Nagging Depth Concerns about Nox 600

[mrmastadon]

Greetings all!

I would consider myself relatively new to detecting, having previously used a machine that can only be described as cheap, Chinese junk. Recently I remembered just how much I enjoy the hobby and bit the bullet, purchasing an Equinox 600. I've been having a blast digging clad (and a random 1865 IHP that was about 1" below the surface!) in local parks and schoolyards. Generally I have loved learning the machine and its language, and have put about 100 hours on it.

I have read anything online I can find about the Equinox and watched hours and hours of videos, and after all this, while I feel like I've learned an incredible amount, I am haunted by a nagging suspicion that I am not getting the proper depth out of the detector. In my 100 hours, I have dug a couple thousand targets and have never once found anything below 6" or maybe 7" (if I'm being generous), with the exception of some whole aluminum cans, a large square chunk of copper, and an old sewer grate. When I do get a signal showing 4 or 5 depth bars (which I understand is somewhat subjective), the machine has literally never once given a tone or VDI number that is repeatable -- or even close to repeatable -- from two angles.

As for settings, I have tried everything imaginable, starting with stock settings, and all six modes (Park, Field, Beach, 1&2). I have tried raising sensitivity and lowering sensitivity. I have tried auto, manual, tracking, and no GB. I have tried discrimination and no discrimination. I have tried all single frequencies and multi-frequency. I have raised iron bias and lowered iron bias. I have raised recovery speed and lowered recovery speed. I have noise canceled. Still, 6" is my max. (I am using the stock 11" coil).

Now, I am in central North Carolina and at the moment, in the middle of the hot summer, our soil consists of rock-hard, thick red clay interspersed with rocks that make digging deeper than about 4" difficult, even armed with a Lesche Sampson. I understand that these are not ideal conditions and will present depth challenges for any VLF detector. Detectorists in places like Kansas and Nebraska with soft, black, loamy soil will always punch deeper with their machines, but I purchased the Nox in part not just for depth, but for stability/repeatability at depth, and I still feel like I'm coming up short.

Today, I had an idea: while all of my local soil is as described above, I have a raised garden bed that is filled with nice, soft, black, plant-happy dirt. I found an open spot and buried a quarter, dime, and sterling ring at 10". I tried all modes and raised and lowered the various customizations. 98% of my sweeps resulted in absolutely no hits from the detector. Finally -- and only -- in Park 2, with recovery speed 3, sensitivity above 22, no iron bias and no discrimination, I got a very faint, fluty tone over the quarter, and only when swinging the coil as fast as I possibly could. The other items? Nada. At no point, even when the quarter was "detected," did the machine offer a VDI.

So, apologies for the long-winded question but I wanted to give as much detail as possible. Does this sound normal? I will be the first to admit I don't have the level of detecting experience that many of you have, so I may simply be expecting too much out of the machine. But I've read so many posters claiming things like "I found an 11" dime on edge with my Nox" or "My Nox slammed a quarter at 15"" that something just doesn't feel right. I've also watched Calabash's video many times on the Nox with deep silver and I just don't feel like my machine is able to replicate those results, especially after today's test in better soil.

So, newbie inexperience/paranoia, or something else? I would love to hear insight from people far smarter than me when it comes to these things. And thanks in advance to all, as I have long been impressed with both the wisdom and the attitude of users on this forum -- it is a model of how the internet 'should' work, in a more perfect world.

-Andrew

 

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[relicmeister]

Doesn’t sound right to me- especially your test bed result. Experts will soon reply no doubt, but I would definitely suggest giving a factory reset a try.

 

[malenkai]

I don't have a Nox but I can make some general comments, FWIW.

I don't trust test gardens. A coin buried in the dirt for 100 years should be more visible than one recently buried due to metal leeching into the ground matrix over time. Don't know if this is true, but its what I've heard.

That red dirt in North Carolina is tough. I've detected there a few times, and I've never gotten the depth I get here. Likewise, I get more depth in that clean dirt you describe than I do around here.

I think some people exaggerate depth claims. Unless you carry a tape measure (I do), it is human nature to over estimate. I have an E-Trac and have dug over 25000 coins with it, and have never gotten the depth others have claimed with that machine. I think when I do get a really deep dime, which is rare, it is because the machine heard something else.

