Equinox and can slaw questions

Iggyks

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NE Kansas
I am considering the Equinox (probably limited by budget to the 600) after two years of my beep 'n' dig Tesoro Mojave. Many of the properties in my area were hunted @15-20 years ago by a retired lady with lots of time (and others too, I'm sure) and I'm hoping the Nox might find some things that were missed in the past. But many of the spots where I've had success with some old coins they mow cans rather than pick them up before mowing and I've seen some complaints about can slaw with the Nox. Is this something to worry about? Thanks!
 
Any aluminum target can fool any metal detector sometimes even a few Minelabs that cost well over $1000 along with the Whites V3i and maybe Whites DFX. The Equinox 600 and 800 are no different. If you are looking for gold jewelry and you aren't digging some pull tabs and can slaw and zinc pennies you will miss gold jewelry. There is nothing on the Equinox that will immediately make it easy to not dig aluminum trash. After enough hours one can get a pretty good idea however. Luckily, unlike some other detectors, the Equinox just like some of the other Minelab simultaneous multi frequency detectors, will let you know that you have a low or mid conductor under you coil all the way out to its reasonable possible depth of detection or 8 to 11" depending on soil conditions. That is a big help. It will also tell you a lot about the size or your target too once you get used to it.

Jeff
 
On many machines, a large piece of aluminum will come in where a small coin comes in. The trick, at least on the E-Trac, is to determine the size of the target, which is relatively easy on that machine unless it is very deep, and thus you can avoid most of it.

I don't know if it is easy to determine target size on the Nox, but that, IMHO, would be the question to ask. I am considering getting a Nox and am interested in this as well, as this ability is one of the things that makes the E-Trac such a great machine.
 
I'm pretty good at guessing canslaw with the ATPro, especially if it's most of the can, but you can never know if you guessed right unless you dig it.

I don't think there is a machine out there that can tell if it's can slaw or treasure, just because every piece of canslaw is unique. depending on how it's bent and twisted and smashed it could ring up anywhere
 
I dont dig much shallow can slaw at all. I do the coil lift trick alot and also try to size it up by length of tone. Deep aluminum always sounds good, and it's tough to walk away from. I usually just dig it if its deep. Lots of good relics and coins that will hit like deep aluminum. Your trash pile will decrease with time, as it should with any machine. The equinox is a great all around detector, and your going to have to dig some trash to figure out what its telling you. Good luck and happy hunting!
 
Agree with what has been posted already. I have over 500 hours on my Nox 800 and still dig can slaw. It sounds so good that I can not pass it up. It can be so many shapes and sizes, I believe it can sound differently because of this. At least it does to my ears. Some people may have hearing that picks up on tones and levels better than most and may be the ones saying they can distinguish trash from treasure most/all of the time. I wish it were me. Like I said I have a lot of hours on mine but still dig my share of that can slaw. So do 4 of my friends that have the Nox 800. Aluminum is just a tough out.
 
Can slaw and pull tabs are the bane of the hobby, and unfortunately like many mentioned here they fall in the same range as gold jewelry. But you can tell how large an object is using the pinpoint feature which is quite helpful for larger chunks and smashed cans etc.
 
In my 38 years of detecting I've used Whites, Garrett, Bounty Hunter, and Fisher Detectors and they ALL loved to sound off on can slaw. Not much you can do about it......ditto for pull tabs.
 
Thank you for all the responses, I guess my concern was that it was MORE prone to problems with slaw. Looks like it's not so I will proceed!
 
Thank you for all the responses, I guess my concern was that it was MORE prone to problems with slaw. Looks like it's not so I will proceed!

If that's the case, if you haven't seen them yet here are some short but very helpful tutorials on the Equinox series I found online:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpymZHu8sv5nwrk34ID53OxszE8fjuDFC

(they cover both the 600 and 800)

....and I can agree with the others as I have dug my share of cans and pull-tabs, it's just part of the hobby :lol:
 
..... After enough hours one can get a pretty good idea however. ...

... The trick, at least on the E-Trac, is to determine the size of the target, ....

Jeff and Randy give excellent advice.

On the one hand, aluminum slaw can mimic good targets. However, if you're in an area with too much slaw, and you want to cherry-pick and pass it, then you *can* discern the slaw, via the sound and size, on some machines. Like on my Explorer II, I can pretty much tell and pass it. And hone in on the higher conductor "round and concise" sounds, which are more apt to be coins.

But as others have said : The moment you go to be picky like that, you are going to miss some gold jewelry, and perhaps nickels (depending on if you're notching or not). It's all Las Vegas Odds.

But if I'm hunting junky blighted turf, then that's the LAST place I would waste my time trying to be a hero and angle for gold anyhow. I'm usually sniping for old silver. If gold jewelry were my objective, then junky blighted turf is the LAST place I'd be hunting. Simply go to the beach , if jewelry is your objective. Much less punishing and more conducive to jewelry losses in the first place.
 
