Equinox Settings - forget what everyone else says do it yourself.

[samuelgbrannan]

Equinox Settings - forget what everyone else says do it yourself.

There are a lot of posts on various metal detecting forums asking Equinox 600 or 800 user what settings they use. In my opinion this is not the way to go about deciding what settings you should use for your Equinox.

Why? Other people’s settings are for their specific type of soil and the types of targets they are hunting. This can have a very negative effect if you use their settings on your hunt. Their settings may be optimized for a low mineralization soil and they might be hunting coins and you might be hunting in relics in a higher mineralized soil. Thus your 600 or 800 will be far from being optimized for your conditions.

Here is what I and others consider the right way to optimize YOUR SETTINGS for YOUR HUNT.

Take with you examples of what targets you are hunting. If you are hunting old coins then take your barber dime and shield nickel, etc with you to your hunt site.
Set the appropriate mode 1 or mode 2 for either park, field or beach.
Noise cancel and ground balance.
Bury your example targets about 7” deep be they coins or civil war bullets and buttons at the actual site you are hunting that day.
Now swing over your targets and gradually adjust your different settings while you swing. This can be done with the 800 and I assume it can be done using the 600.
Alter your sensitivity and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.
Alter your recovery speed and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.
Alter your iron balance and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.
Alter your threshold and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.

If the above one was park2 then repeat the entire sequence starting with noise cancel and ground balance with park 2.

Even try it in the gold modes you may be surprised that this produces the best signals.

Even change from multi to 5 kHz or other frequencies.

In my opinion this is the only way to truly optimize your Equinox for your specific targets and soil conditions.

Keep in mind the Minelab engineers did a very good job designing the default settings for each mode and usually only minor adjustments to the default settings are necessary to tailor the default settings to your hunt site.
The same applies to beach hunting.

Take some gold rings and bury them in the wet sand (not in the surf) and perform tests like above before the hunt. This will get your Equinox optimized for that ocean beach.

 

[bootyhoundpa]

Can’t argue with that advice....I do something similar in that when I get a repeating signal I play with adjustments prior to digging it up to see if I can improve the response...the amazing adjustability if this machine is a double edge sword in that the slight adjustment the one way or the other can make a huge difference...

 

[chuck ky]

Equinox Settings - forget what everyone else says do it yourself.

You need to have some guidelines on where to start you settings. If you don't find anything how do you know if you settings are bad or there's just nothing there to find?

 

[u2robert]

You need to have some guidelines on where to start you settings. If you don't find anything how do you know if you settings are bad or there's just nothing there to find?

I would think the setting to start with would be the factory preset?

 

[jmaclen]

Factory pre-sets are just fine under normal detecting conditions. In high EMI and/or high mineralization they are not fine at all.

Jeff