And yet another flooded Equinox..

[smokeythecat]

It will be interesting to see what everybody comes out with this winter, and that's coming soon.

 

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[vferrari]

Your not supposed to be able flood one in under 10 feet......so dunking or going in the water with it is exactly what they are advertising. So they will eat there words in there advertising campaign. I planned on going in the water with it from the get go because of this advertising. If dunking it in the tub causes it to flood then there guilty of false advertising and/or faulty craftsmanship. Either way that's on them not me for taking it in the water. I took mine straight from the box to the ocean. They really should give a set of waterproof head phones with every purchase. I guarantee that most failures are at the headphone jack. People go right in with the port open or with the stock....not waterproof headphones. The standard set of headphones should be waterproof that would cut there warranty work in half.....why would you supply anything but water proof head phones with a machine that's advertised as waterproof. This machine is not waterproof until you make it so by making an additional purchase of waterproof headphones. I thought that was kind of deceptive on there part.....I was seconds from plunging in with the stock phones. At the last second common since told me that this jack just can't be waterproof ?? After going back to the truck and carefully reading the manual I realized I came very close to destroying the machine. I closed the port and jumped in with only the external speaker......I could barley here it at full blast under water. It's a tool for me like a hammer....if you cant hit the nail as hard as you want for the fear of breaking the hammer then ...well....do I really want that hammer ? So far my nox hammer has worked as advertised and I'm surely not gonna baby it. With out a tank your never gonna be able to scan the bottom in ten feet of water while still breathing from your snorkel.....you just cant reach the bottom with the coil with out diving down. So technically speaking 4-6 foot is about as deep as I can comfortably snorkel and still be able to reach the bottom with the coil. At 7-8 feet the shaft is to short to be able to get the coil close enough to the bottom to be effective while still being able breathe through a snorkel. You can only water detect to 6 feet with a snorkel before you need compressed air to breathe so you can stay down and effectively scan and dig. Up and down free diving is much less effective when scanning and digging. This is a wading and snorkeling machine that's all....not a diving machine.

Agree with you, this is not a diving machine.

The headphone jack is designed to be water tight regardless of whether a waterproof or non-waterproof headphone or no headphone is plugged in. There is an internal seal in the jack designed to prevent water ingress to the electronics and the port cover just provides superficial dust and moisture protection and should be used but the pod should still remain watertight even without that port cover screwed in (if not, really poor design). The port should be flushed with fresh water though after use in salt water to mitigate corrosion to the metal contacts in the jack.

The headphone jack could have a design issue or seal defect, but other suspects are either a defect with the one-way gortex pressure valve (burp valve) in the battery compartment, the battery compartment o-ring seals, defects in the speaker compartment seals, or defects in the plastic seam welds of the case.

My money is on an early manufacturing defect that was not being picked up by the factory quality control processes that ML has hopefully corrected and they are banking on the fact that only a small minority of users actually use their machines in the water and only a small minority of those machines will fail so they have opted to just replace them under warranty on an "as-fail" basis rather than calling for a general recall. They probably hoped to fly under the radar on this one because of that assumption and didn't account for the fact that it could happen to a high profile user like Calabash who has a popular you tube presence. Oops.

Would be really interested in knowing whether this is a big or little problem based on overall failure percentages but if you just count Calabash's small universe sample, you are talking a 60% failure rate (3 of 5 machines) at last count. Doh!

 

[Blak bart]

The headphone jack is designed to be water tight regardless of whether a waterproof or non-waterproof headphone or no headphone is plugged in. There is an internal seal in the jack designed to prevent water ingress to the electronics and the port cover just provides superficial dust and moisture protection and should be used but the pod should still remain watertight even without that port cover screwed in (if not, really poor design). The port should be flushed with fresh water though after use in salt water to mitigate corrosion to the metal contacts in the jack.

The headphone jack could have a design issue or seal defect, but other suspects are either a defect with the one-way gortex pressure valve (burp valve) in the battery compartment, the battery compartment o-ring seals, defects in the speaker compartment seals, or defects in the plastic seam welds of the case.

My money is on an early manufacturing defect that was not being picked up by the factory quality control processes that ML has hopefully corrected and they are banking on the fact that only a small minority of users actually use their machines in the water and only a small minority of those machines will fail so they have opted to just replace them under warranty on an "as-fail" basis rather than calling for a general recall. They probably hoped to fly under the radar on this one because of that assumption and didn't account for the fact that it could happen to a high profile user like Calabash who has a popular you tube presence. Oops.

Would be really interested in knowing whether this is a big or little problem based on overall failure percentages but if you just count Calabash's small universe sample, you are talking a 60% failure rate (3 of 5 machines) at last count. Doh!

