Hi,
On the Nox 600 and 800 I definitely use and depend on both tones and numbers.
I have used an Explorer a couple of times and have owned the Deus. The Equinox 600 or 800 are totally different. The tones on the Nox are somewhat similar to the Explorer in that they can be really clear tones with very little brittleness or static on good targets. Recovery speed, target separation and the unmasking abilities of the Nox are far superior to the Explorer series in my opinion as are the overall ergonomics. Tones on the Deus have a lot of "character" in that they can sound broken or crackly on the edges and can really tell you tons about the target. They aren't very musical compared to the Nox tones which can have more distinct, undistorted clear pitches on good targets. With the Deus and Orx I concentrated more on the amount of scratchiness of the tone and somewhat on the actual pitch to help me identify targets. With the Nox I would listen for really clear, well defined pitches before looking at the easy to read display. For me, the Deus is primarily a tone detector since the controller display is really small and hard to read for me and lots of people. I would only briefly check my display when deciding to dig or not with the Deus or Orx to see IF there was a target ID number and possibly how deep it was using the Deus. Depending on the clarity and pitch of the Nox tones (once you memorize say the 5 tone or 50 tone options) you can hunt pretty well without looking. Unless you are hunting in the dark with the really too bright display backlight turned off on the 600, (I put a purple or red plastic filter over my 600 display at night), I would highly recommend looking at the Nox display however. The jumpiness or not of numerical target IDs, the depth meter and the easy to use (unlike the Deus) onboard pinpoint function can tell you a lot of extra information about the target too which after many hours of use can be extremely dependable.
Using the discrimination features on the Nox 600, the horseshoe button which quickly takes you out of discrimination and allows full iron responses, using a little threshold tone for nulling over iron or other discriminated target ranges, adjusting the iron bias and adjusting the iron range tone break, pitch and volume level can really help you learn how to deal with iron targets with practice. I rarely dig an iron target unintentionally anymore unless I am taking a chance on a really deep iffy signal in hopes of deep silver or gold coins and jewelry.
The Nox 600 and 800 in Field 1 are reported to do very well discriminating out coke responses so they do not mask good targets in the -3 to + 4 range (small gold) due to the multi frequencies chosen for Field 1 by Minelab.
Jeff