The best you can do is find a buddy with the same machine, and compare on the same targets in the same dirt, then look at settings. I do know with the E-Trac that the noise cancel channel matters (I've done alot of testing on that); I don't know how the Nox works but you did mention that in your writeup.

 

[smokeythecat]

I also don't bother with test gardens anymore. When I used both the Nox 600 and 800 I got decent depth, say 6-7", but seriously, not much deeper. There are other brands of machines out there that go a lot deeper. My best target in dry ground was at 27".

 

[vferrari]

I don't have a Nox but I can make some general comments, FWIW.

I don't trust test gardens. A coin buried in the dirt for 100 years should be more visible than one recently buried due to metal leeching into the ground matrix over time. Don't know if this is true, but its what I've heard.

That red dirt in North Carolina is tough. I've detected there a few times, and I've never gotten the depth I get here. Likewise, I get more depth in that clean dirt you describe than I do around here.

I think some people exaggerate depth claims. Unless you carry a tape measure (I do), it is human nature to over estimate. I have an E-Trac and have dug over 25000 coins with it, and have never gotten the depth others have claimed with that machine. I think when I do get a really deep dime, which is rare, it is because the machine heard something else.

The best you can do is find a buddy with the same machine, and compare on the same targets in the same dirt, then look at settings. I do know with the E-Trac that the noise cancel channel matters (I've done alot of testing on that); I don't know how the Nox works but you did mention that in your writeup.

That^. Believe it or not, detectorists lie. 10" targets are a challenge for any machine regardless of soil type. My deepest recoveries with Equinox have been nickels at between 12 to 15" in wet salt sand. Also, I doubt that you actually have 10 inches of non-mineralized top soil before you hit your nasty mineralized red clay, though you would obviously know best about that. Furthermore, refilling the hole results in less compacted soil with air pockets that limit the magnetic field strength of both the transmit coil and that which is induced in the target. That is why aged test gardens are more realistic of "real life" conditions, because the dirt has been given time to settle through gravity and moisture effects. The "halo effect" is somewhat of a misonomer and really mostly only applies to heavily corroded ferrous targets and some coppers. Less so with silver and gold and other corrosion resistant metals.

Regarding the Nox itself, I do agree you should do a factory reset. Maximum depth performance for the high conductive targets you buried (hopefully flat on and not tilted or edge on which will also limit depth) should be achieved using single frequency at 5 khz (provided EMI is low) followed by either Park 1 or Field 1 with perhaps Beach 1 coming in a distance third since these are all low frequency weighted Multi IQ modes. Lowering recovery speed can increase depth performance to an extent but tends to increase ground noise in pseudo AM (i.e., no disc or horseshoe mode). Speaking of EMI and ground noise, make sure you do a noise cancel and proper auto or manual GB before conducting your tests. On the Nox, Noise Cancel and GB are not universal to all modes, so you need to do each at least once for each mode you test including single frequency.

Bottom line, your real life detecting experiences seem pretty reasonable. And even though you are pushing the reasonable limits of detection in your test garden, your results seem to defy what I would expect for the given detector settings (i.e, I would expect the "2" modes to be the worst performers in this test because they are optimized for lower conductive targets (gold, brass, lead, aluminum) and/or smaller than coin sized jewelry targets, especially at high recovery speeds which also tend to make deeper targets difficult to hear). Another thing to try is to see if pinpoint mode picks up your test garden targets. If pinpoint mode can't, either your targets are buried beyond the reasonable limit of detection or your detector/coil is defective.

If you are still getting similar depth results after setting up your machine as above, definitely see if you can get another 600 at your test garden to confirm you don't have a machine problem. HTH.

 

[smokeythecat]

V is correct. My 27" target was a Rev War cannonball and it had a huge halo around it. I found it with a Tesoro Lobo back in 1989. A normal size target in good ground with my Deus is 10-11", maybe a squeak deeper, but that's it. The coin at 15" is not real. It's click bait on youtube.

 

[mrmastadon]

Awesome replies already, and some good food for thought - thanks to all! I like the idea of trying to pinpoint the 10" target, since I've always had the sense that the pinpoint mode is actually the deepest detection "setting."

