Friends Gold finds with Equinox he’s killing the gold!

[Mark kus]

This guy I know has been hunting with his Equinox at the beach and his own words no other machine comes close
To finding gold as the equinox!!!
He has a CTX and now only uses the Equinox so for non believers here’s proof one hunt!
Again not my hunt just thought I’d share his success.
His own words. “Hunt #7 and more gold. What a monster machine Minelab has made. I worked my ass off for it. Tons of pull tabs and small junk but this is what good stuff turned up.”

 

[Pondmn]

I was once told 25-30 pull tabs to a ring. Just like gold nugget hunting you have to dig the trash.

 

[Jason in Enid]

Congrats MKUS, those are awesome rings!

podmn, you're tab ratio is way, way, way low.

 

[Mark kus]

Congrats MKUS, those are awesome rings!

podmn, you're tab ratio is way, way, way low.

Not my finds thanks but I plan on finding gold with my Equinox to...

 

[dewcon4414]

IF you consider 14 a solid pull tab then you have to dig a whole lot of um......... but its not as simple as that. There are several styles of pull tabs.... new and old and the Nox really like to squeeze a lot of um in that nickel range......... so id dare say with the Nox in an old site you best eat your wheates because you are going to be digging.

Dew

 

[Southwind]

Love my 800 in the tot lots.

 

[Sweeping-4-junk]

More like 200 pull tabs to each ring on inland sites.

 

[scubadetector]

In 2016 I dug 1351 pull tabs to 53 pieces of gold. To me it is NOT the machine that finds it. Most any machine will give a signal over gold. It is up to the user to dig the signal and be rewarded with trash or a gold ring. Simple. (I didn't even count the other scrap pieces like shotgun shell head stamps) I think if I counted all my trash I would give up on gold!







I know the Equinox has been slated to hit small gold. Some beaches that is not feasible due to all the scrap aluminum and in my case scrap small pieces of brass at bullet beach. That is where I find thousands of pre WW1 30-06 bullets and shell casings and parts of shell casings. Remember also, if it is not there, it can't be found by any machine!

 

[RandyNorthridgeca]

At the beach I've only found 1 gold ring with the my 800 so far. Yesterday wet sand conditions were ugly so I dry sanded it and dug a ton of foil and my share of pull tabs looking for the gold. If gold was there I couldn't pass my coil over it to save my life but I tried I'm glad to see your friend is having some luck.

 

[jtalley007]

A guy told me had cleaned this area out the week before with a Fisher 1280x

We can send a probe to Mars but I guess they can't make a machine that will ever distinguish gold from Tabs

 

[scubadetector]

A guy told me had cleaned this area out the week before with a Fisher 1280x

We can send a probe to Mars but I guess they can't make a machine that will ever distinguish gold from Tabs

Never believe any place is cleaned out. It won't happen. Coins and rings get buried and unburied with sand movement and frost heave. Waves can bring in new targets and so can visitors to a beach. Also the saying is absolutely true. You miss by an inch you miss by a mile. The 1280X sends a cone shaped signal into the ground being a concentric coil and the Equinox sends a wide narrow line down in the ground. So at its deepest depth, the 1280X might be covering an inch of ground!



That is a BIG advantage with the double D coil on the Equinox in a lot of places to hunt. You can cover more ground and KNOW you hit more.

The Fisher 1280X is a good machine. The Equinox has another advantage over it in fresh water with the faster processor. The Equinox will hit salt water where the 1280X will not, nor can you change coils on a 1280X.

And you are right. No machine can distinguish gold from pull tabs, brass head stamps, or lead sinkers. If you want it you dig and dig. Luckily digging in sand is much easier than the ground.

 

[MEV]

In 2016 I dug 1351 pull tabs to 53 pieces of gold. To me it is NOT the machine that finds it. Most any machine will give a signal over gold. It is up to the user to dig the signal and be rewarded with trash or a gold ring. Simple. (I didn't even count the other scrap pieces like shotgun shell head stamps) I think if I counted all my trash I would give up on gold!


http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j234/robertg_g/DSC00775_zpsipij8lip.jpg

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j234/robertg_g/DSC00684_zpscn2wzw2f.jpg


I know the Equinox has been slated to hit small gold. Some beaches that is not feasible due to all the scrap aluminum and in my case scrap small pieces of brass at bullet beach. That is where I find thousands of pre WW1 30-06 bullets and shell casings and parts of shell casings. Remember also, if it is not there, it can't be found by any machine!

