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Equinox ‘Order of Operations’?

MichiDigger

Full Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2020
Messages
247
Location
Swartz Creek, MI
Just received my Nox 600. Manual says:

1) Turn on
2) Select a Detect Mode
3) Noise Cancel
4) Begin Detecting!

With the 600, I obviously don’t have the Gold modes. Living in Michigan, I don’t have salt water. Manual or auto ground balance appears to be my best options.

My question is where in the ‘order of operations’ should ground balancing come in or does it matter? Thanks in advance!
 
Just received my Nox 600. Manual says:

1) Turn on
2) Select a Detect Mode
3) Noise Cancel
4) Begin Detecting!

With the 600, I obviously don’t have the Gold modes. Living in Michigan, I don’t have salt water. Manual or auto ground balance appears to be my best options.

My question is where in the ‘order of operations’ should ground balancing come in or does it matter? Thanks in advance!

I noise cancel in the same sequence you have here.

You don't need to GB at all in Multi mode. Keep it at zero.
 
Leaving ground balance on default 0 is a perfectly good way to start out.

If you aren't sure if you need to ground balance (since the Equinox does not have a mineralization bar or graph on the display) here are three ways to tell.

When you have finished your startup sequence, sweep the coil over the ground you want to detect and listen for lots of really short clicks and pops that may or may not register as a numerical target ID. If you hear several with each sweep you either have lots of tiny man-made iron or metal fragments at your site or you have ground mineralization. You could even have both! If you hear nothing sweeping the coil over target free ground or only an occasional click or pop you are good to go with the default 0 ground balance setting. This is in the manual which makes for a nice bedtime story. If instead you hear tons of jumpy audio and see lots of wildly fluctuating numbers on the display, you have too much sensitivity for the EMI in the area. Lower the sensitivity until the Nox quiets down and/or move to another area away from the EMI source if you can find it.

A weird way to see if you need to ground balance is to find some target free ground then press and release the pinpoint button. If you are not over of near a target you should hear nothing except for maybe a steady, faint background hum. If you hear lots of "boing" like sounds as you sweep or raise and lower the coil (if you get the pinpoint function to work properly.......it does take some practice and reading of the manual repeatedly especially anything in the blue boxes) you probably need to ground balance.

The easiest way is to press the settings button again after noise cancelling (if you are not over a target) which puts the Nox into ground balance mode. As you gently raise and lower the coil you may hear nothing or a steady faint background hum=good. Hit the detect button and go detect. If you hear a lot of "boing" type audio you might want to press the accept/reject button while raising and lowering the coil until you hear a beep and the number on the screen settles. If you are not comfortable doing that you can also just manually raise the number from 0 with the - and + buttons until it quiets down. Either way, you just ground balanced the Nox. If you still aren't sure just hit the - button until you get back to 0. It is all in the online manual. It takes less than 30 seconds after a little practice.

If you notice a squiggly line under the Wi Fi/Bluetooth/Headphone icons in the top right corner, that means you put the Nox into tracking ground balance mode. Just go back into setting/ground balance and press the accept/reject button again so the squiggly icon goes away and hit the detect button to return to detecting.

So, an experienced user will probably have this sequence if their site has iffy mineralization or EMI. It takes less than a minute with practice.
Turn on
Select detect mode
auto noise cancel
check for ground noise
auto ground balance if needed
possibly lower sensitivity if EMI or ground noise is still present, if not, raise sensitivity until the Nox audio gets unstable and back off a click
go detect
find some great targets (and some trash)

Jeff
 
I’ve never needed to ground balance mine, I just leave it at 0 like minelab reccomended. But my soil isn’t very mineralized


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Hi Michigander.
The 600 can detect gold.
Ground balance, it will work without doing it but will be more efficient doing it.
I myself don’t recommend using auto track balance.
Doug
Equinox 800
 
Leaving ground balance on default 0 is a perfectly good way to start out.

If you aren't sure if you need to ground balance (since the Equinox does not have a mineralization bar or graph on the display) here are three ways to tell.