Agreed it is hard to separate fact from fiction, and of course detectorists, like fisherman, have a propensity to round up, not down.

I have a friend with a 600, so I will see if he wants to compare machine performance over the same targets.

 

[GoDeep]

It took me a long time to realize, soil is everything. The soil around where i live here in Minnesota, 7" average on most coin size objects is all you get (be it with my Whites, my Nox 600, my CZ, my AT Pro, all are about the same). Watching video's of guys down south dig coins at 12" with the same detector leads one to believe something is wrong, but it isn't. It's just the area you are in, not the detector. Never is.

 

[digger27]

Sounds right to me.
A freshly buried coin can sometimes be hard to hit even in good dirt, give it some time to let everything settle and compact a bit and try again.
I live in Birmingham Ala...also challenging red clay and some pretty bad mineralization in the rarer, dark stuff.
Most around here I know don't dig much past 5", ever, and some have been doing this for decades.
I think we can get deeper but the bad soil screws things up badly they deeper you get signals so skewed and unrecognizable that even targets at 5" can be easily missed...I know this because I have found many that aren't really deep but severely masked and I have figured out a few indicators that help me notice them and a couple of deeper ones too but they are still far from normal signals.
I was at an old early 1800's house with a friend that looked like it had some decent dark dirt but we never found anything last 4-5" which confused us.
He was using an AT Pro and also a Max, I had my F70 with just about everything maxed and in all metal.
We experimented, I dug a hole about 7-8" deep and we put a clad quarter flat in the middle at the bottom.
Out of the hole I hit that coin at 13"+, in the hole neither of us heard a peep from any angle or using any settings and we didn't cover it up, either...it was just sitting in an open 5" wide hole with no dirt over it but the surrounding soil seemed to have the same ability to hide it as a Romulan cloaking device.

I also have experience hunting in beautiful, black low mineralized heavenly dirt when I lived out west in Kansas for a few years.
I found a few things fairly deep, maybe up to 8-10", but I have been doing this stuff for over a decade and I have dug thousands upon thousands of targets in both good and bad soil and I can count the few I found deeper than 5-6" on the fingers of my two hands.
There are exceptions but most hunters, mostly all of us, usually find the average normal coin and ring targets not much deeper than that 5-6" level...if that.
Just the way it is.

You don't have perfect soil, far from it, and yet to me your detector is still seemingly pretty capable of excelling in its ability to find good targets relatively deep as does my Nox in my devil dirt.
Don't expect miracles, even in perfect soil with perfect tools and a huge amount of experience using them that rarely ever happens.

 

[gunsil]

For general coin and jewelry hunting extreme depth is overrated. In fifty years of hunting most of my coins and jewelry have been found in the top 6-7" of soil with many including colonials at 3-5". This will be true anywhere in the US as we don't have coins that were dropped a thousand years ago. Unless where one hunts has been silted over by floods or filled over with landscaping coins just don't normally get really deep in the ground. Coins do not sink, they get slowly covered over. I don't have a lot of time in on my Nox but I have found small silver coins to 10" with my Safari, but they were either in deep woods or where soil had been added on lawns, and they were faint whispers that were hard to repeat. I have so much faith in that Safari when I hear that silver sound I have to dig those faint unidirectional signals. I also don't look at the screen much for VDI, I listen for the silver sound. By the way, those deeper small silver coins were found with an 8" coil which back in the day was considered the optimum for coin hunting. Detector companies have gone to larger stock coils simply for better depth claims, if Minelab made an 8" coil for the Nox they would sell thousands.

 

[smokeythecat]

With the Nox I had nothing was ever found over about 7 inches deep and that in good sandy ground.

 

[sprailroad]

I had hoped to add something to you questions mrmastadon, but you received some really good response's from some really good detectorist, so......what they said.

 

[smokeythecat]

The deepest coin I ever got was at about 10-11" in perfect, sandy loam soil and moisture conditions. It was a silver Washington quarter. I was surprised how deep it was. Even the last KGII I found was only 4" down. Blew my ears off. Most of the ground here isn't too good, so it was a one off. Also if I wasn't using the Deus with the HF coil, the regular coil would probably never have gotten it. To get a $1 US gold coin even at 2-3" is a feat in moderate to hot ground. Like they said, the ground is everything.

