Equinox 800 Gold Nugget Detecting Tips

[Steve Herschbach]

These tips are based on my personal use of the Minelab Equinox 800 at a few locations in Nevada and California. That means you have to take this with a grain of salt for other locations as far as exact settings but the basic process is the same. I will probably update this in the future as I learn more, including hopefully any observations and tips people may provide on this thread.

The Gold Mode is only available on the Equinox 800 and features a VCO boosted audio that is quite different than the other Equinox modes. It is very powerful, especially in Multi frequency, and will detect very tiny pieces of gold. The downside is that in highly mineralized ground you will encounter hot rocks and even the ground itself that wants to react and create signals. The basic secret of nugget detecting with a VLF detector is in tuning the detector for the best performance possible, while accepting that air test type results are not possible in bad ground. A balance must be obtained between sheer power (sensitivity) and the false signals generated in difficult ground.

The key default settings for Gold Mode 1 are:

Frequency: Multi
Ground Balance: Tracking
Sensitivity: 20
Recovery Speed: 6
Iron Bias: 6
Accept/Reject: -9 through 0 rejected, 1 through 40 accepted

When I hit new ground when nugget detecting I want my detector to be running with manual adjustments. Initially knowing how the ground responds is very important and I want to make any settings that affect anything myself. Therefore, the first thing I do is turn off the ground tracking and use the Auto (pump coil over ground) method of ground balancing instead. Ground tracking can also track out faint nugget signals, so my preference is to run with it off if possible.

Frankly, I have not experimented with Iron Bias much. In theory at least reducing this setting will reduce the possibility of tiny gold being misidentified as ferrous. Since I am mistrustful of filters I have been running the Iron Bias at 0. Starting out however people may want to leave it alone since adjusting too many things at once may not be productive for beginners.

Recovery Speed is highly misunderstood. People latch onto one out of context statement "lower recovery speed equals more depth" and too many people therefore are immediately going to lower settings. Higher recovery speeds allow the detector to better separate trash targets from good and minimises any masking effects. "Masking" is where bad targets overwhelm and hide good targets. Mineralized "hot rocks" are really nothing more than a large target that can mask (hide) nuggets not just under but next to them. Reducing the recovery speed will often add no depth due to ground conditions, and mask nuggets next to hot rocks. Higher recovery speeds will reveal those nuggets, and so you are often getting more "relative depth" with higher recovery speed settings. I basically stick with the default setting of 6 and will not go lower unless the ground is relatively low mineral and free of hot rocks. Most importantly, in some ground you will find that the coil will tend to give false signals when bumped. This is directly affected by Recovery Speed. Going to lower recovery speeds will generate more false signals due to bumping on rocks.

With all that said however, reducing the Recovery Speed can add extra sensitivity to very deep or very small targets. A setting of 4 is easily manageable in low mineral ground and can work for the Equinox in higher mineral ground with a skilled operator. It is possible to go even lower though the detector will typically become less stable at the slower recovery speed settings. 

Sensitivity is one of those “set it as high as you can without making the detector too unstable” type settings. My settings normally range from 18 to 25 but could go lower in bad ground.

Now, the extremely important Accept/Reject settings. Weak gold signals in highly mineralized ground will definitely run into the ferrous range. Starting out, I am going to toggle the Horseshoe button to remove all rejected settings so that the detector reacts to everything.

My starting point for Gold Mode 1:

Frequency: Multi
Ground Balance: Auto (pump method)
Sensitivity: 20
Recovery Speed: 6
Iron Bias: 0
Accept/Reject: -9 through 40 accepted

The first thing I want to do is see how the ground responds with these settings. Find a place hopefully free of trash, and run the coil over the ground and observe what happens.

In most gold locations you should see lots of target responses at -9 and -8 plus possibly -7. These are ground responses and are giving you direct feedback on your settings. The first thing I want to try and do is reduce those ground responses as much as possible by employing a mix of ground balance, sensitivity, and recovery speed. Simply ground balancing should cause those signals to alleviate somewhat. You will want to note hot rock readings especially. The ground will balance out (ground noise reduce) at one ground balance setting, but it may make some hot rocks worse. Sometimes you can manually tweak the ground balance to also reduce the hot rock response while not really making the ground itself worse by trying intermediate settings. You can only do this when not in tracking since tracking decides for you where the settings will be. I always will stay in manual until forced to use tracking for this reason alone.

Reducing sensitivity is also a good thing to do in many cases, yet people are very resistant to doing so for fear of losing depth. The thing is, unless you can get the detector to settle down and run relatively smoothly you will struggle with hot rocks and false signals. Reducing sensitivity will reduce hot rock signals faster than it will reduce metal signals in most cases, so back it down as needed to get stable performance.

