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Minelab Equinox 800 Vs White's V3i


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24 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

There is a piece of gold jewelry that perfectly emulates the signal from every bit of aluminum trash made. No VDI number and no meter can separate them. Reject one, you reject the other. That’s just a fact.

Tell me about it. Discrimination, or at least TID numbers can be your worst enemy. I have to recall one of the best finds I ever made:

It was in the early 80's, I was in Palo Alto at lunch from Hewlett Packard with a friend to demonstrate my Whites 6000 Di SIII. It had the big TID meter on it, which I thought I was proficient at reading. We were at a relatively small and new park, when I hit a large signal. I told my friend, confidently, that's a screwcap. Had I been alone, I would have kept moving along and left the "screwcap". Instead to prove my proficiency at IDing items, we pried it up from about a 1/2" down. It was a large University of Santa Barbara college class ring. 14C gold. Yowsa. I learned a valuable lesson from that experience.

 

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You guys that still have your V3i. Try this test and you will see what I'm talking about. Set up the machine so that in analysis the machine uses the sizing feature. Flip the switch forward. Then get a piece of can slaw and pass it over the coil. Then take a ring and pass it over the coil and notice the difference in the wave pattern. You will see the can slaw has jagged lines where the ring has a nice smooth rise and fall displayed.  Now, the problem with this is it works on shallow targets and not as good when the target is 5" or more in the ground.

To me, this topic "ML EQ-800 vs Whites v3i" is like comparing a sports car to a SUV. 

Over the last couple days, I have been working the school yards, over ground that I have worked with my V3i. I found targets that was missed before with my V3i. The big plus I think is the fast recovery speed. With that being said, I have not tried boosting my recovery speed on the v3i. Some targets "Quarters", that I did find with the EQ800, I felt would have probably missed with the V3i, because there was trash right next to the target, but I do think the V3i is better at analyzing the target before you dig, mainly because no other detector has this feature.

Better question.. Is the ML800 the best waterproof detector on the market? I think so.

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Think the EQ is better at really trashy sites with its super fast recovery speed and think the V3i would be better at hunting for gold jewelry at sites not as trashy. Also, think the V3i is better at telling a nickel from can slaw. For relic hunting, haven't used the EQ800 yet, but from the reviews i am seeing, this might be the better detector because of how deep people are saying it can go.

I think the weight is better proportioned on the V3i, even though it is heavier. Coil on the V3i weighs less than 1 pound and that is the 13" Detech Ultimate coil. The EQ800, most of the weight is in the coil, so not distributed evenly. I do not like the power button being on the side with the EQ800.

The EQ800 seems to be better with it's ID's. I have had issues with the V3i mis-identifying targets occasionally. The pinpointing is better on the v3i, however, I have been getting better with the EQ800 and most cases, dont even need to use the pin pointer option.

For me, think I will keep my V3i and the EQ800 just because of the spectrograph feature on the V3i though, will be selling my Whites DFX in the near future.

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I'm still pretty early in my comparison of each, but I will say that after today I'm very impressed with the depth of the Equinox. It runs like a multifrequency F75 LTD in terms of depth and speed. 

I do find myself still reaching for my V3i often. It's worth noting that the V3i is no slouch in the recovery area either. It's processor is plenty powerful for what it is tasked with. It also has 200 points of recovery/reactivity adjustment and when you begin experimenting with it, it's a surprisingly quick machine.

The weakness of the V3i vs the Equinox is partly going to come down to the ground balance systems. The poor ground balance system of the V3i kind of relegates it to being best suited to mild-moderate inland soil or dry sand conditions. In those conditions though, I have a hard time imagining the Equinox will ever be my go-to outside of the water. I do enjoy the extra information, and so far the V3i to me is just more fun to use. There are so many ways to minimize or monitor junk, which to me is the primary purpose of running a VLF over a pulse induction machine. I find myself digging much more junk with the Equinox. But I also do not discount that my current position and preferences could evolve with more experience. I haven't yet dialed it in the way I like to run like I have the V3i. It's an entirely different setup than I've gotten used to. Once I've gotten all my little tweaks in place it might be an entirely different story. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last weekend I found my first Gold ring with my new to me ML EQ800! Wife and I celebrated the day. But on to my comments..

Just wanted to add another 2 cents worth to this conversation. Because of living in suburbia, my main hunting sites are parks and schools, and for a detectorist, translates into.. a lot of trash in the ground. Also, I have been using only Whites detectors over the past 3 years and mainly the V3i over the past 1.5 years.

