FISHER F 75 COMPARED TO THE MINELAB EQUINOX 800

Truth

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Apr 13, 2016
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Abita Springs La....Born in New Orleans
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Peterw, the underlying factor is stuff you want has to be in the ground to begin with. I hunted a park a couple years ago, something that's really not my style and got so many wheat cents, buffalos, and Indian cents it got tiring. And lots were deep. And there was a ton of junk there too. A lot of the nickels are in the gold range, and I didn't get any gold. Just didn't get the loop over any.

I'm going retro with really deep analog machines and PI machines for awhile. Although digging a silver dime at 18" can be so annoying.

I always said in the field that, ā€œBeware what you wish for WANTING to hit deep ā€œtargetsā€ and having to DIG
deep are totally two different things.ā€ ā€œDeep targetsā€™ arenā€™t always treasure believe me.
 

Peterw

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Aug 9, 2015
204
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Blairsville Pennsylvania
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The flaw in the above logic is that you assume that Equinox (or Deus) for that matter has no tells for deep or flat iron which is simply not true. Yeah you will get a high tone, but easy tells include iron grunt off the edge and use of the pinpointer to simply observe you are passing over something too big to be a button or bullet. So yeah, I will dig that iron "high tone" with Equinox or Deus, not because I don't know I am digging iron, but because I want to make sure that iron is not masking something else or is not itself something I might want to recover. One of my best finds was a Deus high tone off the back end of a parrot shell buried 1.5 feet down. Knew it was probable big iron because of the depth for the signal strength, but did not give up on it and was rewarded. People who pass over the "certain" iron are the ones who are risking leaving behind the goodies lying beside or beneath it or leaving behind a spur, projectile, bayonet, or sword blade (big iron can result in a decent relic or lead to a trash pit).

Also, I 100% agree with you that the Equinox TID is compressed, that makes the vdi stable. Similarly, 100% agree the Deus TID is bouncy. But TID accuracy is not a detector attribute I associate with relic hunting but more with coin shooting. Coin denominations typcally fall within nice orderly TID bins, relics do not due to the variety of shapes, sizes, and metals. So I am basically digging anything non-ferrous regardless of TID.

You say you are a relic hunter, but your philosophy to leave the certain deep iron sounding targets and focus on TID, sounds more like a coin hunter. Not a biggie, just two different philosophies on relic recovery here and I get why you wouldn't necessarily think Equinox or Deus are all that. I think it is less, though, about relic vs. coinshooters here (Calabash is almost exclusively a relic hunter) and really less about F75 vs. Equinox either. You approach relic hunting and iron not because of the way your detector behaves but because you would rather bypass iron, period. I get why people line up on one side or the other on certain detectors, and I think it has to do more about hunting philosophies than detector capabilities. My 2 cents FWIW.

Sorry if I mislead you somehow,but Iā€™m not a relic hunter..If I were Id probably never own another machine except a Deus...We all have different styles of hunting I guess,you say you dig iron knowing itā€™s iron,I wouldnā€™t do that being a coin hunter primarily.
Calabash is a dedicated relic hunter and makes some outstanding finds,no doubt..And Iā€™m not at all insinuating he doesnā€™t do a good job on his videos or is intentionally misleading anyone..I just said they could be misleading to a coin hunter who is selective in the targets getting dug,Hence where the visual ID comes in on the machines being compared.The visual ID is somthing thatā€™s not addressed in the videos.And as a him being relic hunter I can understand why,itā€™s not that important in those situations.
 

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Calabash Digger

Calabash Digger

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Apr 18, 2016
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XP DEUS II ,XP DEUS, EQUINOX 800, EXCALIBUR II,
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I like the comments on the Equinox liking iron.... V you seen me hunting a iron loaded site with it and I was not chasing deep iron with it. I think the guy above bought a Nox and Deus and never learned either of them . I think the guy above is also the same person who doesnt even hunt iron and runs from it. At least that what he said on another forum....How many people do you really see talking about how great the I D is on a AT PRO?? :laughing9:
 

vferrari

Silver Member
Jul 19, 2015
4,910
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XP Deus with HF/x35 Coils and Mi6 Pinpointer/ML Equinox 600/800/ML Tarsacci MDT 8000 GPX 4800/Garrett ATX/Fisher F75 DST/Tek G2+/Delta/Whites MXT/Nokta Simplex/Garrett Carrot
Primary Interest:
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Sorry if I mislead you somehow,but Iā€™m not a relic hunter..If I were Id probably never own another machine except a Deus...We all have different styles of hunting I guess,you say you dig iron knowing itā€™s iron,I wouldnā€™t do that being a coin hunter primarily.
Calabash is a dedicated relic hunter and makes some outstanding finds,no doubt..And Iā€™m not at all insinuating he doesnā€™t do a good job on his videos or is intentionally misleading anyone..I just said they could be misleading to a coin hunter who is selective in the targets getting dug,Hence where the visual ID comes in on the machines being compared.The visual ID is somthing thatā€™s not addressed in the videos.And as a him being relic hunter I can understand why,itā€™s not that important in those situations.