You are so right , since Nox came out i have been looking at a lot of videos , and i noticed Nox picks up a lot of trash , and why becuase Nox is telling you that almost all Targets are good Even if they are not , so people have to dig that Target, and thats why they are getting more trash but more good Targets.

So i tried it my self with my ctx 3030 i started digging almost everything exepct iron ohhhh boy , more trash but also a lot more good Targets i mean a lot more. I'm soo happy right now. Yes you dig more but you come home more happy.

 

[scubadetector]

You are so right , since Nox came out i have been looking at a lot of videos , and i noticed Nox picks up a lot of trash , and why becuase Nox is telling you that almost all Targets are good Even if they are not , so people have to dig that Target, and thats why they are getting more trash but more good Targets.

So i tried it my self with my ctx 3030 i started digging almost everything exepct iron ohhhh boy , more trash but also a lot more good Targets i mean a lot more. I'm soo happy right now. Yes you dig more but you come home more happy.

AND THAT is the problem with VDI machines. Folks that use them RELY on the VDI and the discrimination patterns they are custom to. The Equinox has opened up the pattern and although folks could do that with their CTX machines they chose not to.

The Equinox is a good machine. It is very capable of getting the job done MOST of the time. I have not used mine underwater yet but I will in a couple of places. It has one flaw for me. And that is I can't take it to some places that I really want to. The main reason is I would drown the critter over 10' deep.

I have had this discussion before from folks claiming their machine finds more stuff than someone elses machine. MOST of it is hogwash. Lets give an example here.

So we have an Equinox with a 19 - 22 over a target. Do you dig it? Some will others will not. Why won't folks dig it. From my experience it can be a wheat cent, an aluminum twist cap, a large shotgun head stamp, a zincoln, a boy scout neckerchief slide, a light bulb base and a few other undesirables.

Some folks pass those signals up because they find trash 100% of the time. So now you have someone with a beep and dig machine come allong with no VDI numbers go over the same target and they get the same signal. They dig and get rewarded with a 10.00 gold eagle or a huge fat class gold class ring.

People PRAISE the machine which is HOGWASH. The machine didn't find it. The USER of the machine is the one that actually decided to take the chance it wasn't a piece of junk and dig it.

The detectors we use are just tools. ALL are designed to tell you something is in the ground. The main difference in them is some will get a signal on deeper objects. Pure and simple, if you want treasure you will dig trash. No machine built yet can separate gold from undesirable metals. Another plus with the Equinox is the faster processor. It does a great job of target separation. So does a couple of my other machines but I have been using them for so long I know what they tell me.

The Equinox is a good tool. It is light, deep, and fast. The only reason it replaced my E-Trac is the weight of the latter. I am disabled and couldn't swing it as long as I wanted to. It cannot replace my main machines because of its limitations. For those that need a light versatile machine for fresh water, land and salt water, there is nothing out there that will compete with it, in that price range.

And the only one that can compete with how versatile it is, happens to be made by the same company but is over double the price.

 

[smkunder]

Great write up, I agree its the user for sure and then the detector. Bells and whistles are great but does not override whats between our ears.

 

[Jason in Enid]

.....

AND THAT is the problem with VDI machines. Folks that use them RELY on the VDI and the discrimination patterns they are custom to. The Equinox has opened up the pattern and although folks could do that with their CTX machines they chose not to.

......

Not entirely. Any machine can be used as a "dig it all". That is not why we buy discrimination detectors though. When it comes to comparing on detector to another, the primary factor isn't "can I get some semblance of noise over a target", its about getting clean, repeatable hits. If detector A shows a target as bouncing from iron to nickel to iron to penny, thats not a good "dig me" signal. If detector B gives a solid "indian head" reading ever pass, then thats a definite "dig me" target if the hunter is willing to dig something in that range.