If the ground is mild enough you should be able to find settings that reduce or eliminate the readings in the -9, -8, and -7 ground range, plus hopefully alleviating any hot rocks that are present. However, in very bad ground you may still have a lot of signals in that region. If so, try a couple things. First, go ahead and try out the tracking. Tracking has an advantage in that it will typically tune out a hot rock in a single swing or two, while being extremely resistant to tuning out metal objects. If you can get smoother performance over the ground than with any reasonable manual settings, it may be the way to go.

In the worst ground and hot rocks the magic ability to switch frequencies can be a serious aid. I have found that Multi is very powerful... more powerful than any single frequency. That does mean that by simply going to 20 khz a lot of ground and hot rocks that are noisy in Multi settle down and become manageable.

One of these options may allow you to go detecting without rejecting any target id numbers. That would be ideal. However, do not be surprised if residual signals remain in the -9, -8, and -7 region. If they are still too prevalent, then hit the Horseshoe button again to engage the Accept/Reject function, but go in and open up everything except the offending signals. That for me commonly means blocking -9, -8, and -7 but accepting -6 and higher. Or maybe you need to block -6 also. You have to listen to what the detector is telling you and adjust accordingly.

If you do end up blocking out some low negative numbers you may find you can also bump the sensitivity back up a point or two as long as everything stays quiet.

Again, the goal is to try and shut down ground and hot rock responses to the greatest degree possible while retaining as much detecting power as possible. It's a balancing act.

Tiny nuggets will often read as solid hits at target id 1 and 2. The larger the gold, the higher the target id reading. Gold can appear anywhere on the meter all the way up into the 30's if the nugget is large enough. I have not had it happen yet but be very suspicious of 0 and -1 readings as also being possible gold readings.*

This is just an example of where I end up at on my ground a lot so far:

Gold Mode 1
Frequency: Multi
Ground Balance: Auto (Ground pump method)
Sensitivity: 18 - 23
Recovery Speed: 4 - 6
Iron Bias: 0
Accept/Reject: -9 through -7 rejected, -6 through 40 accepted

Note: the following works as well on both Equinox 600 and Equinox 800. Since Gold Mode lacks target tones, going to Park 2 and using the solutions above plus the additional possibility of tones is another alternative. Instead of using Gold Mode and blocking the lowest target id numbers they can be left open to signal as ferrous or mixed ferrous targets. And you now have 5, 10, and 15 kHz options that Gold Mode lacks. Park 2 set up properly is quite close to Gold Mode performance and a perfectly acceptable nugget detecting alternative, and actually superior for some situations.

You may also use Field 2 as a starting point. Be very careful however because the default rejection pattern for Field 2 rejects target id 1 and 2. This will reject most small gold nugget readings and reduce signal strength on larger gold by blocking part of the signal. I therefore recommend Park 2 to avoid this possibly fatal error.

For Park Mode 2:

Frequency: Multi
Ground Balance: Auto (Ground pump method with manual tweaking)
Sensitivity: 16 – 25
Recovery Speed 800: 4 - 6 (default is 6)
Recovery Speed 600: 2 - 3 (default is 3)
Iron Bias: 0
Accept/Reject: Everything accepted, rely on tones (alternative reject -9, -8, and -7 if too much ground feedback)

In closing, I want to say that gold nugget detecting demands far more expertise from the operator than most detecting. People who rely on canned settings provided by others will never be expert unless they really understand what the settings are doing. It is imperative that you be able to observe ground responses as I have noted above, and know how to best alleviate them while losing as little depth on gold as possible. It is a very fine balancing point done correctly and can only be done properly by a person who genuinely understands how the detector operates. The only way I know to become proficient is lots of experimenting in the field with different settings on test targets and hot rocks. The settings above are less important than the methodology, and if you want to truly become a proficient nugget hunter you do need to work at it.

I hope that helps somebody out - best of luck to you!

Updated Nugget Detecting Tips 9/2018

*This article recommends keeping as many negative numbers set to accept as is possible. It has been confirmed that as I suspected that nuggets range well into the negative numbers.

First gold nuggets found with Minelab Equinox from Jonathan Porter report...

[flakmagnet]

What a great read. Thank you as always for taking the time to share and educate. It does not go unnoticed or underappreciated.

I fully agree with your strong suggestion to learn how to use this detector. Gold prospecting with a detector is a constant learning process. Combined with learning the Equinox, it is doubly important to heed your words.

 

[DigsAlot]

Good starting points for a GoldiNoxs trip Steve.

I left mine in auto tracking ( letting the unit do the work).

I also bump my response up to 7 and 8. I found it makes target id better. The .5 grain I found was hiding in hot ground.

