This should be a safe question to post here. I got shouted down and seriously brow-beat for this subject @ a few other forums.
I got one of the original Nox 800's. I put it through a few .... admittedly short .... tests over a few days, on flagged signals. I would flag what I suspected to be a deep turf coin (wheatie or silver at 7 or 8", etc...). And then try it with the Nox. I armed myself with all the latest rumor-mill buzz, of the various optimum setting option pros & cons, at the time. And the short-story is: I was not impressed. The Explorer just seemed to have more "room to spare". The Nox didn't seem to have tell-tale audio enough, that I would differentiate from scores of objects nearby, that I would certainly have passed.
So I floated it for sale after only a week. The market was still hot at the time (long back-order lists), so I was actually able to make a profit. But my hunting partner was quite dismayed that I hadn't given it more time. And when I posted my results on some forums, my results were immediately dismissed . D/t various reasons like :
a) "You should have tried such & such setting. Or that & such setting". or
b) "That's only because you have more experience on the sounds of the Explorer...". Ie.: "You simply didn't give yourself enough time to learn the Nox's sounds."
Any other benefits the machine touts, didn't interest me. Ie.: I'm not into nuggets/prospecting. Micro-jewelry doesn't excite me. And I have other machines to reach for if I'm in carpet-beds of nails (ghost-townsy thick iron). Hence, that only left curiosity for the turf. And I didn't feel like it added anything extra, in my short tests.
Then a few months ago, another friend here in CA got the Nox. Although he had only used it in old-town demolitions and relicky sites so far (not turf-cherry-picking), he and I were curious as to how it stacks up . So THIS TIME, in order to prepare for the push-backs (of incorrect setting options), I cautioned him to : Please go on-line, to any/all forums, and do key-word archive searches, on all hobbyist's input. And get an exhaustive list of any/all potential setting changes, that could help. Naturally, each one comes with different pro's and cons drawbacks. But told him to "cover all bases" and make a list of all the various settings that could be tried.
We also thoroughly rehearsed the idea of "not falling prey" to the easy psychological trap, of : Having a signal pointed out to you, and ... hearing anything, and thus announcing : " Yes I hear it too" . Because, for a test like THIS, the MUCH BIGGER QUESTIONS ARE : 1) Could you have found that on your own ? 2) Can you tell that, versus shallow clad and nail falses and other-such-trash that we are trying to pass up ? Even then, it's easy to subconsciously convince yourself of a "yes" for the answers to both those questions (d/t the memory-bias trick). So to solve that, we agreed ahead of time to ALSO flag targets, that we suspected are NOT deep high conductors. And then not-tell the other person which target is which. Let THEM be the one to "call" it. That way there's no subconscious grading-bias.
We met up at a certain turf area in San Francisco . Where I can still reliably get several more wheaties, and a silver or two @ anytime I'm passing through that part of the state. And right off the bat, I started flagging suspected deepies. And , at first, he could get anything I pointed out. Some of the ones he was showing me, I told him I would pass, d/t I felt they were too shallow to be an oldie. But that can be written off to his lack of turf prowess/experience.
On a few of the signals, he had to admit that he would NOT have heard them if they hadn't been pointed out to him. And to whatever extent he could hear them, they had no distinguishing characteristic , that would have sounded any different than various things , that were going to end up being junk. A few times he'd point out a deep whisper, but they tended to be deep nail falses. His ratio of getting fooled by deep nail falses was 2x or 3x as high as times that I got iron-fool-falses. And ... each time, he'd attempt to "re-do" his call (change his tune), and say : "Well, come to think of it, it *did* sound a little off". Doh ! That's always an easy trap to fall into. We only remember those type premonitions when we get the nail in our hand. Yet if it were a deep silver or wheatie, we'd say to ourselves: "AHA, I KNEW IT".
