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

[Jeff McClendon]

The wide variety of steel crown bottle caps can be a tough target for these SMF detectors depending on what condition they are in and how deep.

On the Legend, I usually hear 5" deep or less ones in good shape having broken up audio with large target ID swings from 1 to the mid 40s. The Ferro Check meter also reflects that even with a Bottle Cap Reject setting on 1 using the Ground (G) or All (A) discrimination patterns and indicates a mixed ferrous/non ferrous target. Some of them don't have those tendencies and come in strong with a 19, 20 or 21 target ID and no broken up audio or iron IDs using the same settings where I detect. I get very similar weird behavior using Deus 2 and the Equinox 800.

I have not seen any undamaged pull tabs of any variety consistently have a single 26 target ID. I have seen damaged ones be a solid 26 along with broken off beaver tails and those freshness seals that are just used with the modern pull tabs.....why do people pull those out too and then discard them? They must be bored or distracted half out of their minds! 

[midalake]

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

The bottlecap reject on The Legend has me a bit befuddled.  On shallow caps, even at 0, the caps read wacky and have a different sound.  However, at depth, even at a max of 8, they still read and sound good.  The Equinox and the Apex (with its iron audio) are vastly superior to The Legend at id'ing bottlecaps at depth.  I have to play more with this but as of now I'm digging way too many bottle caps.

If that Legend gets to the beach, I will consult to you Bill on some initial settings. Bottle caps is one item I never worry about.  It will be all about gold testing in the wet sand [especially chains] and how the detector handles the transition from wet sand to water. If it all works out, we should have the Nox 800 and 900. Deus2, Manticore and Legend!  Buckle>UP! 

[JCR]

Multi Wet will often give a little lower TID  than Multi Dry or the other multis on mid scale targets.

[StarVatrex]

On 7/14/2023 at 9:28 AM, Jeff McClendon said:

The Legend was released in December of 2021 so it has been for sale for 1.5 years. This is the second summer for northern hemisphere users. Maybe you are in the southern hemisphere?

The Legend I own did not perform very well on the saltwater beaches I sometimes hunt on until software version 1.09. 

I have not had any issues finding gold jewelry, small gold nuggets or any low conductors like small lead or small brass targets no matter what mode I’m using except for Park and Field M3 which I rarely use.  In fact, the first target I found with the Legend was a 10k opened hoop earring that was surrounded by safety pins. Plenty of gold targets have followed. 

 

 

Correct, I live in Spain and I reserved mine in December 2022. WHP version. I do not arrive until 03/27/2022 (first units in Europe). It brought version 1.04 and a luxurious instruction manual.

I had an Anfibio Multi and I was very excited. In dry sand it defended itself but when it touched the water that was impossible.Threshold doesn't work...

Updating the device was an odyssey at the beginning and the following versions improved the device a bit. v1.08 wasn't bad at all. Couldn't even do a factory reset, and M3 didn't exist.

It was with v1.09 when it finally started working. My patience was beginning to wear thin and every day I went out less and less to dive. It's very frustrating to keep hearing false signals when you're down there... And little or no gold came out. The v1.10 demo was the big change for me. It finally worked, and it had Threshold !!! But the gold still didn't come out...

And this spring the XT Pro arrived and the rest you already know...

That is the last photo I have of the ad I put up for sale. It was 30 days and 12 hours. No more Nokta, thank you.

 

It is my humble opinion based on my own experience and usage.

😎

[Jeff McClendon]

7 hours ago, StarVatrex said:

It was with v1.09 when it finally started working. My patience was beginning to wear thin and every day I went out less and less to dive. It's very frustrating to keep hearing false signals when you're down there... And little or no gold came out. The v1.10 demo was the big change for me. It finally worked, and it had Threshold !!! But the gold still didn't come out...

 

Your saga sounds a lot like mine except that most of my hunting is done on dry land where the Legend mostly functioned well. I got mine on March 20, 2022. It had mammoth update issues and it had a faulty system control unit which made updating it even harder. I also waited patiently for version 1.09 and the adjustable iron bias feature so that I could use my Legend for gold prospecting. About the time that version 1.09 was released in July of 2022 I had a serious ankle injury that required surgery and several months of recovery so I didn't get to properly test it until the spring of 2023 and then version 1.11 was released.

