A paradoxal post about “Some things I need to change or wine about concerning the new Nox” and then also: ‘look what I found with it’ 
Starting to detect with a new detector isn’t fun and games. I have to really test the Nox with my buddy’s Deus alongside to see if it really matters, because I really don’t like the handle and straight shaft. I need a good enough reason to stop using it. I find myself trying to get my hand higher and more to the back of the handle all the time but it doesn’t get where I want it to be. Custom-made shaft, here I come.. Well no. Handle is fixed to the screen, and I need the screen cos the beeps aren’t telling much. I also like to watch the screen on the Deus because sometimes the lower tones have an ID that I would still dig to see if it gets better. With the Nox, you have to see whether the ID is constantly around the same numbers, but a 10 and 12 have 2 different tones so you can’t tell by the tones whether it’s a consistent signal.
Actually I never had problems with the 30-20 year old Minelabs after dealing with the XP Deus for the majority of the past 7 years. Those have very simple settings and very easy tones and I will always want to have THOSE exact tones. Except for the Deus in Hot mode, I also like that sound a lot. I can’t imagine I was so stupid years ago to tell people not to use the Hot mode as I thought my custom program was better. Why ?? It seems the full tones in the HOt program give so much information about the target. Using the Hot program is like:
“Oh, this is iron because it spits or squeaks. This is a nice full tone, so copper or a piece of aluminium. And this is very small and on top of the soil apparently.”
I got so used to these tones.
And then I start using the Equinox 600 and I have no idea what all those iffy beeps mean. Of course, there’s the BIG beep that even makes the handle vibrate. THat’s easy. So up comes a 15cm piece of aluminium handle bar or a hole can.. Or a coin sometimes. But a lot of the beeps seem random eventhough I know I have to keep the sensitivity around 20 to start. It’s just not going ‘ooo dig meeee, I’m a target’. I really have to listen carefull to what the detector is saying all the time. Really not used to that.
My settings for field for my first Nox attempts :
Field 2 – noise cancel – ground balance – 2 or 5 tones – Iron bias 2 (which should be 1 i figured now) – sens 20.
Dig everything that has a consistent ID (with a few nrs difference).
And the craters that I dig now.. the craters. How hard is it to pinpoint with a new detector with a 11 inch coil after you have been using another 11 inch coil for years with great success when locating something in the ground ?? I can’t remember the last time i hit something with my shovel and maimed it.
But ok, one thing I have to set straight: I never dig really deep with the Deus -like one shovel in is usually enough- so I can imagine this is why it seems so much easier to pinpoint with it. And yes, I’m not saying it doesn’t go deep.. I do have some deeper stuff sometimes, like the copper-iron cent on the beach that was 25cm deep. Last week I had a coin quite deep. If the Nox goes a bit deeper, then it might be harder for the machine (or me) to know where the object is sitting.
I found amazing things on just a random field last week with the Nox, because my Deus coil ran empty. Oops. Didn’t know what I was doing until I stopped digging fluctuating ID’s. Can’t remember what the good finds were coming up as..I do remember digging a gigantic wide hole for the coin that was probably the very old silver coin (only saw it was silver later on). It was somewhere on the side, as turns out more often with the Nox. I know when something is in the side of the hole with the Deus, it’s often something odd or iron which gives a good sound on one side.
So to stop digging all the iron with the Equinox, I set the Iron Bias on 2. But now I see the 600 doesn’t have as many increments as the 800 so I realized now this is why I don’t dig ANY iron.. The 3 is the maximum so the 2 isn’t at the start, it’s already a medium setting. So I will change that to 1 and then I guess I will have more iron again.
Some manual info about going over Iron targets : ‘The Iron Bias Setting provides some control over the Target ID response. A lower Iron Bias setting will allow the natural response to dominate which means that the target is more likely to be classified as a non-ferrous target. A higher setting will increase the likelihood that the target is classified as iron. Iron Bias is only available when the operating frequency is Multi.”