Equinox 800 and AT Max: Going for Deep Silver

I have watched several of this fellow's videos. I find his Equinox videos to be really disjointed and haphazard. At least try to clear the ground of large iron targets in the vicinity of your 12" deep silver coin target holes before burying your targets. Mark their location so the viewer at least knows where they are especially since the videographer couldn't figure out exactly where they were using two great detectors!!!! Plus, I have to say that I disagree with most of what he says and I disagree with many of his settings.

My Colorado ground is very mineralized similar to his ground in NW Oregon. Running the Equinox with nothing rejected at all in my dirt and in his is maddening. All I have to do is reject -9 and I won't hear most of the constant ground noise from hot rocks and magnetite. I can still hear all of the man-made iron targets. I actually detected a 10" 1948 Roosevelt dime today with my Equinox 800 in Park 2 with small iron and aluminum targets sounding off simultaneously under my 11" coil. The Rosie signal was very clear, with correct two-way tones and numbers even though I had to isolate the signal by limiting my search coil swing to about 2 inches in order to avoid the adjacent targets. I had my recovery speed on 5, iron bias on 1, sensitivity on 22 and I was hunting with -5 to +40 targets accepted which rejected hot rocks, magnetite and some very low VDI EMI from the park's underground wireless sprinkler system.

He kept lowering (slowing) his target recovery speed while trying to hit two adjacent targets=a high conductive, freshly buried SLQ and a well established large deep iron target. He lowered the recovery speed in order to get more depth but managed to create more iron masking by doing so. I personally would have slightly speed up the recovery speed instead.

His comment about the Equinox iron bias settings having an effect on depth has not be suggested or proven, PERIOD. I do try to run my Equinox with as little iron bias as possible but that has nothing to do with depth. I don't want to accidentally mask a small or poorly oriented deeper non-ferrous target by using too much iron bias which can definitely help to identify iron better but also may mis-identify non-ferrous targets as iron when they are close together.

He insisted on trying to hit freshly planted 12", obviously mineralization challenged and adjacent iron masked targets using Park 1. After almost half of the video he went to Park 2 and almost got some good results. Park 2 and Field 2 are good for more mineralized soils and hard to hit targets that either are smaller, masked or on edge. Had he sped up the recovery speed, I believe he would have been able to clearly hit both silver targets and with the appropriate tones and target IDs.

The AT Max in its basically unfiltered threshold based all metal mode was able to apparently hit both targets. Since he did not mark them it is really hard to know for sure. His AT Max and my AT Gold in threshold based All Metal mode with the same sized coils are very deep detectors. In the other discrimination modes he tried, he had very little success using the AT Max

He could have used the Gold modes on the Equinox 800. Although they are one tone modes, they do give very accurate numerical target IDs on most targets including SLQs and Mercury dimes. That would have been a good way to compare the Equinox and AT Max raw power since the Gold modes are the closest thing to threshold based all metal on the AT Max.

So, I disagree with your paraphrase of his statement at the end of his video and your conclusion drawn from it. Both detectors do very well in magnetite iron mineralization and in areas of man-made iron trash.

I do agree with the fact that the Equinox is capable of correctly identifying the conductivity of really deep non-ferrous targets by registering them with the appropriate target id numbers (which will be a bit jumpy on deeper targets) and with the correctly pitched tones if one is using a mode that allows multiple tones. The AT Max in All Metal will hit very deep targets but it will not usually give an accurate target ID and will often just give an iron grunt even on deep non-ferrous targets.

Personally, I don't gain much from this guys videos except for what NOT to do. His comments are also turned off for his videos........... I know he is associated with a detector dealership. That does not automatically make him a great fount of knowledge.

That was hard to watch. Had to skip through most of it. 12" dimes are very tough if not nearly impossible unless soil is really mild and ground is super clean. You would really have to be in absolutely dig it all mode to dig that dime with either machine. I personally don't know why the guy posted it as it didn't really teach you anything.

I don't like the Equinox below 4 recovery speed, but that's just me. Some people do like 2-3, but if you do turn down that low your going to have to go slow. I also run horseshoe on all the time with 0 iron bias. I run 5 tones with the pitch and volumes set to my liking. I did not like the way the guy on the video was running his. You need to put the sensitivity up as high as you can while still being stable to get the deepest targets. EMI is probably the Equinox's greatest weakness, and unless I am in the country I can seldom turn up above 20.

