My New Treasure Talk Blog - Equinox 600 Vs 800

[Bayard]

I've been using a 600 for the last few days in old parks that I've hunted hard with my Etrac in the past.  So far, the only 800 feature that I've missed having was the ability to turn down the backlight.  The 600 backlight is like the sun compared to the backlight on an Etrac.

[IdahoAl]

Again, thanks Steve for good useful info.             ...........

[MontAmmie]

Steve-

I want to go clean out our beaches of gold chains this weekend.  There's gotta be tons of them out there since my stupid PI machine won't even pick them up.  Which program would you suggest to get the max depth?  Beach 2 with the recovery speed on about 2?  I'm used to going slow because of aforementioned machine. Would the all metal mode go nuts in the salt water?  I'll probably just hunt the wet and dry sand since the Atlantic is still kinda cold right now.  We're supposed to be getting some huge waves (right out of the NE!) to stir it all up starting Sunday.  I can't wait!

[Toddbbq]

39 minutes ago, MontAmmie said:

Steve-

I want to go clean out our beaches of gold chains this weekend.  There's gotta be tons of them out there since my stupid PI machine won't even pick them up.  Which program would you suggest to get the max depth?  Beach 2 with the recovery speed on about 2?  I'm used to going slow because of aforementioned machine. Would the all metal mode go nuts in the salt water?  I'll probably just hunt the wet and dry sand since the Atlantic is still kinda cold right now.  We're supposed to be getting some huge waves (right out of the NE!) to stir it all up starting Sunday.  I can't wait!

beach 2 is the way to go for wet sand and recovery 2 works very well, did not try all metal mode as the presets were very good. beach 1 is for dry sand and I notched out up to 5 as there was soo many foil targets. One thing I learned was YOU WILL DIG rusty bottle caps.

[MontAmmie]

12 minutes ago, Toddbbq said:

beach 2 is the way to go for wet sand and recovery 2 works very well, did not try all metal mode as the presets were very good. beach 1 is for dry sand and I notched out up to 5 as there was soo many foil targets. One thing I learned was YOU WILL DIG rusty bottle caps.

I've dug so many bottle caps with the Infinium that I think I've cleaned our beach out of 'em.  Targets of any kind are few and far between here and I'm hoping to find some stuff the Infinium is missing.  I amazes me that it will find the barb off a fish hook at 10 inches down but it can't see a gold chain touching the coil.  Thanks, Todd!

[Toddbbq]

10 minutes ago, MontAmmie said:

I've dug so many bottle caps with the Infinium that I think I've cleaned our beach out of 'em.  Targets of any kind are few and far between here and I'm hoping to find some stuff the Infinium is missing.  I amazes me that it will find the barb off a fish hook at 10 inches down but it can't see a gold chain touching the coil.  Thanks, Todd!

You will really like the Equinox then!!

[Wayfarer]

One possible advantage of the manual noise cancel is that you can manually set it to “0” in a low EMI area which may squeeze out a bit more performance compared to being frequency shifted away from the neutral or resonant primary frequency.  This was true in the old days where you would want to run without any frequency shift since the electronics, especially the loop, were tuned to run best at one set of frequencies. Not sure if this may be true with the equinox, but it did make a noticeable difference on my old XLT and IDX.  

[Chase Goldman]

4 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

In general no, but that is not to mean I never will and that is why I am an 800 owner first and 600 owner second. I want all the control possible, and I am sure at one point I will use those extra options. Will people on a budget buying their first detector? I doubt it. The article did end with “when in doubt get the 800”.

Peope who think I am magical and can alleviate all doubt and risk in a detector so new are not being realistic. The Equinox is deceptively simple but also has a learning curve simply because there has never been anything exactly like it. You can’t fill gaps in knowledge with assumptions as is possible with many models which are basically just copies of some other model.

I try my best but people should realize I have never looked to others when making detector buying decisions. I see something I am interested, I get it and try it. That’s because there is not one among you who can tell me what I will like or not like. I also see people say they want honest answers. Being honest means knowing when to say “I don’t know”. It also means knowing I cannot know other people’s desires in a detector, and since I am not trying to sell anyone in anything when in any doubt at all I will always default to telling people to give it more time for a clearer picture to appear. I advocate looking to a wide range of experiences and opinions from actual users of the detector more so than any one person, and that includes me.

These are early days and I am trying hard to provide people with information based on limited knowledge. Give me another year and I might be willing to go so far as to claim I am an expert on the Equinox. But not yet. Do realize I pay the bills here and ask nothing in return but for people to respect and help each other.

Does anyone really wonder why the rest of the testers have chosen to keep their heads down? I don’t.

In the end I can only offer some guidance and advice but when it comes to personal decisions you all have to make your own. I can’t do it for you.

Steve - first of all, many thanks for directly answering my question, this thread has been keeping you busy with many direct questions.

Hope you don't lump me in the camp that believes you can alleviate all doubt.  LOL.  Believe me I have learned my lesson about asking why Minelab did this and that and about asking subjective whether this or that is a good/bad thing type questions.  

That is why I carefully worded my question to make it clear I was merely collecting objective user data (did you ever use this or that?) so as a grown up boy, I can make my own decisions.  Your blog did not explicitly mention the reduced range of the 600 recovery speed settings (only the reduced resolution (number) of settings) and knowing that max and min recovery speed settings have a direct relationship to separation and depth capability, respectively (as you mentioned in your blog post), I wanted to get a feel from you on how significant you felt those missing endpoint adjustments on the 600 were from a day-to-day performance standpoint.  I got my answer, not very significant since you rarely ever had to invoke them.  This is also consistent with Deus where the analogous highest "reactivity" settings are rarely ever invoked.  If your user experience had been to invoke those endpoint settings more frequently on a day-to-day basis that might have changed my perspective on the importance of those missing endpoint settings.  This information further solidifies for me your blog statement that: "The EQUINOX 600 has the same features, but keeps it simpler."  Which some folks have unfortunately misinterpreted.

In the end, I don't know what I don't know and because of that, I may end up just getting a 2nd 800 because I may find that my style/type of hunting may necessitate more frequent forays into the high recovery region due to hunting primarily in thick iron situations.  Also, as you said, "these are early days" and as time marches on and more users (including myself) get experience with the Equinox, there may be yet unknown applications for those extreme endpoint settings for recovery speed, the additional iron bias settings, the high single frequency settings, and/or for Gold Mode (i.e., for other mid-conductive targets beside nuggets).  Or we may eventually find out that to get the same ML-branded wireless hardware for the 600 that is included with the 800 we may have to chew up a significant chunk of the price difference as as separate purchase.  (So much for that accessory coil - LOL).  Thanks again for the response and perspective.

[vanursepaul]

3 hours ago, Toddbbq said:

beach 2 is the way to go for wet sand and recovery 2 works very well, did not try all metal mode as the presets were very good. beach 1 is for dry sand and I notched out up to 5 as there was soo many foil targets. One thing I learned was YOU WILL DIG rusty bottle caps.

Amen on the bottle caps!!!

But i have found more nickels than ever before!!

I'm scared when i get any numbers less than 10 ... and def afraid not to dig them---but at 5 down so far it has all been foil.

I have had no problem noticing nickels or quarters or dimes or pennies...UNLESS they get deep ....and then it is like nugget hunting to me---- you just get that idea you had better investigate a little further and then Boom!-- It is deep!

And, I dont want to miss a chain, so it looks like i will still be digging the low stuff until it becomes unbearable-