My Soil Sucks Please Help With Equinox 800

[2Valen]

Steve,

Thanks for the information and yes I did try using single frequencies instead of multi.

When you stated that some areas just can't be searched is what I am wondering about for this area. The same things happened to me on my neighbors property with the same results. He lives about a half mile from me down the road.

When I had seen a post very similar to mine in the same area it got me wondering if we were having the same problem.

I hope that the information I posted above this helps.

Thanks

[bethanyb1201]

Hello all! I forgot about this post! I have since figured out the 800 in my loamy glacial till! I am in Loda Il. Its on the southwest corner of iroquois county. It took ALOT of tinkering and tests but I am now able to get 10 in on a dime during Ideal conditions. 1st thing I found out was we have alot of ariel plane to ground signals for some reason so can I can only hunt at night. Its the only time I can have a quiet machine. 2. You MUST grid off a 30x30 or whatever size section you want to hunt and do random GB over the grid. I can go from 90 to 15 in 5 foot! Auto isnt fast enought to keep up. 3. I can only hunt when ground is completely dry or soaking wet! No inbetween.. It has to do with the heavy mineral content. In dry soil I get 6 in and soaking wet 10 in. This info is for multi only. Very SLOW swing speed.. I use the beach for land settings and they work perfect! Higher recovery speed doesnt help in this soil for some reason. I have better luck on 2-3 and extremely slowww.. I run sen 20-24... Those old bricks sound like silver dollars! I havent figured out how to beat that besides switching over to 10 custom..I also learned 50 tones. Thats the way to truly beat this soil! The machine tells you everyrhing you need to know on 50... 5 not so much. You also must use head phones. If you dont you WILL miss the little subtle noise thats dif from bricks and minerals. I spent 20 miserable hours in my test garden on 50 tones before I got it. I came from a discovery 3300 almost like yours. Biggest keys are a GB grid, 50 tones, soaking wet or dry soil. I am in Tennessee as we speak and detecting on regular ground is like shooting fish in a barrel compared to home. Stick with the beach to land and learn it.. Forget the machine has all other multi modes. In central Il you are better off using a single freq than using park,field... Gold mode I am starting to see some major promise also but going to play more before giving my approval.. Sorry I dont know the big words but hope that helpsm

[Horst]

good to see how much help one will receive on this forum. I had EMI issues with my Nox 800 and they are history now due to the input I received from you guys right here on DP. Good to know there is a family................

[2Valen]

bethanyb1201,

Thanks for the input for what you found on this unit, I hope to learn how to understand everything that you have told me about the settings that you are using. I live 125 miles south of you near Hillsboro IL. and I will have to find a place to make a test garden in this soil and learn what you have shared.

Thanks for the information!

 

[Chase Goldman]

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

When I first got my Equinox 800 I watched several videos to find out the best way to use it, and found that every time it gave a strong signal I dug down. When I stated that I have 100+ holes/targets that it showed something there I meant it.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to fill in some of these details.  Unless your machine is broken (unlikely, but still a possibility at this point), I think we can help you but we will still need some more info.

I gather from your response regarding your  brief Bounty Hunter pipe locating experience that you have very little general experience metal detecting for discrete, small in-ground targets.  Lack of basic metal detecting skills can be somewhat at play here.  That can affect your expectations and I think that may be also affecting how you are setting up the Equinox and interpreting the Equinox signals and can be causing difficulties in communicating the issues you are experiencing.  

I also don’t doubt your local conditions are contributing to your issues. So I will have to ask you some more questions to attempt to figure out what is going on.

For example, need some more clarity from the above quote  - dug down and what?  Were you able to recover any targets?  If so, what were they? Were the strong signals two ways (I.e., equally strong when swinging right to left and as well as left to right?). 

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

First I did a full reset on the unit and proceeded to set it manually.

Full reset was a good first step.  What mode/settings did you PRIMARILY use after you reset the machine? What exactly did you set “manually”.  I usually advise not making any manual settings adjustments on the Equinox when starting out (other than auto noise cancel and ground balance if needed), and use Park 1 at the default settings and learn the machine with that mode exclusively.  

The reason is that each mode (Park 1, Park 2, Field 1, Field 2, Beach 1/2, Gold) behaves differently and if you are new to Equinox and especially metal detecting, you can become quickly overwhelmed switching modes because it can be like you are learning 3 or 4 new machines at once, not one.  And believe me, you don’t want to be learning more than one machine while also learning how to metal detect.  

You can take it one step further and just hunt in single frequency (10 or 15 kHz) as Steve suggested to take even more complexity out of the equation until Equinox starts to click for you.

