Equinox 800 has been out in the field over a year - results?

Longbow, I realized we may be talking about different things here. Yes, maybe the ID is better on the nox than the etrac, but to me the disc ability is far better on the etrac than the nox. I guess that was what I am getting at, just took me awhile to figure out how to say it.

zeemang said:

Longbow, I realized we may be talking about different things here. Yes, maybe the ID is better on the nox than the etrac, but to me the disc ability is far better on the etrac than the nox. I guess that was what I am getting at, just took me awhile to figure out how to say it.

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To each his own machine,and what we all consider good..But there is not a machine made that has better ID than the Etrac,maybe the 3030 but that’s it..I see these posts of the equinox being compared to the Etrac and just shake my head,I guess my opinions on it would be people are really reaching.lol..You get what you pay for and seeming Minelab makes both machines, that in itself says it all.

Woodbutcher, believe me, my go to machine for hunting land is still my etrac, hard to beat it!

zeemang said:

Woodbutcher, believe me, my go to machine for hunting land is still my etrac, hard to beat it!

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Zeemang, I definitely believe you, and my comment was in no way directed to you.lol..sorry if it sounded that way

No problem. I only got my nox because funds are bit tight at the moment, otherwise I would have gotten another excal for the water and stuck with my etrac for the land. As soon as more $ comes in I will sell my now and get back to an excal for the water...

I really appreciate this topic and all of you that have responded with your experiences. This quote is from a professional detectorist. Steve knows his stuff. He was an Equinox tester and he and his site are a great resource for detecting in general. One of my favorite quotes ever,

Steve Herschbach
Detector Prospector
Steve Herschbach
Administrator
19,516
11,265 posts
Location: Nevada

"At the risk of offending someone, and that is not my intent.... anyone that can’t do well with an Equinox needs to work more on their detecting skills. Opinions about the Equinox instantly tell me what’s what with a persons skill level. It’s not the be all end all of detectors but it does run with the best of them. If people are blaming the machine...."

I have definitely had to put in the work and improve my detecting skills to meet the challenges offered by detecting with the Equinox series. I had to do the same with the XP detectors too. Some detectors are for the occasional "test drive" detector users. I don't think the Nox can really be experienced by using it once a month for a short weekend afternoon hunt.

Jeff

jmaclen said:

I really appreciate this topic and all of you that have responded with your experiences. This quote is from a professional detectorist. Steve knows his stuff. He was an Equinox tester and he and his site are a great resource for detecting in general. One of my favorite quotes ever,

Steve Herschbach
Detector Prospector
Steve Herschbach
Administrator
19,516
11,265 posts
Location: Nevada

"At the risk of offending someone, and that is not my intent.... anyone that can’t do well with an Equinox needs to work more on their detecting skills. Opinions about the Equinox instantly tell me what’s what with a persons skill level. It’s not the be all end all of detectors but it does run with the best of them. If people are blaming the machine...."

I have definitely had to put in the work and improve my detecting skills to meet the challenges offered by detecting with the Equinox series. I had to do the same with the XP detectors too. Some detectors are for the occasional "test drive" detector users. I don't think the Nox can really be experienced by using it once a month for a short weekend afternoon hunt.

Jeff

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Thanks for the post Jeff,, Steve is defiantly well known and a asset to this hobbie

I bought the Equinox to open up my old spots I'd hunted with the FBS Etrac and Explorer, to get through the masking on missed coins. I instantly satisfied me in doing just that. I was happily surprised how the Nox goes deep also. IMO, the Equinox doesn't ID as precisely as the Etrac since it doesn't report the Fe. The Etrac is the best in that ability but it still struggles in moderate to higher trash, and it is slow. That's where the Nox excels. With finesse in working a tone blip suggesting a high conductor inside trash when using the Equinox, it does a great job in dissecting out a missed coin.

Right out of the gate, I've had nothing but praise for the Equinox. I don't know whether I might grab the Etrac if I had new territory which hasn't been hard hunted. I would certainly hit that spot again with the Nox once I felt it was drying up.

It is simply satisfying seeing more finds in the same spots by using the Equinox. It takes some diligence and the ID sometimes makes me wonder if my one-way signals are worth digging, but so far, it has been great.

I still re-hunt small, trashy spots which has been hunted by both the Nox and the Etrac, and dig tough signals from the Equinox to test the ability. One spot near an old park pavillion where we've all found stuff over the years, surfaced to missed coins just yesterday. This was in an area no bigger than 5'x5'.