I have been using the ML EQ 800 solely over the past month and am coming to know this detector quite well now. My biggest problem with this machine is I wish it had more Target ID numbers like the Whites with +95 Target ID numbers. To me this is a problem because I have found too many trash items under the nickel ID of 11-13. On the Whites V3i a 19 target ID will almost always guarantee a nickel or a ring.

ML EQ 800 - TID 11-13 I have found (Gold Ring, nickels, can slaw, rolled over pull tabs, condiment packets, foil) Would have never found foil or can slaw in the nickel range with the V3i.

I have notched out the TID 14 which does help a lot with most modern pull tabs, but not all.

With the ML EQ 800, I have had to change the way I detect and pay more attention to the way a target sounds when pin pointing. Listening for the quick drop off in sound as I wave the coil over the target.

 

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These are my 2 main machines. So far I have compared about 100 targets. The 800 missed a few that the v3i picked up. The info the v3i gives saves a lot of trash digging. I like the weight of the 800 and love that its waterproof. It definitely does not replace the V for a land detector.

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  • 1 month later...

 

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  • 1 month later...

Optimal coil  for SPECTRA V3- maintain high sensitivity and depth and separation to tiny things -0.05 gram gold O segment at a depth of 10cm, and reach enough depth on the coins -ag Denar in a depth of 23cm similar to the standard large coils ...- somehow similar simulating the Park 2 program at Equinox-likewise, I know the multifrequency 3F Whites Spectra V3. I have achieved very good results at the mars sniper 6X10 coil with Rxgain9-TX boost ON, DS95-96 ,,, even when detecting SEF 12x10 coil  is is a little bit more-better to give a signal on small coins -in 23cm. but again it is slightly less sensitive to 0.05gram gold O segment in depth of 10cm.In this game there is a lot of factor - magnitude of coil-ground signal, resilience-sensitivity to Emi, Separation, sensitivity to very tiny things, and reach to very small things and also male and large coins. so the optimum coil size is somewhere in the 7X10 or 8x9 range to maintain depth, sensitivity, separation, good resistance to EMI and ground mineralization, and quiet work on high sensitivity.
 

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I'm a few months into the Equinox by now and growing into it. I think it's a great machine, and I've actually never expected much from it other than the hope that it would give me V3i style multifrequency water operation, so I can go with it where my V3i can't.

On land though, I can't say that it's a replacement for the V3i. I'm finding what I'm seeing reported here, that the Equinox is not noticing many targets that the V3i does particularly when they are deeper. I'm finding that it's not quite as deep or as sure of itself as my V3i. There aren't as many tools to rule out junk that my V3i is pretty clear on.

It can't be overstated though that I've gone through extraordinary effort to understand the V3i and how to get the most out of it. For the conditions that I deal with I have the V3i dialed right in to where I feel I'm getting the most out of it. I am not yet at that level of confidence with the Equinox that I feel I'm getting every bit of performance it offers, but pretty close.

What I can say about the Equinox is that it is even faster than I imagined. I thought that with 200 points of reactivity and the kind of horsepower the V3i has for a processor that it would be able to pretty closely follow the speed of the Equinox if I maxed both out. Not so. Not even close. The Equinox is far quicker Nomatter what I do to the V3i. In heavy trash there's no doubt the Equinox would be my weapon of choice. In harsh ground it would be my weapon of choice. In mild to moderate ground and trash conditions the V3i remains a very powerful coin and jewelry tool.

I have noticed that both work best with a conservative sweep speed. Even where the Equinox is maxed out, it is more likely to see those elusive targets if you take your time. Early on I got into a habit of assuming that because of its speed I could swing it at a pretty brisk pace and just investigate when it hit on something. When I began to slow it down a bit it started to see things it hadn't hit on before in the same patch of ground, like a nice buffalo nickel.

I'm getting pretty good at sniffing nickels out with it now, usually a solid 13. That's one thing I love about both machines. Once you get to know them, they don't have the trouble with nickels and pull tabs that plague most hunts and most units. Until I got my hands on these two I didnt even consider nickels worth the trouble of chasing. All considered, I feel I have a deadly combo here and I don't think I'd change it. Toward the end of the season when prices of used machines is at the lowest, im going to give the CTX-3030 another go. Other than that I've given all the other machines of note a fair shake. The CTX is the only one I didn't get as much time with as I'd liked to have had. For now, my V3i is still my go-to. There's something about White's machines that agree with Northeastern conditions. They all do very well here. 

Ill update again later in the season on how these two compare and contrast with more experience on the Equinox. 

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