MINELAB EQUINOX 800 VERSE THE VISTA GOLD GAIN

Heres a test video of the two machines head to head on some test. Thanks John for sending it to me....Seems to be a real easy machine to operate and of course it will take time to learn tonal nuances . The test will show the gist of it.GOLD GAIN and EQUINOX

Thanks for doing that.... and putting that one to bed.

Dean



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2018 03:02AM by bado1.

Ole' Calabash is wearin' clogs! I haven't seen a pair of those since the good Ole' 70s. I guess that's the New thing now. Man I am old. But still lived through the best decade ever.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2018 02:20AM by Harold,ILL..

Real men wear clogs Harold..

Nice video--thanks for the effort.

Nice video Calabash.
I'll stick with my Nox and Deus and Impact and Etrac.

Calabash,

Great test and good synopsis/opinion on your part. Lots of things I can agree with. Glad you took the time to do this and thank you. Even with only a few hours under your belt with it, you showed the pluses and minuses very well and outlined them in your presentation.

Yes...the VGG is not a cherry picker or a unit to hunt with in modern trash. But my last outing in modern trash (along with tons of rusty nails and pieces of iron) I found that gold chain. The ID on that chain came in at a 1-2 on a NOX 800 with a crappy tonal signal...similar to what the boardwalk screws came in at and what they sounded like. Sometimes going into a hunt with a dig all non-ferrous targets mindset brings back the goods...even though you end up with a pouch full of tabs/aluminum/srews/washers, etc. I went into that hunt with that mindset. Its a tough one and you have to be disciplined, but the VGG forces you to get into that mindset. You can't change a setting or 2 and set it up to cherry pick. However, you make an excellent point when you stated what happens when you are on a site with a few other guys and you want to select certain targets to hit while leaving others in the ground since you have competition. Can't do that with the VGG and it's an great point.

If one was hunting with a NOX and cherry picking, digging for instance 12 and higher numbers, they never would have found that chain. So cherry picking can be a detriment in certain applications. Beach hunting is a place where you really don't want to cherry pick. Dry sanding is murder in terms of modern trash...but digging that garbage is the only way have a chance to pick off gold of all types. It's easy digging though, so that is why most of us do dig that garbage. I can definitely see not using a VGG in a park or lawn type setting where you really have to pick your spots. Hence your point of it being more of a specialty unit and not a unit where one can pick their spots. But the opposite can also be true in that situation stated above about having competition at a site. If the other guys are doing the same thing and are after certain targets while leaving others in the ground, then the dig all non-ferrous mindset may pull out the winner of the day.

Without question a person new to the sport with a $800-$900 budget should go for a NOX....the VGG is not a first detector for most people. The NOX is.

As far as analog vs digital. Some of us just gel with an analog, 2 tone machine. The audio is less processed, simpler and using headphones, there are those tonal nuances and pops/cracks/sizzels a digital unit does not give us. And the analog brained guys such as myself like that stuff.

I can't gel with the ML tones. Not sure why. Only one I can is the E-Trac and just use that to coin hunt since I can cherry pick high tones.Had a Sov GT, Excal....gone. If I do get a NOX, I know it will probably not last too long or I will sell the E-Trac since it seems the NOX is pretty on par with it and can do other things and it's water proof. A HUGE advantage even if just salt water beach hunting or wet sanding. The ability to give the unit a fresh water bath after those types of hunts is priceless.

As far as that Super Six goes don't test with it. If you have some time, hunt with it in some of your sites. Just GB, NO boost, 2 tone, Gain and Sens at close to max, red dot iron discrimination, iron volume at a level where you can hear it but it is lower than normal volume and dig all non-ferrous tones.

It will be interesting to see if you find anything cool.

Heck...you may just be a digital, multi tone, fancy pants kinda guy and can't gel with the VGG. Us old fart analog guys won't hold it against you !! HA!! You know I am busting em.

Don't send it back until you at least get one good hunt in with the Super Six.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2018 03:53AM by therover61.

I am gonna take it to my old house site and give it a whirl in a few days. Im a dig it all kinda fellow myself on my relic sites just like having the choice.

Cool video man another one bites the dust VGG seems like a decent machine tho. The iron audio is way obnoxious sounding tho, at least on camera

My sites have very little modern trash, so both would perform well in and around the small nails on a medieval site. But the extra that the nox brings makes it a no brainer, much more versatile.
I wonder though, with some of the torn down old homesites you guys detect, where there may be bigger lumps of iron and tin, bits of cast iron pots etc, would they both handle it the same?

That's a good question?

A good question, how does the Nox handle shallow tin can lids and deteriorated tin can parts? Does a person dig a lot of it with the Nox? One of Calabash first video of the Nox had it giving a shallow can a good quarter signal on a can just under the surface. I heard ni modulation or overload on it. My sites are littered with this stuff. Without a concentric coil or some kind of modulation to let you know it seems you would spend a lot of time digging this stuff?

Well after using it you get a feel for aluminium cans (shallow) . It reacts different to SMALLER round objects. Its hard to explain but its different. As for digging tin cans not really been on a site loaded with them yet.

