NOX 800 Iron Bias Settings?

medicchief · Mar 4, 2019

Need some input from my fellow Nox 800 users. I am digging a lot of ferrous objects (ID above ferrous range), unless I run my Iron Bias up to 9.....with sensitivity at 20. What's the general opinion? If I run it at 3, I'm digging nails and all kinds of ferrous stuff... Is it me and my lack of Nox experience? I've been detecting almost 10 years and it's wearing me out.....

AirmetTango · Mar 4, 2019

My experience metal detecting is much less than yours (only 2 years), and my experience with the EQ800 is very low too (only about 20-25 hours on mine so far), but I'll throw in my 2 cents. I rarely set my IB any higher than 2 - usually less. I do have to work a little harder to avoid digging iron and nails, and I have to make more judgement calls on "mixed" signals, but I know it's the only way I'll be able to hear a good target nestled in tight to a ferrous object. I'm learning that high gain detectors like the EQ tend to false more easily on nails and deep iron - I experienced the same thing while running my Garrett AT Max all of last year.

If you run the IB up to 9, sure, you'll suffer significantly less iron falsing and the detector is more likely to call "mixed" targets ferrous, but you'll also be negating one of the key benefits of the Equinox which is it's unmasking ability.

This website has the easiest to understand overview of Iron Bias on the Equinox that I've found so far: The Silver Fiend: Minelab Equinox Iron Bias Explained. Just like all the other settings, there are always trade offs when choosing which adjustment to make to the detector.

medicchief · Mar 4, 2019

Thanks AirmetTango! It's just very frustrating to get an ID in the 20's, only to find a nail or bolt, etc. (ferrous). I always make sure there are no other targets in the hole as well. I read the link you referred to and I completely understand the iron bias principal. The odds of a nail or ferrous object masking a non-ferrous object are almost none in the majority of the places I hunt. That said, I may run it slightly high until I get more experience with the machine. I'm no dummy (my military ASVAB score was a 97, out of a possible 99), but my NOX sure makes me feel like one!

Rattlehead · Mar 4, 2019

+1 on what AirmetTango said. I usually run mine at 1 or 2.

Cutting back the sensitivity in thick iron helps. The higher sensitivity the more sparky the iron becomes.

Pay attention to how repeatable those signals are. Falsing iron generally doesn't hit consistently. A good target will.. Even if handicapped by iron and only in one direction.

Iron does have a different sound. You'll start to pick up on it as you put more time on the machine.

Good luck!

medicchief · Mar 4, 2019

Thanks Rattlehead!

NCtoad · Mar 4, 2019

Try running in all metal (horseshoe button on) and set the iron volume low. You'll hear the iron grunts and in my experience if there's a majority of iron grunts as you circle the target, then there's a high probability of iron in the hole, even if you're hearing high tones. I almost always run my iron bias at 0.

tnsharpshooter · Mar 4, 2019

First off any and all folks will be fooled from time to time and dig iron or nail.

So what do you do?

Sweep target and find a good steady sweep speed and coil height.
Sweep quite a few times and pay real close attention to actual coil position on the actual spot of ground and see if Eqx reports the same or very close with each sweep. If it does better chance of being nonferrous. If NOT good clue it’s iron.

Coil height can be raised too, if you are still getting a good signal likely not coin sized target.

Eqx likes to report iron falses louder than it does nonferrous items. Not all the time.

Turning 90 degrees on target and sweeping can help sometimes and bigger iron elongated can be exposed.

Using pinpoint feature and listening to how it sounds. If it ramps up real fast with a hard to describe louder squeal, this indicates a bigger target, bigger than button or coin size.

It probably helps if a person understands really how any VLF detector can recognize nonferrous under, beside bigger ferrous materials. When one realizes this it will accelerate their being able to spot the odds possibilities of actually taking a shot at a targrt giving signal.

Use of horseshoe button engaged.
It can help you, it can hurt you.
If you walk on a target that is giving iron tone on one edge or both when sweeping you CAN be leaving a nonferrous target in the ground. Trust me on this. I learned the hard way.

Something else I need to mention here.
You will see where Nox like such to at times as the coil trails the suspect target spot (area) it likes to give a higher pitched tone and ID will generally follow like in the high 20s and 30s.
Eqx can do the on ferrous too.
And nonferous too, usually deeper.