Yep. I need to work on my reading comprehension. You didn't mislead, I misread your post I thought you said you were a relic hunter not "if I were" a relic hunter. Everything you said makes sense from a coinhunter's perspective. But I would still investigate the iron too, even as a coin hunter, unless pressed for time. Regarding TID on the Equinox/Deus, they are primarily tone machines and the quality of the tone does play into dig decisions for both the relic hunter and the coin hunter. You can get a lot more target information from tone quality (not just tone pitch which merely determines tone ID and corresponds to the target ID number) than you can from a couple digits flashing on the screen.
 

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Peterw

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Aug 9, 2015
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Blairsville Pennsylvania
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How many in field hours do you have on the f75,At gold,tesoro vaquero or any of the others you test in your garden and say theyā€™re not as good as a Deus or equinox? Iā€™ll answer this fast,you have zero in field time on those machines.Kinda hypocritical to say I never learned a machine,I actually have a lot of hours in field with the deus and equinox.
I donā€™t run from iron,just donā€™t look for old burned houses as a way to hunt.To be honest ,anyone who used a f75,At gold,vaquero and went to a Deus or a equinox is actually more knowledgeable than you and your test bed to give a honest report of the machines.They would actually have a better understanding of the potential vs swinging over planted targets.lol
 

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Calabash Digger

Calabash Digger

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XP DEUS II ,XP DEUS, EQUINOX 800, EXCALIBUR II,
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I missed you woodbutcher.....
 

OP
OP
Calabash Digger

Calabash Digger

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XP DEUS II ,XP DEUS, EQUINOX 800, EXCALIBUR II,
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Wood I thought you sold your f75 plus??? If it was so great why did you sell it? Have you sold all your detectors this week and went back to Tesoro? What flavor is it this week?
 

Treasure_Hunter

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Colonial78 post by our rules or lose the right to post at all. Any more insults earns timeout.
 

Peterw

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Aug 9, 2015
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Blairsville Pennsylvania
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Wood I thought you sold your f75 plus??? If it was so great why did you sell it? Have you sold all your detectors this week and went back to Tesoro? What flavor is it this week?

Nope,still got the f75+,,thinking about it tho..took it out to a old cornfield today and got some flat buttons,a buckle and lots of modern lead..Good enough machine but Iā€™m looking hard at the anfibio..I like Tesoroā€™s cause when I coin hunt silver theyā€™re really quite in parks,I just turn that disc up full blast and I donā€™t hear a sound till it hits a coin,plus theyā€™re light..best clad stabbed made imo.
I think weā€™re gonna see a lot of new releases in the next few months so Iā€™m trying to hold back on buying anything.The orx looks ok but I think Iā€™d get another Deus before the orx,more control with Deus which I just might end up getting for fields with the used market so cheap on them.If Minelab could duplicate the deus ergonomics I think theyā€™d be able to make those comments they made,but until then Iā€™ll hold my breath.lol
 

ā˜  Cipher

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Aug 16, 2016
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Middleburgh, NY
Detector(s) used
Whites: Spectra V3i, MX Sport, Bullseye TRX. Fisher: F75 LTD, 1280-X, F2. XP: Deus. Minelab: X-terra 70, Garrett: AT Pro, Ace 250, Propointer II. Tesoro: Compadre. Bounty Hunter: LRP, QDP, 3300, 2200,
Primary Interest:
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It's the gentlemanly thing to do to say things like each person has to pick what is right for them and that no machine is better than another. There's some validity to some machines clicking better with some people than others. Tones for example seem to be a major selling point or roadblock for some people. I personally love Minelab tones. I don't care for tones you find on most others, but if tomorrow a killer machine were released with fart tones I'd buy it. In any event, I don't find it to be true that there's no best or better machine(s). As much as it is a hobby, it's also a science and objective tests are how we measure performance. When we get right down to the tradition of declaring all machines are created equal and experience is what matters most there are usually 2 elephants in the room or land mines of reality being avoided.