It's not fair to say that we are finding targets in old worked areas only because we are digging everything. Many of the targets I have been digging are WITH nails and WITH aluminum trash but I'm still getting a solid "dig me" response. The only reason I would not have dug those before is because either I didnt get a "dig me" or I didnt pass over the spot. Since I grid search locations from multiple directions, its a slim chance I didn't put my coil over those targets before.

I really want to make some comparison videos on live targets, but the process is horrible. It requires recording, marking, shutting down, walking back to the car, swapping out detectors, walking back, re-ground balance, re-noise cancel, then video the re-scan, then dig to see, then going back to the car, swapping detectors and going back to continue the hunt. If you think it was bad just reading that, try doing it. I can't lay a $2500 detector on the ground and walk away from it while I focus on something else.

 

[scubadetector]

Jason, what I wrote for sure doesn't apply to ALL. I think it applies to most. You can't stereotype all detectorists. Also the places you hunt are never the same. On one drop off in a lake, I spent three hours on one tank with a machine in ONE spot. The noise it made was unbelievable. Every pitch and signal it could make it did. So I started fanning. Nails, screws, bolts, nuts, washers, coins, silver, gold and everything under the sun came out of that spot.

Very true the Equinox has a faster recovery speed and you can hear good targets closer to bad. However if you know your machine up down and backwards like I do, you can figure that out on your own MOST of the time. I do know not always. I also know I used one machine exclusively and swore by it. I was able to get another underwater machine and was FLOORED at what I missed with my main heater. I do know absolutely for a FACT that one machine can give a solid hit where another one just won't no matter what settings you use.

I was diving in a popular boating hang out when I was flagged down by a boater who just lost a big diamond ring by their boat. I searched and searched for every nickel signal and couldn't locate it. I came up ready to give up. They then told me the shank was broken. A whole new ball game. I went down and searched for any signal good or bad. I found it. A completely broken, I would never have dug that signal. Opened my eyes big time. I am hoping the Equinox will give a good signal over targets like that. BUT I am also prepared for the Equinox to give me good signals over split shot, buck shot, snap swivels, pieces of foil and every other piece of metal it can when I start diving with it.

So far in swinging my Equinox next to an E-Trac. I have found targets with the Equinox I would not have dug with the E-Trac and my friend has found targets I would not have dug with the Equinox and he has found good items. We have tested these two machines side by side at least 3 days a week at an old campground. We have had fun comparing them and they are both wonderful machines.

 

[Jason in Enid]

So far in swinging my Equinox next to an E-Trac. I have found targets with the Equinox I would not have dug with the E-Trac and my friend has found targets I would not have dug with the Equinox and he has found good items. We have tested these two machines side by side at least 3 days a week at an old campground. We have had fun comparing them and they are both wonderful machines.

Yep, any change in detectors can show you new targets the old one couldnt, whether changing models or brands. Each detector has its own frequency, and patterning as well as different algorithms for reading the signal. My Equinox is finding things my CTX missed, and I'm sure if I move to virgin ground and hunt in reverse, the CTX will find things the EQX missed, and same if I picked up a deus, or garrett. We always hope those misses will be few and far between.

 

[scubadetector]

This is not my writing but it sums the situation up nicely.

First person: I have gone over a site with the Nox pretty well and then gone over the same site again with the Nox and found things I missed the first time. Therefor....the Nox is better than the Nox.

Second person: Well you convinced me! I am putting my Equinox up for sale and buying one of them Equinox machines! Thank you for taking the time to test these 2 machines against each other!

__________________

 

[Jason in Enid]

LOL, I remember that post.

 

[maxxkatt]

I agree, don't leave your detector anywhere unattended. I saw one video where two guys hunted one with the CTX 3030 and one guy with the Equinox 800. when either would find a good signal the other one would swing over it and note the ID. Then they would dig the target and compare the TID's. That is about the only way to get a fair comparison. I believe all air tests prove nothing. Due to gravity we don't hunt in the air, but in the ground where ionization of a target takes place and creates a halo. Plus we have all types of targets and junk residing in the same area at different depths. Side by side comparisons in the filed is the only thing that will compare machines.