The machine will flood with that port left open. The machine will flood without threaded waterproof headphones. The machine comes with standard non threaded headphones. It's a weak point. So your right when you say that port cover is for moisture protection !!

 

[vferrari]

The machine will flood with that port left open. The machine will flood without threaded waterproof headphones. The machine comes with standard non threaded headphones. It's a weak point. So your right when you say that port cover is for moisture protection !!

From page 58 of the Equinox User's manual:

"Headphone Socket Submersion

The headphone socket on the detector is waterproof, and will not be damaged if submerged without the plastic dust-cap attached.
However, if water enters the headphone jack it may cause false headphone detection. If this occurs, the detector speaker audio will cease and the headphones icon will appear on the LCD.

Resolve this by clearing the water from the headphones socket."

I interpret this to clearly mean that you can enter the water with whatever headphones you want and without the dust cover (which can easily become misplaced BTW based on the weak way it is attached to the socket) and all you have to worry about is whether the headphone detection circuit inadvertently actuates. If you are going to submerge it or put yourself in a position where it can be submerged, though, it only makes sense to go in the water with a set of waterproof headphones that can also take a dunking and by plugging them into the jack with the proper screw connector, you are just providing an additional layer of protection. I have a waterproof set of phones so have not dunked the Equinox without them but have seen video where users dunked the Equinox without the cover and without the headphones attached to no ill effect. Yet Equinoxes are dying in bathtubs. Sigh.

So bottom line, I totally agree with you that people should be using the right headphones for the job, but it shouldn't be a fatal mistake, as far as the Equinox is concerned, if they don't.

 

[Bayoutalker]

The machine will flood with that port left open. The machine will flood without threaded waterproof headphones. The machine comes with standard non threaded headphones. It's a weak point. So your right when you say that port cover is for moisture protection !!

My 800 came with wireless headphones that I knew were not waterproof but the machine itself should not flood by using these since the port is closed with the cover. It would be the same as using it with no headphones at all. So far I have only submerged mine in shallow water but it has not leaked. I was of the understanding that the machine only remained waterproof with headphones that were screwed in or none at all.

 

[Bayoutalker]

From page 58 of the Equinox User's manual:

"Headphone Socket Submersion

The headphone socket on the detector is waterproof, and will not be damaged if submerged without the plastic dust-cap attached.
However, if water enters the headphone jack it may cause false headphone detection. If this occurs, the detector speaker audio will cease and the headphones icon will appear on the LCD.

Resolve this by clearing the water from the headphones socket."

I interpret this to clearly mean that you can enter the water with whatever headphones you want and without the dust cover (which can easily become misplaced BTW based on the weak way it is attached to the socket) and all you have to worry about is whether the headphone detection circuit inadvertently actuates. If you are going to submerge it or put yourself in a position where it can be submerged, though, it only makes sense to go in the water with a set of waterproof headphones that can also take a dunking and by plugging them into the jack with the proper screw connector, you are just providing an additional layer of protection. I have a waterproof set of phones so have not dunked the Equinox without them but have seen video where users dunked the Equinox without the cover and without the headphones attached to no ill effect. Yet Equinoxes are dying in bathtubs. Sigh.

So bottom line, I totally agree with you that people should be using the right headphones for the job, but it shouldn't be a fatal mistake, as far as the Equinox is concerned, if they don't.

That is what I was trying to point out. The detector should not flood but it could have a problem with the headphones working properly. If it does leak that is what warranty is for. The leaks that are occurring may or may not be related to the headphone jack. Until the actual cause is revealed we will not know what it is. Blaming the headphone jack may be totally wrong.

 

[Blak bart]

Me too. I would not risk submersion without the port closed or with proper threaded waterproof headphones. Just me. I'll stick with what works and so far so good by these methods.

 

[ARC]

The box lay next to me in 4 ft while I fan tatgets....to rocky for a scoop here so its snorkel and fan.

Never met a spot I couldn't scoop... What kind of scoop do you have ?

Tin can with holes on a stick ?

:P

 

[Blak bart]

Coral rock with light sand over the top. All the heavy material settles in the swiss cheese bottom of rock that lies any where from lightly exposed to 2-3 feet under sand. Sometimes under the sand layer will be a pothole in the rock bottom that's jammed with shells and rocks that often have to be wiggled out one at a time to reach a target. I have left hopelessly deep targets that have been lodged in cracks and crevices in the bottom. all the bottom looks like this under the sand. If I'm lucky the sand is light and I only have to fan a little to get to the layer that looks like this, then its fan and pick the potholes clean of shells sand rock and targets. this was a sand beach with a foot or 2 of sand over it. It's been blown off by hurricane Irma. If you try to get down to the target with a scoop you will hit coral rock like this. In 4 feet of water here there's only a light layer of sand and a little grass here. coral fans and reef are growing on the exposed rock that sticks up out of the sand here. It will even look like a beautiful sand patch and then bang scoop hits rock that's still attached to the planet 4 inches under the sand !!

