maxxkatt
Forum Supporter
Garrett AT???? are you referring to the AT Pro? My Garrett AT Pro has 4 replaceable AA batteries.
Who should I listen to? The guy who hunts clad? The guy who hunts early relics? The guys finding stuff? The guys finding silver? It all depends......
I don't water hunt for modern stuff so scubas review is basically useless for me.
I don't hunt clad in clean ground so woodbutchers review is basically useless for me.
Woodbutchers says it doesn't perform better than any other mid priced machine... on what clad? Woodbutcher makes a broad stroke with his statement.
Most read multiple veviews written by users who have different needs and results from their new product. This way they can get a balanced idea of the capabilities from those seasoned users. I see no problem with those reviews. Where things go wrong is where Mr. High Pockets who is product supported tries to force his SHILL (only the good) impression off to unsuspecting buyers. They give the rosey impression that it is possible to find a dime under a volkswagon. This is true but you have to remove the volkswagon to do it not from a perch way above it. With this machine the crop of reviewers that have posted have pretty well given a number of negative aspects along with an above average of favorable traits. This is shown by the different targets and areas that these new owners are hunting and what their expectations have been. Every thing being said the NOX has held a good portion of the high ground and has not fell victim to the falsehoods because they are few.
I dug a bug once and found a silver dime underneath.
Does that count? Lol
Only if he was on a rug.
Only if he was on a rug.
Not if he had a jug.Couldnt be , because then he would be too snug...
The equinox is designed in a specific way. Understanding what is does well and what it doesn't do well is important to know. It may not be the best choice for your hunting preferences. Or it might be exactly what you need for your hunting preferences. It takes time to learn the detector and to find out how to set it to get the results you need in your hunting situation and location.
As with Woodbutcher, he has a legitimate complaint about the high conductor ID compression. I think he mislabeled it as inaccurate instead of compressed. The coins are stacked really tight in the discriminate. This makes it more difficult to get separate ID's for different coins. They can run into each other and sometimes overlap Even though the ID is accurate, it is also compressed and for his style of hunting, this does not provide enough target info. The equinox does hit coins very well but you will dig more undesirable coins in the process. But some of this can be overcome with using ALL the settings correctly to gain more info.
Where the equinox stands out is it's low conductor sensitivity. It really hammers those small low conductors well. Nickels on down really stand out. It will make a great beach detector for finding small gold. But you also have some moderately tight low conductor compression and this may lead to digging some more trash if you don't utilize all the other settings.
Since the equinox has blistering processing and recovery speed, the tones are short and quick. Gathering detailed info from the tones is difficult especially when the recovery speed is set high. Also with the compressed ID discriminate, you get multiple targets falling into the same ID number making it difficult to decide on to dig or not to dig. So one needs to take into account their hunting location and specifics and tune the recovery speed accordingly. Slowing it down will lengthen the tones and allow the detector more time to process the target. This can help to aid in audio ID. I think most guys just jack the recovery speed to high and leave it there thinking the faster is better. But that is not always the case. The recovery speed needs to be set to reflect the best performance in your hunting grounds. And even within your hunting grounds, things can rapidly change so one needs to be aware of this and make changes as they go along. Too low of a recovery speed may result in an inaccurate ID so the balance needs to be found and maintained.
Iron bias is another setting most just set and forget. This can cause problems as you will never gain useable feedback to accurately ID a target. Too high and you will get some wrap around producing a false tone that fools you into thinking it is a non-ferrous target. You dig it and it's a nail. Tune the iron bias to give accurate tones and be ready to change it as the iron gets thicker or thinner.
The two main settings on the equinox, (recovery speed and iron bias) have opened up a lot of hunting sites that the FBS detectors struggled at. So guys buy the equinox thinking that these two settings are a game changer. It is, but(ONLY) if used accordingly to your hunting environment.
With the use of discrimination on a compressed discriminate scale, -10 to 40, you will have targets share 2 or more ID numbers. A push tab will hit 13/14. If you block one of the numbers, the other number will still sound off but with a broken tone since only one of the two numbers sounding off. This is known as skirting. The open number tries to sound off around the discriminated number. This can be used to your advantage as to alert you to a possible good target like a gold ring while making the push tab sound bad. This helps to ID the push tab without blocking the gold ring, But you will also need a checker mode saved in the user mode to further investigate. This can save you a lot of digging while not completely blocking a potential gold ring. So use you discrimination strategically and sparingly to keep the tone quality better and to maintain better depth.
Using the sensitivity accordingly on this detector is more important due to the high gain sensitivity. Run it too high and it becomes noisy and unstable, too low and you loose deep small targets and loose depth. Run the sensitivity to give stable, high quality tones with good depth. But don't overdo it or you performance will suffer. Change it as needed through the ground you are on. Keep it higher in the cleaner open areas and cut it back in the trashy difficult areas. This will greatly reduce unwanted wrap-around falsing.
Also on the 800, you can move the tone breaks and manage the tone bins so that you can just mute a bin or two. This acts like a discrimination but without the effects on the tones that a lot of discrimination creates. It helps it to keep the processing fast as possible while maintaining better tone quality, especially with a high recovery speed.
There is a lot to be learned about the equinox that will be revealed in time so at this time, it is premature to make a definite decision about the overall performance of the equinox. Early reports and videos show some promising results though.