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Prelim Equinox 800 review
- Thread starter MassSaltH2O
- Start date
Hi MassSaltH2O
great questions and like I said earlier a great review especially for guys like me that are moving from prospecting to inland coin and jewelry hunting and finally to beach hunting. I've got military kids that get transferred all over the place and visiting them always means some beach detecting is going to happen!
I really opened a can of worms. In the old days All Metal Mode meant you were detecting in a mode that was unfiltered, no shared circuits with other functions like a screen, not discriminated in any way and the single tone audio and threshold tone were one in the same. A slight waver in the threshold tone possibly indicated a small or deep target. A larger modulation of the threshold tone indicated a shallow or big target. Some had a sensitivity or gain adjustment and some didn't and it was just maximum depth raw detecting power. Some prospecting and relic detectors still have a less pure form of this mode. It gives you the opportunity to check a borderline target in a discriminated mode and then double check in All Metal for maximum depth. Some pinpoint functions on todays detectors share that circuit too. If you were detecting in a relatively clean area with little trash like in prospecting you could run in threshold based all metal mode and use discrimination mode for target identification and cherry picking too (if the discrimination mode could detect the target). The Equinox 600 does not have anything like this mode. The 800 has a portion of it in Gold 1 and Gold 2 with its single tone VCO audio, but that audio circuit is not tied to the threshold. They are separate. Otherwise the 800, with all of the incredible functions included in Gold 1 and Gold 2, bares little resemblance to threshold based all metal mode.
So, every time the original return signal is altered, filtered or affected by functions built into the detector to process the target, the signal is attenuated. The Equinox does that in ways we'll never know about unless we work for Minelab. For me, that has turned out to be a really good thing when prospecting. I was definitely skeptical at first. Wow, I get all kinds of information on up to 12" targets that I could never get on any previous VLF prospecting detector and so far that information has been rock solid accurate. I would not have believed it before using the 800 for prospecting.
So, we're talking about METAL detectors here. I'm trying to be serious...............plastic detecting??????
When I press the horseshoe button on either the 600 or the 800 I am taking a shortcut between whatever discrimination pattern is set for the mode I'm hunting in and a pattern that accepts all (metal) targets. For some people that means "hey I just gained a bunch of depth "cause I'm in all metal right?". Nope. That means you simply (and very conveniently!!!) allowed any detectable metal target under your coil to be detected with the press of one button with the same transmit and receive signals you were using before you pressed the button. All of those tiny (and I mean tiny as in "my target just vanished") bits of natural iron, human made iron, tin, foil AND GOLD reading below 0 or wherever the notch was set, just became wonderfully detectable. In my world that means I have a complete carpet of clicks, pops, zips and other extremely annoying sounds caused by actual targets, ground mineralization noise and low frequency EMI with every sweep of my 11" coil. The 6" coil handles it much better due to its smaller footprint.
The Multi-IQ simultaneous frequencies of the Equinox seem to have more than made up for the lack of depth caused by not having a threshold based all metal mode. Yeah, it might not go as deep as some other comparably priced detectors with that feature. And pressing that horseshoe button can create a lot of noise and problems for folks that are hunting with it engaged all the time (all metal targets accepted) in iron infested areas like beaches with plenty of black sand. If you are lucky enough to have a relatively low iron level beach that would be fantastic. I like a quieter detecting experience in my old age and just use it to check for iron target responses in the -3 to -9 range if I get a strong signal in the -2 to 21 range and wonder if it is the upper end of a rusting iron response or a legitimate coin or jewelry target.
The Equinox has made me learn so much in the last year. What a great but definitely imperfect (it is still developing) detector.
Jeff
great questions and like I said earlier a great review especially for guys like me that are moving from prospecting to inland coin and jewelry hunting and finally to beach hunting. I've got military kids that get transferred all over the place and visiting them always means some beach detecting is going to happen!
I really opened a can of worms. In the old days All Metal Mode meant you were detecting in a mode that was unfiltered, no shared circuits with other functions like a screen, not discriminated in any way and the single tone audio and threshold tone were one in the same. A slight waver in the threshold tone possibly indicated a small or deep target. A larger modulation of the threshold tone indicated a shallow or big target. Some had a sensitivity or gain adjustment and some didn't and it was just maximum depth raw detecting power. Some prospecting and relic detectors still have a less pure form of this mode. It gives you the opportunity to check a borderline target in a discriminated mode and then double check in All Metal for maximum depth. Some pinpoint functions on todays detectors share that circuit too. If you were detecting in a relatively clean area with little trash like in prospecting you could run in threshold based all metal mode and use discrimination mode for target identification and cherry picking too (if the discrimination mode could detect the target). The Equinox 600 does not have anything like this mode. The 800 has a portion of it in Gold 1 and Gold 2 with its single tone VCO audio, but that audio circuit is not tied to the threshold. They are separate. Otherwise the 800, with all of the incredible functions included in Gold 1 and Gold 2, bares little resemblance to threshold based all metal mode.
