Real world test - Equinox 800 vs XP Deus vs Tesoro Vaquero

smokeythecat

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Vferrari and I finally got together today to do the promised side by side test of the Equinox 800 and the XP Deus. Since I had my Tesoro Vaquero with me, we also included it.

Here are the history, parameters and the ground rules we set: We were hunting in the horrible extremely highly mineralized Culpeper County, Virginia red dirt. This dirt is so mineralized, most people who attend the paid hunts there use PI machines. A lot of the locals have also given up with anything but a PI machine. The place has been hunted since the 1960's at least. The Army of the Potomac spent a lot of time there. BFO machines have been used, PI machines, VLF machines and multi frequency machines. Just about everything. The dirt itself is a hard red mineralized conglomeration with numerous minerals in it and an amazing amount of iron. The iron is so bad in some of the fields, the little magnetite crystals form rivulets in the gulleys when it rains. There are also some copper minerals and gold minerals in these fields. However, iron is king. Most of the rocks, which are numerous will make a machine "sound off". Hot rock city it is!

We got to the site about 10 and got our machines set up. We decided the fairest method of comparison was to use factory settings to dig today. So Hugh set up the Equinox 800 the 11" coil, with Field 2 and multifrequency mode. After ground balancing, no further refinements were made. I set up the Deus with the 9" HF elliptical coil, Deus Fast mode, tracking for ground balance and 74 khz. NO further tweaking was done. The Tesoro Vaquero was ground balanced, and I had the discrimination set on "3", which will ignore most small nails. The Vaquero has no meter, FYI.

Even though the site has been pounded for more than 50 years, there are still relics there. We did three tests. Our first test was as follows: I knew where I had dug eagle buttons and three or so minie balls from, so we proceeded to this test plot, about 8' x 8'. Hugh went first and the Equinox found 3 possible targets. We noted where each was. He said they were not exactly screamers on the machine. I first took the Deus and it easily found all 3 targets, and the same here, they were not especially good targets. I fired up the Vaquero and it also found all 3 targets. Hugh had the honor of digging them. (I let him do the work.) All there were mid sized nails.

The second test involved moving to a spot I had just found this year which was possibly overlooked by previous diggers. This time I went first with the Deus. In a 10' x 10' area, LOADED with hot rocks, which was really annoying, I found 5 repeatable targets, and at this site if you get a repeatable target, you dig it. I marked each with a little stick. Hugh came behind me and found 4 of the 5. The fifth, the 800 would not pick up. I then followed with the Vaquero. The Vaquero found 4 of the 5, but not the same four.

I let Hugh dig again. Aren't I gracious? The first target all the machines found easily was a minie ball about 8" deep! In that ground that is DEEP, considering the soil. The second target was a 1/4" piece of camp lead. This is the target the Vaquero did not see. It was about 4" deep. The third target was a bigger piece of camp lead. It was also about 4-5" deep, all three machines found it. The fourth target was ANOTHER piece of camp lead, which was about 6" deep and all 3 machines found. The fifth target was a percussion cap just under the surface of the ground. The Deus nailed it easily, the Vaquero chirped on it, which is a "dig me" sign, and the 800 did not see it at all. We were sort of perplexed at that, but a percussion cap in this dirt is a miracle anyway.

So after the "native target" test, we did the "planted" test. I had brought three objects. A minie ball, a percussion cap and an eagle coat button. This is NOT a park or coin shoot comparison, but a comparison for relics in iron infested and iron rich soil.

All three machines easily found the minie, it was down about 8", now for some of you folks, that's not deep, but for this crudola dirt, it IS DEEP. The eagle button I put on edge and all three found it, but it took awhile! It was also 6" down and was NOT easy for either of the machines.

The last item was the little percussion cap. I put it only 1" down. All three relics were in small plastic bags so we wouldn't lose them. The Deus found it, the Vaquero chirped on it, the 800 could not hear it at all. THEN we went detecting!

We moved over to a fence where I had found some cuff eagle buttons. All I found there was one iron underwear button. We did find quite a few tiny nails today. I then moved over to a fallen tree my kepi hat letter "A" had been found. Hugh came over and we started moving dirt and each of us found some camp lead, Hugh got a percussion cap and an iron underwear button. I moved over to where I found the 1858 flying eagle cent. Over the last few weeks, I had been playing around the tree and the stump, and today what was left of the roots of the stump finally gave up the ghost and came free. I had a half sort of signal with the Deus in the middle of the hole where the stump had been. After digging halfway to China, I could no longer find the target in the hole. I moved the loop over the dirt taken out of it (we were using full sized shovels), and had a screamer of a signal in the pile. I called Hugh over for the unveiling of something I hoped would be cool and it was an eagle breastplate.