I am one of those hero types, I mostly hunt some of the trashiest parks and public sites you have ever seen and yet I still dig relatively little trash and continue to find much more than my share of great treasure...including some fantastic old coins, tons of silver jewelry and about 3 dozen gold rings.

Lots of those gold rings came out of many parks in NE Kansas and NW Missouri because I lived in Olathe for 3 years and had access to dozens of great parks in that area...and boy do I miss it.

The last gold ring was found using a Nox and the standard coil in a park with about 100 years of trash and that ring was surrounded by trash including more than one piece of can slaw and pain in the butt foil.
I have been doing this for years using several detectors including that Nox, two Fishers and two Tesoros.
I can do this easily and avoid the bulk of the trash out there but only after vowing to learn each detector as well as I possibly could because years ago I just got real tired of digging tons of trash but still wanted to find great things so I decided to learn a better way to hunt.
The biggest part of that learning is spending time understanding target behavior better than just well no matter what detector I happened to be standing behind at the time.
It took me less time than you might think and it was fun learning all along the way with every one...including the Nox which I am still learning, by the way.
 
Where the Equinox shines, in my opinion, is in separating targets. Most can slaw pieces don't sound like coins, so the nox is pretty good at picking out the coins in trashy parks...especially with the 6" coil, but the stock coil is pretty good too. Silver rings often signal in the higher-than-can slaw range, too. Gold is often so similar-to-slaw sounding, you don't get as much advantage with the nox for that.
 
.... Gold is often so similar-to-slaw sounding, you don't get as much advantage with the nox for that.


The same is true for every machine. Since gold jewelry comes in so-many-shapes, it can mimic can slaw. Even concise rings can have heavy sides "crowns" (bigger ends), that .... they can sound different, depending on the sweep direction. As opposed to coins which are perfectly uniform in shape/dimensions.

Add another annoyance : Rings with a "crown" will tend to eventually be on edge, with the heavy side down, in un-disturbed turf. The reason I know this is that a friend of mine took a year long study of a certain park in San Jose. He'd pulled a lot of silver and wheaties out of a certain section in the prior years, but had always gone high disc.

One day he decided he must be leaving a lot of nickels and gold behind, so he decided to do an experiment : He went into relic mind-set (ie.: dig anything/all conductors). He gridded off a big area, and .... for months and months , anytime he hunted there, he purposefully dug every single thing. Eg.: even down to foil, etc... And kept careful records of depth, ID, etc... Even to the point of digging slowly to ascertain accurate depths, etc....

And yes, he did dig some gold rings with this strip-mine method. And he noticed that when any of them had a "crown" (a heavy side), that they were always heavy-side down. And as you can imagine, that immediately takes away an "round" sound they might have had.

In the end, btw, after thousands of trash items and a meager handful of worthless orange buffalos and Vs, and perhaps a dozen gold items, he concluded it simply isn't worth it to strip-mine junky turf for nickels and gold. He realized he could simply drive over the hill to Santa Cruz beaches, and have a much better odds at gold rings, w/o the punishment, haha
 
The same is true with every machine ? Wait a minute... I thought the AQ was the solution....
 
The same is true with every machine ? Wait a minute... I thought the AQ was the solution....

Haha, well here's the immediate solution to ANY md'r, with ANY machine, who tries to tell you that he can tell aluminum apart from gold :

Merely invite the person out to the nearest inner city blighted park. Turn him loose and see how much gold he can dig, while leaving most aluminum in the ground.

Within 30 minutes, you will hear only the sound of crickets. :laughing:
 
In my 38 years of detecting I've used Whites, Garrett, Bounty Hunter, and Fisher Detectors and they ALL loved to sound off on can slaw. Not much you can do about it......ditto for pull tabs.
Well said!!! Slaw is always an issue but most detectorists can use techniques to rule out large/whole cans....

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
Well said!!! Slaw is always an issue but most detectorists can use techniques to rule out large/whole cans....

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

True......one way is to lift the coil and if there's still a signal when the coil is 10 inches above the target there's a pretty good chance you've found a can:lol:
 
I love Tom's reply. My one cents worth since coins are in short supply and I can't give two. I love my Mojave and it has it's place but I think you will be surprised at what you missed when you start using the 600. Last year I hunted an Elementary School basketball court and decided to dig everything around it. I had hunted it in the past with my Mojave. I got a jumpy 16 to 22 VDI and it turned out to be a 10K High School class ring. For whatever reason I passed it up with the Mojave as well as my guess is many other before me. What I am saying is if you want to find the good stuff you have to dig the can slaw. I also found a nice 925 ring the same day. Would I have found it with the Mojave if I dug everything. More than likely...
 
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