Notching and Depth

[tcp]

I have the Equinox 600 and I was wondering about depth when using the Accept/Reject button to notch out targets. I did a simple air test only accepting 12, 13, and 14 to see how deep it would register on a nickel. vs. using the default settings that come up when doing a factory reset. I left the sensitivity alone after doing a noise cancel. Basically I was only trying to see if notching out everything but nickels had any effect on the amount of depth the machine was able to achieve vs. using the factory reset settings. I was only using a nickel for the test. The machine was able to pick up the nickel at 6 1/4" with everything notched out but the 12, 13, and 14 and it read and sounded the same with the default settings. No change in depth with either setting. I know air is not dirt but I was only interested in finding out if the use of discrimination (notching out targets) affects the depth the machine is able to achieve. I was wondering if other people have found the same results. I could not find much information about the Equinox and depth when discriminating out certain targets on the forum. Thanks for comments.

 

[5900_XL-1]

I always ran my Explorer and Etrac wide open in disc, due to the best FBS users I personally knew,,,always saying you lose depth if notched. I've tested the Equinox 600 in both open and notched. I don't know how it does it, but the Nox hasn't shown any loss in depth when notched. So far, the Equinox, for my needs, is a really easy and deep machine. Running in multi frequency, I use my 600 asa turn on and go. Ground balance seems to make zero difference. I'll noise cancel at most, if I get chatter, and adjust sensitivity to quieten it down.

I see no loss in depth when notched.

 

[dewcon4414]

You have to remember........ disc is an audio thing. It affects the headphones more than the target. So if you notch a specific digit it can affect how the phones responds. In most cases they say it can chop targets 3 digits either way. In AM many people say....... im getting more depth, not really its more their phones are able to respond properly to the everything going on. Another reason to use a GOOD pair of phones where their speakers have a low freq response with good db.

 

[IDXMonster]

You have to remember........ disc is an audio thing. It affects the headphones more than the target. So if you notch a specific digit it can affect how the phones responds. In most cases they say it can chop targets 3 digits either way. In AM many people say....... im getting more depth, not really its more their phones are able to respond properly to the everything going on. Another reason to use a GOOD pair of phones where their speakers have a low freq response with good db.

Exactly. It’s not that the machine isn’t seeing a target,it’s that you’re not being told about it due to the speed of perhaps the audio generator or the inability of bad phones to accurately drive a signal. Of course,other metallic stuff in the vicinity can cause numbers, and therefore audio responses, to read into the notched area,and you won’t hear about that either! Where possible,it’s always been best to have at least your general target area completely open(hunting silver coins...everything above zinc open). If you’re hunting everything,then...better tune up the old ears!

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Guys with respect I disagree with this a bit, its not just an audio thing. Targets have a large footprint, within a few inches of the surface the footprint can be 2 feet wide. Its an illusion crafted by the detector that the target footprint is only a few inches across. During a notched out null there's no tone, in all metal free of this null condition the machine is free to give a mix of tones simultaneously, trash and coin, iron and coin, without interruption. But during a null it can't. Explorers are notorious for latching onto a null and not wanting to let go of it and during a null all you hear is silence masking nearby coins.

I have minimal time on my Equinox 800 but from what I see its "perceived" target separation is much improved vs an Explorer so this is less of an issue, until you start to lower the recovery speed for max depth. Then like the Explorer I need to be concerned with trash/iron nulls masking nearby coins. And like the Explorer I have to slow down and pay attention to time on target. If you think about a coin, with nearby trash and iron, all those targets are polluting a good size surface area, overlapping each other, so its kind of a glob of signals mixed together. As the hottest part of the coil is centered over the coin, it rises above the mix, especially if you use the old Explorer 2-3 inch wide wiggle over the coin, feeding the machine such a strong stream of coin signal it drowns out the weaker overlapping nearby iron and trash portion of the signal.