We didn't find much else near the tree, so moved to a trash area for a couple hours - which produced nothing but some lead scraps.

We then moved back up the little incline and moved some big rocks, hot rocks at that, and under the rocks pulled a couple eagle cuff buttons, a brass suspender clip, more camp lead and little nails.

Hugh got a few other items, and I'm sure he'll add to this when he gets home. He had more traveling than me tonight.

I had a great time, it's always nice to go with someone else.

We also found out something very, very interesting. At the end of the day I totally disassembled the Vaquero. Hugh took the 800 apart. The S handle for the Vaquero nearly perfectly fits on the 800! There may be some science projects in the future.

Hope this helps.
 

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dirtlooter

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very interesting, I still believe that there isn't a one detector that is perfect in every thing. some may be more perfect to someone for their style of hunting and what they hunt.
 

Terry Soloman

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Smokin' post! Thank you for sharing!!:notworthy:
 

DeepseekerADS

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Thank you Smokey,

You put your analysis together very well, I personally learned a great deal from your post.

Again, thank you.
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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No problem. I did not draw any conclusions, just put out the data. That red dirt is horrendous. I had walked over the one minie in the 10' x 10' area at least 20 times. The soil was moist, but not wet. I was kind of surprised the Vaquero pretty much held its own against the others. I'll try to get some pics tomorrow. I haven't cleaned anything up yet. I'm not sure how many tones Hugh had set up. The Vaquero has only one tone. I had the Deus preset on 3.
 

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pepperj

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That's what I like to read about testing out between machines, well done guys.:occasion14:

You stated: "I set up the Deus with the 9" HF elliptical coil, Deus Fast mode, tracking for ground balance and 74 khz."

Query: What was the
discrimination set at ?
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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Truth 1253 it's about 87 or 88 on the Deus. The Vaquero has no meter. Hugh will chirp in on what his read, I'm sure. We didn't exactly take a ledger out there with us. Pepperj, we used the XP factory presets, so whatever that is. I honestly can't do metal detecting math. Some of the more knowledgeable folks here can do the math a lot better than me. On the Vaquero it was a "3" which will eliminate small nails only.
 

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pepperj

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Truth 1253 it's about 87 or 88 on the Deus. The Vaquero has no meter. Hugh will chirp in on what his read, I'm sure. We didn't exactly take a ledge out there with us. Pepperj, we used the XP factory presets, so whatever that is. I honestly can't do metal detecting math. Some of the more knowledgeable folks here can do the math a lot better than me. On the Vaquero it was a "3" which will eliminate small nails only.

I'm assuming the presets are 6.4 for the iron or something like that. Just trying to justify the HF coil as lot of my sites are laden with iron and maybe there's some hope yet of grabbing more out of them.
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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Pepperj, I can just turn on the machine later today and let you know what the default is. No problems. We just didn't mess with settings to "optimize" any of the machines as would consider that "cheating", as we wanted a test of the machines, not the operators.
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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The factory discrimination setting we used is 6.8.
 

vferrari

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Vferrari and I finally got together today to do the promised side by side test of the Equinox 800 and the XP Deus. Since I had my Tesoro Vaquero with me, we also included it.

Here are the history, parameters and the ground rules we set: We were hunting in the horrible extremely highly mineralized Culpeper County, Virginia red dirt. This dirt is so mineralized, most people who attend the paid hunts there use PI machines. A lot of the locals have also given up with anything but a PI machine. The place has been hunted since the 1960's at least. The Army of the Potomac spent a lot of time there. BFO machines have been used, PI machines, VLF machines and multi frequency machines. Just about everything. The dirt itself is a hard red mineralized conglomeration with numerous minerals in it and an amazing amount of iron. The iron is so bad in some of the fields, the little magnetite crystals form rivulets in the gulleys when it rains. There are also some copper minerals and gold minerals in these fields. However, iron is king. Most of the rocks, which are numerous will make a machine "sound off". Hot rock city it is!

We got to the site about 10 and got our machines set up. We decided the fairest method of comparison was to use factory settings to dig today. So Hugh set up the Equinox 800 the 11" coil, with Field 2 and multifrequency mode. After ground balancing, no further refinements were made. I set up the Deus with the 9" HF elliptical coil, Deus Fast mode, tracking for ground balance and 74 khz. NO further tweaking was done. The Tesoro Vaquero was ground balanced, and I had the discrimination set on "3", which will ignore most small nails. The Vaquero has no meter, FYI.