When you have finished your startup sequence, sweep the coil over the ground you want to detect and listen for lots of really short clicks and pops that may or may not register as a numerical target ID. If you hear several with each sweep you either have lots of tiny man-made iron or metal fragments at your site or you have ground mineralization. You could even have both! If you hear nothing sweeping the coil over target free ground or only an occasional click or pop you are good to go with the default 0 ground balance setting. This is in the manual which makes for a nice bedtime story. If instead you hear tons of jumpy audio and see lots of wildly fluctuating numbers on the display, you have too much sensitivity for the EMI in the area. Lower the sensitivity until the Nox quiets down and/or move to another area away from the EMI source if you can find it.

A weird way to see if you need to ground balance is to find some target free ground then press and release the pinpoint button. If you are not over of near a target you should hear nothing except for maybe a steady, faint background hum. If you hear lots of "boing" like sounds as you sweep or raise and lower the coil (if you get the pinpoint function to work properly.......it does take some practice and reading of the manual repeatedly especially anything in the blue boxes) you probably need to ground balance.

The easiest way is to press the settings button again after noise cancelling (if you are not over a target) which puts the Nox into ground balance mode. As you gently raise and lower the coil you may hear nothing or a steady faint background hum=good. Hit the detect button and go detect. If you hear a lot of "boing" type audio you might want to press the accept/reject button while raising and lowering the coil until you hear a beep and the number on the screen settles. If you are not comfortable doing that you can also just manually raise the number from 0 with the - and + buttons until it quiets down. Either way, you just ground balanced the Nox. If you still aren't sure just hit the - button until you get back to 0. It is all in the online manual. It takes less than 30 seconds after a little practice.

If you notice a squiggly line under the Wi Fi/Bluetooth/Headphone icons in the top right corner, that means you put the Nox into tracking ground balance mode. Just go back into setting/ground balance and press the accept/reject button again so the squiggly icon goes away and hit the detect button to return to detecting.

So, an experienced user will probably have this sequence if their site has iffy mineralization or EMI. It takes less than a minute with practice.
Turn on
Select detect mode
auto noise cancel
check for ground noise
auto ground balance if needed
possibly lower sensitivity if EMI or ground noise is still present, if not, raise sensitivity until the Nox audio gets unstable and back off a click
go detect
find some great targets (and some trash)

Jeff

Jeff. Very informative write up. I stop swinging the coil periodically and keep it perfectly still on the ground, and check for the chatter. If I still get clicking with no motion, I assume it's unstable and lower sensitivity.

Does this sound in-line with your procedure? A new buddy I made yesterday, running a 600 like mine, both machines about the same age of 2 years. He said he was running full sens of 25, and he commented that it became silent during coil movement.

I had to lower sens on mine to 19 to stop the chatter when "coil was left perfectly still on the ground."

Which of us was actually stable?
 
You guys saying you GB a lot. You do find a clean spot on the ground, and don't simply GB any-old-where. You can do more harm than good if you don't.
 
I noise cancel then pump the coil for a GB every time. I thought this was standard?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Turn the darn thing on. Pick your mode. Noise cancel and hunt. The rest is BS.
 
Turn the darn thing on. Pick your mode. Noise cancel and hunt. The rest is BS.


That's not very friendly goodmore. No one including me said you have to hunt any particular way or there is something wrong with you detecting using default 0. If you don't need to ground balance, by all means don't. I wish I got to hunt on ground like that. For the folks like me that do need to manually ground balance, for whatever you consider a "BS" reason, it is great to have the option (why did Minelab go to the trouble to include different ways to ground balance on the Equinox?????).

Jeff
 
They added the ground balance feature for high mineral ground looking for small match head sized gold nuggets. It doesn't apply to many hunters out there.

Buy the books. Make it harder than it needs to be. I don't care at all.

The Equinox is a turn on and go detector. It isn't calculus. It even provides pictures for those that can't read.
 
Donut,
"Wow" pretty much says it all..........

I guess MichDigger and I waisted our money buying an Equinox 600 since it has features like manual, automatic and tracking ground balance that we didn't need since the 600 doesn't have the Gold modes for finding match head sized nuggets in high mineralization...... I wonder why Minelab included those features on a detector that is not designed for gold nuggets???

I like reading the Equinox manual and its FREE!!!!!

Jeff
 
Especially the big blue box on page 40.

Ground balance away. It makes no difference to me.

The 600 has a notch feature too. Haven't used notch in 45 years of detecting.
 
Jeff. Very informative write up. I stop swinging the coil periodically and keep it perfectly still on the ground, and check for the chatter. If I still get clicking with no motion, I assume it's unstable and lower sensitivity.