So, every time the original return signal is altered, filtered or affected by functions built into the detector to process the target, the signal is attenuated. The Equinox does that in ways we'll never know about unless we work for Minelab. For me, that has turned out to be a really good thing when prospecting. I was definitely skeptical at first. Wow, I get all kinds of information on up to 12" targets that I could never get on any previous VLF prospecting detector and so far that information has been rock solid accurate. I would not have believed it before using the 800 for prospecting.
So, we're talking about METAL detectors here. I'm trying to be serious...............plastic detecting??????
When I press the horseshoe button on either the 600 or the 800 I am taking a shortcut between whatever discrimination pattern is set for the mode I'm hunting in and a pattern that accepts all (metal) targets. For some people that means "hey I just gained a bunch of depth "cause I'm in all metal right?". Nope. That means you simply (and very conveniently!!!) allowed any detectable metal target under your coil to be detected with the press of one button with the same transmit and receive signals you were using before you pressed the button. All of those tiny (and I mean tiny as in "my target just vanished") bits of natural iron, human made iron, tin, foil AND GOLD reading below 0 or wherever the notch was set, just became wonderfully detectable. In my world that means I have a complete carpet of clicks, pops, zips and other extremely annoying sounds caused by actual targets, ground mineralization noise and low frequency EMI with every sweep of my 11" coil. The 6" coil handles it much better due to its smaller footprint.
The Multi-IQ simultaneous frequencies of the Equinox seem to have more than made up for the lack of depth caused by not having a threshold based all metal mode. Yeah, it might not go as deep as some other comparably priced detectors with that feature. And pressing that horseshoe button can create a lot of noise and problems for folks that are hunting with it engaged all the time (all metal targets accepted) in iron infested areas like beaches with plenty of black sand. If you are lucky enough to have a relatively low iron level beach that would be fantastic. I like a quieter detecting experience in my old age and just use it to check for iron target responses in the -3 to -9 range if I get a strong signal in the -2 to 21 range and wonder if it is the upper end of a rusting iron response or a legitimate coin or jewelry target.
The Equinox has made me learn so much in the last year. What a great but definitely imperfect (it is still developing) detector.
Jeff
Hi MassSaltH20
I forgot to mention something. Like you said. The Equinox is so sensitive and so powerful that even when you set up for gold jewelry you are still getting copper pennies and bottle caps. The copper pennies at depth may lose target ID value, just about any coin sized target will depending on how deep it is and how much mineralization as in iron and or salt is dragging down those target ID numbers for deep targets. Cant' help much there, I have to deal with the same thing here. If I get a good audio repeatable tone and my depth gauge shows deep and the audio response has a small radius on the ground, I dig it and hope for a surprise. The steel bottle caps if they are rusting will sometimes give nice iron low tone and negative numbers during part of a sweep and when lifting the coil. If they are relatively shallow the numbers might jump a lot due to their composition or maybe not if they are recent drops. Others have written about this on other forums too so there may be some good work arounds
Jeff.
I forgot to mention something. Like you said. The Equinox is so sensitive and so powerful that even when you set up for gold jewelry you are still getting copper pennies and bottle caps. The copper pennies at depth may lose target ID value, just about any coin sized target will depending on how deep it is and how much mineralization as in iron and or salt is dragging down those target ID numbers for deep targets. Cant' help much there, I have to deal with the same thing here. If I get a good audio repeatable tone and my depth gauge shows deep and the audio response has a small radius on the ground, I dig it and hope for a surprise. The steel bottle caps if they are rusting will sometimes give nice iron low tone and negative numbers during part of a sweep and when lifting the coil. If they are relatively shallow the numbers might jump a lot due to their composition or maybe not if they are recent drops. Others have written about this on other forums too so there may be some good work arounds
Jeff.
MassSaltH2O
New member
Hi Jeff, re finding bottlecaps, I'm going to try setting my iron bias on five.
MassSaltH2O
New member
Congrats! Beautiful ring!
Willee - Texas
Well-known member
I would like to know what detector you were using that could discriminate out everything except gold?
If you had one why would you ever stop using it?
If you had one why would you ever stop using it?
jtalley007
Active member
I love Minelabs and have owned a truckload of them since the sovereigns.
I never used this feature but Andy Sabisch and other pro hunters talked about it and from a number of targets dug, to ratio of gold would have to increase if gold is present.
Imagine how many 100’s if not 1000’s of zinc, copper pennies, dimes, quarters, etc are found per piece of gold?
Minelab, if you’re reading these forums and it’s possible, how about spreading the TID out in an update to allow us to do what the older FBS and FBS 2 could do?
Notch out coins and dig foil through traditional gold ranges?
Even if we don’t physically notch them out on the older smartfind and 3030 screens you could visually do it?
Thanks
I never used this feature but Andy Sabisch and other pro hunters talked about it and from a number of targets dug, to ratio of gold would have to increase if gold is present.
Imagine how many 100’s if not 1000’s of zinc, copper pennies, dimes, quarters, etc are found per piece of gold?
Minelab, if you’re reading these forums and it’s possible, how about spreading the TID out in an update to allow us to do what the older FBS and FBS 2 could do?
Notch out coins and dig foil through traditional gold ranges?
Even if we don’t physically notch them out on the older smartfind and 3030 screens you could visually do it?
Thanks