Minelab Equinox 800 - How I learnt the Machine

Before I start this rather lengthy blog I'd like to begin by stating this isn't exactly a 'review' of the Equinox 800, it's me sharing my thoughts about the machine, explaining the process I went through to learn it and how I currently use it. There are so many reviews of the Equinox range out there I'm almost certain that the world doesn't need another one. - Side Note, I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, I'm simply sharing both my thoughts and experiences.

After a rather long hiatus from the hobby I knew nothing of the developments within the industry, I was still under the impression that Fisher/First Texas we're at the forefront, I'd never heard of XP, Nokta Makro or Minelab. I guess you can say I was pretty clueless, however, I'd metal detected for many years of my life, just not in recent years, I knew what it was all about, I just wasn't up to date. It was a chance conversation with my dad about mud larking on the Thames in London that got me back into detecting. Having lived in London for well over 20 years, the Thames is in walking distance of my front-door, so the prospect of detecting on the foreshore relit the fire in my belly about both detecting and metal detectors. I started to look back into it and it wasn't long before I was researching and obsessing over the machines that were now on offer. My first proper detector was a Fisher 1265x, this was an analog/beep & dig machine, I had no concept of digital metal detectors at all.

After a short while figuring out what I needed to search the River Thames affectively, I opted for the Fisher F19 with a 5' inch coil. I picked this specific machine for it's fantastic target separation, I didn't need a deep seeking detector, you can only dig on the Thames foreshore down to about 7cm - "Depth wasn't a priority, target separation was". Once I had the F19 in my hands, it felt like I'd never been away, as I wrapped my fingers around its handle, memories of all the treasures I'd found in the past came flooding back to me. When I started swinging it was like a neutron bomb exploded in my head - "Why The Hell Did I Ever Stop Metal Detecting". After my first trip out with my F19 it became very clear almost straight away that I was going to get back into detecting in a big way, however, for every other detecting environment the lack of depth that the F19 had wasn't going to be conducive to getting the deeper targets out of terrains such as pasture and ploughed fields.

The Module

I started looking online at a few different detectors and hunting out as much information as possible, to be honest everything started to blend into one and when I accidentally fell down the YouTube rabbit hole of comparison videos with hundreds of comments underneath, many from grown men, arguing about what machine was best, I quickly lost interest - detecting isn't a competition, I decided I'd go down to my local metal detecting dealership, Joan Allen Metal Detectors, and have a look at a few machines in the flesh whilst having a chat with the guys in the shop. To be honest no huge discussions took place, I wanted something deep and when the Equinox 800 came up in conversation I decided to get one, I didn't think about it a great deal, I knew nothing about multifrequency technology but to me the 800 ticked all the boxes, I had no concept of the hype that surrounded this machine when it was released a few years prior and most importantly I didn't really care. 

Getting home and unpacking it, it felt a million years away from my old analog Fisher 1265x, putting the machine together I was somewhat disappointed by the old cam lock design of the shaft. The arm cuff appeared to bend easily and the handle reminded me of something similar to what was used on some dodgy 80's briefcase. First impressions, the build quality was poor for a machine that cost just shy of £1,000, I would of expected it to of had a carbon shaft at the very least, once constructed it appeared to be well balanced and surprising light. I could forgive the cheap build quality if the performance was top notch. Scanning through the instruction manual, it all seemed pretty straightforward, obviously I'd never owned a digital machine but the way I see it is, all detectors are just a variation of each other, be it analog or digital.

So the first thing I'd advise when starting out with the Equinox 800 is to simplify it as much as possible, don't run before you can walk. Personally I didn't use the stock programs, I tweaked them straightaway because I understood what both the recovery speed and iron bias were all about. However if you initially don't understand a great deal about the settings then using the stock programs is the perfect place to start and when you begin to feel comfortable then you can begin tweaking.

First off, for me, both 5 & 50 tones were initially way too much to handle so I decided to set the machine up as close to how the Fisher F19 sounded, this way I'd make it far more easier for me to understand, doing this added a little familiarity to the sounds I was hearing. The iron was a quiet low tone, set to 1 and everything else that rang in as 'non-ferrous' came in as a high tone with a volume setting of 25. Once it was fully charged I took it out the same day that I purchased it, I went to a spot on the river medway shoreline, this location was the perfect place to start because it wasn't a very trashy site. I thought that visiting a place like this would ease me into the language of the detector without feeling overwhelmed.

I used the "beach 2 mode" with zero iron bias and a recovery speed of 4, because the terrain was non-trashy I didn't need to separate lots of targets. I find with a recovery speed of 4, you still get good depth and have decent separation, also you seem to get more of an elongated sound on the small objects, I very rarely go above 4 unless I'm on a really trashy site. Combined with this I run my sensitivity at 25 everywhere I can get away with it, if the machine is chattery I'll drop to 23 or keep going down until it stabilises. Any setting that you change with the Equinox only needs to be done in small increments, moving just one digit up or down makes a big difference so be conscious of this.