 

[ARC]

Perhaps a new scoop ?

 

[GreenMeanie]

They raised the prices on the EXCAL and people still bought them because they worked. The price increase started right around when they started to leak and the pots started locking up from the salt and the warranties started coming in.
The only thing that slowed down EXCAL sales was the release of the CTX.
And yes there are threads out there that people are hinting at force flooding also diving videos all over youtube.

For detectors, prices usually stay the same or fall as better, cheaper machines come out. Equinox actually accelerated this trend. Nokta/Makro is about to push the more for less envelope further with the Simplex. ML would be making a huge business mistake changing the Equinox price upwards and it goes against current trends in detector pricing (including the ML Vanquish price estimates), but ML HAS recently increased pricing on some of their older niche gold detectors still in production.

 

[vferrari]

They raised the prices on the EXCAL and people still bought them because they worked. The price increase started right around when they started to leak and the pots started locking up from the salt and the warranties started coming in.
The only thing that slowed down EXCAL sales was the release of the CTX.
And yes there are threads out there that people are hinting at force flooding also diving videos all over youtube.

I hear you, nevertheless, the $2.5K CTX also experienced leaks due to an inferior battery gasket design. Again, it would be a bad business decision to up the price because they didn't deliver what they promised. They have probably sold many, many more Equinoxes than CTX's and Excals combined. If people are willing to commit fraud, that's one thing, but if folks want to use the Equinox as a water machine in accordance with what ML advertised no one should be faulted for making sure the machine is not defective while they still have warranty coverage and they should not be threatened or deterred by fears of price increases. ML should simply stand behind their product by honoring the warranty and fixing whatever manufacturing or design issues they have to deliver the product they promised.

 

[GreenMeanie]

But there was also a guy on here taking his CTX with a thicker o-ring to 60ft depths and when it leaked claimed the warranty.
I agree honest warranties should be taking care of but I think the NOX is going to push the limits of dishonest warranties because more people can afford them. Almost wonder why companies don't add something to prove how deep the detector has been like companies do to prove if a cell phone has taking on water.
I will be watching closely as we approach the 3 year limit.

I hear you, nevertheless, the $2.5K CTX also experienced leaks due to an inferior battery gasket design. Again, it would be a bad business decision to up the price because they didn't deliver what they promised. They have probably sold many, many more Equinoxes than CTX's and Excals combined. If people are willing to commit fraud, that's one thing, but if folks want to use the Equinox as a water machine in accordance with what ML advertised no one should be faulted for making sure the machine is not defective while they still have warranty coverage and they should not be threatened or deterred by fears of price increases. ML should simply stand behind their product by honoring the warranty and fixing whatever manufacturing or design issues they have to deliver the product they promised.

 

[vferrari]

I understand your point, more people have the Nox so perhaps a higher number of unscrupulous owners trying to cheat the system.. Glad ML is taking care of the failures, but it would really be helpful if ML would come clean on the magnitude and source of the failures so folks could now whether this is something they have to worry about for the long haul. I'm guessing we'll hear crickets.

 

[smokeythecat]

Just basic submerging a unit a few weeks before the warranty expires (shallow, like in a tub), is WISDOM, not an indication of being unscrupulous. This discussion should have never taken place.

 

[vferrari]

Yeah, that's what I have been saying, if it dies in the tub you are entitled to your warranty replacement. But I have seen those vids Greenie is talking about folks treating it like it's a diving machine, which it isn't.

 

[smokeythecat]

I haven't watched that nonsense. I was detecting today in the wet sand, with anther brand, then had a happy nap. Made a friend of a seagull! Gave little kids toys I dug, that kind of thing.

 

[Bayoutalker]

Yeah, that's what I have been saying, if it dies in the tub you are entitled to your warranty replacement. But I have seen those vids Greenie is talking about folks treating it like it's a diving machine, which it isn't.

I hope mine never leaks but if it does I would rather it be when I really don't need it instead of on a trip. The way I use mine it might be a long time until I get it under water and if it leaks then it might be out of warranty. I don't see a problem testing it in a controlled way. There will always be people that will push the limits and then expect warranty to cover their abuse. Manufacturers know this. They can usually tell if a problem is legit or not.

 

[smokeythecat]

Bayoutalker, take a back up machine with you. I normally do.

 

[Bayoutalker]

Bayoutalker, take a back up machine with you. I normally do.

I always do but the Nox is my favorite. If I want to do some serious water hunting I have a CZ21 to use. It is just not as nice to use.