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Detector Advice Please - High Mineralized Ground - Vanquish 540 / Nox 600?

nalgene77

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2015
Messages
9
Location
British Columbia
Hi Everyone!

I'm getting back into dirt fishing after a 4 year break here in British Columbia Canada and that's where the highly mineralized ground comes into play. I've had good luck in the past with the XP Deus, but the target ID's were useless. It was however great for iron separation.

My biggest interest is old coins and jewelry in parks followed by relics and then shore water hunting. At first I thought the Minelab Vanquish would be a good choice but after talking to a local dealer they felt the machine wouldn't be a strong contender.

This leaves me strongly considering an Equinox 600 or 800 but the 600 seems to check off all of the boxes at a lower price and includes a Pro-Find 20 Pin-pointer. Am I missing out on not getting the 800 or would the Vanquish 540 be fine?

I'm open to other models, so please offer your recommendations. I'd like to keep the budget under $1500.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge and wisdom :)
 
I love my 600. It's the first detector I've owned out of 4 that doesnt loose any noticable depth when I run a hard discrimination of copper pennies and higher with nickels notched in.

Mind you I only run that program when I'm fairly certain I'm in a no Indian zone. šŸ˜

The little 6"er is hard to beat in trashy lots.
 
Hopefully jmaclen will chime in. He's very knowledgeable about detectors in highly mineralization areas. if he doesn't then PM him. Also if you choose the 600 there's one of the sponsors offering a free 6" coil right now.
 
Hopefully jmaclen will chime in. He's very knowledgeable about detectors in highly mineralization areas. if he doesn't then PM him. Also if you choose the 600 there's one of the sponsors offering a free 6" coil right now.

That's a heck of a deal if the base price is reasonable. Good info.:thumbsup:
 
There are different kinds and types of mineralization, probably prudent to figure out exactly which type of mineralization you have because I don't know how all detectors react to, or can deal with, all of the different types.
That being said I live in Birmingham Ala, which has about 9 different soil types depending on where you live in the state and at which altitude.
Soil near rocky outcrops and mountains are different than what we have in the valleys, for instance.
In my case, the area I live in and hunt is composed of soil made from crushed limestone and or sandstone with many areas that have both.
The soil is usually red and that is because of the very high amounts of ferric or iron oxide...which make hunting here challenging at best and extremely frustrating at worst.
Depth can be pitiful with most brands and I have used 4 different ones myself and have talked to or hunted with others that used a few more brands.
Most can't give decent or accurate readings on most targets last 5" or so in the more challenging soils, I have figured out a new language and indicators when using my Fisher F70 that is a bit more accurate and deeper but they can all be considered outside the box information that took me a long time to figure out and still far from accurate.
Depth is still hard to come by and nothing near what I experienced when I lived and hunted out west in Kansas and Missouri with what I considered almost perfect low mineralized, beautiful black dirt.
Still, I have had some great success despite our depth issues and more so our sometimes extreme masking problems.

Then the Nox appeared.

I can tell you in our soil it works better than any other detector I have ever held in my hands or have seen others use or have heard others talk about when the subject of ability and capability is discussed.

It still won't get monster depth like I experienced out west but it definitely can get deeper than my others with more accurate information on the deeper targets and I am very happy with that.
More importantly it handles our masking problems with much better ability than any detector I have seen in this environment and that is our biggest challenge we have to overcome at most of my hunting sites, depth is actually down the line a bit because, luckily, much of our dirt has high concentrations of clay that prevents many targets from sinking too deep.
Not everywhere but most of my sites in public areas and private lawns.
I had no intentions of buying the Nox of anything else until the day a friend got one and we went to a well scoured old park and it picked out a few silver dimes in a very short time that were not extremely deep but were very well masked.
I was floored...and eventually I got one for myself.
Using it for awhile now I have come to the conclusion that those masked dimes were no fluke, time and time again this one seems to notice the more challenging targets better, many times deeper with not always perfect ID's but still way better than than any other tool I have used in the past.
It just makes everything I do, and need to do, easier.
A good purchase for me that has re-energized many of my old sites with results...in my kind of mineralized soil, that is doing things better and easier that others just couldn't match.

Hope my experience helps.
 