Ground balancing was simple, I was surprised at how quiet it ran on the sand, that afternoon I found a few musket balls and some modern coins, the signals were repeatable from all angles and the audio was nice and solid. To be honest I didn't really take much notice of the numbers on the screen, growing up with a beep and dig detector I'm far more interested in the tone/tones. For me detecting is a "tones game", I think numbers are a modern day 'red herring', I notice a lot of new detectors are sold on the back of "cutting edge target I.D", but I just don't believe that exists, far too many trash targets fall within the same VDI number scale as a good target, my advice is to concentrate on tones alone, forget the screen and make a habit of digging everything that comes in 'non-ferrous'. You've got to dig the trash to find the treasure and however advanced companies claim their machines to be, digging trash walks hand in hand with successful metal detecting.

Musket Ball - Solid Signal

It wasn't long before I scored myself a permanent permission, I had over 200 acres of farmland to search on a regular basis so this was going to be the perfect opportunity to really learn the machine. Obviously I'd never used it on pasture so it was going to be a steep learning curve. Initially I found operating it tricky, it was the first time I'd used it in an environment that had lots of iron and trashy objects. I used the field 2 mode with a recovery speed of 5, full sensitivity with an iron bias of 0, I dug a fair amount of trashy objects along with some modern coins. When you first start using the machine it's a really good idea to dig all the targets, even if they're grotty tones that don't repeat. Doing this will start to give you an overall view of what the machine is telling you, and trust me when I say good targets can sound bad, and depending on the iron content of the land and the depth of the target, many coins and buttons that I've dug gave off super iffy signals that only repeated from one direction, most of these targets were 10 inches or a fraction more. You'll find on the deeper targets the tones will have a hushed. whispery quality to them and, a lot of the time the numbers will be all over the place. If you put the time into learning the 800 inside and out it ends up being a pleasure to use, just like any metal detector, you want the machine to be an extension of both your arm and yourself.

Initially because I was hunting in 2 tones I wasn't getting a great amount of feedback from the ground. Over the coming months I was out at least three times a week, 12 hours at a time, I was determined to nail the machine. At the end of each hunt I'd ease myself into five tones by using them for the last half hour or so, after a week of doing this I found myself hunting in 5 tones exclusively. 5 tones opens up the ground way more than two, you can hear all the different conductors and it produces a 5 dimensional audio image of the ground you're walking over. It's perfect for cherry picking, for example, if you're on a short hunt and you want to just dig the high/coin tones then you can do this easily by ear alone. Also 5 tones is great for hearing the good targets amongst the iron. The process explained above was how I graduated to 50 tones, at the end of each hunt I'd switch to 50 tones to the point where I used them all the time. Using 50 tones is a fantastic way to hunt, you can gain so much more information, it seems chaotic to start with but trust me, when you get use to it you won't look back.

Along side the above advice I recommend that you get into the habit of searching in "all metal mode/horseshoe on" with as little discrimination as possible, you might dig more trash but I believe this allows the machine to always operate at the optimum level. Also you stand way more chance of hearing good targets close to the iron. If you use too much 'iron bias - FE1', you have the risk of the detector allocating a non-ferrous object close to the iron as iron itself. If I use any iron bias at all which is almost never, I won't go above 3, I don't use the FE2 setting at all., this is kept at 0 and I never access it.

Because I have the iron volume low I find myself meditating on the rumbling lowtone and the mid to high tones really jump out. Also with the iron audio on it's far easier to hear if a potential target is actually the detector 'falsing'. What I mean by this is pretty straightforward, if you can hear you've got a large amount of iron under the coil and you're getting sparky high tones in one specific area, this is usually the detector falsing on the irons edge. If you suspect this to be the case, pinpointing over the target can usually confirm if in fact it is large iron, the pin-pointers modulation will spread over a large area. If however you pinpoint over the suspected iron and the modulation is more localised then it could very well be a good target in close proximity to the iron - trial and error will help you develop a sixth sense for this.

Once again, it takes a while to master all these specific settings and quirks but the more you hunt it becomes second nature pretty quickly. I can't stress enough how important it is to learn your machine, if you don't learn your detector backwards, forwards and sideways then you're wasting both your time and money. I see so many people on social media buying every one of the 'latest and greatest' machines with the viewpoint that "said machine" will find them more stuff and stop them digging trash, I'm sorry but it just doesn't work like that, it's a combination of both the machine and the person operating it that finds the treasures ........ and the trash.

