Big Boys Hobbies

The Equinox Line is the Best Sub $1000.00 All Terain Detector on the Market

Halfstep opened my eyes. Thank you.

I am not hear to argue or talk negative about the Equinox. If you want a jack-of-all-trades machine the Nox is a solid choice. If not there are other choices.

Bottom line. If you want to compare mid level machines, AND you do not need a jack-of-all-trades machine, you have other solid choices than the Equinox.

ALL mid level machines will find great stuff with good depth. in some ways with a faster recovery time the Equinox MIGHT do better than others. In other ways another machine MIGHT do better than a Nox.

There are a few folks on here with AT-Pro's that are so good with them, they can pull gold out of iron. Small gold at that. I saw that with my own eyes. They have no need for a Nox because of their knowledge of the machine they use. They don't need a salt water machine at all. They mastered what they have.

The Equinox as I see it is in a league of it's own. ONLY because of its jack-of-all-trades capabilities.

Plenty of folks do not need an Equinox. They will never detect salt water. They won't hunt gold fields.

Folks that have mastered the CTX have no use for a Nox, unless they want one.

I got one for one reason. I have been using it for wading but I went back to my CZ-20 yesterday. i haven't found gold chains, however I have found small rivets, small pieces of aluminum foil, small brass snaps, things that fell through the scoop that I couldn't locate and exactly 123 bottle tops.

Actually that bracelet is a gold chain and I haven't checked my suspicions yet but I THINK the links are large enough the CZ would have found it. I need to see. If it doesn't I will be very surprised.

Enjoy whatever machine you swing. I am sure the Equinox is being evaluated and played with by Garrett, Fisher, White's and all the others and something will come out that betters it.

BUT, no matter what anybody swings, PRAISE the USER for a good find, NOT the stupid machine.
 
An interesting thread.

So we have a new model detector series called the Minelab Equinox and it seems there is some animosity towards it or the folks who speak more positively about it.

Why?

A few things folks should maybe think long and hard about.

Does anyone in their right mind not think Minelab knew full well their competitors models capabilities?

And when engineering and designing Equinox these capabilities were part of the equation.

Higher mineralized ground being one area where VLF detectors struggles more.

So Minelab priced Equinox based on accessories (options) provided with the 600 and 800 model packages based on the entire market.

The Garrett At series got a lot of praise over the years, right?

And for good reason.

The Equinox line deserves every bit the praise the At series has received.

I'll say this here again as I have said before.
Where are the Vids where Fisher F series or White's V series are kicking Equinox booty?
Or where the At series is kicking Equinox booty?

Yeah, folks are quick to jump on the Etrac or CTX train to oust Equinox.
Amazing, it takes a Minelab to beat a Minelab.
That should say something.

Minelab just like all other detector manufacturers (at least I hope) want to make the best performing detectors.

Fact is not all can be the best in all venues all the time.

Equinox I think is for price paid best in more venues right now vs the competition.

How long will this last?
I don't know.

I can say though, folks should be keeping close eyes on Nokta/Makro and Xp at the very least, and Minelab too.

Minelab knew what they had with Equinox line.
Their intent was to rock the detecting world.
Mission accomplished !!!
 
I wouldnt say there's animosity towards a electronic device,that don't sound right.
I think the handfull of equinox lovers here need a place on the internet were all 5 members can meet and discuss how much better the equinox is than all other machines.
Is the equinox good? Just as good as anything in its price range,but myself I don’t see it being better,at least not for me.I do see the 800s coming up Used now,more and more,,and the 600s aren’t even being bought used,not from what I’ve seen..I think the smoke has cleared,and the mirrors are reflecting what I saw early on,,just another mid range machine with midpriced performance.Not a bad thing,but you get what you pay for.
 
I tell you what ive noticed a lot of times about detector reviews on the forums. You have some accomplished hunters who actually find stuff and some novices both reviewing detectors saying contrary things.

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.

The FACT is for relics in iron it does outperform a lot of whats out there. AT SERIES would be the first one I started with showing the NOX smokes it...…

If you want a machine that can pull masked targets then the equinox is for you. If you hunt clean ground like woodbutcher does then any ole machine will do for you.

Who do you listen to?

Look at the reviewers finds, comments, and type of hunting they do before you start writing machines off from what they say.

Theres been a few after the nox since it came out.....funny thing is I never really see them post any finds ….

The Equinox is the best mid priced detector going at the moment..


If someone is smart enough to research sites and find them ,then they might be smart enough to tell you about a detector. If someone cant even find a site to hunt you might not want to listen them about a detector.

BTW one more thing to beware of. Some people like to sit on the couch and talk about detecting and finding sites. There are others who actually get out there and do it.... who do you listen to?
 
calabash digger said:
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.
Click to expand...

I don't hunt in high iron areas for relics, but I don't find your reviews useless. I am however, skeptical about reviewers that find all other reviews useless. Keep the videos and commentary coming.
 
Although I’ll take clad,I don’t consider myself a guy who goes out looking for clad.I go for jewlery and mostly older coins.
If I were a avid relic hunter,I’d listen and pay close attention to guys like calabash and tnsharpshooter.No argument on they know how to dig it all.
As a coin hunter,I’m selective on what machine I use.I sold probably one of the best single frequency machines for old deep coins,the xterra 705,,to purchase a equinox..I since sold the equinox And recently bought another 705.Because for me,proper visual ID means time,and time means passing up pennies and finding old coins.
Call it what you will,but I don’t see the equinox as anything special.And in all reality,why should it be? If it works for you,by all means use it.But it’s not the best at old coin hunting for me,not by a long shot.But what do I know, I’m a clad hunter.:laughing:
 

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If you dont hunt relics then my reviews might be useless for you because all mine are centered around iron. If you in in woodbutchers and scubas game them you might want to listen to them. It all depends on what game your in who you need to listen to...…


Henry Ford said it best though ( Experience is the best teacher) YouTube can help though....

Of course these are just my opinions...…..
 
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 dont know of any high pants that are sponsored by minelab on this forum...

Is anyone on findmall sponsored by minelab?
 
All good info here,just from different types of hunting.I don’t think anyone is misleading anyone,just telling it like it is through they’re eyes,and experiences.
 
bowwinkles said:
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.
Click to expand...

I dug a bug once and found a silver dime underneath.

Does that count? Lol
 
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.
 
"Takes a Minelab to beat a Minelab", <-- gosh that is funny, yet probably true.

My reviews are 99% based on salt water beaches. I couldn't resist posting the recent gold chain, but typically i post my finds weeks or months after. Otherwise, my beaches will be flooded with folks detecting the following tide.

Undoubtedly we will see this thread again within the next year. Hopefully it will be Fisher or Impact releasing a Challenger to steal the spotlight. Bottom line is the competition will be good for consumers, more options and hopefully competitive pricing.
 
halfstep said:
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.
Click to expand...

I can agree with probably everything in your post.If i had a beach near me I’d own a equinox and probably not another machine,just one,the equinox..But I don’t,my dirt is so dry and hard packed ,,it’s a chore Somtimes to even get a coin out.Thats why good ID is on my top list,along with a Backlight..Everything else like depth,speed,frequency,all thaise I can deal with in a mediocre performance wise.
 
It's been 7+ hours since anyone responded.figured I need to speak up or the thread would die. Bwhahahahha.

Everyone is right, as long as they choose Bounty Hunter!!! Bwhahhahaha :laughing:
 
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