EQUINOX VERSE EXPLORER DEPTH TEST,

In and around the places I hunt, a CZ gets shut down in ID and depth at approx 5 to 6 inches. The last CZ I had was a Tom calibrated CZ5 that was an 11.5 or 11.8...I can't remember off the top of my head. It could do that in the air testing but my ground killed it to the point that a silver quarter at 8 inches was undetectable. I had the 8 inch and 10.5 inch coil for it. The FBS machines were the same way. They could eek out a tone if I used a larger coil...the 10x14 Excellerator and especially the 13" Ultimate could. Coil control and position was critical though. The hardest coin for my testing is a 10 inch silver dime. If you look up Keiths video on the CZ that he runs through his test garden...that is what I see with a CZ here too. You can manipulate the ground balance directly over top of the dime and get a signal but doing so makes it to the point of being inoperable in normal hunting due to the noise.

I know you guys think I'm full of it when I say stuff like that but it is true.

The Nox for me has been a heavy weight in performance. I can nab silver coins down to 10 to 10.5 inches with a good enough ID and tone that tells me its a deep high conductor. When you have seen the big machines with a reputation for being super deep, fall flat on their face at 5-6 inches, it is a little bit discouraging but for the first time in a long time, I've found something that can punch deeper in disc mode. I could always run an F75/T2 in all metal and get deeper depths than I can with the Nox. But they can't do it in disc mode and not all sites are all metal friendly.

Im digging deep relics in the wild too. I understand soil plays a big part but here its a deep machine...






Welgund Wrote:
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> I tested the NOX 800 for about 50 hours on 100s of
> real in ground targets against my 11.9 Tom CZ 6a a
> nd CTX and in my soil the Nox was lacking. The No
> x 800 loves old beaver tails at the 6 to 7 in rang
> e. It would give a great tone and bounce between
> 12 and 13. I would flag about 50 good nickel sign
> als then cross check them with the CZ and would on
> ly dig at best 10 of them. I Did This 3 different
> times. Results all the same. The weird thing abo
> ut the Nox is it performed real well in my test ga
> rden but out in the old parks around me it lacked
> depth on deep targets I could only attribute to my
> soil conditions here in colorado. My CZ and CTX a
> r definitely deeper then the Nox here in my soil,
> results elsewhere may be different. Trash from t
> reasure ratio I can't see it would be better in an
> y soil against a CZ or CTX.

The Nox is a real hoover on well hunted ground, most of my Nox coin finds have been in the first 6 inch, and i'd also say that the majority have been on edge, all the easy face up coins are long gone at that depth range, and my AKA Signum got all the easy deep one's lol.

Yeah got one those guys over there crying about the f75 and explorer test I did and saying didn't have enough time on those machines to test them against the NOX. I waiting on his video to show what those detectors can do in HIS hands against it. I bet ill be waiting this time next year too.

That's the first foul they cry if you show another detector whooping their precious....

Daniel Tn Wrote:
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> In and around the places I hunt, a CZ gets shut do
> wn in ID and depth at approx 5 to 6 inches. The l
> ast CZ I had was a Tom calibrated CZ5 that was an
> 11.5 or 11.8...I can't remember off the top of my
> head. It could do that in the air testing but my
> ground killed it to the point that a silver quarte
> r at 8 inches was undetectable. I had the 8 inch
> and 10.5 inch coil for it. The FBS machines were
> the same way. They could eek out a tone if I used
> a larger coil...the 10x14 Excellerator and especia
> lly the 13" Ultimate could. Coil control and posi
> tion was critical though. The hardest coin for my
> testing is a 10 inch silver dime. If you look up
> Keiths video on the CZ that he runs through his te
> st garden...that is what I see with a CZ here too.
> You can manipulate the ground balance directly ove
> r top of the dime and get a signal but doing so ma
> kes it to the point of being inoperable in normal
> hunting due to the noise.
>
> I know you guys think I'm full of it when I say st
> uff like that but it is true.
>
> The Nox for me has been a heavy weight in performa
> nce. I can nab silver coins down to 10 to 10.5 in
> ches with a good enough ID and tone that tells me
> its a deep high conductor. When you have seen the
> big machines with a reputation for being super dee
> p, fall flat on their face at 5-6 inches, it is a
> little bit discouraging but for the first time in
> a long time, I've found something that can punch d
> eeper in disc mode. I could always run an F75/T2
> in all metal and get deeper depths than I can with
> the Nox. But they can't do it in disc mode and no
> t all sites are all metal friendly.


I believe you Daniel----and----I'm glad my ground isn't like yours!-----My ground (for the most part) is fairly heavily mineralized and most of my hunt sites are pretty trashy.---But man, you've got some "mean" ground!-----The Equinox isn't my "first choice" weapon out here but glad to hear it's working out for you.---------Del

Don't get me wrong here guys! The CTX3030 is a marvellous creation and the Design Teams involved in its creation deserve huge praise as it is the technological tour-de-force!