If you have adjusted settings away from the defaults, suggest you factory reset and start again with a clean slate and use my suggestions above on the mode and frequency settings.

Make sure you are using the default discrimination settings to filter out iron and ground noise.

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

The only way that I was able to hit a target with this 800 was to lay a penny, dime, Nichol, quarter, and my wedding ring on top of the grass and then I was able to find them once the sense was turned down.

Mode?  What did the display numbers read for each target?

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

As of today I have had the Equinox 800 for 1 full week and have tried using it 4 times with the same results.

Have you tried any other locations.  Local parks or other large farm fields?  BTW, veteran metal detectorists typically need 100 hours swinging a machine in the field before they feel comfortable about what the machine is telling them about buried trash and keeper targets.

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

I have not found any nails, pull tabs, bottle caps, or trash like that.

What have you found?  You should sample  some trash test targets in addition to coins to help you differentiate trash and keepers and so you can see how they display and sound.

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

About the only thing that I can think of is that there is an awful amount of bricks in the ground, but the soil is good black dirt. 

Doubt brick pieces would cause your issues.  What makes you think bricks are in the ground?  Have you dug any bricks?  Did you run the coil over recovered bricks to see if the detector responds to them?

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

Since I live out in the country so far we have no cell phones because they don't work here. I was about 250 feet away from the house and even turned off the wifi units in the house.

Any Overhead power lines in the area, electric fences, invisible dog fences, noisy power transformer?

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

What is VDI as I am new to this term, I really want to learn everything I can so it will help me find relics and maybe someday gold.

Yes, sorry for using the acronym.  VDI stands for visual display indication.  What numbers were being displayed when these 100’s of signals were being heard? You may also hear the similar term TID which stands for target ID.  Every target gives a fairly unique ID number.  Knowing what ID numbers are displaying on your 100’s of target signals in your yard can help us decipher what those might be.

High conductors like copper, silver, and clad coins will ring up in the 20’s and 30’s.  Some larger aluminum objects like beer cans can ring up here, too.  Mid conductors like nickels, small aluminum, brass, and gold jewelry will ring up in the low teens or single digits. And iron targets (unless large targets like pipes and horseshoes) will ring up as negative numbers.

From what you are describing, your problem sounds different than Bethany’s soil issues which are primarily affecting detectable target depth, but they could be related.

See if you can fill in the above gaps and hopefully we can get this machine clicking for you.

[GB_Amateur]

Just a longshot WAG:  was your home once heated by coal?  Mark Gillespie, a regular poster here, has told of a schoolyard where he can only hunt with a Pulse Induction (PI) type of detector because in the past the waste from coal burning (known as 'coke', I believe in Britain, and what we used to call 'cinders' when I was growing up) was spread there.

Chase's suggestion to try your detector in a local park should remedy the problem you're having if I happen to have hit on its source.

 

[2Valen]

Chase,

Thanks for responding to me and I will do my best to answer these questions.

When I first started I kept everything on Park 1 and multi after I completed the noise cancel and the auto ground balance.

For example, need some more clarity from the above quote  - dug down and what?  There was nothing there and when I checked again it did not hit on anything. I filled the hole back in and kept on going.

Mode?  What did the display numbers read for each target?  I started with Park 1 and had several hits in the ranges of 17 - 31 and that is the only things that I tried to dig.

Have you tried any other locations.  I have also gone to a local beach and used Beach 1 auto with sensitivity set on 11 and I did find 6 pennies and 2 lead anchors. Everything was only about 2 inches from the top of the sand. I have yet to try my neighbors field that had an old church on it about 100 years ago. I do want to learn this and will do almost anything to so.

Doubt brick pieces would cause your issues. These are full bricks that were probably laid for a landing strip during WWWI when this area was used to train some of the pilots before they went to war overseas. I heard that they built several landing strips out of the bricks and trust me when I say they are everywhere. Some areas the bricks are laid side by side for almost 100 feet and goes on for almost a 1/4 mile. They are down in the ground now about 18 to 24 inches. I found this out today when I was talking to some long time residents from the area.

Any Overhead power lines in the area, electric fences, invisible dog fences, noisy power transformer? There is no overhead lines, electric fences, dog fences, or noisy transformers within a 1/2 mile of me.

What mode/settings did you PRIMARILY use after you reset the machine?  Most of the time I used the factory settings and used Park 1 around the house and Beach 1 at the local beach.

What exactly did you set “manually”. I set the noise cancel, then manual ground balance, and target to 5. I tried to copy some settings from a youtube video that I had watched.

