Everyone is jumping on the Nox bandwagon and I could keep it off with the arguments that I’m not going to find a lot more with a new detector, and also a lot of people have some issues with the build quality of the Nox. I watched some youtube tutorial for Nox Beginners and did some facepalms. I mean, the fairground attraction sounds at startup = ?? There seems to be a lot of icons instead of words.
But ok, if it’s that good than I guess people have a good reason to buy it.
My first 2 hrs with the Nox on my *very good hunted to death* field were kinda disappointing in that i had a lot more signals again (Yay), but then I had to dig A LOT deeper too and that mostly ended in either No Item because somehow I lost the signal. OR the item was rusty iron. Joy. Very big iron nails, and other iron items; I sometimes dig iron nails or rusty rings with the Deus, cos well.. Deus LOVES iron rings and I accept that little thingy.. but I didn’t but a 10-yrs younger multifrequency Minelab to start digging gigantic craters for nails every metre. Why can the old Minelab Sovereign and Excalibur perfectly ignore iron ?? So I went back to the computer to google and apparently all I needed to change was the Iron Bias setting. It’ set to 0 in Field 2, and the iron will go away if you put it to 2. It’s in the advanced settings of Recovery Speed (the last one). The higher you put it (it goes to 9) the ‘longer’ the silence will be around bad targets. So if you go over iron which has a ‘good part’ with a high tone, the bad iron part will widen up a bit and make the good part not sound out with a good tone. I also have this with my Deus that iron will give a bad tone next to a good high tone. I’m pretty confident in that it’s not accidentally a good item very close to iron. Well, it is possible but I’m not going to dig every time I get into this situation.
I first tried the 50 tones. Then the second time I took Digmaster’s advice and set it to 2 tones, which helped a lot. It gives you only a good tone and a bad tone. IT does seem to give a much softer reaction to a lead musket ball than the Deus but cannot really say much about it for now. I know Deus also seems to react louder or softer depending on frequency. Isn’t that what the high freq is all about ? Ringing harder on foil and gold ?
Losing the signal happens almost never with the Deus. It’s hard to lose it because I can pinpoint very well and rarely have to dig very deep with Deus (yes it seems not to go so deep but sometimes it does amaze me). If I take one pile of dirt out and the signal is gone, i put the pinpointer in the hole. In most cases the Thing just fell a bit deeper and is out of reach. Lately the dirt was playing games and I lost my item. Found it back sticking under my boot 
. Several times it was hanging on the piece of mud that was stuck to my shovel. THe mud is annoying sometimes. Well, it’s always annoying. Either too hard and dry in Summer, or mushy and sticky in Winter :p Yes, I do appreciate the rare occasion where the mud is behaving perfectly.
THe Equinox has a design that makes me cringe forever. I mean, you guys had to just get someone’s Deus, hang it against the wall of the design office and make some kind of copy of it. But what you did was: ‘let’s not take into account ANY ergonomy.’ It’s heavier, the handle is big and shapeless (I think the battery is in the handle). It started really hurting my hand with thick gloves after 2 hrs because i couldn’t get my whole hand around it. THe next time without glove was better, but my arm was almost falling off. I’m a small tiny girl, you know. Thanks for caring for the exceptions in your target audience :p I did expect the whole detector to roll to its side when I put it down on the ground, but it stayed upright perfectly. It does have a bigger fork than the Deus. Does also get in my way sometimes but ok. Very Wide arm rest. Totally not necessary for me. Also I don’t like straight shafts. I discovered that when I made my own telescopic carbon shaft for my Sovereigns.. it activates the muscles in my underarm and hand more, it seems. And there you go: the old Minelabs can be modified and you can put the unit wherever you want, put new handles on it.. Does not work that way for the new Equinox. Pity, and shame, since I like fiddling with stuff. I was thinking of cutting off the handle but now it turns out the battery is in there. What kind of Frankenstein do I have to make to have an S-handle with this detector.. My guess is the waterproofing caused some limitations. THe coil cable is just long enough to have a unit on the shaft, so no removable big unit with built-in battery. Why not ? I could have changed the shaft then. Maybe you can remove the whole unit/handle thing and put it in a bag around your waste. Silly huh.
So yeah, I need to try the Nox on the beach because I don’t really feel a need to change my lightweight Deus on the field. It is said the Nox is performing better on pasture and I don’t have much of that anyway. There is room for improvement on the beach. 1) I don’t find much, maybe due to the sanding in. 2) there always seems to be a problem with the old detectors that I’m using. It would be nice to not have a constant ringing because of cable break or empty batteries. So I’m not sure about the nox’ place in my collection. I actually bought it because we are going to start printing parts for detectors, and well.. There’s not much to upgrade on a Deus, is there ? 
OF course, if I find lots of stuff in the future, I will keep it. I’m not sure I will be able to swing it for 4 hrs like I do with the Deus. WEll, 6 hrs was even possible once with my Deus 13″ coil.
I did find a nice green whole needle with my Nox on the good field. It looks a lot cooler in reality. Seems some yellow metal is shining through but the shape says it’s quite old. Most cool finds on that field go back 500 yrs.
