Joshc214
Senior Member
After taking a year + off from detecting I finally got the itch to get out again. I previously had an excal which over a year I found 140 grams of gold from primarily water hunts. When I stopped detecting I sold both the gold and the excal... While this was a great machine for water hunting here in south Florida I wanted to try something different this time around.
The Nox appeared to fit the bill with all of the latest technology it has to offer. My only issue was I couldn't find any solid reviews on using a Nox over an Excal for water hunts, most people on this board who have an Excal & Nox appear to prefer the Excal for water hunts, mostly because their afraid the Nox can't hold up to surf hunts combined with noise chatter created from the surf.
I wanted to give my feedback on the Nox coming from someone who only water hunts. First of all I found this machine to be just as solid as the Excal when it comes to hunting in the surf zone. It's just as easy to swing around in the water, especially with a plugger carbon fiber shaft. I might end up using epoxy on the coil to add even less drag, but I don't mind keeping the coil cover on. As far as chatter, this was my first time using it and yes, it does have chatter in the water, but it's also easy to correct. I started in beach mode 2 at a sensitivity level of 20 and recovery speed of 4. This setting had quite a bit of chatter. I found a sensitivity level of 17 in surf zones, and a sensitivity level of 18 in calmer areas lead to almost no chatter. Ghost headphones (no more bright yellow headphones!) also helped amplify the target sounds making it easy to distinguish chatter from an actual target.
With the control box underwater I'm still able to read every signal # on the display screen. This allowed me to view the depth of the target and avoid all penny signals leading to better finds in a trashy area.. to me, this is a huge advantage over my old excal, digging every single target gets old fast when you have a penny every foot or two.
On this hunt my strategy was to dig every low or high # target which gave a repeatable signal. Pennies appeared to be in the 16-24 range, so I completely ignored these targets. In a less penny infested area, I'll dig these, but it's nice to have the option. With this strategy I was still able to get the higher range silver targets as seen in the picture.
As far as depth, imo, this machine goes much deeper than the excal in the water. I was using a stealth 720i scoop and many of the targets were out of reach with a single scoop. I'm attributing this to the 11" coil over the 10" excal coil.
The best part about hunting with an equinox is after 6 hours in the water I can get out and take my headphones off and not have a constant hummm sound from dealing with the threshold of the excal. It's a nice change to have a silent hunt with only targets providing noise feedback.
I guess the only negative I can really think of with the Nox is the pin pointer mode doesn't seem to work too well in the water. There may be an adjustment to fix this, however, I wasn't able to get accurate readings because of feedback from waves affecting the signal. Even without being able to use the pinpoint mode I was still able the retrieve every target.
The gold ring is marked 375, the hoop earring is marked 14k and the 2 silver rings are marked 925. Not bad for the first hunt with a brand new machine. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come!
The Nox appeared to fit the bill with all of the latest technology it has to offer. My only issue was I couldn't find any solid reviews on using a Nox over an Excal for water hunts, most people on this board who have an Excal & Nox appear to prefer the Excal for water hunts, mostly because their afraid the Nox can't hold up to surf hunts combined with noise chatter created from the surf.
I wanted to give my feedback on the Nox coming from someone who only water hunts. First of all I found this machine to be just as solid as the Excal when it comes to hunting in the surf zone. It's just as easy to swing around in the water, especially with a plugger carbon fiber shaft. I might end up using epoxy on the coil to add even less drag, but I don't mind keeping the coil cover on. As far as chatter, this was my first time using it and yes, it does have chatter in the water, but it's also easy to correct. I started in beach mode 2 at a sensitivity level of 20 and recovery speed of 4. This setting had quite a bit of chatter. I found a sensitivity level of 17 in surf zones, and a sensitivity level of 18 in calmer areas lead to almost no chatter. Ghost headphones (no more bright yellow headphones!) also helped amplify the target sounds making it easy to distinguish chatter from an actual target.
With the control box underwater I'm still able to read every signal # on the display screen. This allowed me to view the depth of the target and avoid all penny signals leading to better finds in a trashy area.. to me, this is a huge advantage over my old excal, digging every single target gets old fast when you have a penny every foot or two.
On this hunt my strategy was to dig every low or high # target which gave a repeatable signal. Pennies appeared to be in the 16-24 range, so I completely ignored these targets. In a less penny infested area, I'll dig these, but it's nice to have the option. With this strategy I was still able to get the higher range silver targets as seen in the picture.
As far as depth, imo, this machine goes much deeper than the excal in the water. I was using a stealth 720i scoop and many of the targets were out of reach with a single scoop. I'm attributing this to the 11" coil over the 10" excal coil.
The best part about hunting with an equinox is after 6 hours in the water I can get out and take my headphones off and not have a constant hummm sound from dealing with the threshold of the excal. It's a nice change to have a silent hunt with only targets providing noise feedback.
I guess the only negative I can really think of with the Nox is the pin pointer mode doesn't seem to work too well in the water. There may be an adjustment to fix this, however, I wasn't able to get accurate readings because of feedback from waves affecting the signal. Even without being able to use the pinpoint mode I was still able the retrieve every target.
The gold ring is marked 375, the hoop earring is marked 14k and the 2 silver rings are marked 925. Not bad for the first hunt with a brand new machine. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come!
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