Out west here where at old homesteads, mining camps, ghost towns etc are littered with rusted tin, stove parts, flat iron. The early settlers discarded this stuff everywhere. The Deus gives a great ID on it but the sound is hollow sounding letting you know not to dig. Makro/Noktas with how much they are amped up will overload on a lot of it even if 4 to 5 in deep with jumpy IDs. Deeptech VGG will blast your ears off but also sound crackly, not smooth like a good target. Tesoro with a concentric will avoid lots of it and if it does hit on it will give a long tone instead of a short crisp tone. Different tools for different detecting scenarios. I will always need at least one machine capable of running a concentric coil in my arsenal. Right now I happen to have 5, a Vaquero, Mojave , Multi Kruzer and F75. F75 will probably go but it's still a good machine just don't have enough arms to run them all.

FWIW, I can offer some insight to the Nox and the tin cans and roof pieces.

I have two sites I have hunted quite extensively that would fit that description. One of them is actually on my property that I own. There was an 1850s house there, that some time after the turn of the century, they replaced the wood shingles with tin. This house was torn down in the late 1980s, along with the outbuildings that were also on the property...and promptly dozed off into the woods into a pile. There's tin cans, tin roof pieces, all over the place here. In fact, if you ever get the chance, look up "tin can holler" from Athens, TN and what you read about is part of my property and area that I live in. The other site is a house built approx 1910 and is currently still lived in.

With the Nox, I haven't had any issue with the tin cans or the tin itself from the roof. What I do find myself digging though, are the lead seal things from the nail/screw that went in the tin roof. Those things are everywhere up here on my place where they tore the house down.

The trash item I've noticed a big spike in digging since having the Nox, are aluminum screwcaps. I don't have a problem with cans or can slaw. The aluminum screw caps though, I just can't pass those up. They normally ID around 20-22 but sound too good to pass up to my ears.

What about steel crown bottle caps?
I would imagine it's good with them like the CTX and Etrac?

Welgund Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A good question, how does the Nox handle shallow t
> in can lids and deteriorated tin can parts? Does
> a person dig a lot of it with the Nox? One of Cal
> abash first video of the Nox had it giving a shall
> ow can a good quarter signal on a can just under t
> he surface. I heard ni modulation or overload on
> it. My sites are littered with this stuff. Witho
> ut a concentric coil or some kind of modulation to
> let you know it seems you would spend a lot of tim
> e digging this stuff?

Most of the smaller rusted tin can pieces the box 800 does really well on, the bigger can sized stuff will still sound good but easy to tell by lifting the coil and swinging over them. As for the smaller stuff the Nox eats them alive prob one of the best that I've used. That out in Nv in the ghost towns. Cant wait to get the 6" coil to try, should be a game changer for me in my iron ghost towns.

Hello all.

Video below words....

Nice Video Calabash and done without bad intentions what is good to see these days, I truly didn't see you fudging settings to make one machine more favourable over.

Thought would do a video in response to your video, it's not response of my machine is better than yours as in all fairness I think you did a good honest video there, park hunting and cherry picking you can't really do with the VGG, you can keep to the real clean signals but not a chance in hell that your going to be as accurate when picking items against a VDI machine.

I also appreciate you kept the GB at the same point as you left them from the ground.

You've done a great job on the depth part of the VGG and your words in general are not out of line.

But as I said before and you said in the video that you need to learn a machine be it from any manufacturer.

With the VGG the GB dial can be used to control the tone of the nails and this in return allows you to run a lower amount of disc when in (Shallow Iron) without falsing on iron as much when your looking at items mixed in with the nails at max 4-5 inches!

The Red Dot on the disc is what you may call a safe zone also, on the Red Dot with all Vistas that have the two tone ability gives you more target information, to give an example a clean silver coin away from iron in soil will give you a crystal clean high tone, a odd shape bit of lead or bent cracked weak metal in the same clean soil conditions tend to give a slight scratch to the high tone or a small fuzz of iron tone whilst sweeping Coil off the suspected target in certain direction.

The lower disc you use the more you lose the target information but you gain in general performance when separating targets, you can in many cases run the VGG with zero disc and that will take care of small iron.

Or bigger iron can be taken care of with good use of the Ground Balance as shown in the video.... it's all about understanding the soil and the machine and the targets depths via the audio that the machine feeds back to your ears.

So I did this video in response to show you what can be missed if you run the machine in on the pre set Red Dot Disc Point and not use the GB to assist when the right conditions allow.

But I take nothing away from the ML Equinox or your video, just showing what can be achieved with a little knowledge and understanding of the VGG

Video here...... [youtu.be]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2018 08:58PM by Ziggy.

Nicely put Ziggy - respect for everyone’s inputs is normal on this forum (but not universal). This is one of the things which makes this place nice.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

Ziggy, setting the disc on the first notch and ground balance to the 9 o'clock position and using the super 6 coil is dynamite also. I have been having so much fun with the Gold Gain. I am a long time Tesoro fan though and don't care if I have digital read outs and such. If a machine performs at the highest in the nail beds it has a place in my arsenal.