4-6" is average depth for modern coins for me. "Modern" meaning after the Civil War.

 

[mrmastadon]

I had hoped to add something to you questions mrmastadon, but you received some really good response's from some really good detectorist, so......what they said.

Truly. These replies have given me an awesome amount of genuinely helpful information.

 

[GoDeep]

Truly. These replies have given me an awesome amount of genuinely helpful information.

I remember when i got my AT Pro, i called it the "6 inch wonder" as thats about as deep as it would go in my soil. I thought my Nox 600 would be better. Anecdotal evidence suggests it's not really any deeper (definitely feel it's recovery was faster and it has more tweaks you can do to it on bias, threshold and what not). I bought an old CZ which are famous for their depth and added a new 10.5 coil to it and it may have been just a bit deeper. I buried a quarter 10" deep and the CZ would randomly hit a faint signal on it, so random i wouldn't have dug it or missed it all together. The AT Pro and Minelab wouldn't even give me a faint signal. That really got me to realize, it's the soil. Not a defective detector. I never tried my Whites DFX or spectrum on that 10" quarter as i had sold them long ago, but suspect much the same results.

 

[eman1000]

For the short time I owned the Nox the depth was just fine in my soil in Indiana and performed very well on my deep targets in my test garden. I have a quarter at 11-12" that so far I have only hit with 3 machines and the Nox 600 was one of them. The Vaquero would do it but you had to run max sensitivity and ground balance had to be just right slightly negative and I could hit the quarter but was not ideal for actual hunting conditions.

The Nox 600 could hit it I believe with VDI but it has been awhile and my ORX can also hit that target as well. The ORX is doing it with a 9" HF coil and weighs less than 2lbs so that is impressive to me.
There are two targets my Simplex doesn't even notice at all with max sens in all metal mode and one is this quarter and the other is a dime at 8-9"

Depth is not the most important feature to me if I can get stable vdi on targets in the 6-7" range with good trash separation then I am happy and the Nox can do that no problem. I would say 95% of my old copper and silver I rarely dig deeper than 6-7" on.

Maybe I'm missing deeper targets but I don't think so...
In hindsight I probably should have kept my Nox and given it some more time I struggled with the tones coming from using Tesoro's.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

The deepest coin I ever dug was in about 1983 using my Garrett DeepseekerADS III at a scout camp in Northwest Ohio. Almost gave up on it = digging, digging more. For some reason I just kept digging - sounded so sweet.

Elbow deep = 15" for me - a mercury dime.

I probably gave up on others, especially down here in Virginia = hard red dirt and lot's of rocks.

But even an antique (now) detector went deep for that dime. Probably just perfect conditions at the time, and a lot of patience on my part.

 

[MackDog]

I live in Spokane highly mineralised soil. With my Know set up with the 15" coil (which I use all the time) get good solid hits on dimes to 9" nickels 9", pocket watches 12".. What I suggest you do is find a partner with a metal detector (preferably a Know) going hunting together and compare signals. We do this all the time on deep signals. If your machine doesn't pick them up the same then take it back and have it checked out. You should be banging 7' 8" coins with the standard coil. With my 15" coil I hit a solid tone at almost 9". It was a 1870 fish scale on its side. Try running in all metal and switching to your desired VDI's and you will also dig deeper. Remember if it's a solid tone at different angles dig it, you will be surprised a lot. Good luck

 

[bklein]

Try the quarter flat vs vertical and switch your sweep 90 degrees on vertical tests.
Also try swapping coils with your friend.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

I don't think the technology of "depth" has changed all that much from the early 80's. The new detectors may brag about their depth capabilities, but really I don't see that much advancement as far as depth. Now we got all those new "programs", gizmo types, etc.

The advancements I see are in the water detectors. Yep, in 1983 I dug a dime at 15" dirt digging ....

I'm not chasing rainbows anymore. It's unlikely I will buy a new "technology" anytime soon. I fell for the CTX - don't use it much anymore - that Tejon is my go to dirt digger. Water is where I've seen the most advancements - they are now very dependable and capable. Right at this moment - ya just can't beat an Excal.