OregonGregg said:
If I had the Etrac, I wouldn't be in any hurry getting rid of it thinking that the new Equinox will replace it. I would try the new Equinox first and then decide. If you primarily are hunting old parks and chasing deep silver.........
If it is a very fast recovery machine, then I am sure there will be trade-offs. It might or might not detect as deep as the Etrac, but I doubt that it will ID targets at depth, as well as the Etrac can. In fact, you might start seeing small flat iron etc. ringing in as non-ferrous. I really see this machine complementing the Etrac/CTX etc. It is a lite machine, waterproof to 10 feet, fast recovery(handling trashy sites better etc) This would be my go-to general purpose machine and if I wanted to do more specific types of detecting, such as "Deep" silver.....then I would grab an Etrac. ( as an afterthought if it does offer a "reactivity" setting.........)
The 800 model offers 5 freq and a multi ( so six total if you count the "Multi") It looks like the new machine gives a single VDI number. So if that is true then you will be faced with six different sets of VDI numbers, one for each freq. So the next question is do they offer the option to "normalize" the VDI numbers and if so to what freq are they normalized to? What numeric scale do they use, is it similar to Whites -95 to +95 or is it a 0-99 scale and where is the ferrous non-ferrous breakpoint? Does it offer any kind of iron audio volume adjustments, is it a single tone or multi-tones machine, and if multi tones does it offer the ability to set tone breaks ?? etc etc etc. A picture of a guy jumping from an airplane doesn't really answer too many questions. Lots of questions still out there about this machine.
I find it funny that the whole premise of this machine is that it will obsolete single freq machines and yet the machine can run in 5 different single freq. So Minelab says single freq is obsolete, but we will let you run your machine in five different obsolete modes LOL. I think people need to pay less atten. to marketing hype and just look at the specs and features to see what it might offer.
It has 5 frequencies . 5 10 15 20 40 . Multi is all of those together . When you look at what is says is there are 6 settings , the first 5 are single then the multi which is all 5 . Still that will be enough.
I have used the Terra 705 and this is very similar in design though freqs are different but the Terra 705 had a good depth for Silver , i also suspect the Equinox will be better on Gold due to the high freq .
The ET and CTX have trade offs too . I have been told that even though the ET and CTX have 28 freqs that they only search in small groups of freqs at a time and the freqs are chosen automatically depending on the ground or site which the machine can determine , also that they are linked to the noise channels .
As for the numbers on the Equinox , i would not be too bothered with them , listen to the machine . If set up right and you have the right headphones then you will know what targets they are . I learned the Terra like that and after a while i could go on a beach and know exactly what i was digging almost every time .
Your last bit about making all single freq machines obsolete , in a way thats true. It will be able to swich from 1 to multi and no other can do that and the patent will see to it that no other company other than Chinese !!! will either. And this machine even with the multi freq function on will be faster than the Deus .
XP are going to have a fit if the Equinox is as good as the info says . I hope so.