One of the reasons I sent my VGG to Calabash was to witness several things.

1 - how fast can he set it up and be proficient using it. He pretty much said it's a real easy unit to set up and being a veteran hunter, got the VGG humming in seconds flat. Shoot, he didn't even need to manual as the wind took it and almost blew it right across the porch ! I cracked up when I saw that.

2 - Depth in his test garden. No problem there.

3 - Recovery speed/separation. Nail board test grade I give it a B. Since he was comparing it to the Nox with the 11 inch coil he did not test with the Super Six. He stated that it would not be a fair comparison and I agree 100%. Hopefully if he has some time he will do that test using the Super Six...but as I stated in a previous thread, I want him to actually hunt with that coil and just have some fun. No comparing, testing, etc. Just go out to one of his sites and use the VGG for a few hours and report back.

The other reason is it hear is opinion. I think this video/opinion piece is his best yet. Fair all around, brings up some really valid points and showed the abilities of both units with both units probably on par, settings wise. Hard to tell since one is a Corvette the other a GTO.

Some guys like driving a Corvette, some a GTO.

In either case, you have to drive awhile to first get the feel of the car...and drive it a lot to master it, know exactly how it runs, what it can do and how to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of it.

Same with high quality detectors.

Bottom line... have fun out there.

I watched that video Ziggy...that's an eye opener.

Gonna go back to that beach site when the VGG returns, lower the discrim and run with several GB settings to see if I can sniff out a few more goodies.

Indeed and good to hear Welgund, I only use the GB to help like this in really busy iron areas, I generally run disc at 9pm but tell folks to set on the dot when familiarising their self with the VGG or any other Vista machine.

Many soils I've been on balance around the 9am naturally also and some maxed out at 7am.... it's just when your balancing around The 2Pm Mark and hit huge amounts of iron it can be beneficial to dial the GB right back in order to grab targets in shallow iron, not always can you get away with it so as said it's about learning the machine, when back into the grey your hot rocks will give a reverse signal instead of being knocked out like if balanced at 2pm, don't get confused with the tone of a coin on edge though, even tricks my mind sometimes when the signal is soft.

Indeed and that's what I thought, very muched enjoyed his video here, his words about park hunting and so on is spot on and the depth test was impressive from both machines, I just thought I would show in a video with some manipulation of the GB how you can winkle out finds in shallow iron, a lot of this here has come from around the iron in the last 6 months but only a few times I've had to use the GB round at 9am due to the irons been spitting clean high tones, you will tend to find this when the iron is in mass amounts in the first few inches sometimes and that's where you can lean on the GB to lend a hand.

But the last six months the VGG has produced this lot now I've tallied up for an upcoming article, as mentioned I've dug thousands of holes to find across 5/6 fields.... but been worth it for sure.



how do you delete



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2018 03:17PM by Ziggy.

Great finds ! I haven't had time to watch the video been busy as a cat on a hot tin roof . I will get around to it and thanks for the FAIR review of my review you wrote.

Good video it hits the coin better. I will have to do some more test with your settings. The 1 st problem (I don't know if it is really one) here is my sites normally have shallow and deep iron on them usually never just one way or the other. Does it cause it to false on deep iron manipulating the ground balance like that ? It will be interesting to see how those settings compare to the Nox on a recovery speed of 7 for depth , separation and such. Thanks for posting it...

When y'all do your testing would you please show the ID numbers on the detectors that have VDI screens? When relic hunting in thick heavy iron ID numbers are as useless as taste buds on a A-hole.

tabman



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2018 11:17AM by tabman.

When hunting in thick old iron for relics if it beeps I dig it, plain and simple, don't care about ID. I don't care if your old site is littered with modern trash over ancient trash, you could miss that stellar find if your trying to skip anything above iron. Digital IDs are pretty much useless in old sites.

Harold -- I've not had the Nox at the beach yet to see about the modern crown caps, but I do have a mid 1900s-newer park that I occasionally hunt, that saw a lot of activity during the glass bottle days and it is littered with rusty crown caps everywhere. The F75 and other machines are useless in there when trying to coin hunt; they ID every one of them as a coin, even in BC mode. The FBS machines and the CZs handled them well too. There were two old water fountains that were there, that the ground around them is littered with the crown caps. I've only had the Nox in there once, and came out with 2 silver dimes, a half dozen wheats, and that large gold signet ring. I didn't dig any crown caps, but I do think the modern ones are made of a different composition than the older ones. I could be wrong though, as I don't have any of the newer ones to test.

I dig it all on old relic sites too. I do like having the tonal nuances though....., like when your over a silver coin how it sounds, then I get excited because I know its not just another shot gun shell...


Welgund Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When hunting in thick old iron for relics if it be
> eps I dig it, plain and simple, don't care about I
> D. I don't care if your old site is littered with
> modern trash over ancient trash, you could miss th
> at stellar find if your trying to skip anything ab
> ove iron. Digital IDs are pretty much useless in
> old sites.