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Choosing the Nox 600 over the Vanquish 540 to me is a no brainer in your Rocky Mountain soil conditions. Being able to ground balance the 600, choose between 6 great and very different programs, and run full tones (50) along with fully waterproof is a huge plus for the Nox 600 over the Vanquish models especially if you are a serious dirt fisher that wants one just about do it all detector.

I have used all of the Vanquish models and they are fantastic for what they can do. Their ergonomics, coil choices and solid target IDs at depths past 8" even in really bad dirt are very impressive. However, they will not always be able to handle some types of high mineralization like the Nox will since they do not have a user ground balance adjustment. I have experienced ground mineralization feedback in some mineralized soils where if I am hunting with all metals accepted I get audible low iron tone responses from the ground when passing the coil over target free ground, at the end of swings, when pumping the coil and when pinpointing targets. There is a workaround but it is awkward.

Whether you should buy the 800 instead of the 600 is another story. I have both and as long as I am running in 50 tones with just a little iron rejection I do not notice much difference between them. If I am using 5 tones, the tone breaks are not adjustable on the 600 which for your modern Canadian steel core clad may create some issues. There are lots of other audio features that are not available on the 600 along with some fine adjustments for recovery speed and iron bias and a few other things too.

They are both incredible detectors which like the Vanquish will almost always correctly ID most targets with tones and numbers at depths of 8" or more in most situations once you learn your target responses. In my 5 bar+ dirt (F19) or completely full mineralization bar (XP Orx) those detectors and many others I have tried can correctly ID low to mid conductors at 3" MAYBE. Past that depth every target reacts like a very high conductor.

Before you buy a Vanquish or Nox you might want to try some of your modern clad on them if you have a dealer near you. There have been some complaints about the Nox especially on modern Canadian coins.

Jeff
 
There are different kinds and types of mineralization, probably prudent to figure out exactly which type of mineralization you have because I do t know if all detectors react to, or can deal with, all of the different types.
That being said I live in Birmingham Ala, which has about 9 different soil types depending on where you live in the state and at which altitude.
Soil near rocky outcrops and mountains are different than what we have in the valleys, for instance.
In my case, the area I live in and hunt is composed of soil made from crushed limestone and or sandstone with many areas that have both.
The soil is usually red and that is because of the very high amounts of ferric or iron oxide...which make hunting here challenging at best and extremely frustrating at worst.
Depth can be pitiful with most brands and I have used 4 different ones myself and have talked to or hunted with others that used a few more brands.
Most can't give decent or accurate readings on most targets last 5" or so in the more challenging soils, I have figured out a new language and indicators when using my Fisher F70 that is a bit more accurate and deeper but they can all be considered outside the box information that took me a long time to figure out and still far from accurate.
Depth is still hard to come by and nothing near what I experienced when I lived and hunted out west in Kansas and Missouri with what I considered almost perfect low mineralized okay black dirt.
Still, I have had some success despite our depth issues and more so our sometimes extreme masking problems.

Then the Nox appeared.

I can tell you in our soil it works better than any other detector I have ever held in my hands or have seen others use or have heard others talk about when the subject of ability and capability is discussed.

It still won't get monster depth like I experienced out west but it definitely can get deeper than my others with more accurate information on the deeper targets and I am very happy with that.
More importantly it handles our masking problems with much better ability than any detector I have seen in this environment and that is our biggest challenge we have to overcome at most of my hunting sites, depth is actually down the line a bit because, luckily, much of our dirt has high concentrations of clay that prevents many targets from sinking too deep.
Not everywhere but most of my sites in public areas and private lawns.
I had no intentions of buying the Nox of anything else until the day a friend got one and we went to a well scoured old park and it picked out a few silver dimes in a very short time that were not extremely deep but were very well masked.
I was floored...and eventually I got one for myself.
Using it for awhile now I have come to the conclusion that those masked dimes were no fluke, time and time again this one seems to notice the more challenging targets better, many times deeper with not always perfect ID's but still way better than than any other tool I have used in the past.
It just makes everything I do, and need to do, easier.
A good purchase for me that has re-energized many of my old sites with results...in my kind of mineralized soil, that is doing things better and easier that others just couldn't match.

Hope my experience helps.

Thank you for the very informative post, I'm definitely now a believer in the Nox. Would you suggest the 600, or do you think I'll be missing out on some key features by not buying the 800?
 