Loving the Equinox 800, but some of the old lessons learned hunting with Explorers still apply, that's my 2 cents worth.

 

[dewcon4414]

We will agree to disagree here Charles normally we dont.........but you said "During a notched out null there's no tone, in all metal free of this null condition the machine is free to give a mixed tones"

I dont think its a depth loss as much as an audio loss. Coil shut down in trash areas .... now theres a depth loss based on the target. You are more likely to miss a target because of bad chopped response from notching.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

We will agree to disagree here Charles normally we dont.........but you said "During a notched out null there's no tone, in all metal free of this null condition the machine is free to give a mixed tones"

I dont think its a depth loss as much as an audio loss. Coil shut down in trash areas .... now theres a depth loss based on the target. You are more likely to miss a target because of bad chopped response from notching.

Hey Dewcon, loss of depth no, loss of target (target gets masked) yes. The coil is like that giant eye in Lord of the Rings that spins around in the tower. You would think your coil would always look straight down but instead when it locks onto a null it can be looking off sideways to the side or out in front of the coil even though there's a coin deeper directly under it. Ditto for some near surface trash targets they also cast a shadow of trash signal over a fairly wide area, aluminum caps for example. Sweep your car door with the coil, that's how big the magnetic field really is.

 

[BigTony]

Charles, you just helped me understand why I could not locate a target the other day. I tried to pin point but I kept getting a signal away from where the coil just indicated it was.

Thanks, now I just have to dig a small hole for n between those two areas to break the loop and hone in on the target.

Tony

 

[Jason in Enid]

Charles, you just helped me understand why I could not locate a target the other day. I tried to pin point but I kept getting a signal away from where the coil just indicated it was.

Thanks, now I just have to dig a small hole for n between those two areas to break the loop and hone in on the target.

Tony

If you get NO PINPOINT from where you get the coin response, its almost always an iron nail and its pointing directly at the center of where you hear it.

If you get a perfect pinpoint where you get the coin response, but the hole is empty, it can be one of several things. It can be a large item VERY deep. It can be a nail false. It can be an iron item that was completely rusted and disintegrated when you dug the hole. or it can be a coin that is on a high angle, these throw the signal off to the side. I have found coins like this 4 - 5 inches off the pinpoint spot.

You also have to pay attention because that coin you trying to pinpoint can be next to large iron and you attempt to pinpoint will always be drawn away to the iron, BUT there will be some level of response from the coin location also, even though you cant see it as an individual target

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Charles, you just helped me understand why I could not locate a target the other day. I tried to pin point but I kept getting a signal away from where the coil just indicated it was.

Thanks, now I just have to dig a small hole for n between those two areas to break the loop and hone in on the target.

Tony

If you think the target may be an old coin assume its worth $2,000 and dig the nearby trash target out of the way first. I have put my digger into more than a few by not doing this and the nearby trash target pulled my pinpoint off center.

 

[dewcon4414]

I agree...... there are a lot of targets and minerals being process with that big ole 11" coil with the sensitivity cranked up. You can tell that just by the coil HALO it produces. The good thing about the Nox is it will hear a lot of the targets because of its fast recovery. If i get a good tone in there...... i dig. Awhile back i got a good tone and some iron tones..... dug and ended up with a fish hook, tiny iron chain and a gold ring all in the same scoop.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

To notch or not to notch...if I'm hunting for max depth targets I'll be hunting wide open in all metal. At the max depth, the absolute limits of the machine the TID can be way off the mark. Not a little, way off. Most extreme example of this I ever saw was a Spanish silver 8 reale, that's almost as large as a silver dollar. The TID was down near nickel. The signal was just enough to barely warble the threshold tone, most swings no TID at all but every 3 to 4 swings TID would hit down near nickel. That told me it wasn't a false, something was down there, I had no idea what it was, but there was definitely a target down there because the threshold warble repeated on the same spot. So we dug a hole about 2 foot across and 18 inches deep (beach sand) I stuck my coil in the hole and it was screaming silver. After several hours of digging in the same hole we recovered 40 of these Spanish 8 reales.

