For newbies and somewhat experienced users using the Equinox detectors.

I came from three years of hunting with the AT Pro and many hours on other mid-ranged price detectors. I now have about 30 hours on the Equinox 800 and on any given day after a hunt I am about ready to sell the 800 and buy another AT Pro. But I find myself out there 2-3 days later hunting with the 800.

I highly recommend Clive James Clynick's book "The Minelab Equinox series - From Beginner to Advanced." I paid cash for this book and am not associated with Mr. Clynick in any way. I think a total newbie to this hobby might be a little bewildered in trying to understand this fine book, but it is the best out there on the Equinox detectors. Experienced AT Pro hunter will get a lot from it. Minelab users will probably not need it, but they will likely find it useful since the Equinox is a different beast than other Minelab detectors.

I read the book, bought the 800 and off I went hunting. I experienced what many of you guys were saying. It is so chatty, I cannot make heads or tails of the sounds or TID's. Some people on the forums in the Equinox sections complained a lot about this problem. The reason I could not make heads or tails of all the beeps and boops is that I had not learned how to use the Equinox 800 properly. Not even close.

Some people say just hunt in park1 or park2 or field1 or field2 and it is just like hunting with the AT Pro in the standard coin mode. No folks it is not that easy and even if you do this you will be frustrated. In those different modes, the Minelab engineers did a great job of letting the machine take over a lot of your decision making. But what the engineers cannot do is interpret all the tones for you that you will hear for different types of targets or make you understand the very many different sequences of TID readings for different targets. Minelab engineers are good, but not that good. We are a long way from any detector saying on its display this is absolutely a barber dime buried 12” down so dig it. Or saying caution this is can slaw at 2 inches and but there is a barber dime 4 inches below it so dig both.

It is up to you to solve this part of the Equinox equation with your brain. When and if you do, you will be using one of the finest detectors every designed for the price and finding things others have overlooked using their older $800 detectors and even some of the $1000 and $2000 detectors. I notice the experienced Equinox users are praising the Equinox metal detector and the inexperience user are complaining on the forums about the Equinox. This just confirms my newbie theory of using the Equinox detector for the first 30 hours.

I put some more hours on the 800 and read Clynick’s book the second time carefully. And I learned a lot more on the second reading and the book answered a lot of the questions about the Equinox and particularly about the 800. Some of these questions didn’t even occur to me until I put in some more hunting time on my 800. Did I read the 800 user manual from Minelab? Yes, I printed it out and read it several times underlining a lot of stuff. But it is a vendor manual and they tend to be terse and just cover the functions of the hardware and little else. Maybe that is why Minelab didn’t print a manual. Maybe they didn’t want you to read it.

The Equinox is a very high performance machine. Why is it chatty (meaning producing all kinds of tones and TID readings seemingly all at once)? It is chatty BECAUSE it is a high performance detector and is reading and reporting to you everything under the coil that other older $800 - $900 detectors cannot do.

But when you learn to properly ground balance and noise cancel and use 50 tones and all metal AND RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENT TID’S AND TONES THAT TELL YOU THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUNK TARGETS AND GOOD TARGETS YOU WILL LOVE THIS CHATTINESS. It is this very chattiness that allows you to differentiate between good and junk targets.

Later you will learn to use tone breaks to adjust your tone break ranges, volumes and pitches for your particular style of hunting and type of hunting locations. I put the above sentence in all caps because you should be able to do that. And when you are able to do that, you will not be digging trash targets all the time or at least most of the time. If you don’t do that, what is the point of having such a capable detector and not using the features that makes it a great detector. Otherwise just get any $700 detector and dig everything. It will save you time in learning the Equinox and there are many guys out there who are very successful by digging every target. For me, I don’t have the time or stamina to dig everything.

Watch videos by Calabash Digger videos on Youtube. In a lot of his videos he calls out what the target is BEFORE he digs the target. He is right most of the time or very close. How does he do that? He knows how to use his Equinox and he knows how to listen to the tones and reads the TID’s. No, the Equinox will not give you one number let’s say 24 and say that is a dime, case closed. But you will learn to hear a dime and know it is not trash by the tone and other type of checks that verify it is a dime or a piece of trash. In 50 tones you can more easily recognize bottle caps as bottle caps. Same with screw caps and other junk. In the same manner the TID’s on trash are jumpy meaning they jump around and even include a number way lower or higher.

Calabash digger and other experienced Equinox users know all these things. You must get out there and hunt and learn. A good start is reading Clynick’s 111 page booklet on the Equinox series of detectors. I will most likely be re-reading it a third time.

To recap: if you are a total newbie or have been using the mid-priced detectors in the $800 range, you will likely have to really invest in some real book, forum, Youtube video learning time and field study time before you will be at one with your detector.

You should read the forums and watch the videos. I find it hard to really hear the nuances of the different tones you find in the videos compared to the tones I hear using the 800 with my earphones. I would love someone to do an instructional video on the different tones from in ground targets between junk and coins, rings, CW bullets. But I don’t know how you can get a GoPro to be wired into the headphones. I guess it is possible and almost necessary in an instructional video on metal detecting to let people hear these subtle differences in tones and of course the bouncy or steady TID’s resulting from different types of in ground targets. Very few of the videos on Youtube show clearly the TID readings while swinging due to the glare and motion.

Am I there yet with being one with my machine? Almost, but not quite. I now know what I need to accomplish, and I am in the process of doing it before I head for the civil war hunting grounds.
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You must be related to Tnsharpshooter.

Try 2 tone. That makes it easy.

Rick

I won’t slur the op here.
It is good to see someone interested and willing to share their honest thoughts on any detector model.

Yeah, to a person first giving the Equinox a run, they may not realize all the goings on with it.
I sure didin’t.
But using in a pounded site showed me it is not a typical VLF detector as far as comparing to lot of prior released models.
Some folks I reckon thought Minelab was trying to pull a fast one with folks.

They sure didin’t pull a fast one with the explorer series, Etrac, CTX, etc.

No way in the world could a cheaper priced detector perform,right?

Equinox is not an end all detector. But for price paid it is very good as far as I am concerned.

I look forward to other future models being released too.

Maxxkat, good on you to share your experiences.
What detecting forums should be about.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2018 12:08AM by tnsharpshooter.

Have any been wrapped around a tree yet... Coinstrike anyone?

I'm with Rick, for site hunting forget all the bells and whistles, 2 tones IS all you need.

Contrary to what some people post, don't be afraid to use a bit of iron bias if it helps intelligibility at a particular site. It's a big maybe that it will cost you non-ferrous targets. I have not seen anyone claim they lost a co-locate that can only be seen with IB at 0. Not talking air/above ground tests. All iron is not created equal.

Tom D if it was you. a Big Thanks.