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Equinox 800 trashy program

halfstep

Elite Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Messages
608
Location
Hunter Missouri
I've got a real good grasp of the equinox 800 modes and settings. I have been running some experiments on different setting with different modes. I've been wanting to take FULL advantage of the equinox high speed and iron bias and build a custom program to save into the "user mode" that would allow me to hunt those super trashy campsites and old home sites. Or anywhere the trash is abundant.

I have previously hit some campsites that were loaded with trash. I did well at picking out coins amongst all the trash but it made for slow detecting. Most campsites have some clad but if one has to spend a long time searching, it isn't worth the time and effort.

So I have been tinkering and fine tuning the equinox 800 so as to be able to quickly clean out a campsite of it's clad. So I set up Park 1 with some custom settings and saved it into the user mode. I did this on my wife's 800 and also on my 800. Then this evening, we went down to a campsite a few miles from the house. It is a deer hunting campsite that has been used for years. My wife and I have already hit it twice with her safari and me with my CTX. We picked out a few bucks in clad and went over the whole site pretty good. (My CTX was NOT set up as well as I could have set it for trashy campsites) I just used a park program on the CTX that I liked.

So I thought this would be a great place to take the 800's and give the new custom settings a test and see if we can find anymore clad. I let my wife hit the inner parts and in less than and hour, she found 2 quarters, 1 dimes, 1 nickel and 3 pennies. I went around the outer parts and found 8 pennies. That is 15 coins we have missed before. My wife is very good with a detector. She doesn't know much about the settings so I set the detector/s up for her and turn her loose. At 5' 2" and 115 pounds, she is a dirt ninja.

But anyways, the custom program proved to be a success. It made for quick and easy clad picking. It was amazingly quiet considering the over abundance of trash and the coins rang out loud and clear. What trash got thru most of it gave a sketchy tone making for easy audio ID. But the coins gave the solid tone like the sounds of a telegraph being sent from a submarine. lol They had that solid TAT TAT sound with a sonar extension. Easy to ID the tones. Push tabs mostly sounded sketchy which was nice but beavertails sounded as good as nickels. Bottle caps mostly sounded weak and jumpy.

I am going to hit some more trashy campgrounds and see if I can tweak the program some more but overall, my wife was well pleased. And so was I. It is strictly a coinshooter program.

The equinox 800 is very adjustable and versatile. With some understanding of the settings, you can get a lot out of it. I also set the Park 1 and 2 up with some tweaked setting as well as the Field 1 and 2 with their own settings. I will test these as well. They should work very well for the types and locations we hunt.

We went to one of the creeks Monday and took the 800's for a swim. The are actually waterproof, lol. After getting some water time in and learning what I needed for that, I set the Park 2 up as a fresh water hunting program for coins and jewelry. (Park 1 is set up or parks and yards) I will go back and see if my new settings will work well.
 
If I tell you then I will have to kill your detector. :laughing:

I am going to run over some more campsites and see if I am satisfied with it. I might need to tweak it some. I am running a fair amount of discrimination as to eliminate a lot of trash found in campsites. I may need to adjust that a little yet. All the coins are high tone, high volume and everything else is low tone, low volume. This makes the coins jump out and makes what trash gets thru sketchy. I set the iron bias at 0 and the recovery speed at 8 and run the sensitivity at a lower number around 15.

Those campsites are trashy and I wanted a way to hunt them quickly without all the distracting time consuming trash tones. I just wanted to be able to pick the clad (silver if any) out of them without digging a lot of trash and chasing signals. Those campsites usually contain enough clad to make them worth detecting but the trash can negate that. The equinox is great for unmasking making it a good detector for campsites and old home sites littered with iron. But trashy sites will eat up a lot of time so I take advantage of discrimination and the tone bins and tone volumes.
 
I've been running park 1 with iron bias at 0 and recovery speed at 7 the last few times I've gotten to go (been working a lot lately and haven't been able to detect). However I either only disc out ferrous or run no disc so I can hear it all. I can see where your trashy program would make coins really stand out. I may have to try that next time.
 
