Charles (Upstate NY)
Well-known member
Tom had asked me for my thoughts on a few questions. (Tom your email box is full I could not reply to your msg) Figured I would post my thoughts here for everyone.
Equinox vs Excalibur, Explorer.
Assuming wet salt water beach or salt water hunting...no machine on the planet will be as smooth and quiet as the Excalibur its not even close. PI's maybe. Now, since you are already getting 15-20 inches of depth with the Excalibur on coin/ring sized targets on your beaches honestly I don't think you would achieve much more depth on those size targets with another machine. There is an upper limit to depth relative to target size. Maybe a PI machine could get a bit deeper.
In contrast to your beaches on south NJ shore beaches the black sand and iron, tightly packed fine sand, an Explorer will dominate the Excalibur on depth. So I mostly used my Explorer on those beaches, but still used my Excalibur for water hunting and sometimes for wet sand hunting when I just wanted to have a relaxing quiet hunt vs wrestling with my Explorer dialed up to 11 being noisy and blippy.
So I would not buy an Equinox to get more depth on your beaches. I would buy an Equinox to get smaller gold on your beaches. I have run extensive tests on small gold with the Equinox. It CRUSHES the Excalibur on small gold, also crushes the Explorer. The Equinox will hit on small gold that is invisible to the other machines, you can rub the gold on the other machines coils and its dead silence.
IMPORTANT: While the Equinox will hit this small gold, it won't hit the small gold very deep. Therefore if you are going to hunt for small gold you need the right beach conditions favorable for small gold hunting. Complete waste of time hunting for small gold if there's a foot of sand covering up the small gold.
On NJ beaches the small gold beach conditions are typically after a storm. If you are finding coins near/on the surface, and they are green and crusty and been out there for a while, oh yeah that's small gold territory. If you are finding tiny bits of scrap metal, tennis shoe eyelets, small bits from fishing gear, yep small gold is lurking.
Is it even worth hunting for small gold? Yes, this is the path to multi thousand dollar diamond solitaire rings. (someone feel free to ask me about this theory) Also diamond solitaire stud earrings and a ton of small to medium small gold chains that have been piling up on beaches for decades because prior machines could not detect them, they have been invisible. Now you know why I purchased an Equinox!
The Equinox will NOT be stable and quiet like an Excalibur and certainly not when cranked up to hit on small gold. That's just reality. Neither was the Explorer. I spent years hunting in the iron/trash/mineralization infested Upstate NY area with Explorers so hunting with my Explorers cranked up to me is easy now. All that chatter and noise and iron, its my threshold tone. My brain can pick out a target from this noise easily, that's why when I moved to the NJ Shore and started hunting beaches I was able to run my Explorer hotter in all metal. The amount of chatter and iron hunting in all metal on the beaches, some perhaps many people can deal with that. It wasn't always easy for me. The first couple years up in NY it was tough learning to hunt in all metal with all that unstable racket. In the early years I would regularly switch from running the machine hot and unstable, then hunt for a while with the machine dialed back. All metal for an hour, then run a disc pattern for an hour. I had to ease into hunting with the machine dialed up hot and unstable over time.
The CTX 3030 has many advantages over the Equinox, just as the Explorer does. Those machines have 2 axis target ID the Equinox does. Both will be far superior in ID'ing trash from good targets. The Equinox lacks the 2nd axis of target information. Does that really matter on a beach? Not so much, maybe with the exception of bobby pins and crown caps. On an Explorer I never dig either of those trash targets, which allows me to dig more promising targets per hunt and increase my gold count.
Any machine will pick up a near surface target on the outer edge of the coil (front, back, sides) which can make pinpointing frustrating. There is a magnetic field on the outer edges, its just much weaker than the center of the coil. But its strong enough to get a hit on near surface targets, even a few inches beyond the outer edge of the coil. Here learning to hunt in NY's 300 years of iron and trash heap conditions helped me. Often I'm dealing with multiple iron and trash targets near the good targets. Picking through this while pinpointing has become second nature. On the beach I find pinpointing much easier, typically there's only the one target. But I'll still lift my coil and check a coil size area around the target before digging to pinpoint because nothing is more frustrating or exhausting than chasing a target 10 scoops deep on a beach.
Final thoughts on the Equinox. I'm getting older and heaving around an Explorer is becoming more difficult and less fun. Even though I could crush the poor Equinox in certain conditions with my Explorer, I anticipate using the Equinox more for its lighter weight and better balance. Because fatigue, that's also a factor in my gold count.
