Equinox Settings - forget what everyone else says do it yourself.

maxxkatt

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There are a lot of posts on various metal detecting forums asking Equinox 600 or 800 user what settings they use. In my opinion this is not the way to go about deciding what settings you should use for your Equinox.

Why? Other people’s settings are for their specific type of soil and the types of targets they are hunting. This can have a very negative effect if you use their settings on your hunt. Their settings may be optimized for a low mineralization soil and they might be hunting coins and you might be hunting in relics in a higher mineralized soil. Thus your 600 or 800 will be far from being optimized for your conditions.

Here is what I and others consider the right way to optimize YOUR SETTINGS for YOUR HUNT.

Take with you examples of what targets you are hunting. If you are hunting old coins then take your barber dime and shield nickel, etc with you to your hunt site.
Set the appropriate mode 1 or mode 2 for either park, field or beach.
Noise cancel and ground balance.
Bury your example targets about 7” deep be they coins or civil war bullets and buttons at the actual site you are hunting that day.
Now swing over your targets and gradually adjust your different settings while you swing. This can be done with the 800 and I assume it can be done using the 600.
Alter your sensitivity and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.
Alter your recovery speed and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.
Alter your iron balance and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.
Alter your threshold and see what gives you the best sound and best numbers.

If the above one was park2 then repeat the entire sequence starting with noise cancel and ground balance with park 2.

Even try it in the gold modes you may be surprised that this produces the best signals.

Even change from multi to 5 kHz or other frequencies.

In my opinion this is the only way to truly optimize your Equinox for your specific targets and soil conditions.

Keep in mind the Minelab engineers did a very good job designing the default settings for each mode and usually only minor adjustments to the default settings are necessary to tailor the default settings to your hunt site.
The same applies to beach hunting.

Take some gold rings and bury them in the wet sand (not in the surf) and perform tests like above before the hunt. This will get your Equinox optimized for that ocean beach.
 
Got any videos on You Tube on machine setup, why certain settings are being adjusted and the results achieved?
 
This is not a method you would want to use if cherry picking. I think this method might prove useful on a site you thought you had cleaned out and where you want to be sure you got all the findable goodies.

I tend to move somewhat regularly and I am not going to take the time to do anything other than noise cancel and GB. My iron bias is set pretty low to begin with. Unless I am missing something the lower the iron bias the better. To my knowledge all iron bias does is help you reject falsing iron at the expense of loosing some good iffy targets the higher you raise the setting. My recovery is set on 6 most of the time. I would certainly lower it if the site was clean and I wanted or needed more depth. The same goes with sensitivity to a certain extent.

It would take a lot to convince me this method was useful enough to do at every site. There are so many variables on some sites that a setup in one spot on said site might be totally different just a few feet away. In relatively clean spots with not much iron or modern trash the stock programs would probably be totally fine for most folks.

Yes you certainly could make adjustments to fine tune to each site individually. In doing so you might eek out a few more finds. I am personally in the camp of tweaking settings to the average of the sites I hunt and running with it or worse case making a slight adjustment to settings as needed.
 
This is not a method you would want to use if cherry picking. I think this method might prove useful on a site you thought you had cleaned out and where you want to be sure you got all the findable goodies.

I tend to move somewhat regularly and I am not going to take the time to do anything other than noise cancel and GB. My iron bias is set pretty low to begin with. Unless I am missing something the lower the iron bias the better. To my knowledge all iron bias does is help you reject falsing iron at the expense of loosing some good iffy targets the higher you raise the setting. My recovery is set on 6 most of the time. I would certainly lower it if the site was clean and I wanted or needed more depth. The same goes with sensitivity to a certain extent.

It would take a lot to convince me this method was useful enough to do at every site. There are so many variables on some sites that a setup in one spot on said site might be totally different just a few feet away. In relatively clean spots with not much iron or modern trash the stock programs would probably be totally fine for most folks.