I've been running park 1 with iron bias at 0 and recovery speed at 7 the last few times I've gotten to go (been working a lot lately and haven't been able to detect). However I either only disc out ferrous or run no disc so I can hear it all. I can see where your trashy program would make coins really stand out. I may have to try that next time.

I know the rule of thumb is to run as open of a pattern as possible. Discrimination requires more time for the detector is filter thru and good targets mixed in with trash are harder to separate when those areas are discriminated out. Plus tone fullness and quality go down when discrimination goes up. Depth can also be reduced. There is always a trade off. One can't have it both ways.

That is why one has to weigh out both the good and bad and decide what one is willing to give up in order to gain something else. In those super trashy sites, running a more open program, one will be dealing with a constant bombardment of signals. It is like detecting with a machine gun. That would make the process of detecting those sites a very time consuming task. Most of those sites don't contain much if any valuable finds. Mainly clad, an occasional pocket knife or some sort of something a camper left behind. So I don't want to spend very much time pilfering through all the burnt and melted junk, all the wrappers, bottle caps, beavertails, square tabs and brass shell casings. I just want to pick out the few bucks in clad that has accumulated over the years.

So I run a tight coin picking discrimination setup with not a lot of room for anything else. I want the trash that escapes the discrimination to sound sketchy and I want the coins to have a unique sound that is strong and solid. I use extremes in the tones and volumes to get unique tone responses. The discrimination pattern is something that the user needs to develop to their area and defined by the amount and type of trash.

High recovery speed and low iron bias gets good separation and helps to reduce the effects of a lot of discrimination. It helps to gain back some tone quality as well. It helps to give more accurate ID in those sites as well. Keeping the sensitivity down lower than in normal hunting sites helps a lot with falsing and makes for a lot quieter detector. Running a "hot" setting in those trashy sites just leads to chasing ghosts. It slows you down.

It runs amazingly quiet and the coins pop out with strong consistent straight high tones and the trash, except beavertails, is weak and sketchy. I can blast thru those gnarly sites quickly and know that I cleaned it as well as can be expected.

I also have a CTX I bought in early Feb. and still learning it. But I am gathering enough knowledge and experience to build a program for those trashy campsites as well. It's more complex with the CTX and requires more testing and time. Then I can compare the CTX with the equinox to see how they both do.
 
I know the rule of thumb is to run as open of a pattern as possible. Discrimination requires more time for the detector is filter thru and good targets mixed in with trash are harder to separate when those areas are discriminated out. Plus tone fullness and quality go down when discrimination goes up. Depth can also be reduced. There is always a trade off. One can't have it both ways.

That is why one has to weigh out both the good and bad and decide what one is willing to give up in order to gain something else. In those super trashy sites, running a more open program, one will be dealing with a constant bombardment of signals. It is like detecting with a machine gun. That would make the process of detecting those sites a very time consuming task. Most of those sites don't contain much if any valuable finds. Mainly clad, an occasional pocket knife or some sort of something a camper left behind. So I don't want to spend very much time pilfering through all the burnt and melted junk, all the wrappers, bottle caps, beavertails, square tabs and brass shell casings. I just want to pick out the few bucks in clad that has accumulated over the years.

So I run a tight coin picking discrimination setup with not a lot of room for anything else. I want the trash that escapes the discrimination to sound sketchy and I want the coins to have a unique sound that is strong and solid. I use extremes in the tones and volumes to get unique tone responses. The discrimination pattern is something that the user needs to develop to their area and defined by the amount and type of trash.

High recovery speed and low iron bias gets good separation and helps to reduce the effects of a lot of discrimination. It helps to gain back some tone quality as well. It helps to give more accurate ID in those sites as well. Keeping the sensitivity down lower than in normal hunting sites helps a lot with falsing and makes for a lot quieter detector. Running a "hot" setting in those trashy sites just leads to chasing ghosts. It slows you down.