This is just my opinion, but I think the 11" is the best coil for the Equinox. I think it performs best with that coil. The 6" is okay in certain situations, and if you had clean ground in fields the 15" might work okay if you needed to cover some ground. Again I think the Nox was designed around the 11" and I prefer that coil on my machine in most situations.

jmaclen said:

...
I do agree with the fact that the Equinox is capable of correctly identifying the conductivity of really deep non-ferrous targets by registering them with the appropriate target id numbers (which will be a bit jumpy on deeper targets) and with the correctly pitched tones if one is using a mode that allows multiple tones. The AT Max in All Metal will hit very deep targets but it will not usually give an accurate target ID and will often just give an iron grunt even on deep non-ferrous targets....

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Thanks for your in-depth critique and response to his videos. The above portion I quoted from your comment is what I had been hearing when comparing the AT Max versus the Equinox in regards to deep targets and/or deep silver. So when I saw that video and it basically sounded like he was telling viewers that the AT Max on deep silver, in certain situations, was going to be better than the Equinox, it really caught my attention.

longbow62 said:

That was hard to watch. Had to skip through most of it. 12" dimes are very tough if not nearly impossible unless soil is really mild and ground is super clean. You would really have to be in absolutely dig it all mode to dig that dime with either machine. I personally don't know why the guy posted it as it didn't really teach you anything.

I don't like the Equinox below 4 recovery speed, but that's just me. Some people do like 2-3, but if you do turn down that low your going to have to go slow. I also run horseshoe on all the time with 0 iron bias. I run 5 tones with the pitch and volumes set to my liking. I did not like the way the guy on the video was running his. You need to put the sensitivity up as high as you can while still being stable to get the deepest targets. EMI is probably the Equinox's greatest weakness, and unless I am in the country I can seldom turn up above 20.

This is just my opinion, but I think the 11" is the best coil for the Equinox. I think it performs best with that coil. The 6" is okay in certain situations, and if you had clean ground in fields the 15" might work okay if you needed to cover some ground. Again I think the Nox was designed around the 11" and I prefer that coil on my machine in most situations.

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I agree his videos are hard to watch. They need to be edited better, with pointless footage cut out and maybe more subtitles added. I'm guessing he knows this, but chooses not to spend the time editing his videos in post-production.

And what you're saying about getting deep silver in clean or mild soil is something that intimidates me in regards to finding the deep silver in my yard and/or neighborhood.

I think I would enjoy using and owning the AT Max more than the Equinox...except for the fact that the Equinox will be a better performer in almost all situations. I'm just trying to figure out if one of those rare situations where the AT Max is better (or at least the equivalent as the Equinox) applies to my situation. It sounds like it does not.

Until I found my first silver, what I enjoyed using and owning would win out. But geez, the thrill of finding silver is awesome!

As Minelab says, "performance is everything."

mh9162013 said:

Thanks for your in-depth critique and response to his videos. The above portion I quoted from your comment is what I had been hearing when comparing the AT Max versus the Equinox in regards to deep targets and/or deep silver. So when I saw that video and it basically sounded like he was telling viewers that the AT Max on deep silver, in certain situations, was going to be better than the Equinox, it really caught my attention.

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I doubt an At Max can compete with an Equinox.

metaladdict said:

I doubt an At Max can compete with an Equinox.

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I agree

mh9162013 said:

I agree his videos are hard to watch. They need to be edited better, with pointless footage cut out and maybe more subtitles added. I'm guessing he knows this, but chooses not to spend the time editing his videos in post-production.

And what you're saying about getting deep silver in clean or mild soil is something that intimidates me in regards to finding the deep silver in my yard and/or neighborhood.

I think I would enjoy using and owning the AT Max more than the Equinox...except for the fact that the Equinox will be a better performer in almost all situations. I'm just trying to figure out if one of those rare situations where the AT Max is better (or at least the equivalent as the Equinox) applies to my situation. It sounds like it does not.

Until I found my first silver, what I enjoyed using and owning would win out. But geez, the thrill of finding silver is awesome!

As Minelab says, "performance is everything."

Click to expand...

The Equinox is capable of finding AND identifying deep silver targets just fine if the user knows what they are doing. The AT Max and my AT Gold will also find deep silver targets..........I probably will not know it is possibly a deep silver target until I dig it and all the other deep targets in the area.

If you are torn between the Equinox and the AT Max........that is a good dilemma to have. Both are excellent detectors, can easily offset their value in finds if you learn them and hold their value very well. You can't go wrong buying either one from an economics standpoint.

jmaclen said:

The Equinox is capable of finding AND identifying deep silver targets just fine if the user knows what they are doing. The AT Max and my AT Gold will also find deep silver targets..........I probably will not know it is possibly a deep silver target until I dig it and all the other deep targets in the area.

If you are torn between the Equinox and the AT Max........that is a good dilemma to have. Both are excellent detectors, can easily offset their value in finds if you learn them and hold their value very well. You can't go wrong buying either one from an economics standpoint.

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That's good to hear, thanks!