I've had my new 600 out to the beach a couple times now and I am completely amazed at the depth of this machine. I am running Beach mode 1 all default settings, but using a WM08 from my son's 800 that he does not use and the wired headphones that came with the 600. I am in Southern CA where the beach sand is heavily mineralized, in fact I had a previous Whites Beach Hunter for a short period that was challenged by all the iron laden sand.
Anyway I have been hunting a popular beach in our area that I have hit so many times before and seen many other detectorists in the same spot (even posting on Youtube). In about an hour I pulled $4+ in change out of what I thought was a hunted out area. Nothing real old but many coins dated in the 60's and 70's that appear to have been there a long time. What stood out for me was how deep I was getting targets. I learned that digging the faintest of signals, especially the higher pitch ones, resulted in coins routinely 12" deep and some closer to 15". The challenge I ran into was that my small 4" aluminum scoop simply could not dig that deep so I was down on my hands and knees digging as when you get that deep the sand is very compacted and damp. That really slowed me down not to mention killed my back.
I am trying to learn what the machine was telling me so I was digging all targets to see what they were. The most frequent targets were old rusty bottle caps, especially the Corona ones that produce a fairly solid tone, lots of pull tabs, and I can't believe how many tent stakes I found. Several strong good signals turned out to be buried beer cans one was easily 18" down.
So I purchased a new 12" x 6" stainless sand scoop with the pointed nose that makes all the difference in recovering these deep targets. I've never previously owned a Minelab as I was a Whites guy with my favorite being an old Eagle II SL so I have nothing modern to compare against but I am quite pleased with the simplicity of use, light weight, and performance of the Equinox.....I'm happy!
Next step is to start searching in the water, can't wait. Thanks to the Equinox community on this forum for all the info, it has been very helpful.
Anyway I have been hunting a popular beach in our area that I have hit so many times before and seen many other detectorists in the same spot (even posting on Youtube). In about an hour I pulled $4+ in change out of what I thought was a hunted out area. Nothing real old but many coins dated in the 60's and 70's that appear to have been there a long time. What stood out for me was how deep I was getting targets. I learned that digging the faintest of signals, especially the higher pitch ones, resulted in coins routinely 12" deep and some closer to 15". The challenge I ran into was that my small 4" aluminum scoop simply could not dig that deep so I was down on my hands and knees digging as when you get that deep the sand is very compacted and damp. That really slowed me down not to mention killed my back.
I am trying to learn what the machine was telling me so I was digging all targets to see what they were. The most frequent targets were old rusty bottle caps, especially the Corona ones that produce a fairly solid tone, lots of pull tabs, and I can't believe how many tent stakes I found. Several strong good signals turned out to be buried beer cans one was easily 18" down.
So I purchased a new 12" x 6" stainless sand scoop with the pointed nose that makes all the difference in recovering these deep targets. I've never previously owned a Minelab as I was a Whites guy with my favorite being an old Eagle II SL so I have nothing modern to compare against but I am quite pleased with the simplicity of use, light weight, and performance of the Equinox.....I'm happy!
Next step is to start searching in the water, can't wait. Thanks to the Equinox community on this forum for all the info, it has been very helpful.