Choosing the Nox 600 over the Vanquish 540 to me is a no brainer in your Rocky Mountain soil conditions. Being able to ground balance the 600, choose between 6 great and very different programs, and run full tones (50) along with fully waterproof is a huge plus for the Nox 600 over the Vanquish models especially if you are a serious dirt fisher that wants one just about do it all detector.

I have used all of the Vanquish models and they are fantastic for what they can do. Their ergonomics, coil choices and solid target IDs at depths past 8" even in really bad dirt are very impressive. However, they will not always be able to handle some types of high mineralization like the Nox will since they do not have a user ground balance adjustment. I have experienced ground mineralization feedback in some mineralized soils where if I am hunting with all metals accepted I get audible low iron tone responses from the ground when passing the coil over target free ground, at the end of swings, when pumping the coil and when pinpointing targets. There is a workaround but it is awkward.

Whether you should buy the 800 instead of the 600 is another story. I have both and as long as I am running in 50 tones with just a little iron rejection I do not notice much difference between them. If I am using 5 tones, the tone breaks are not adjustable on the 600 which for your modern Canadian steel core clad may create some issues. There are lots of other audio features that are not available on the 600 along with some fine adjustments for recovery speed and iron bias and a few other things too.

They are both incredible detectors which like the Vanquish will almost always correctly ID most targets with tones and numbers at depths of 8" or more in most situations once you learn your target responses. In my 5 bar+ dirt (F19) or completely full mineralization bar (XP Orx) those detectors and many others I have tried can correctly ID low to mid conductors at 3" MAYBE. Past that depth every target reacts like a very high conductor.

Before you buy a Vanquish or Nox you might want to try some of your modern clad on them if you have a dealer near you. There have been some complaints about the Nox especially on modern Canadian coins.

Jeff

I appreciate all of the information in your post, it's very encouraging that I'm on the right track. I'll do some more research on the detection of Canadian clad, before I pull the trigger. Thanks!!
 
Thank you for the very informative post, I'm definitely now a believer in the Nox. Would you suggest the 600, or do you think I'll be missing out on some key features by not buying the 800?

I bought the 800 because, well, I could afford it and I am a huge experimenter and tweaker of settings.
I figured I would much rather have all features available to me in case I want to try them at some of my my more challenging sites.
A "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it", sort of mindset.
Turns out I have used mine in many different ways, even used both beach settings in the dirt among a thousand other setting combinations.
Because monster depth isn't super important to me, I have alot of great masked targets at the 5-7" level that every hunter seems to have missed over the decades, my goal is to find the best unmasking settings so I have the best chance of noticing the unnoticeable.
Nice to report that there are differences and some settings do actually work better than others in certain sites and situations but overall most of the settings I have tried seem to be able to hit on great treasure no matter how I set mine up.
Maybe 98% of the time, anyway.
As always I am trying to find the perfect settings that will unlock the puzzle of how strange targets can and do behave in my dirt which I might not ever accomplish here but it sure is fun trying.

From what I read the 600 and 800 both have the same basic engine running them and pretty much the same great abilities to find treasures, programming seems to be the biggest difference between them.
Maybe the 800 has more control over some features like some advanced tones and pitch, not as many inbetween numbers on the speed settings on the 600, no 40Khz beach settings and a few other things but in the grand scope of things the ranges each both work at is pretty much the same.
I don't think you will be lacking much using the 600 over the 800 unless those added features and control are important to you as they are to me.
So say many knowledgeable owners that have used both.

My F70 was the same, forever it was compared to the flagship F75 and those guys made it clear to us for years that it was always the better choice despite costing hundreds of dollars more.
We owners knew that wasn't true, both units had the same guts, the same power, the same abilities but again, just some of the programming was not the same.
I didn't care that I had no onboard programs I could flip to, I didn't miss what I didn't have so I just took 30 seconds out of my busy day to set the thing up the way I wanted at any site and it always seemed to work fine...everywhere.
One day Dave Johnson,the electrical engineer and designer of both units, came onto a forum when this subject again came up and stated categorically that they were equal in pretty much all respects as far as the ability to find treasure, the sheer power, the boost feature, recovery speed...all of it.
The programming was different but that was all, the things that really counted were always the same.
We F70 owners knew that but it was nice to see it in writing from a person that both sides respected.

Get the one that has the features that you think you can grow into and will work best for the longest time...for you, if that is the way you are heading.
Always the best advice for anyone in this hobby.
 
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