With all that said there has been many home's in the area that did use coal, but I do not know if there was ever a house on my property before. Glaciers did make it down this far and I go panning quit often in several creeks and streams near me. My wife and I have only found a couple of ounces in the past couple of years but we did find a nice diamond last year. There is also a lot of coal being mined around here and also a coal fired power plant 10 miles down the road.

I hope that this helps find a solution for what is going on. I am talking to my neighbor that is going to allow me to put a test garden on his property if his ground is any better.

Thanks for taking the time to help me.

 

[Chase Goldman]

Hey we're making some progress, but still have questions...

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

Have you tried any other locations.  I have also gone to a local beach and used Beach 1 auto with sensitivity set on 11 and I did find 6 pennies and 2 lead anchors. Everything was only about 2 inches from the top of the sand. I have yet to try my neighbors field that had an old church on it about 100 years ago. I do want to learn this and will do almost anything to so.

I reckon the beach you went to was fresh water?  If so, just keep the detector in Park 1, because the Beach modes are designed to cancel out false signals due to salt, so should primarily be used at salt beaches or in alkaline soils.   Beach will still work in fresh water, but you may unnecessarily lose your ability to recover deeper targets as a result of the programming used to compensate for salt.

But my main question is why did you keep sensitivity dialed down to 11 at the beach?  Was the detector noisy at the default sensitivity setting of 20?  Generally, beach mode is the most stable mode and can be run at relatively high sensitivity settings.  The combo of beach mode and the super low sensitivity setting of 11 could explain why you were only recovering shallow targets.

Also, were you hearing hundreds of targets at the beach?  Did you try test targets at the beach?

9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

What exactly did you set “manually”. I set the noise cancel, then manual ground balance, and target to 5. I tried to copy some settings from a youtube video that I had watched.

Not sure what you mean by target to 5.  Do you mean 5 tones?  Park 1 defaults to 5 tones.  Try to refrain ftom using you tube settings until you learn the machine and understand what the settings do. You should be able to get away with Park 1 at all the default settings save for doing a noise cancel and auto ground balance and the only adjustment being sensitivity to reduce chatter as necessary and should be good for 99% of the detecting situations you will routinely encounter.  Use beach mode at a salt beach if you go to one (will work better than Park 1 unless you just stay in the dry sand).

Also, when you were unable to recover targets in your yard (dug down and nothing was there), how did you pinpoint the target location?  Do you have a handheld pinpointer? 

How did you pinpoint and recover targets at the beach?

At this point, my suggestion is for you to find out if there is a nearby detecting club or metal detecting dealer that can introduce you to some experienced local detectorists to show you the ropes.  If I lived closer, heck I would road trip your way and do it myself as I have done a lot of instruction on detecting basics and courses focused on specific detector models.

[2Valen]

Chase,

 

But my main question is why did you keep sensitivity dialed down to 11 at the beach?  I had to lower the sensitivity because I was getting to many targets that had nothing in the ground.

Also, were you hearing hundreds of targets at the beach?  Yes I was getting many false targets until turning down the sense.

Did you try test targets at the beach?  I did bury several coins about 6 inches down and was not able to find them again. They are still there and with some luck learning this unit I will be able to go back and find them.

Not sure what you mean by target to 5.  Do you mean 5 tones?  I think that it was the tones, but I only tried it for a very short time and went back to the factory settings and then turned down the sensitivity.

Also, when you were unable to recover targets in your yard (dug down and nothing was there), how did you pinpoint the target location?  I used the pinpointer feature on the Equinox 800 to locate the spot, then dug down and moved the soil to the side about a foot away from the hole. I then scanned again and nothing showed up.

Do you have a handheld pinpointer?  How did you pinpoint and recover targets at the beach? The day I went to the beach my new Garret pin pointer was delivered and I did use it at the beach. Won't leave home without it when I go again.

Chase at this point with all your advice I am going to leave it in the factory modes and learn it the best that I can.

I am looking for some areas to practice on that are not so hot, and allow me to learn the tones better.

My wife thinks that I am sweeping to fast and wants me to slow down. It takes about 2-3 seconds to go from left to right and then 2-3 seconds to go right to left. I keep everything level with the ground and try to take my time. I hope that is correct.

What part of the country do you live in? There is a place in Tennessee that I really want to go to some day again. 35 years ago I built a detector from some parking lot equipment to find a lost gold shipment and would love to have a few friends go and help find it. I have narrowed down the area to a 2 mile stretch, but I know it is going to be down deep. The last time we found a VW Bug buried about 4 feet deep. We were able to dig it out and fix it up. This trip would be to locate a $500,000.00 pay wagon for the troops during the Civil War, that is why we had to go really deep. Most of the pay was gold coins and silver coins, and there was no paper money involved. Let me know if you would like to try to help find it.