Doh
One thing we each noticed, that when it hit about 8am, then I REALLY started to spank him. I would show him 4-star wheatie type signals (the classic tooty-fluty tunes), and it was all he could do to even get a tick or a burp over it. And in each of the situations, would stop, pull out his cheat-sheet, and try a myriad of settings changes, re-sweeps, different angles, re-balance, noise-check, sens up/down, toy with recovery speed, blah blah blah blah. Nothing helped. That tells me, in the case of a flagged spot, that NO ADDED AMOUNT OF YEARS OF EXPERIENCE would have helped. Eh ? But on the other hand, we both realized that things had only gone from bad-to-worse, at about 8am-ish. And that he'd done better at the 5 to 6am hour, for example
So we began to suspect that his Nox 800 was more prone to certain types of inner-city EMI. And that the "city comes alive" at the starting of people's waking hours. And apparently whatever-specific electronic noises , didn't happen to affect the Explorer. So to be fair, I couldn't fault the Nox. Since I too have been in zones where the Explorer "didn't like the atmosphere" , at certain locales, as well.
Hence we decided to have a "Round II" test, at this spot, on another day. But that THIS time we'd go at like 4am. So that we could have a few hours of no street traffic, no waking-hours-EMI, etc.... But still, the results were about the same : I was spanking him 3x to 1x on old coins. Whether the order of the flag was "me calling him over" or "him calling me over". And then comparing the correctness of the "calls/TID". By this time, he was beginning to lack confidence in his Nox 800. We even went to another location, in another city, about 30 or 45 min. away. To a park that, likewise, still have scores of deep wheaties/silver to choose from (yet carpets of clad to avoid). And after sampling around for awhile, he perceived that he was getting no EMI at this location. D/t the couple of starter deepies we flagged and compared, came in as good as could-be-expected on his machine. Contrast to the post 8am comparisons at our SF spot, where ...it was clear that something was skewing results.
But at the end of this particular park's hunt time. I had bested him on count. But to be fair, we didn't do a lot of "flagging" at this particular spot. Hence it could be chalked up to luck of the draw. Like maybe I wandered into a slightly better area. Or that I have more year's experience, etc... Still though ... Just based on the few we did flag in this location, I did not see ANY advantage of his Nox, over the Explorer, for the deep-turf-objective. At BEST it would have been a move-sideways.
We posted our results. And the pushback was predictable . The Nox faithful continued to say that it not a fair comparison, when one person has nearly 20 yrs. on Explorers, and the other guy only has a few months on a Nox. I tried to point out that these were FLAGGED SPOT TESTS (such that ... no added-amount-of-year's experience or settings-changes would have changed the results). But that fell on deaf ears. The Nox faithful could logically say that : While perhaps this Nox user can say that the "tick" he could get was indistinguishable from the myriad of crap he was trying to pass, yet : To an *experienced* nox user, perhaps the difference would have been clear. And again, as can be predicted, Nox faithful dreamed up *yet more* settings changes the Nox guy *should* have tried.
At that point , I began to suspect that NO AMOUNT of testing will EVER satisfy the desire to pit to the two against each other. ANY PERCEIVED failure to win-the-duel will summarily be dismissed on some grounds. And ... sure ... perhaps some objections have merit. But on the other hand, all the "outs" that can be rolled out as objections, seem to be never ending.
All of us want the "best mousetrap". And many of us here saw how "parks came alive" back when the Explorers were introduced. They were spanking the Whites on depth, and they had better deep-bent-nail reject when compared to the CZ's. So they made parks come alive again. Thus, when the Nox hit the market, and people were touting that ... in the same fashion, their parks "came alive", then : It's to be understood that people would want to "see that". Ie.: to do tests and comparisons. IN THE SAME WAY THAT .... 15 to 20 yrs. ago, we saw our Whites and Fishers and Garrets getting their b*tts kicked in deep turf by the explorer. Ie.: At a certain point, you couldn't argue with the Exp. results back then. Right ? So what's not fair about subjecting the Nox to the same standard of testing and results ?
What's the opinion here, for deep-turf-cherry-picking ? Is the Exp. better ? Or the Nox ? Or merely a step sideways ?