Charles
Equinox vs Excalibur, Explorer.
Assuming wet salt water beach or salt water hunting...no machine on the planet will be as smooth and quiet as the Excalibur its not even close. PI's maybe. Now, since you are already getting 15-20 inches of depth with the Excalibur on coin/ring sized targets on your beaches honestly I don't think you would achieve much more depth on those size targets with another machine. There is an upper limit to depth relative to target size. Maybe a PI machine could get a bit deeper.
In contrast to your beaches on south NJ shore beaches the black sand and iron, tightly packed fine sand, an Explorer will dominate the Excalibur on depth. So I mostly used my Explorer on those beaches, but still used my Excalibur for water hunting and sometimes for wet sand hunting when I just wanted to have a relaxing quiet hunt vs wrestling with my Explorer dialed up to 11 being noisy and blippy.
So I would not buy an Equinox to get more depth on your beaches. I would buy an Equinox to get smaller gold on your beaches. I have run extensive tests on small gold with the Equinox. It CRUSHES the Excalibur on small gold, also crushes the Explorer. The Equinox will hit on small gold that is invisible to the other machines, you can rub the gold on the other machines coils and its dead silence.
IMPORTANT: While the Equinox will hit this small gold, it won't hit the small gold very deep. Therefore if you are going to hunt for small gold you need the right beach conditions favorable for small gold hunting. Complete waste of time hunting for small gold if there's a foot of sand covering up the small gold.
On NJ beaches the small gold beach conditions are typically after a storm. If you are finding coins near/on the surface, and they are green and crusty and been out there for a while, oh yeah that's small gold territory. If you are finding tiny bits of scrap metal, tennis shoe eyelets, small bits from fishing gear, yep small gold is lurking.
Is it even worth hunting for small gold? Yes, this is the path to multi thousand dollar diamond solitaire rings. (someone feel free to ask me about this theory) Also diamond solitaire stud earrings and a ton of small to medium small gold chains that have been piling up on beaches for decades because prior machines could not detect them, they have been invisible. Now you know why I purchased an Equinox!
The Equinox will NOT be stable and quiet like an Excalibur and certainly not when cranked up to hit on small gold. That's just reality. Neither was the Explorer. I spent years hunting in the iron/trash/mineralization infested Upstate NY area with Explorers so hunting with my Explorers cranked up to me is easy now. All that chatter and noise and iron, its my threshold tone. My brain can pick out a target from this noise easily, that's why when I moved to the NJ Shore and started hunting beaches I was able to run my Explorer hotter in all metal. The amount of chatter and iron hunting in all metal on the beaches, some perhaps many people can deal with that. It wasn't always easy for me. The first couple years up in NY it was tough learning to hunt in all metal with all that unstable racket. In the early years I would regularly switch from running the machine hot and unstable, then hunt for a while with the machine dialed back. All metal for an hour, then run a disc pattern for an hour. I had to ease into hunting with the machine dialed up hot and unstable over time.
The CTX 3030 has many advantages over the Equinox, just as the Explorer does. Those machines have 2 axis target ID the Equinox does. Both will be far superior in ID'ing trash from good targets. The Equinox lacks the 2nd axis of target information. Does that really matter on a beach? Not so much, maybe with the exception of bobby pins and crown caps. On an Explorer I never dig either of those trash targets, which allows me to dig more promising targets per hunt and increase my gold count.
Any machine will pick up a near surface target on the outer edge of the coil (front, back, sides) which can make pinpointing frustrating. There is a magnetic field on the outer edges, its just much weaker than the center of the coil. But its strong enough to get a hit on near surface targets, even a few inches beyond the outer edge of the coil. Here learning to hunt in NY's 300 years of iron and trash heap conditions helped me. Often I'm dealing with multiple iron and trash targets near the good targets. Picking through this while pinpointing has become second nature. On the beach I find pinpointing much easier, typically there's only the one target. But I'll still lift my coil and check a coil size area around the target before digging to pinpoint because nothing is more frustrating or exhausting than chasing a target 10 scoops deep on a beach.
Final thoughts on the Equinox. I'm getting older and heaving around an Explorer is becoming more difficult and less fun. Even though I could crush the poor Equinox in certain conditions with my Explorer, I anticipate using the Equinox more for its lighter weight and better balance. Because fatigue, that's also a factor in my gold count.
Charles