Listen to how the Eqx reports as far as smooth tone over target vs giving more brash tone over targets.
Brash reporting higher odds of being ferrous under coil yet ID can be in nonferous range.

Using stock coil I keep my iron bias as zero.

Users of EQX 800
You may consider trying the following.
Use gold mode 1 and sweep the suspicious targets found with park and field modes.
By doing I think you’ll find it will help you weed out some of the iron falsing.

Also folks should ensure their GB is not dialed above actual ground as this will make Nox sound better than normal when sweeping over some ferrous targets.
Ground can change after initially balancing when moving around a site.

Cheers and happy detecting.

medicchief · Mar 4, 2019

Y'all are awesome! My FA Battalion motto is/was "Never Give Up"! I'll apply that same ethos with the NOX

Foragist · Mar 5, 2019

tnsharpshooter said:
First off any and all folks will be fooled from time to time and dig iron or nail.

So what do you do?

Sweep target and find a good steady sweep speed and coil height.
Sweep quite a few times and pay real close attention to actual coil position on the actual spot of ground and see if Eqx reports the same or very close with each sweep. If it does better chance of being nonferrous. If NOT good clue it’s iron.

Coil height can be raised too, if you are still getting a good signal likely not coin sized target.

Eqx likes to report iron falses louder than it does nonferrous items. Not all the time.

Turning 90 degrees on target and sweeping can help sometimes and bigger iron elongated can be exposed.

Using pinpoint feature and listening to how it sounds. If it ramps up real fast with a hard to describe louder squeal, this indicates a bigger target, bigger than button or coin size.

It probably helps if a person understands really how any VLF detector can recognize nonferrous under, beside bigger ferrous materials. When one realizes this it will accelerate their being able to spot the odds possibilities of actually taking a shot at a targrt giving signal.

Use of horseshoe button engaged.
It can help you, it can hurt you.
If you walk on a target that is giving iron tone on one edge or both when sweeping you CAN be leaving a nonferrous target in the ground. Trust me on this. I learned the hard way.

Something else I need to mention here.
You will see where Nox like such to at times as the coil trails the suspect target spot (area) it likes to give a higher pitched tone and ID will generally follow like in the high 20s and 30s.
Eqx can do the on ferrous too.
And nonferous too, usually deeper.

Listen to how the Eqx reports as far as smooth tone over target vs giving more brash tone over targets.
Brash reporting higher odds of being ferrous under coil yet ID can be in nonferous range.

Using stock coil I keep my iron bias as zero.

Users of EQX 800
You may consider trying the following.
Use gold mode 1 and sweep the suspicious targets found with park and field modes.
By doing I think you’ll find it will help you weed out some of the iron falsing.

Also folks should ensure their GB is not dialed above actual ground as this will make Nox sound better than normal when sweeping over some ferrous targets.
Ground can change after initially balancing when moving around a site.

Cheers and happy detecting.

Good info and tips here and in the rest of this thread. Thank you and the others. Threads like this can help me and others better learn the language of the Equinox.

Waveoff · Mar 5, 2019

I run my Iron Bias at 0. I do dig my fair share of iron but I have also found quite a few coins in a trashy, pounded park since switching to 0 Iron Bias. Many of the coins have had nails in the same hole/plug and I'm finding coins in spots I've detected many times before. I'm already up to 33 silver coins FTY after switching to the lower iron bias setting from previously running Iron Bias at 4 and Recovery at 4 at most of the same sites. Also, what tnsharpshooter mentioned in his post is really good info. Especially the brash versus smooth tone. I find that most targets that have a nice high tone with high ID numbers, but have a slightly delayed audio response with a quick ramp up and down on the audio, usually ends up being a ferrous target.

metaladdict · Mar 5, 2019

I run my iron bias at 0 all the time. Rarely do I dig iron.

medicchief · Mar 5, 2019

metaladdict said:
I run my iron bias at 0 all the time. Rarely do I dig iron.