I got one of the original Nox 800's. I put it through a few .... admittedly short .... tests over a few days, on flagged signals. I would flag what I suspected to be a deep turf coin (wheatie or silver at 7 or 8", etc...). And then try it with the Nox. I armed myself with all the latest rumor-mill buzz, of the various optimum setting option pros & cons, at the time. And the short-story is: I was not impressed. The Explorer just seemed to have more "room to spare". The Nox didn't seem to have tell-tale audio enough, that I would differentiate from scores of objects nearby, that I would certainly have passed.
So I floated it for sale after only a week. The market was still hot at the time (long back-order lists), so I was actually able to make a profit. But my hunting partner was quite dismayed that I hadn't given it more time. And when I posted my results on some forums, my results were immediately dismissed . D/t various reasons like :
a) "You should have tried such & such setting. Or that & such setting". or
b) "That's only because you have more experience on the sounds of the Explorer...". Ie.: "You simply didn't give yourself enough time to learn the Nox's sounds."
Any other benefits the machine touts, didn't interest me. Ie.: I'm not into nuggets/prospecting. Micro-jewelry doesn't excite me. And I have other machines to reach for if I'm in carpet-beds of nails (ghost-townsy thick iron). Hence, that only left curiosity for the turf. And I didn't feel like it added anything extra, in my short tests.
Then a few months ago, another friend here in CA got the Nox. Although he had only used it in old-town demolitions and relicky sites so far (not turf-cherry-picking), he and I were curious as to how it stacks up . So THIS TIME, in order to prepare for the push-backs (of incorrect setting options), I cautioned him to : Please go on-line, to any/all forums, and do key-word archive searches, on all hobbyist's input. And get an exhaustive list of any/all potential setting changes, that could help. Naturally, each one comes with different pro's and cons drawbacks. But told him to "cover all bases" and make a list of all the various settings that could be tried.
We also thoroughly rehearsed the idea of "not falling prey" to the easy psychological trap, of : Having a signal pointed out to you, and ... hearing anything, and thus announcing : " Yes I hear it too" . Because, for a test like THIS, the MUCH BIGGER QUESTIONS ARE : 1) Could you have found that on your own ? 2) Can you tell that, versus shallow clad and nail falses and other-such-trash that we are trying to pass up ? Even then, it's easy to subconsciously convince yourself of a "yes" for the answers to both those questions (d/t the memory-bias trick). So to solve that, we agreed ahead of time to ALSO flag targets, that we suspected are NOT deep high conductors. And then not-tell the other person which target is which. Let THEM be the one to "call" it. That way there's no subconscious grading-bias.
We met up at a certain turf area in San Francisco . Where I can still reliably get several more wheaties, and a silver or two @ anytime I'm passing through that part of the state. And right off the bat, I started flagging suspected deepies. And , at first, he could get anything I pointed out. Some of the ones he was showing me, I told him I would pass, d/t I felt they were too shallow to be an oldie. But that can be written off to his lack of turf prowess/experience.
On a few of the signals, he had to admit that he would NOT have heard them if they hadn't been pointed out to him. And to whatever extent he could hear them, they had no distinguishing characteristic , that would have sounded any different than various things , that were going to end up being junk. A few times he'd point out a deep whisper, but they tended to be deep nail falses. His ratio of getting fooled by deep nail falses was 2x or 3x as high as times that I got iron-fool-falses. And ... each time, he'd attempt to "re-do" his call (change his tune), and say : "Well, come to think of it, it *did* sound a little off". Doh ! That's always an easy trap to fall into. We only remember those type premonitions when we get the nail in our hand. Yet if it were a deep silver or wheatie, we'd say to ourselves: "AHA, I KNEW IT".