Yes you certainly could make adjustments to fine tune to each site individually. In doing so you might eek out a few more finds. I am personally in the camp of tweaking settings to the average of the sites I hunt and running with it or worse case making a slight adjustment to settings as needed.

I couldn’t agree more with every word here^^^^^
 
I couldn’t agree more with every word here^^^^^

x3. I have my default setup for a new residential permission and I'll use it to survey the place. I'll dig a variety of targets in different areas and get a feel for what's going on. Then I go back around and change settings as needed. If I'm trying to get the place done on limited time, then I just go straight for the typical hotspots using what I think are appropriate settings and make adjustments as necessary.
 
I have to agree with the others here, I usually just noise cancel and go. I also have my iron bias set low and recovery speed at 6. I'm not much of a tweaker to begin with but I really can't see spending that much time and effort at every hunt site, I don't even have a test garden at home so I doubt I'll be wasting valuable hunt time creating one elsewhere. I do realize though that some people are tweakers and find all that testing to be fun, I'd rather be hunting!
 
I really like this approach but not for tweaking a lot at the cite. A simple planting of a "benchmark target" you brought with you, buried when you refill your first 6-8" hole. Hole is already there. A simple clad dime counts, even if you leave it there after affirming that you are pleased with the way the machine hits it.

I have had many hunts over the years where I discovered something was not right, after burning an hour or more.

Why not make that first dig a sanity check, to feel confident for the rest of the hunt? Hole is already dug.
 
What's wrong with using fairly average settings to start with and then being guided by the machine?
If you are detecting lots of iron, you know your IB can't be too low...if the ground is clean you can reduce the IB and perhaps the Recovery...

If the ground is very noisy reduce the sensitivity a bit untill it becomes stable...Just remember to Noise Cancel each time you change the settings and keep an open mind about what's going on...
 
I should make it clear that you don't have to do this every time or even do it at all. But don't just use someone else's setting for it could put your settings off quite a bit on your site.

I have done this on several particular CW relic sites where it is important to me to have my 800 set up as good as possible since the sites are in Atlanta and have most likely been hunted real good in the 70's and 80's. All of the easy stuff is pretty much gone.

Once I have done it for a particular area I pretty much know what my modes and settings are each time I hunt that area.
 
I should make it clear that you don't have to do this every time or even do it at all. But don't just use someone else's setting for it could put your settings off quite a bit on your site.

I have done this on several particular CW relic sites where it is important to me to have my 800 set up as good as possible since the sites are in Atlanta and have most likely been hunted real good in the 70's and 80's. All of the easy stuff is pretty much gone.

Once I have done it for a particular area I pretty much know what my modes and settings are each time I hunt that area.

Ah, gotcha! I thought you were advocating doing it at each individual site you hunt. Basically you are doing what many do in their coin garden. Except you take it a step further doing it on the actual site you are about to hunt. I cannot comment on the merits of doing it that way, but logically it's definitely not going to do any harm that I can think of. The best test for this method would be to thoroughly hunt a place without doing it. Then bury the targets and do this setup method and compare results.
 
Yep, presets on any detector work quite well. I have to tell myself that designers actually took em outside before they sold em.

I've often thought a side by side FIELD test of identical detectors readings over the same undug FIELD target with one using presets and the other using custom settings would be interesting.

Hmmmmm
 
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Yep, presets on any detector work quite well. I have to tell myself that designers actually took em outside before they sold em.

Yep Norm, worked well for me. Found a lot of stuff in areas I had hit hard with an AT Pro, with the NOX factory settings! I would mess with it (ugh) and then just do a factory reset and forget about it. Would probably still have the NOX, if not for health and family issues at the time.
 
Yep Norm, worked well for me. Found a lot of stuff in areas I had hit hard with an AT Pro, with the NOX factory settings! I would mess with it (ugh) and then just do a factory reset and forget about it. Would probably still have the NOX, if not for health and family issues at the time.

Yep I stick pretty close to presets for a long time as I haven't seen a major difference after pushing buttons and twisting knobs.
 