Even though the site has been pounded for more than 50 years, there are still relics there. We did three tests. Our first test was as follows: I knew where I had dug eagle buttons and three or so minie balls from, so we proceeded to this test plot, about 8' x 8'. Hugh went first and the Equinox found 3 possible targets. We noted where each was. He said they were not exactly screamers on the machine. I first took the Deus and it easily found all 3 targets, and the same here, they were not especially good targets. I fired up the Vaquero and it also found all 3 targets. Hugh had the honor of digging them. (I let him do the work.) All there were mid sized nails.

The second test involved moving to a spot I had just found this year which was possibly overlooked by previous diggers. This time I went first with the Deus. In a 10' x 10' area, LOADED with hot rocks, which was really annoying, I found 5 repeatable targets, and at this site if you get a repeatable target, you dig it. I marked each with a little stick. Hugh came behind me and found 4 of the 5. The fifth, the 800 would not pick up. I then followed with the Vaquero. The Vaquero found 4 of the 5, but not the same four.

I let Hugh dig again. Aren't I gracious? The first target all the machines found easily was a minie ball about 8" deep! In that ground that is DEEP, considering the soil. The second target was a 1/4" piece of camp lead. This is the target the Vaquero did not see. It was about 4" deep. The third target was a bigger piece of camp lead. It was also about 4-5" deep, all three machines found it. The fourth target was ANOTHER piece of camp lead, which was about 6" deep and all 3 machines found. The fifth target was a percussion cap just under the surface of the ground. The Deus nailed it easily, the Vaquero chirped on it, which is a "dig me" sign, and the 800 did not see it at all. We were sort of perplexed at that, but a percussion cap in this dirt is a miracle anyway.

So after the "native target" test, we did the "planted" test. I had brought three objects. A minie ball, a percussion cap and an eagle coat button. This is NOT a park or coin shoot comparison, but a comparison for relics in iron infested and iron rich soil.

All three machines easily found the minie, it was down about 8", now for some of you folks, that's not deep, but for this crudola dirt, it IS DEEP. The eagle button I put on edge and all three found it, but it took awhile! It was also 6" down and was NOT easy for either of the machines.

The last item was the little percussion cap. I put it only 1" down. All three relics were in small plastic bags so we wouldn't lose them. The Deus found it, the Vaquero chirped on it, the 800 could not hear it at all. THEN we went detecting!

We moved over to a fence where I had found some cuff eagle buttons. All I found there was one iron underwear button. We did find quite a few tiny nails today. I then moved over to a fallen tree my kepi hat letter "A" had been found. Hugh came over and we started moving dirt and each of us found some camp lead, Hugh got a percussion cap and an iron underwear button. I moved over to where I found the 1858 flying eagle cent. Over the last few weeks, I had been playing around the tree and the stump, and today what was left of the roots of the stump finally gave up the ghost and came free. I had a half sort of signal with the Deus in the middle of the hole where the stump had been. After digging halfway to China, I could no longer find the target in the hole. I moved the loop over the dirt taken out of it (we were using full sized shovels), and had a screamer of a signal in the pile. I called Hugh over for the unveiling of something I hoped would be cool and it was an eagle breastplate.

We didn't find much else near the tree, so moved to a trash area for a couple hours - which produced nothing but some lead scraps.

We then moved back up the little incline and moved some big rocks, hot rocks at that, and under the rocks pulled a couple eagle cuff buttons, a brass suspender clip, more camp lead and little nails.

Hugh got a few other items, and I'm sure he'll add to this when he gets home. He had more traveling than me tonight.

I had a great time, it's always nice to go with someone else.

We also found out something very, very interesting. At the end of the day I totally disassembled the Vaquero. Hugh took the 800 apart. The S handle for the Vaquero nearly perfectly fits on the 800! There may be some science projects in the future.

Hope this helps.

Yep, that is pretty much how it went down. The Deus and Equinox where basically neck and neck. The p-cap thing was weird, especially since I have found both the Equinox and Deus HF hitting on very tiny targets almost to an annoying degree. The Equinox did find a p-cap on its own later in the hunt so I am going to call that a tie. I will also note we temporarily "lost" one of our planted button targets, and I will point out that it was the Equinox that eventually found the damn thing after we started panicking and were semi-randomly digging up our impromptu test garden. Smokey may dispute that sequence of events, but I am sticking to my story. Score one for Equinox. Deus "wins" the relic challenge overall, however, because it did score the Eagle breast plate but that was only because Smokey distracted me by making me dig up the numerous run-of-the-mill probable relic targets (e.g., minie balls and underwear buttons) we had both previously marked while sneaking off to detect and dig under the base of the fallen tree - lol. Before it was "dug out" both detectors pretty much left no doubt that it was going to be a keeper non-ferrous target. It was cool to pull the first plate out of that nearly 60-year pounded site after a four year plate drought. One of my most impressive Equinox finds was a small brass and iron buckle that gave an iffy tone. After pulling some nails out of the hole and plug, I had a hunch (based on what Equinox was telling me) and managed to pull a keeper mostly ferrous target. I credit Equinox for giving my the edge on that recovery since it was giving me both ferrous and non-ferrous tones that did not sound like typical falsing. Hard to describe.

