

I had a Legend for a couple of years and it's one of the few times I don't agree with Jeff...

For the beach, it is not so good. And Nox, in saline environments, is clearly lagging behind.

MD in dry sand is not bad but MW only serves to get Silver. I think they are too high frequency weighted and max filtered to match the stability of Nox.

You simply can't find Gold. Or at most any rings on the surface. Try to put a Gold wedding band a couple of inches into the Wet Sand and tell me... you'll just walk over it with that typical Nokta chatter and you can hear It !!

I dedicated a couple of summers to it, about 600 hours, and I gave up. I no longer have it and my Nox 800 is still there at home, since 2019.

The shaft is short and flexes. Carbon quality is relative. Mine turned whitish with the salt and I wash the equipment at every outing. The quality of the protective plastic of the coil is from China and access to different menus at night is impossible...

The charging system is a pleasure and the quality of the speaker impressive!...😎

Try to sell a second hand, the market will put you in your place.

No, it's not a Nox and it doesn't even look like it.

That is just my opinion...