Obviously if you've got a simple entry level detector that hits on coins at 5 to 6 inches maximum with literally no settings to change, there isn't a great deal to learn or master - "hence the term entry level", But if you invest in more of a higher end machine with a lot of different settings then it's within your interest to know exactly what each setting means, how to apply them and what to listen for, all of this is mastered by spending time in the fields, there are no short cuts and no amount of Youtube video watching is going to beat first hand experience. In regards to the Equinox 800 and "super secret, deep and powerful programs" that many self-appointed experts on Youtube claim to have. I'd like to point out that there are no settings that will give your machine super powers. On the Equinox you have to set the machine up for both the terrain and the environment you're searching on and in, there's no secrets, simply the right settings on the day.

In regards to the individual settings, both basic and advanced, I personally don't use a great deal of them. Firstly, I don't mess with the tone breaks, the factory preset settings work fine for me. I think the Threshold is completely pointless because it's only a 'reference threshold', it doesn't add any additional depth it simply adds a tone that you can use as a 'reference'. The Equinox does have a true threshold but it can only be accessed through Gold Modes 1 & 2. Obviously I use the noise cancel, I make a habit of doing this periodically during a hunt, mainly if I change mode or a single setting. Combined with this I perform a ground-balance if I change terrain, alter a single setting or the machine starts to false or chatter. The only volume I adjust is the iron level, I always have this on a setting of 1. 

The main controls that I use the most are the recovery speed and the sensitivity - taking into account I search in all metal with zero discrimination, for me these are the two main elements that make the most difference. Very .... very occasionally if I do use any discrimination ' as mentioned before' I very rarely go above 'FE3', I find a setting of 3 starts to break up any false signals and starts to give you more of an idea of a potential trash target. Also ... as mentioned before, if you go too high with the discrimination settings you could cancel out potential good targets, especially if they're close to iron. 

In regards to the separate modes, I hunt mainly in Park 2 & Field 2 with a recovery speed of 4 and an FE setting of 0, I find these to be the deepest modes, Field 2 is really sensitive, it's fantastic at finding deep coins both flat and on their edge, along with both large and small relics at depth. I've experimented with Field 1, this mode is really sensitive to smaller, shallower items, it's actually quite shocking just how small some of the targets are. One point I'd like to mention about small items in all the different modes, you can mistake them as being 'deep' because they have a tendency to be whispery tones. Many times I've dug tiny pieces of shallow aluminium foil thinking it was a really deep target on the edge of detection, it's tricky to gauge this. The other thing that's tricky to initially get right is the pin-pointing of really shallow targets, I'm not exactly sure why it's hard but I've read online that other people have a problem with this as well. The other annoyance with the pin-pointing is the random drop in volume that you seem to encounter, I believe this is a glitch in the software and I'm surprised Minelab haven't rectified it with a firmware update. 

I haven't used the Park 1 mode a great deal and I only use the Beach modes on the river Medway foreshore, both Beach modes run quiet in the sand and detect all manner of objects both shallow and at depth. Regarding the gold modes these are fantastic for coin shooting. Due to them only being one tone I have to look at the screen and the VDI but I basically dig within the number range that would usually give me a coin/high tone. Because the threshold on both gold modes is active/true you can hit on really deep items. If you listen really carefully you'll get a deviation within the threshold tone without a number or tone from the machine registering, when this happens it means there's a potential deep target. It takes concentration but I've hit both deep coins and buttons listening to the threshold without any indication of both VDI and tone.

In regards to the frequency settings I mainly hunt in 'multi', I very rarely use the single frequencies. If EMI is really bad I'll switch over, if I do use any other frequency it's usually a toss up between 4KHZ & 5KHZ, in all honesty I don't see a great deal of benefit using anything other than multi, there might be guys out there that understand the theory behind single frequencies that disagree with what I'm saying and that's fine, I'm not a scientist and I don't know the ins and outs behind frequencies and the way they work. Maybe in super trashy parks where there's a chance you could find both gold and silver jewellery there might be benefits to certain single frequencies but for my pasture fields I genuinely don't see the point in changing from multi. 

I'm racking my brain over things I might have missed and I can't really think of any other than ... swing speed? I've found that a slow swing speed works best, whatever recovery you might have the 800 set at, take it easy and take it slow. I think I've pretty much covered everything that's relevant to the way I use my Equinox, I could go on but the main approach has been covered, any features that I haven't mentioned is because I don't use them, there's no point writing about something I don't use. To sum up, the Equinox 800 is a very good machine and performs really well, it's like you're getting multiple machines in one. It does have it's weaknesses but no machine is perfect. In regards to its faults, the build quality isn't great and I can't comment on the leaking issues people have had using it underwater, I search on dry land. 

The key to understanding it is simply time in the field, the more you use it and get comfortable with it, you can then start making minor adjustments to fine tune it for your hunting sites. When you get to this point you'll start to enjoy your time in the field so much more because you're not second guessing what the machine is telling you. I wouldn't recommend buying the 800 as your first detector, it's definitely for someone with more experience in the hobby, however it's a perfect 'graduation' machine if you've been metal detecting for a few years and want to upgrade. All in all an great detector !!