Man, I bet you've really gotten to know your NOX! I'm sure I just need more time with the machine (and study). The NOX is an entirely different beast, compared to what I'm used to.....Tek Delta, Omega and AT Pro......Thanks again y'all!

tnsharpshooter · Mar 5, 2019

medicchief said:
Man, I bet you've really gotten to know your NOX! I'm sure I just need more time with the machine (and study). The NOX is an entirely different beast, compared to what I'm used to.....Tek Delta, Omega and AT Pro......Thanks again y'all!

You are welcome.

Martin_V3i · Mar 5, 2019

I ran my 600 for months with IB at factory setting of 0, and was definitely digging more nails at depth than with the previous FBS machines. I changed to a setting of one about a month ago, and dig less nails. I really enjoy LESS iron. The fact I still dig a few rusty nails is ok. It tells me that I am splitting the difference between missing deep silver and finding lots of rusty iron.

DIGGER27 · Mar 8, 2019

Rattlehead said:
+1 on what AirmetTango said. I usually run mine at 1 or 2.

Cutting back the sensitivity in thick iron helps. The higher sensitivity the more sparky the iron becomes.

Pay attention to how repeatable those signals are. Falsing iron generally doesn't hit consistently, a good target usually will even if handicapped by iron and only in one direction.

Iron does have a different sound. You'll start to pick up on it as you put more time on the machine.

Good luck!

This....^^^^

You just need more experience.
Every detector I try to learn it was the same for me, at first not much is familiar and I dig all kinds of trash and iron...purposely and a lot that just fool me like high falsing iron.
Soon enough I started to understand and dug less and less garbage and more quality treasure.
Same with the Nox, everywhere I hunt is iron, sometimes massive amounts.
I run with between 1 & 4 most of the time and still get falsing but I am slowly learning the difference between good and bad, the more I learn the less garbage I dig...and there are some good iron indicating behavior.

At 9 nobody can say for sure but I say chances are you are missing most targets sitting near or around iron...you just won't see or hear them.
You don't like iron, don't want to hear it and don't want to dig it, we get it, but I don't think there are any magical detectors out there that will knock out iron and then act like it isn't there, all will be affected by iron whether you disc it out or in the case of the Nox turn up the bias high.
This is no miracle machine, it won't silence iron completely and it is not totally perfect at dealing with masking but it is extremely good at it and gets even better when you learn to understand it well.
A bit more experience than have now.

This guy says it, you have to find your own level you are comfortable with but you still have to learn more and you will always dig some iron no matter what.
Or at least dig some iron...a lot of those iffy,on the border, is it iron or isn't it iron signals might not produce positive results if you dig them but a few just might shock and thrill you.

medicchief · Mar 8, 2019

DIGGER27 said:
This....^^^^

You just need more experience.
Every detector I try to learn it was the same for me, at first not much is familiar and I dig all kinds of trash and iron...purposely and a lot that just fool me like high falsing iron.
Soon enough I started to understand and dug less and less garbage and more quality treasure.
Same with the Nox, everywhere I hunt is iron, sometimes massive amounts.
I run with between 1 & 4 most of the time and still get falsing but I am slowly learning the difference between good and bad, the more I learn the less garbage I dig...and there are some good iron indicating behavior.

At 9 nobody can say for sure but I say chances are you are missing most targets sitting near or around iron...you just won't see or hear them.
You don't like iron, don't want to hear it and don't want to dig it, we get it, but I don't think there are any magical detectors out there that will knock out iron and then act like it isn't there, all will be affected by iron whether you disc it out or in the case of the Nox turn up the bias high.
This is no miracle machine, it won't silence iron completely and it is not totally perfect at dealing with masking but it is extremely good at it and gets even better when you learn to understand it well.
A bit more experience than have now.

This guy says it, you have to find your own level you are comfortable with but you still have to learn more and you will always dig some iron no matter what.
Or at least dig some iron...a lot of those iffy,on the border, is it iron or isn't it iron signals might not produce positive results if you dig them but a few just might shock and thrill you.

Thanks again everyone and you are exactly right DIGGER27. I've done a lot more reading and watching videos. Then I finally got out for a while today to apply what I've learned. That having been said, the learning curve has been a long one....but as of today, things are starting to click! :yes:

NOX 800 Iron Bias Settings?

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AirmetTango

medicchief

Rattlehead

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NCtoad

tnsharpshooter

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medicchief

Foragist

Waveoff

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metaladdict

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Martin_V3i

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DIGGER27

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