Just my two cents.

[mn90403]

It is 'funny' that the nuggets on the screen above are on Field 1 for the picture!

I gave a presentation at our gold club/beach club meeting about a month ago.  It was just after I found the specimen with 2-5g of gold in it.  In my presentation I showed people in a women's club with lighting how the 800 would hear gold on a hot rock or while holding nails or other trash.  I waved a nugget and trash under the coil with sensitivity around 15.  We had a microphone near the speaker so we even had more EMI in the room.  Some of the hot rocks/nails over gold nuggets I have tested in the field and know the 800 'could' find a nugget of reasonably small size in mining trash and deteriorating buildings.  To me this might be the greatest potential of the 800.

I've found two other nuggets the first time I used it in the desert.  I've been to the same area 3-4 times since and not found anything.  This is an area where we have hit pretty hard and most of the trash was removed to get at the hundreds of nuggets in that 2-3 square mile area.  We got most of the gold with our 7000s before the 800 was out.

I say all of this so that I feel somewhat confident now that when I swing over gold the 800 'sees' it.  I think it will easily see bigger gold in trash and that is the area I want to find.

I'm not trying to ignore the settings as I used the default mostly with accepting -1 and 0 as Steve suggested.

Mitchel

[Steve Herschbach]

8 hours ago, mn90403 said:

It is 'funny' that the nuggets on the screen above are on Field 1 for the picture!

The photo is from JPs linked article and are his nuggets and detector. He really does not cover settings in his article so I have no idea if he was using Field 1 to actually find the nuggets or not. Field 1 is a “milder” mode than Field 2 and maybe his soil called for it. You have to use what works, and as I noted I tested in Nevada and California. JP may be doing something entirely different in Australia. 

I liked the photo but I suppose I should replace it with one of my own.

[mn90403]

My comment about the photo was that it is probably 'shot after' he found all the nuggets of course and probably after turning it off and on a few times and it just happened to be in Field 1.  The idea that he was using that to find them really didn't occur to me.

That would be a great addition to the gold finding ability if he did.

I'd leave JP's picture and add some of yours that you have.

 

[EL NINO77]

Programs Park 1, Pole1 with frequencies of 20 khz and 40khz are more sensitive - they see tiny gold as in multi-frequency - it's also a detail but it's good to know it ...

[GB_Amateur]

7 hours ago, phrunt said:

Investigate all bouncy target ID's in the low iron range.  (emphasis mine)

Does this mean that a steady, repeating TID in the iron range can be safely ignored (i.e. not gold)?

 

[Steve Herschbach]

It just depends on the trash levels. Rule number one of nugget detecting - dig absolutely all targets. But if you can’t realistically do that, you start skipping the ones with the worst signals. But it is always a gamble with small signals in highly mineralized ground. The more ground iron mineralization, the more chance a weak non-ferrous signal will read ferrous.

Here is how that works. Get a very faint signal, consistently ferrous on every sweep. Obviously ferrous, no question. Now remove a little soil. At some point the target reads both ferrous and non-ferrous, erratic. Remove a little more soil. Now it’s a fairly consistent non-ferrous signal.

The detector sees both the gold signal, and the ferrous ground mineral signal. It tells you which signal dominates, and that may very well be the ferrous component. Consistency only tells you that the machine is consistently accurate, or consistently inaccurate in its reporting.

It’s like a spectrum, with a pure ferrous reading on one end, pure non-ferrous reading on the other, and every possible inconsistent reading in between. It just depends on how much and how intense the interference from the mineralized soil. 

The IS NOT an Equinox issue, this applies to all detectors, especially single frequency detectors. Equinox has enough controls plus Multi-IQ to do better than most.

More Details Here

Like I said, rule number one is dig everything. This is how you learn that a ferrous reading can be a non-ferrous item. If you can’t dig everything, dig anything that gives any non-ferrous reading at all, even just once out of several swings. If that’s too much digging, then ramp it up to dig only solid non-ferrous readings. It’s like a sliding variable scale, determined by how much time you have, and how strong your back is.

[Steve Herschbach]

My explanation was not aimed at anyone, just generic stuff. Your case is special Simon in that you are using the disc to eliminate certain pesky non-ferrous items. This can be helpful. I have been places where people have fired off thousands of rounds of .22 bullets, and being able to knock out the shell casings can be a neat trick. Yes, a large nugget that reads the same as a .22 shell casing will be missed, but the odds of that are low, whereas the odds of digging the one thousand shell casings is 100%. The same for you and certain pellets, or any constantly reoccurring trash or hot rock item. Rejecting anything always has risks, but it is all we have for working really trashy locations.