Given that you take the time to really work a tricky signal amongst trash, I believe the Equinox out shines the Etrac. It is a pure pleasure seeing the ID with the Etrac though. That ID gets washed out in trash though. jm2c

D.E.F. Stands for definitely get one.
I think it does a great job on the beach with the stock coil.

jmaclen said:

I really appreciate this topic and all of you that have responded with your experiences. This quote is from a professional detectorist. Steve knows his stuff. He was an Equinox tester and he and his site are a great resource for detecting in general. One of my favorite quotes ever,

Steve Herschbach
Detector Prospector
Steve Herschbach
Administrator
19,516
11,265 posts
Location: Nevada

"At the risk of offending someone, and that is not my intent.... anyone that can’t do well with an Equinox needs to work more on their detecting skills. Opinions about the Equinox instantly tell me what’s what with a persons skill level. It’s not the be all end all of detectors but it does run with the best of them. If people are blaming the machine...."

I have definitely had to put in the work and improve my detecting skills to meet the challenges offered by detecting with the Equinox series. I had to do the same with the XP detectors too. Some detectors are for the occasional "test drive" detector users. I don't think the Nox can really be experienced by using it once a month for a short weekend afternoon hunt.

Jeff

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I totally agree with Steve and Jeff. The 800 quickly pointed out to me that I lacked a lot in the general metal detecting knowledge and skills even though I had been detecting off and on since 1986-1988 time frame.

Who knows what targets I missed with a variety of detectors over the years because I just did not take the time to really understand each machine and metal detecting theory or learn from others. Of course back then we did not have the great MD forums like this one.

So using the 800 for a year and really trying very hard to understand it and the theories and putting them to use I now feel comfortable that if a good target is under my coil I should be able to find it. I have proven that to myself. Hunted a soccer field that I and others have hunted many times and started pulling out older clad that everyone should have found. Many thanks to vferrari for answering lots of my technical questions and many great guys/gals on this forum (my favorite).

duplicated post - deleted it.

maxxkatt said:

I totally agree with Steve and Jeff. The 800 quickly pointed out to me that I lacked a lot in the general metal detecting knowledge and skills even though I had been detecting off and on since 1986-1988 time frame.



Who knows what targets I missed with a variety of detectors over the years because I just did not take the time to really understand each machine and metal detecting theory or learn from others. Of course back then we did not have the great MD forums like this one.



So using the 800 for a year and really trying very hard to understand it and the theories and putting them to use I now feel comfortable that if a good target is under my coil I should be able to find it. I have proven that to myself. Hunted a soccer field that I and others have hunted many times and started pulling out older clad that everyone should have found. Many thanks to vferrari for answering lots of my technical questions and many great guys/gals on this forum (my favorite).

Click to expand...

+1

I agree with them as well. After a year of using the equinox I am more impressed than ever and I do not feel more confident with any other machine in my hand. I have not used my CTX in months and I dont regret selling my etrac or at pro one bit.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

I live and hunt in Birmingham Alabama and our dirt is more than weird.
Red clay minetalization and insane amount of iron masks just about everything I go after past 2-3" deep...sometimes even shallow targets are masked and skewed sitting on the surface.
I have used several detectors and learned to combat this devil dirt and all the masking problems and did surprisingly well however the Nox deals with all of it better than any other tool I have used and it seems effortless.
I have never found so many masked targets in my life and it is getting even easier as I learn to tweak it better.
Every site I hunted in the past has opened up again with surprising volumes if targets I, and everyone else, have missed around here for decades.

In my area I know other hunters that used AT Pros, AT Max's, many Whites units, a Deus and one with an E Trac....most have put them away forever after they got a Nox and saw what it could do.

Personally I prefer to use my F70 for fun because it has that expanded disc range that I would rather use than the short range of the Nox.
However the Nox is finding more and doing it more easily so I will stick with that for now.

If I still lived out west in almost perfect Kansas dirt with about 5% of the masking issues I dealwith now and where every detector I used worked fantastically well I never would have even thought about getting a Nox and I didn't have a thought to get one for here, either...until the day I saw how well it works in this dirt.
It's like this thing was designed to hunt specifically in my area of the country.
It is finding more masked targets than I thought possible, anyway.