Here's some of what I wrote about it back in 2012

Ferrous Coin

"This new feature devised by the minicab 'boffins', is very noteworthy due to the fact that its use can truly open up the proverbial 'worked out' sites that are full of trash which thru the years, many searchers would have avoided them..that is until now so to speak!"

But to answer your Q's: weight and depth.

1. Weight - too heavy for prolonged searches: difficult to wield in heavy brush: working up inclines can be heavy going and compounded with the 15x12 coil.
2. Depth - it's no deeper than the E Trac and that does not IMHO justify almost double the cost.

The Explorer XS with the stock off white color 10.5 was to me was the deepest FBS ever built...had to run it wide open and know what to listen for but it would go really really deep...Some wont like the Noise it makes...But those who know how to run them can clean up on deepies..

Something that is close to it now and still in production is the Safari..The tones on the safari are very very similar to the XS almost exactly

Keith

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

Des --

Thanks for your follow-up. No way I can argue with your points 1 and 2, in your post. I fully agree with both of them...may experience shows the same things you are saying.

Steve

Keith --

I've never run an XS, or a Safari, but my experience with the FBS units I HAVE run are that they are all really close in depth, and the "newer" are not, despite what might otherwise have been expected, any deeper than the "older..." I always expected that the E-Trac would prove to be at least a little bit deeper than my SE Pro, but when I tested/ran the E-Trac for awhile, I found that it wasn't; I also then expected the CTX to be deeper than either the SE Pro or the E-Trac...but -- it's not, either, in my experience (unless running the 11" x 17" coil).

NOT saying there aren't some advantages on the newer FBS units vs. the older; I loved the ID-in-pinpoint-mode addition to the SE/SE Pro over earlier Explorers; I loved having the smartfind screen AND the numbers showing up AT THE SAME TIME, on the E-Trac, and I love target trace, and the additional separation ability/speed of the CTX... But, in terms of depth? I saw no improvements with successive FBS introductions. FBS units overall seem nearly neck-and-neck (though, again, I never ran the old XS with 10.5" coil, so you may be right in that it has the edge...)

Steve

I agree on the CTX Weight as one reason I went back to Etrac. They say it's balanced but to Me it was still a beast to swing. I never thought the Etrac was that bad even with the stock Pro coil as I use mostly the Sunray X8. Also the Tones are more digital on the CTX. I guess You can tweek it but still never cared for it.
But to each His own.

Steve the Older XS seemed to have how should I say less filtering of ground noise..as the progressed there was some slight increases in recovery speed and mineral handling...Nothing night and day.but some slight tweaks...and a Se pro user and a XS user in same field hunting on same day would probably hear the same targets..BUT if you ever got used to the XS there was something different in the SE..and vice a versa..To me the more noise added some slight depth in mineral..the Explorer 2 was almost a dead match for the XS by the way just coil was black but same and got built in stand and larger 1/4 inch jack..most prefer that one who use old Explorers..I usually lump those two together...

I never really latched onto the Etrac but was a good unit...But could do the same with a XS for what I wanted to do ..Dig deep.

Keith

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

Keith,

Interesting additional info; I have heard some other "old Explorer" users talk about how the Ex. II with the 10.5" coil was their favorite, as compared to the SE/SE Pro or E-Trac. You are definitely not the first I have heard share this view. It's interesting. Interesting also how you talk about the handing of ground minerals...and how "hearing" those minerals a bit more could allow you to perhaps squeak out one or two extra-deep, iffy-signal targets, as opposed to the "quieter" SE Pro and E-Trac. Very interesting for sure.

Steve

Minelab Explorer.....ground filtering. I always thought the SE had less ground filtering because it was more sparky than previous models. I may be confusing ground filtering with high gain. As the FBS models changed they gained faster processors. Does faster mean less depth, but better seperation?? Do we have to choose......lol. Just thinking out loud....still gathering my thoughts. Perhaps Minelab's attempt to answer the dilemma was with their new Multi-IQ tech. I say attempt because there is always a trade off.....fix one thing and then lacks in other areas. FBS models are known for stable and consistent ID at depth.....time has proved this over and over. None are perfect, at least Minelab, Nokta/Makro, and XP seem like their working on it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2018 01:13AM by Arkansas.

The Equinox has as much depth as any Minelab detector I have ever used. The recovery speed is the best out of all of them. Target ID is where the Equinox requires some reengineering.

Minelab FBS depth seems to have more consistant depth in a wider range of soils then the Nox. My CTX has had constant depth from Colorado to Alabama where as the Nox 800 in my Colorado soil had good depth but not lime my CTX.