Dave Z the Whites DFX master some of you may remember. I watched him do something similar once. He called me over to check a signal with my 15 inch WOT coil, Explorer XS. I heard nothing, but then I was listening for a real target signal not one of these threshold warble super deep targets. Dave dug several IH out of that hole at a depth that was mind boggling to me. His arm was in the hole up to his elbow. Baffled, I asked him Dave come on you had no idea what that target was right, it just warbled your machine, you knew it was deep so you took a shot? Dave said, "You don't miss much do you".

 

[BigTony]

Charles, just the other day in a park that I usually go to, I got a great tone but TID was a 12, nickel. I turned and the same stuff. It was a flat and fat piece of lead. Once out of the hole it TID much higher.

So, I understand what you are saying but let me ask you this question - would you increase the Tones?

I did that on the Nokta Impact and it did help me find more coins but I am curious if you would?

Tony

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Charles, just the other day in a park that I usually go to, I got a great tone but TID was a 12, nickel. I turned and the same stuff. It was a flat and fat piece of lead. Once out of the hole it TID much higher.

So, I understand what you are saying but let me ask you this question - would you increase the Tones?

I did that on the Nokta Impact and it did help me find more coins but I am curious if you would?

Tony

Tony I was about to say no, but on the Equinox I might just do that for a specific type of site. The problem with raising the tones is, if your site has a lot of modern trash and clad you would be overwhelmed with high tones so I probably wouldn't do it on that type of site. But if your site has mostly old and deep targets, and not much modern trash and clad then yeah I'd change the tones. Not only for your example but because of what I saw during air tests of the Equinox.

This is specific to Park and Field 2 only, recovery speed 3-4. Once depth passed a certain point the TID on a silver dime began to drop. What had been a solid 26 on a silver dime dropped to 25, then 24, and kept dropping until the Equinox could no longer get an ID on the target. At that point I was still getting a good tone, just no TID. I was able to get maybe another 2-3 inches of depth and tone beyond where TID cut off. I liked how reliable the TID dropped, each time it lowered say to 24 it was a reliable 24 it wasn't really jumping around. So a mapped high tone to get my attention, a reasonably stable repeating 24, if it looked and sounded deep yeah dig.

The Equinox gives you a bunch of features and options for tailoring your setup to the given site. Its a really BAD habit to use a one size fits all detector setup, I'm speaking from experience. I have got into that bad habit more than once. Always evaluate your site, then think what features or settings would best suit this site and adjust accordingly. This is true during the changes of seasons also, sopping wet ground vs wet, damp, bone dry. Tall grass, short. Night vs day, I tend to get more EMI at night for whatever reason.

 

[BigTony]

Charles, you always give a good amount to digest inyour reply’s, thanks for that, don’t change.

I was thinking of the weaker coin signals or those coins stuck in some crazy bad dirt no matter what site, these coins are still hidden to most detectors. We call it masking nowadays so much so thtat the Detector doesn’t give ample audio on the target that we are looking for. Additional to this weak signal is my hearing loss.

Soon as I get more time on the machine and before prime dirt hunting weather, I’ll try it out. I can always reset the detector to factory.

Thanks and best of luck,

Tony

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Charles, you always give a good amount to digest inyour reply’s, thanks for that, don’t change.

I was thinking of the weaker coin signals or those coins stuck in some crazy bad dirt no matter what site, these coins are still hidden to most detectors. We call it masking nowadays so much so thtat the Detector doesn’t give ample audio on the target that we are looking for. Additional to this weak signal is my hearing loss.

Soon as I get more time on the machine and before prime dirt hunting weather, I’ll try it out. I can always reset the detector to factory.

Thanks and best of luck,

Tony

Plus slow down, way down when looking for these.