It runs amazingly quiet and the coins pop out with strong consistent straight high tones and the trash, except beavertails, is weak and sketchy. I can blast thru those gnarly sites quickly and know that I cleaned it as well as can be expected.

I also have a CTX I bought in early Feb. and still learning it. But I am gathering enough knowledge and experience to build a program for those trashy campsites as well. It's more complex with the CTX and requires more testing and time. Then I can compare the CTX with the equinox to see how they both do.

I'll be looking forward to your comparisons with the CTX. I may try your disc pattern suggestion at my son's soccer field sometime. Thanks for the input.
 
I'll be looking forward to your comparisons with the CTX. I may try your disc pattern suggestion at my son's soccer field sometime. Thanks for the input.

I am comparing 2 trashy ground programs. Both do basically the same thing but in two different ways.

The first trashy ground program is where I use a lot of discrimination to block most everything but the coins. I left the breaks where they were. I have the volume set to 0 in bins 1,2 and 4. I have the volume at 25 in bins 3 and 5. Bin 3 is where the nickel is and bin 5 is where pennies, dimes, quarters and silver. I also have the tone in bins 3 and 5 set on 25. It very quiet and the coins hit high and loud. What trash gets through in bins 3 and 5 sound sketchy and broken.

The second trashy ground program is wide open with only 40 being notched out to stop wrap around. But in this program, I moved the breaks. Break 1 goes from -10 to 0. Bin 2 goes from 1 to 11, bin 3 goes from 12 to 13, bin 4 goes from 14 to 18. Bin 5 goes from 19 to 40. I turn the volume to 0 on bins 1,2 and 4 and turn the volume to 25 on bin 3 and 5. I turn the tone up to 25 on bins 3 and 5 also. All you hear is the coins and what little trash that falls into bins 3 and 5. It is very quiet and the coins hit high and loud. With no discrimination, the tones are a little longer and smoother. I am thinking that with no discrimination that this program will unmask better than the first program that has a lot of discrimination.

Both programs accomplish the same thing but in different ways. First program I use discrimination to eliminate unwanted trash tones but in the second program I use the tone breaks to eliminate unwanted trash tones. Both sound and react nearly identical and trash sound sketchy in both. But the tones sound a little better in the second program.

I will check one against the other over the next couple of days to see if one unmasks and finds more coins than the other.
 
That 2nd one is similar to how I have my coin program set up. It runs quiet and has been working well for me.

Bin one is -9 - 10 (iron, foil, small gold) and is muted.
Bin two is 11-13 (nickels), low tone max volume.
Bin three is 14-17 (pulltabs, canslaw, jewelry) muted.
Bin four is 18-22 (IHP, zinc), mid tone max volume.
Bin five is 23+ (copper, silver), highest tone max volume.
No discrimination used.
 
That 2nd one is similar to how I have my coin program set up. It runs quiet and has been working well for me.

Bin one is -9 - 10 (iron, foil, small gold) and is muted.
Bin two is 11-13 (nickels), low tone max volume.
Bin three is 14-17 (pulltabs, canslaw, jewelry) muted.
Bin four is 18-22 (IHP, zinc), mid tone max volume.
Bin five is 23+ (copper, silver), highest tone max volume.
No discrimination used.

It is very similar to mine. With no discrimination, the tones are better than when using a lot of discrimination. I think it will also unmask better also as the detector doesn't have to pull non ferrous targets through a wall of discrimination.

Thanks for sharing.
 
That 2nd one is similar to how I have my coin program set up. It runs quiet and has been working well for me.

Bin one is -9 - 10 (iron, foil, small gold) and is muted.
Bin two is 11-13 (nickels), low tone max volume.
Bin three is 14-17 (pulltabs, canslaw, jewelry) muted.
Bin four is 18-22 (IHP, zinc), mid tone max volume.
Bin five is 23+ (copper, silver), highest tone max volume.
No discrimination used.

Im using DirtFishings coin set up....which is very similar...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ur0FfDDKUo
 
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