Had an E-Mail from a guy asking a General Q. and as I was looking thru my Test records came across the Tests from 2008 when I was X comparing / testing / evaluating the E Trac v SE
Makes for very interesting revisiting. Lots of the info is in Charts but I came across one point that I think is hugely important and that was:

"Each false signal causes a reverse in Sensitivity. While in Auto 20, false signals tended to drop the Sensitivity to 18 and it then increased to 19 after several feet and then regained the 20 'actual' it had been at before the false signals occurred after another several paces"
I think that's an important thing to say.

Another remark was:

"In general, E Trac appears to be better and more reactive to lesser conductive Cupro Nickel coinage than SE"

Another:

"A small Roman bronze underneath a heavy mineralised brick nulled on the SE whereas the E Trac reported a feint signal!'

It's quite possible that some of the 'nuances' above were some of the factors in why the SE wasn't as popular the way the earlier Explorer's had been and the E Trac was better received afterwards?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2018 01:46PM by Des D.

Very interesting Des. The SE is probably the most coil sensitive of any of the FBS units. The original SE slimline coil was very poor. The SE Pro came out in September of 2008 (had the 11" Pro coil). The information you reproduced (above) was dated as 2008. Wonder which SE was used in the evaluation......basically which coil was used. The SE could be tamed by using the 10" coils from the earlier Explorers and not loose any depth. It took more field hours to click with the Explorer than Etrac. Those that went more by tone than meter ID went back to the Explorer. To a new user the Etrac was King. Thanks again.

Arkansas Wrote:
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> Wonder which SE was used in the evaluation..
> ....basically which coil was used.

The original non-epoxy black coil from the Explorer 2 - instructions were given that all tests had to use this coil.
The 'Pro' coil on today's E Trac didn't exist at that point!
And, I was never a fan of switching out the older non-epoxy coil to the Slimline. Just didn't seem right!

If My Ground was as Hot as Daniel's and Ole' Keith Southerns I would move. Ha!

Keith Southern Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Steve the Older XS seemed to have how should I say
> less filtering of ground noise..as the progressed
> there was some slight increases in recovery speed
> and mineral handling...Nothing night and day.but s
> ome slight tweaks...and a Se pro user and a XS use
> r in same field hunting on same day would probably
> hear the same targets..BUT if you ever got used to
> the XS there was something different in the SE..an
> d vice a versa..To me the more noise added some sl
> ight depth in mineral..the Explorer 2 was almost a
> dead match for the XS ....

Glad to see you posting this. I was/am a long-time Exp. II user. And I picked up an SE to have as a spare. One day, I took the SE to the wet salt beach erosion. I just assumed, at that point, that they were essentially the same machine.

After about 10 or 12 nail grunts, I began to get impatient at the lack of conductors to choose from. One "fringe" signal, that didn't sound that good (but I was getting a hint of conductive) was trying to bleed through. I chased it, and it turned out to be a copper penny or dime. But what struck me as odd, was that it wasn't *that* deep. Ie.: I figured "it should have sounded better".

So I re-traced through my footsteps, and dug some of those "nails" I had passed. Lo & behold: Some other coins that had been on the fringes. All of which were at depths that .... I could have sworn, the Exp. II would have "got on the first pass", rather than having to "coax in".

I posted my observations, and got several concurrences just as you're saying: The SE sacrificed a little bit of depth, in order to have better target separation.

As for the Etrac, it went back to the prior ability. However, there was a complaint there that the higher end targets TID's became blurred. Ie.: silver dime vs copper penny didn't "sing" as much of a target separation song

Yep the Etrac silver warble is the same on deep Silver dimes and wheats. At least to My ears but the digital numbers are right on as the Copper Penny will be a 39 and the Silver dime 44 in My Ground anyways. And Quarters 46. Of course at edge of depth they can vary 1 or 2 points but not much in 'My Mild' ground.
One reason I keep it as like to have at least one Detector that can separate a dime,Quarter,Half. Saves Knicks and scratches as more care and wider birth given to the Bigger Silver coins. I wish CZ could do that. Some say they can tell but You put a Quarter over 10" and tilted and they sound a like to Me.

I always preferred the SE over the ET for silver..... out of the box now the ET newbee didnt have a learning curve...... but once learned the SE was vary hard to beat on silver especially once they had the SEF or Pro coil on them.

That coil shut down can hurt depth if you are getting a lot of chatter. Thats why some are surprised there is a give point of diminished returns on higher sensitivity. Now .....the question is with MUCH faster recovery between responses has this coil shut down been reduced..... allowing the Nox to have more depth in trashy areas..... but loosing it to the SE in open areas, areas of high EMI, and running it with to much sensitivity causing more mineral chatter?