Does this sound in-line with your procedure? A new buddy I made yesterday, running a 600 like mine, both machines about the same age of 2 years. He said he was running full sens of 25, and he commented that it became silent during coil movement.

I had to lower sens on mine to 19 to stop the chatter when "coil was left perfectly still on the ground."

Which of us was actually stable?
Sounds like you guys were not running exactly the same modes or settings besides the sensitivity difference. Just from the manual, Park 1 and Field 1 seem to be a bit quieter on the little targets than the higher frequency weighted Park 2 and Field 2 which are supposed to be hotter on smaller mid to low conductors which could include low frequency EMI and ground mineralization. I still have EMI issues sometimes, especially with Park 2 and Field 2.

Running sensitivity at 25 is something I have never had the opportunity to do so I can't comment on his saying that the chatter decreased when he was swinging his coil. Running at 25 is definitely red lining the Nox in my opinion. Mineralization is so bad here that running 25 would cause constant falsing on every tiny piece of magnetite in the top three inches of the ground here much less any bigger man-made iron. EMI would be a nightmare too.

The only time I get chatter when I hold the coil still either near the ground or in the air seems to come from EMI. I say seems because that is just my experience. Just like you if the EMI chatter bothers me I just lower the sensitivity and maybe do another auto noise cancel.

I can't comment on whether a coil on the ground AND not moving on the Equinox in detect mode can pick up audible ground mineralization noise. Interesting question that I will have to try.......

MichDigger started a great topic. I'm just here to learn and share when I can. Thanks for the question.

Jeff
 
Leaving ground balance on default 0 is a perfectly good way to start out.

If you aren't sure if you need to ground balance (since the Equinox does not have a mineralization bar or graph on the display) here are three ways to tell.

When you have finished your startup sequence, sweep the coil over the ground you want to detect and listen for lots of really short clicks and pops that may or may not register as a numerical target ID. If you hear several with each sweep you either have lots of tiny man-made iron or metal fragments at your site or you have ground mineralization. You could even have both! If you hear nothing sweeping the coil over target free ground or only an occasional click or pop you are good to go with the default 0 ground balance setting. This is in the manual which makes for a nice bedtime story. If instead you hear tons of jumpy audio and see lots of wildly fluctuating numbers on the display, you have too much sensitivity for the EMI in the area. Lower the sensitivity until the Nox quiets down and/or move to another area away from the EMI source if you can find it.

A weird way to see if you need to ground balance is to find some target free ground then press and release the pinpoint button. If you are not over of near a target you should hear nothing except for maybe a steady, faint background hum. If you hear lots of "boing" like sounds as you sweep or raise and lower the coil (if you get the pinpoint function to work properly.......it does take some practice and reading of the manual repeatedly especially anything in the blue boxes) you probably need to ground balance.

The easiest way is to press the settings button again after noise cancelling (if you are not over a target) which puts the Nox into ground balance mode. As you gently raise and lower the coil you may hear nothing or a steady faint background hum=good. Hit the detect button and go detect. If you hear a lot of "boing" type audio you might want to press the accept/reject button while raising and lowering the coil until you hear a beep and the number on the screen settles. If you are not comfortable doing that you can also just manually raise the number from 0 with the - and + buttons until it quiets down. Either way, you just ground balanced the Nox. If you still aren't sure just hit the - button until you get back to 0. It is all in the online manual. It takes less than 30 seconds after a little practice.

If you notice a squiggly line under the Wi Fi/Bluetooth/Headphone icons in the top right corner, that means you put the Nox into tracking ground balance mode. Just go back into setting/ground balance and press the accept/reject button again so the squiggly icon goes away and hit the detect button to return to detecting.

So, an experienced user will probably have this sequence if their site has iffy mineralization or EMI. It takes less than a minute with practice.
Turn on
Select detect mode
auto noise cancel
check for ground noise
auto ground balance if needed
possibly lower sensitivity if EMI or ground noise is still present, if not, raise sensitivity until the Nox audio gets unstable and back off a click
go detect
find some great targets (and some trash)

Jeff

Thanks, Jeff! That is very insightful. So far, with only about 3 short hunts, I haven’t run into ANY noticeable chatter. I have done the noise cancel on each one and only did a manual GB on the last one. Didn’t see any appreciable difference. I guess only GB if and when necessary?
 
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