There are times I have to change settings for certain conditions if you know how.
Minelab made the Nox so an amateur can run it out of the box but it can be be changed for more optimum operations.
It runs fine right out of the box and that was what Minelab had intended. A machine that will work for the amateur and the more advanced detectorist.
Doug
.
 
x3. I have my default setup for a new residential permission and I'll use it to survey the place. I'll dig a variety of targets in different areas and get a feel for what's going on. Then I go back around and change settings as needed. If I'm trying to get the place done on limited time, then I just go straight for the typical hotspots using what I think are appropriate settings and make adjustments as necessary.

x4

sorry, but all the silly 40 min long equinox ohhhh so special settings are waste of time.

just turn it on, noise cancel adjust basics...voila!

Matt
 
Diffrrent detectors have an intuition quotient that can be very different for different people. Just like musicians have an ear for different types of music better than others... they just have a certain feeling for certain types of tones and beats that other musicians, well those other musicians may have their own niched and genres they are good at.

I have four detectors but I just seem to do the very best with my Makro Gold Kruzer. My Tesoro Bandido is next in line, followed by Simplex and lastly the Silver Sabre. Although the quality of a machine has a lot to do with success, it is also largely because of the temperament and sonic expression of my machines is that I am able to get what I get out of them in that order. Anyones" miles may vary. I find that somehow I am really able to pick up on what my Gold Kruzer is trying to tell me. It might not even be exactly the way the engineers who designed it and send it it it's just my own unique relationship with that machine. For that reason I am very attracted to Gold Kruzer's sister unit the Multi Kruzer. However it could be they dont have the same sonic nuances, I would have to watch some demos of both.

I would almost consider selling my Sabre and Simplex at this point and getting the 3-freq MK. For my price range I think the GK and the MK would be perfect complimentary machines with similar user interfaces and can share charging cables, adapters and headphones. My Bandido has turned out to be a really great little machine for what it is, in spite of its monotone expression. Its a perfect little simple grab n go detector for scouting those places you suddenly noticed while driving around. I would take it over my Teknetics Eurotek or Whites Classic 3 anytime any day.
 
I have to admit in the first 6 months I spent way too much time with different settings on the 800. Results were I probably was screwing things up so much I turned my 800 into a Bounty hunter Jr.

Like other said, pick a standard mode to fit your hunt, noise cancel, ground balance (and you don't have to do that if you are average soil) and hunt. The engineers certainly did know what they were doing with the standard modes.

Again, beware of just using other's settings.
 
...Again, beware of just using other's settings.

100% true and great advice, and this applies to all detectors.

The preset modes are designed as a general starting point and do "good" in most situations they're labeled for (coin, jewelry, relic, etc...). Once you learn and understand the machine, as well as the site you are hunting, you can start making adjustment to make it "great" for that particular site/desired target. Keep in mind, small adjustments to the settings can have a huge impact on how the detector responds to a desired target.

I'm guilty of dismissing preset programs on a new detector as inefficient and jumping in to change settings as others suggest, without understanding what I was doing. This only led to frustration and starting all over in a factory preset mode.

When just getting into the hobby or learning a new machine, do yourself a favor and chose a preset program to start. The only adjustments that might be necessary are:
1. Ground balance (if necessary)
2. Noise cancel (if applicable)
3. Volume - to your comfort level
4. Sensitivity - if the detector is chatty or falsing a lot, lower the sensitivity a little at a time until it is stable. Otherwise, leave it as it is for now.

When it comes to sensitivity "more" isn't always better. Once you learn and understand what the detector is telling you, you can start to slowly increase the sensitivity but pay close attention to how the detector responds to the adjustments.

Enjoy the hobby and good luck!
 
I like all the research and findings you all have done, I listen and find new settings that work! I discovered lowering the recovery speed increases depth. Mine is set at 5
Decreasing F2 to 6 helped me at the beach a little!
IDK about sensitivity since I almost always have it at 25.
Happy detecting👍
 
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