To ground balance of not to ground balance?

[Truth]

I’ve heard a lot of users just use zero ground balance and when I ground balance I’m in the 60s. Which one do you do?

 

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[HighVDI]

I would say for people with mild soil no GB is no biggie but hotter soil I'm sure will do better balanced.

 

[CoinHunterAZ]

For me it is totally dependent on where I am hunting. Here in Flagstaff the soil is fairly mild, GB is usually 9-15 or so. At my local spots I usually just do a noise cancel and set GB at zero and go. If I drive 50-75 miles south of my home location however, the ground starts to become increasingly mineralized. Best results in that type ground is with doing a GB, and sometimes I will do it often. GB in the 60's is pretty high, I think I would be doing a GB in that soil. I would also experiment to see what works best for you, as sometimes "less is more". I have not played much with the tracking GB, I just prefer to do it manually (auto).

 

[vferrari]

I just do a GB as a matter of routine and it takes all of 3 seconds, but the Equinox multi IQ is designed to allow you to get away with just using the default GB of 0 for most mild soil detecting situations in any of the modes without a performance penalty.

The thing you need to watch out for is the fact the detector “remembers” the last GB setting, so if you are going to just go for it without balancing, you best check to make sure GB is not set on 73 or something because you last GB’d the detector at a site that has completely different soil conditions than the site you are currently detecting.

How do you know when 0 default is not good enough? If you are getting a lot of ground feedback noise (lots of high minus numbers and iron grunts) in all metal without iron targets actually present, it is best to do an auto/manual GB.

If you find yourself having to frequently re-balance, switch it into tracking mode (there really is no down side to doing this - targets won’t disappear despite what gets spread around the forums). I wouldn’t use tracking if the ground conditions are so mild that there is no variation in ground phase (like a dry sand beach) and tracking is completely unnecessary.

HTH

 

[ColonelDan]

My question would be the opposite of yours. Why not GB? It may not markedly improve your EQX performance under certain circumstances; it certainly will not hurt it and it may just improve it. Like Vferrari, I GB routinely on our beaches and found that it helps.

Just the view from my beach side foxhole....

 

[3cylbill]

you don't listen to your radio when it's almost tuned in , you tweak the tuner so it's loud and clear without static so why run your detector poorly tuned . just makes sense to have the adjustment right...it will work better

 

[Minelab Matt]

I've never ground balanced on my Equinox 800.

Beach or Pasture.

Matt

 

[vferrari]

I've never ground balanced on my Equinox 800.

Beach or Pasture.

Matt

Dry sand/damp sand salt beach (without black sand) generally balances to 0 to 15 on Equinox. UK pasture ground based on US detectorists I've talked to, who've travelled across the pond, is typically mild and stable, so I'm not surprised you've been able to detect just fine without doing a GB.

 

[Jason in Enid]

My question would be the opposite of yours. Why not GB? It may not markedly improve your EQX performance under certain circumstances; it certainly will not hurt it and it may just improve it. Like Vferrari, I GB routinely on our beaches and found that it helps.

Just the view from my beach side foxhole....

Because the design of the circuitry means you dont need to (and the instructions tell you not to)

This has been a raging debate since the FBS was released. The original FBS didnt even have a GB option. The multi-freq ground analysis combined with the fact that its a time-domain function instead of a freq shift function meant that it just wasnt needed.

Then the CTX comes along and minelab decided to give us a GB feature, only for use in extremely bad ground. It was a "last ditch" option to hunt in ground so bad that otherwise it wouldnt be possible (or at least feasible). The problem was that now people with zero understanding of FBS wanted to use it every hunt, in every situation. It actually hurts performance in grounds it didnt need it. But it was a constant debate, and trying to teach newcomers that they should stop using it.

Now we have the EQX and its GB. Again, ML says we dont need it under the majority of situations. They say to use it in extreme mineralized ground or any time you are using a single freq setting. Yet people are STILL saying they use it every time, everywhere. I will repeat it again, ITS NOT NEEDED. There does seem to be a change in GB usage from the FBS2 to the MI-Q however. People did test the GB feature under normal soil condition test beds and they didnt find that it hurt performance like it does on the CTX. So it seems here that if you are using a multi-mode and want to GB, at the very worst you dont seem to be hurting anything even though it wasnt needed to begin with. So, the debate goes on....

 

[vferrari]

Because the design of the circuitry means you dont need to (and the instructions tell you not to)

This has been a raging debate since the FBS was released. The original FBS didnt even have a GB option. The multi-freq ground analysis combined with the fact that its a time-domain function instead of a freq shift function meant that it just wasnt needed.

Then the CTX comes along and minelab decided to give us a GB feature, only for use in extremely bad ground. It was a "last ditch" option to hunt in ground so bad that otherwise it wouldnt be possible (or at least feasible). The problem was that now people with zero understanding of FBS wanted to use it every hunt, in every situation. It actually hurts performance in grounds it didnt need it. But it was a constant debate, and trying to teach newcomers that they should stop using it.

Now we have the EQX and its GB. Again, ML says we dont need it under the majority of situations. They say to use it in extreme mineralized ground or any time you are using a single freq setting. Yet people are STILL saying they use it every time, everywhere. I will repeat it again, ITS NOT NEEDED. There does seem to be a change in GB usage from the FBS2 to the MI-Q however. People did test the GB feature under normal soil condition test beds and they didnt find that it hurt performance like it does on the CTX. So it seems here that if you are using a multi-mode and want to GB, at the very worst you dont seem to be hurting anything even though it wasnt needed to begin with. So, the debate goes on....

First of all, Jason, anyone who is saying they GB is not saying you should GB, they are saying, why not. In other words, just because ML says it's not necessary under most situations, doesn't mean it degrades performance if you do decide to do it for Equinox. It is a completely different situation than FBS/CTX where it can actually degrade performance. No debate about that, whatsoever. So it all comes down to how much is 3 seconds of your time worth doing something you don't have to do.

Why don't we just post what ML actually says in the manual and let people decide on there own. It really is not all that complicated or really worth a raging debate, frankly.

 

[McKinney_5900]

Why not GB? It's not needed in multi, and adding any un-needed tweaks to any machine is a distraction. My soil here is moderate iron. I have tested GB a LOT, and found absolutely zero benefit, none. Besides, a GB needs clean ground so you run the risk of balancing out a good target if anything else is near the GB spot. JMHO

Try this next hunt. Run with zero GB. Find a deep, weak signal, and mentally note the tone quality. Then do a GB in a close clean area, and re-test that weak tone you have marked. COme back and let us know if any improvement was found. Even an undesirable trash signal works. It doesn't need to be a premier treasure tone.

 

[vferrari]

Run a pinpoint to make sure no targets are there b4 ground balancing. GB on Equinox is not going balance out a legit target, it is balancing out ground response that shows up as -9 or -7 IDs. Even tracking GB does not zero out legit targets, weak or otherwise.

I agree that other than under extreme ground conditions it is probably of limited benefit.