Mf Machines On Mineralized Black Sand Salt Beach. D2 And Equinox [long]

[RIbeach_hunter]

Thanks for the comparison.

 I talked with two other hunters while hunting the salt water surf-line today and both had EQ 800's.

 Both said that they handled soil minerals well and were good for small gold jewelry.

 I found an 8.7gm 14kt band today with my CZ-20, but the CZ does not like heavy black sands, otherwise a deep hunter.

[F350Platinum]

Great real time observations!

Thanks for getting out there and doing the hard work. I don't encounter much black sand but when I do it makes me wonder if I should keep my old Equinox 600 handy. For me the problem is usually EMI at the places I travel in the summer, and that's why the Deus is what I always bring now, but the Equinox is in the RV just in case ?

It's interesting, for relic and coin hunting I'm finding the Deus 2 more useful and my go to machine. I've observed that with others as well ? I have had occasions where I got more than others at my beaches, but the people I meet could be withholding.

I hate to say keep the info coming, I did some documentation recently and know what a pain it is. Sometimes it's better to just post raw observations and take a hit now and again. I haven't explored all of the improvements to the Deus 2, but I keep pushing forward. Small wonder it took almost a year to get the last batch out, and then they had to put out the fires. Nice finds!

[Compass]

Thanks for posting your observations midalake. I've never used the D2 but I did have the 800 for a while. I never warmed up to the 800 on the beach but some of that may have been due to its audio coupled with my hearing impairment.

I love the audio options on the Manticore and after limited use in the black sand I much prefer it over the 800. I was considering the D2 but posts like yours make me think that it wouldn't be the right detector for me.

[midalake]

54 minutes ago, Compass said:

I love the audio options on the Manticore and after limited use in the black sand I much prefer it over the 800. I was considering the D2 but posts like yours make me think that it wouldn't be the right detector for me.

The D2 really does work well without the Black Sand. My beach really undergoes changes during the year. I am sure that D2 will be back out by the end of Feb. We have had the Manticore here with good results but in less black sand conditions.

In the coming months we will have both the Equinox 900 and Manticore back here. 

 

[Chase Goldman]

On 1/12/2024 at 11:43 AM, midalake said:

The negatives. Noisy. The Menu.  Clipped target sounds at depth for non-ferrous. Moving water takes D2 out at any depth. Must look at many targets from Mutiple directions[time consuming] . 

What adjustments, if any, have you made from the default settings for audio (PCM, Square, High Square), the Audio Filter, tones (full, multi (2 through 5 tones), pitch , and salt sensitivity?  You run Nox in horseshoe mode, do you run D2 in 0 Disc, negative disc?  

If D2 had a gold field/relic mode with salt handling it could possibly be better with black sand.  I find relic to be the best mode for hot dirt, but it has no salt handling capability.

I think Nox ground tracking is superior than D2 for rapidly shifting salt concentrations in surf/wash.Wash.  I haven't played with the magnetic reject ground setting since ver 2.0 was issued, but it doesn't seem to do anything but limit non-ferrous depth with or without black sand present.

[Sinclair]

What‘s definitely a pro for the D2, are the audio options. You can really tweak it to you likings more than any other machine, I think (didn‘t test the Manti so far, tho).

At the beach I run 5 tones for ease of use at the moment. Switching between full tones, pitch and 5 tones alone feels like swinging 3 different detectors. I can totally see, that those different settings make a sense for different hunting styles and places.
 

And then you have pvm, square and high square, audio response, audio filter and even an EQ. The possibilities are sheer unlimited..

[midalake]

30 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

What adjustments, if any, have you made from the default settings for audio (PCM, Square, High Square), the Audio Filter, tones (full, multi (2 through 5 tones), pitch , and salt sensitivity?  You run Nox in horseshoe mode, do you run D2 in 0 or negative disc?

Running all two-tone Square programs with the Iron tone lowered to 350Hz and the second tone raised to 640Hz. 

No Audio filter, 22 discrimination, Salt Sense 7, Reactivity 0.5, 

I have tried many disc settings from full negative -6.4 to now 22. I do want to experiment with notching.

Beach Pitch program [program 13?]  is 100% out for me. Do not like that program. Serious Iron wrap-around problems. 

I am willing to try anything to help deep non-ferrous targets sound rounder and more whole. Not Bite-y and clipped. 

When working in heavy black sand I notice a general up-scaling of Ferrous targets and down scaling of non-ferrous targets. Seems like I get many more ferrous targets that want to break into the second tone and throw good ID numbers in black sand. 

[JCR]

I don’t have Black sand on a beach, but l do have Maghemite relic sites that present a similar challenge. The minerals up average higher conductive targets around the scale into the ferrous zone where they will give a Ground/lron response. Mid conductor trash like pull tabs can come in as a Copper cent. @EL NINO77 really helped me out on overcoming this using the Hot Rock adjustment of the Versa shifted toward the Positive. I’m still experimenting with this, but it works to a noticeable degree. The MXT does this to some extent also by how the internal scaling is set. I think a Hot Rock adjustment would be beneficial on all high performance detectors.  Is there a setting on the D2 or Manticore that will influence the Target response in relation to the TID scale?   Magnetic Ground or Frequency addition modes?

[Erik Oostra]

Thanks Midalake, your report very nicely lays out some of the things that bother me the most with these detectors.. It's the nitty-gritty of using them in the wild that makes it or breaks it for me, like your examples below..  

On 1/13/2024 at 2:43 AM, midalake said:

Sometimes loss of targets in the hole. 

I find this a real nightmare with the Equinox, it doesn't seem it make any difference what coil is used.. I've found it best to mark the hole (I usually stick a small shovel in it) and let a few waves wash over it.. Other times I've build a mount of sand as a marker next to the hole and walked away for half an hour letting the sea wash it out.. It's a lot of work for a target that the detector should've picked up when it was out of the hole (and which will probably turn out crap) but sometimes when your gut's telling you it's a good target it can pay off.. An example is this little gold ring I found this morning (see picture below), in the ground it kept ringing in at a solid 8 but I lost it when it was out of the hole.. It was too irresistible not to come back for about 20 minutes later, it had moved a bit back out to sea but was a lot shallower to dig..   

On 1/13/2024 at 2:43 AM, midalake said:

The range of pull-tab numbers are ridiculous.

Yeah, even on milder salty black sand the D2 doesn't seem to know its arse from a hole in the ground when it comes to accurately identifying pull-tabs.. It gets very frustrating, but but but.. it does force you to dig everything which improves your chances of a good find.. I get a bit lazy with the Equinox figuring targets will be pull-tabs and not bothering to dig them..

On 1/13/2024 at 2:43 AM, midalake said:

ANY moving water would completely wipeout the detection field of the D2 in both Beach and Beach sensitive.

Yup, another pain in the arse and the main reason I use an Equinox when shallow wading, especially in the wash and surf.. In deeper stiller water it's a very different story, the D2 is a much stabler scuba detector.. 

On 1/13/2024 at 2:43 AM, midalake said:

The Equinox> So MUCH better on handling Black Sand. Most hunting was done at 21 even with water contact. Detection field works in moving water but not on targets of depth.

Most of my beaches don't have much black sand so the D2 usually behaves itself, on other beaches with layers of black sand its target ID is jumpy .. With the Equinox in moving salty water I can hunt at 22-23 sensitivity with a smaller coil and 20-22 with the 15'' round, even the 18'' round runs smoothly at 20-21..