I have stuck with the Legend because it had proven to be an excellent land unit for coin, jewelry and relic hunting. It obviously had issues at some saltwater beaches and until version 1.09, it was pretty useless for gold prospecting unless I just used 40 kHz single frequency and avoided using the Multi setting in prospecting mode due to the iron bias being stuck on setting 8.

So, I totally get your perspective and your decision to move on from the Legend since in my opinion the weakest part of the Legend's detecting abilities out of the box and up until version 1.09 was saltwater detecting.

This is also why I have waited to write a reasonable review of the Legend until now since Nokta have corrected some deficiencies and added some features that make it a much more well rounded and versatile detector than it was at its release.

I am still waiting for XP to do the same for Deus 2 (been waiting for 19 months) and then there is the Equinox 700/900 about which my lips are sealed.

I am glad the X-Terra Pro is working well for you and your hunting/diving conditions in saltwater.

I did get to try one recently on moderate to high iron mineralized dirt and what I thought would happen did happen due to my experiences running the Equinox models in single frequency. The X-Terra Pro would not be a detector that I would choose for the ground conditions that I usually hunt in. 

Like Steve H says often, the ground or in your case saltwater reigns supreme and is the most important factor especially when the mineralization is moderate to extreme.

[Bill (S. CA)]

10 hours ago, midalake said:

If that Legend gets to the beach, I will consult to you Bill on some initial settings. Bottle caps is one item I never worry about.  It will be all about gold testing in the wet sand [especially chains] and how the detector handles the transition from wet sand to water. If it all works out, we should have the Nox 800 and 900. Deus2, Manticore and Legend!  Buckle>UP! 

I was hoping that you would chime in on this.  I do worry about bottlecaps because when the targets are slim I will admit that I will gladly did a quarter.  Trust me, after 3+ hours at Santa Monica and digging less than 2 dozen targets, you get to the point where you just want to dig something.

With that being said, I really do like The Legend in the wet.  It has no water wash/falsing issues as far as I have seen.

[midalake]

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

With that being said, I really do like The Legend in the wet.  It has no water wash/falsing issues as far as I have seen.

What is your black sand content there????   Where I hunt, we are really going to test the Legends ability in black sand. 

[abenson]

57 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I am glad the X-Terra Pro is working well for you and your hunting/diving conditions in saltwater.

I did get to try one recently on moderate to high iron mineralized dirt and what I thought would happen did happen due to my experiences running the Equinox models in single frequency. The X-Terra Pro would not be a detector that I would choose for the ground conditions that I usually hunt in. 

Like Steve H says often, the ground or in your case saltwater reigns supreme and is the most important factor especially when the mineralization is moderate to extreme.

Jeff that's all I needed to hear about the X-terra Pro. Since my ground conditions are similar to yours, I will not be getting one. I was toying with the idea, but now I'll pass.

[Jeff McClendon]

50 minutes ago, abenson said:

Jeff that's all I needed to hear about the X-terra Pro. Since my ground conditions are similar to yours, I will not be getting one. I was toying with the idea, but now I'll pass.

Don't take my word for it due to some of the bad mineralization here. I have no doubt that the X-Terra Pro will do great in most areas and that it is well worth its price.

That is what this review of the Legend is also all about. It is also well worth its price for most detecting situations especially using the latest software.

[abenson]

20 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Don't take my word for it due to some of the bad mineralization here. I have no doubt that the X-Terra Pro will do great in most areas and that it is well worth its price.

That is what this review of the Legend is also all about. It is also well worth its price for most detecting situations especially using the latest software.

I already thinned my detectors to 4 units. 3 I use regularly and 1 loaner. At this point in time I need to think about what I would realistically use on a regular basis. I just think the X-Terra pro would be one I would use a few months and sell anyway. I think the Legend would be the best option if I were to actually buy another detector. But I'd rather use that money buying coils for the ones I already own.