1. Is budget. Not everyone can afford flagships. Fewer still can afford the flagships among flagships. I've seen the thinly veiled resentments in both directions. Many guys who have the most expensive machines won't accept that anyone spending much less could do comparatively well with something much cheaper. They paid to ensure that shouldn't be the case haha. Conversely, many guys formerly of the AT Pro crowd resented the guys running around with a CTX-3030 or an XP Deus because it was out of their reach and those guys often didn't hide their contempt, peppered with wild dirt fishing tales of 14" coins buried under a pile of bent nails purportedly picked up right behind those multi-thousand dollar machines.

2. Is cognitive ability and/or willingness to learn. It's a fact of life that some people are quicker studies than others and some people revel in mastering complex interactions and pattern recognition, while others need much more time to become proficient and do better with the KISS method. It has long been an unwritten rule to pretend everyone must spend x hours on a given machine before he has mastered it and can offer legitimate analysis, advice etc. The keepers of this gate are always locked and loaded, insisting that the number of years in the hobby and number of hours on a particular machine are the last word in a detecting issue. This is not true for everyone. There have been many guys who have come along and learned more in a year or two than some have learned over a lifetime. I've seen some guys come along and get so serious about soaking up the fundamentals of the technology itself that they can pick up practically any machine and as soon as they know where the functions are located in the menu structure they are right up to speed. So it's not the quantity of the experience but the quality of the experience coupled with the ability to understand as much as possible about how these machines work.

I get it though. I understand the motivation behind these traditions. It's a way of being courteous, inclusive, respecting seniority, growing the hobby etc. Ultimately it doesn't really matter what you're swinging if you're finding things and having fun. That's the most important factor. But in a comparison or head to head, it is a competition by its nature and if done correctly, someone or some machine will be objectively better than another, however broad or limited in scope. To some people it will come easier than others and some machines will do things better than others.

To be clear, I'm not saying anyone is being charitable comparing the F75, F75+, F75 LTD etc. with the Equinox. I don't think they are so far apart that experience couldn't make a difference. The F75 has a clever way of processing its signals and there are many "tells" to learn. In some modes two signals are sent and received through two different circuits simultaneously. One true all metal signal and another through the disc circuit to give an ID as deep as possible even when in all metal mode. The all metal signal of course always punches deeper than the disc circuit signal, but there are ways to tell that a deep object reading lower in conductivity may not be iron or aluminum etc. by the combined data in the audio, depth, and target ID. After some time it becomes second nature. I think it's still a competitive machine and deadly once you learn to harness its full depth. If it were waterproof I'd still be swinging one in some places.
 

1LWiL15

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Nov 15, 2021
119
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Upstate New York
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Barska Winbest Elite Edition, Bounty Hunter TK-IV, Garrett Ace 400, Garrett AT Gold, Minelab Equinox 600, Garrett Ace Apex, XP ORX, XP DEUS
Primary Interest:
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Don't "bust one me" and then say "I'm not busting on you" lol....I can handle a good ribbing. :laughing7: :occasion14:

You are right...I have made some VS videos. However, I've always peppered "the other" detector with a few compliments and even gave the Ace 400 a quite positive review.

Always said if you like that bell tone and the color yellow...this is "better" for you. Always said if you are a water hunter...the AT is "better" for you.

"Better" is always up to the person...not the machine. I've said it in my videos (and multiple times in forums)...this is "my opinion" and "better" may be something different for you.

As far as the flippant "code" remark...I make zero apologies for being sponsored...and am quite frank about it....the opposite of a shill (if that is what you are implying).

I consider CD a friend...and agree with him on ALOTm of stuff (even when a FT machine loses). I just disagree with him on the "better" thing. Unlike some people that take personal shots at him (and TNSS) when they disagree...I'd love to hunt with the guy and eat at his restaurant. Only a fool turns down hospitaility and and offer of friendship like that.
I honestly think Calabash means better as in performance. There are definitely detectors that beat each other performance wise, whether or not metal detecting is a competition. If you use say an ACE 150 for coin hunting in parks, and that works for you, then that is OK. But a detector like the Vanquish might be better for you because of its superior performance in parks. (Depth, separation, accurate VDI) etc. Even if you love the yellow of your ACE 150 and the belltone it makes, there are still better performing detectors on the market to choose from.
BTW love you videos, and are there older sites in your area of California?
HH
 

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