Minelab Equinox new "setting" added...

Hi all.

In the last couple of days, Minelab released an updated "quick-start guide" for the Equinox.

[www.minelab.com]

Someone on another forum mentioned that they noticed a NEW setting, in the new quick-start guide, called "Iron Bias."

Sure enough, it's on there. Settings run from 0-3 on the Equinox 600, and 0-9 on the Equinox 800, and it is one of the "Advanced Settings," according to Minelab.

Anyone have ANY idea what this might be?

Novelty, or something with real, potential value?

Steve

I would think MAYBE Steve it's sort of like the old BBS with iron mask on/off...With it on you could here targets next to iron better.....Maybe the Bias is the same but adjustable...run it low and its has less ability to cleanly reject Iron run it higher and it does better at rejecting...

that would be like the DEUS Silencer..Or like what is ay on Makro or Noktas by Bleedy filters...things that get rejected are not cleanly rejected that way a co locate scenario can have a chance at a bleed through...Iron bias should/could also help in iron Fe dirt scenario..

I believe the Equinox also has a sort of Reactivity setting too..for faster recovery speeds...so add the Iron bias too and we can see the Equinox is aimed at unmasking on a new level for Minelab in dense iron..

DEUS Reactivity = Nox Recovery Setting

DEUS Silencer = Nox Iron Bias setting

Maybe just a thought anyways..

Thanks for seeing it Steve! Really has my Curiosity piqued now..

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Keith --

Thanks for the insight! Very interesting. Since I don't have a Deus, nor any other machine that has employed such a setting, I'm trying to understand it in my mind.

A question that immediately pops up in my mind, is, how is this different than just giving "higher resolution" down in the iron disc area? In other words, couldn't you accomplish the same thing by, instead of -9 to 0 in iron ID numbers, make it say -40 to 0, and then you'd be able to just "fine tune" your disc setting, to let a partially masked target "bleed through" or not?

I have heard you and others over the years talk about how instead of just flat rejecting all iron, you like to find where the bulk of the nails at a given site are just barely rejected, and then set your disc right there -- which might be way down into the iron range, but that this approach gives you the best ability to "pick through" the iron and maybe let a severely masked non-ferrous target (whose ID is pulled way down into the iron range due to ID averaging with the nearby nails) to maybe sneak through (in other words, targets that would otherwise be discriminated out, if one was discriminating ALL of the "iron range.") And it sounds like you are describing sort of the same concept here, when discussing the Deus "silencer". So how is this "silencer" different than just "having a bigger ID range on the iron end?" Couldn't one then, with this "expanded iron ID range" then accomplish this very same sort of "fine tuning" with discrimination? There MUST be some flaw in that logic, otherwise I'd think that's exactly what the manufacturers would do -- just "expand the iron range." But since the "silencer" idea does exist, it must be different in some way that "utilizing discrimination on a machine with an expanded iron range..."

By the way, I can't take credit for seeing this in the new "getting started" guide. I glanced at the new one, and read right past it. Someone else on another forum brought it up -- but it definitely has me curious.

Steve

Yes steve the more resolution the better in some cases...especially on older analog designs and such..

Yet sau on high iron resolution disc it takes maybe 4 or 5 points to go fro accepting a two inch nail to completely silencing the nail or assign it solid iron tone..So lets say we set it in the middle of that range so we can hope to get some better unmasking bya co-locate scenario.. well the nail is going to give a very strong high tone and strong low tone ..To us that would sound like every naul was hiding a non ferrous object.

But what if we have decent resolution on that nail and have it report as a low tone or null your preference from tone settings but then have the filtering of that disced item be Bleedy..sort of like a haze over the audio sort of a sparky report little pips and pops on top of it...thena co locate can also be heard as more smoother hit in the pops and clicks...

What happens on a filter if its trying hard to shut up a target the conductance of co locate target has to be strong enough to pull it above that quietness..Sort of like on a C.B radio ..D.X signals has to over come the squelch..There there but hard to hear in the background if the squelch is too high to silence things you don't want to hear...So if a manufacturer cna provide some BLEED of rejected targets the legitimate wanted targets start to have a fighting chance at Breaking through..Sam can hold true for bad soil..if you can have the soil sort of raspy and poppy instead of quiet, smaller deeper lower conductors can break through..

So get the disc right to the point of breaking tone or nulling a nail then let the BLEED happen and what you get is more audio intelligence and less nail chasing.Used to we dug a ton of nails to get smaller keepers...and the ratio was horrendous..sometimes twenty+ nails to a keeper..now we maybe dig 10 or less nails to a keeper.

Another great feature to have is blending tones instead of start stop tones..This is the word I use called BLENDY and couple that with BLEEDY and you can really start to Unmask Better....Luckily Minelab has Blendy audio already so maybe the NOX will too?? and if it does we may be in DEUS territory overnight...the MAKNOK units also have this BLENDY BLEEDY and that's there claim to fame in iron dissecting and its not by chance either...

Bending (Open Gate Audio) Vs Timed report ( Closed Gate audio) allows for a smooth transition from object to object in a calliope type report it doesn't have a predetermined trigger of say here's a nail tone then its timed till it can say here's a Non ferrous tone..it can seamlessly ROLL from one to the other with no hiccups ..By doing this there's no lag..So then throw on top of that the BLEED and we have a SONIC picture of whats under the coil at any given time..FREE FLOW OF INFO I like to call it..

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla

Keith, that is really, really interesting.

You are very descriptive and do a good job explaining, but I'd almost have to spend an hour or so with you, while you show me what you mean and I ask you questions; it would be great to see you making changes in your settings, and talking while you do it, over a suspected co-locate...

It's hard for me to imagine a cleanly disc'd out nail, but then with this "haze of clicks and pops" still happening, and then the subtle difference of the tone of the actual co-located non-ferrous, and how it sounds different than the clicks and pops over the nail. This is a skill that I'd love to learn, and I just don't have that many sites to practice on, here in Oklahoma. We don't have those "square nail littered" sites here (we are largely "too young,") but when I travel back to PA, I invariably end up getting into those sites, and wish I had the skill to pick through them better.

Steve