In my limited experience at this hunt and at a previous DIV with some natural and re-buried targets, I do not declare the Deus "dead" by any stretch of the imagination nor do I declare the Equinox the king of all detectors. The Equinox and Deus and Tesoro excel under these conditions for two reasons: (1) They can be set up to GB properly under these extreme soil mineralization conditions without losing sensitivity which is often not the case with other detector GB schemes. The Equinox might have a slight edge because it can use multi-frequency to establish multiple ground phase numbers at different frequencies to enable a more "quiet" balance, but that mainly manifests itself as an advantage at the beach where you may be dealing with black sand mineralization and salt simultaneously. (2) All three of these detectors are fast and therefore can tell you when you have non-ferrous under the coil (sometimes at exceptional depth) despite mineralization and thick bed-of-nails iron conditons. All three will false on nail heads and big iron. That is the name of the game. Deus and Equinox have some additional tricks up their sleeve that can be employed under these conditions but we left those tricks in the bag for this testing. I will say that if anything both Deus and Equinox audio (50 tones in field 2) will give you a good indication of mid-conductive non-ferrous under the coil. If anything, I will give an edge to Equinox on displaying a good visual ID at fair depth to go along with that audio if the target is solid vs. Deus where you will hear the mid tone but may not get a number. Since, most Deus users, like Smokey and myself, Calabash, and others hunt almost exclusively by audio, then that Equinox visual "advantage" is not necessarily all that great, but sometimes it might make the difference on an iffy signal which will likely just be dug anyway. Finally, another advantage that only Deus and Equinox have (vs. Tesoro which operates at a lower frequency) is great high frequency performance which really helps under these conditions, expecially with the small mid-conductors (e.g., p-caps, camp lead, buttons) and may be why Deus and Equinox had an edge over the Tesoro. This also explains why folks running higher frequency gold machines tend to also do well relic hunting in high mineralized soil.
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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"Distracted?" And yes, losing an eagle button in a 2' square area is cause for panic, as they're sooooo expensive (not.) But hard to get here anymore. Here's what I got. View attachment 1572546 The piece of glass on the left bottom is kinda nice. It's a very dark amber color. Note the two tiny square nails. View attachment IMG_0872.jpg NOW the picture uploads correctly! TWICE. THANK YOU COMPUTER!
 

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vferrari

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"Distracted?" And yes, losing an eagle button in a 2' square area is cause for panic, as they're sooooo expensive (not.) But hard to get here anymore. Here's what I got. View attachment 1572546 The piece of glass on the left bottom is kinda nice. It's a very dark amber color. Note the two tiny square nails.

Who am I kidding anyway, I am a charity case. Couldn't have found that breast plate if they served me lunch on it. Lol.
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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Until this week, there were a few sections of semi rotten tree root sitting on top of the plate, still stuck in the ground, giving you 8' of depth to get to the soil level. That tree was probably 18" across when it fell. Yesterday I was able to dislodge two major pieces of the now decaying root and found the plate pretty deep in the hole. If you were to count the depth it was in the ground and the 8" of root, no one since the Civil War would have been able to find it under that tree. Until yesterday. I don't think you want to lick the plate, copper, brass, dirt, iron all those yummy things attached or in it.
 

fishstick

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GREAT info boys!!!!! Makes my decision even harder now on which one to get ( deus or 800 ) Keep posting all you can for the rest of us fella's. THANX again!!!!!
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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Just get both. Actually here's what I think. Not much...but...an "upgrade" can be a lot of fun. If you have a top of the line machine, it may not make any sense to get something else. The real differences we found out yesterday were MINIMAL with the Deus and the Equinox in our situation, heck, even the Tesoro held its own.

If anyone has a high end machine, just getting another one doesn't make a lot of sense. No one machine is so wonderful relics, coins or jewelry will just jump out of the ground in awe when you get on a site.

If you want to go from, say a $300 machine up, then there are a lot of choices out there. Some folks using the heavy CTX would be essentially downgrading, the advantage to them with either a Deus or Equinox would be the weight issue.

Seems the Deus does better with small targets. Too bad we didn't think to take a tiny gold coin with us to try out. (Be nice if uh, I had one!) The Equinox apparently shines in salt water. Of course, that won't help a lot of folks who live in the middle of the country.

Enjoy what you have! And hurry! Planting season is around the corner!
 

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smokeythecat

smokeythecat

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You mean the machine may get a "U" handle from having it wrapped around you?
 

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