Doh One thing we each noticed, that when it hit about 8am, then I REALLY started to spank him. I would show him 4-star wheatie type signals (the classic tooty-fluty tunes), and it was all he could do to even get a tick or a burp over it. And in each of the situations, would stop, pull out his cheat-sheet, and try a myriad of settings changes, re-sweeps, different angles, re-balance, noise-check, sens up/down, toy with recovery speed, blah blah blah blah. Nothing helped. That tells me, in the case of a flagged spot, that NO ADDED AMOUNT OF YEARS OF EXPERIENCE would have helped. Eh ? But on the other hand, we both realized that things had only gone from bad-to-worse, at about 8am-ish. And that he'd done better at the 5 to 6am hour, for example
So we began to suspect that his Nox 800 was more prone to certain types of inner-city EMI. And that the "city comes alive" at the starting of people's waking hours. And apparently whatever-specific electronic noises , didn't happen to affect the Explorer. So to be fair, I couldn't fault the Nox. Since I too have been in zones where the Explorer "didn't like the atmosphere" , at certain locales, as well.
Hence we decided to have a "Round II" test, at this spot, on another day. But that THIS time we'd go at like 4am. So that we could have a few hours of no street traffic, no waking-hours-EMI, etc.... But still, the results were about the same : I was spanking him 3x to 1x on old coins. Whether the order of the flag was "me calling him over" or "him calling me over". And then comparing the correctness of the "calls/TID". By this time, he was beginning to lack confidence in his Nox 800. We even went to another location, in another city, about 30 or 45 min. away. To a park that, likewise, still have scores of deep wheaties/silver to choose from (yet carpets of clad to avoid). And after sampling around for awhile, he perceived that he was getting no EMI at this location. D/t the couple of starter deepies we flagged and compared, came in as good as could-be-expected on his machine. Contrast to the post 8am comparisons at our SF spot, where ...it was clear that something was skewing results.
But at the end of this particular park's hunt time. I had bested him on count. But to be fair, we didn't do a lot of "flagging" at this particular spot. Hence it could be chalked up to luck of the draw. Like maybe I wandered into a slightly better area. Or that I have more year's experience, etc... Still though ... Just based on the few we did flag in this location, I did not see ANY advantage of his Nox, over the Explorer, for the deep-turf-objective. At BEST it would have been a move-sideways.
We posted our results. And the pushback was predictable . The Nox faithful continued to say that it not a fair comparison, when one person has nearly 20 yrs. on Explorers, and the other guy only has a few months on a Nox. I tried to point out that these were FLAGGED SPOT TESTS (such that ... no added-amount-of-year's experience or settings-changes would have changed the results). But that fell on deaf ears. The Nox faithful could logically say that : While perhaps this Nox user can say that the "tick" he could get was indistinguishable from the myriad of crap he was trying to pass, yet : To an *experienced* nox user, perhaps the difference would have been clear. And again, as can be predicted, Nox faithful dreamed up *yet more* settings changes the Nox guy *should* have tried.
At that point , I began to suspect that NO AMOUNT of testing will EVER satisfy the desire to pit to the two against each other. ANY PERCEIVED failure to win-the-duel will summarily be dismissed on some grounds. And ... sure ... perhaps some objections have merit. But on the other hand, all the "outs" that can be rolled out as objections, seem to be never ending.
All of us want the "best mousetrap". And many of us here saw how "parks came alive" back when the Explorers were introduced. They were spanking the Whites on depth, and they had better deep-bent-nail reject when compared to the CZ's. So they made parks come alive again. Thus, when the Nox hit the market, and people were touting that ... in the same fashion, their parks "came alive", then : It's to be understood that people would want to "see that". Ie.: to do tests and comparisons. IN THE SAME WAY THAT .... 15 to 20 yrs. ago, we saw our Whites and Fishers and Garrets getting their b*tts kicked in deep turf by the explorer. Ie.: At a certain point, you couldn't argue with the Exp. results back then. Right ? So what's not fair about subjecting the Nox to the same standard of testing and results ?
What's the opinion here, for deep-turf-cherry-picking ? Is the Exp. better ? Or the Nox ? Or merely a step sideways ?
