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

[Bill (S. CA)]

Jeff,

Leave it to you to very succinctly summarize what many of us have found with regard to The Legend vs. the Equinox.  Plus you have put the hours in as well.  For me, it has been difficult to use The Legend full time not because of its performance but more because of how easy my 800 is to use.  Some (or a lot) of that may due to millions of hours I have on it.  I will admit that I still get lost in the shortcuts on The Legend.  For some reason they just don't stick. 

One aspect that I would like to touch on is how well balanced The Legend is. With my 800 I have always had to "finger float" the grip and leave my pinkie hanging or the grip angle wears me out.  Might just be me.  But with The Legend I don't have that problem.  I also love how featherweight The Legend is with the new shaft, coil and arm cuff.

I do need to get out with my Legend more.  Just need some more discipline to stop putting my 800 on the charger automatically every night before I go hunting.  it's a hard habit to break.

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

Bill

[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.