New Equinox, anyone aiming to buy one?

I'm probably going to buy the new Equinox, has anyone in the club already pre-ordered? I would love to get some feedback from anyone who is in the first tranche of orders.

Cheers Clive

Using the Equinox
When I joined the club as a newby, one of my hopes was that I could discuss how best to use my machine with other memsbers. I kicked off this thread blog sometime ago on the club website, hoping that people will provide advice. Nothing was forth coming. So here’s a post on my use on the Equinox, in the hope it will encourage others to post their own experiences. - There are at least 6 Nox owners in the club! So please respond.
I have an Equinox 800 bought when they first came out. My advice to people considering buying a new machine is that you will get better value for money with the Equinox 600 compared for the 800 especially if you can get the wireless headset included in the deal.
The reason being that there only other differences are some minor granularity on some of the control settings, and the Gold modes not being available on the 600. Frankly you only need the gold modes if you are going to prospect for gold nuggets in Australia or the USA. I doubt that those setting will be much use in our rivers!
Discounting the 2 Gold settings the Nox is really 6 different machines. I mainly detect in Devon pasture fields so I use Field 2 all the time. I would love it if those of you post your experiences, especially if you use the Park, Field 1 and Beach settings, cause the NOX is different in those modes. So the following is my observations for Field 2!
Rule 1 First read the Instructions time and time again! The Nox appears easy to use, but there is a lot of hidden complexity. Best keep to the basic standard settings and only change one variable at a time. Ideally build a test pit and try out different targets at different levels. Air testing is OK, but targets give different signals in the ground and corrode and give a range of signals and are iffy at depth. Coins on their edge give iffy signals that you’ll need to recognise.
Starting up:- I always select standard field 2. And use all Metal mode unless it is too noisy, in which case I’ll occasionally turn it off to give my brain a rest. I’ll up the sensitivity as high as possible – around 24, but if it gets too noisy and annoying I drop to 23, 22 or so. Apart from that I leave everything else at the default settings. If decide to change I only change one parameter at a session in order to understand the impact it makes.
Noise Cancel and Ground balance. I use the pinpoint mode to first select a quiet piece of ground and then I do the noise cancel and ground balance. (It would be daft to ground balance over a target!) I do not leave the wavy ground balance sign on when I detect. – I do not trust the automatic ground balancing tracking capability, preferring to ground balance again in all new field or conditions.
Iron Falsing The Nox is a brilliant machine, very good at finding small things at depth and in this aspect outperforms many other makes. However it has some quirks in behaviour. The biggest hassle in our Devon fields is Iron. We generally assume that the All Metal range -10 to 0 covers all the Iron – It does not. With the Nox in Field 2 lots of pieces of iron register as nice 4 way signals at 13 and 14 on the VID with very little if any negative signals to give it away. It calls out to be dug! However I hate seeing the number 13! However artefacts and some coins could quite feasibly come in at 13/14 so your decision as to whether to not dig and not have the good find that could have got away, or save time for digging better signals! I would love to hear feedback from others on what they do on this issue. One technique I have started to reuse to resolve this problem is the following. Say I get a good 13/14 signal, I will just click the frequency button and change from Multi to 4 or 5kHz and see if the VID changes, if it stays the same I dig, if it goes to negative or much higher numbers I move on. I quickly go through the other frequency settings and see how the VID changes. (then back to Multi) Different metals give different signals in reaction to different frequencies. My understanding is that silver reacts more to higher frequencies whilst Iron reacts more to lower frequencies. The Nox in Multi mode has an algorithm that combines the results of the different responses to the multiple frequencies it sends out to give us a combined VID and tone, so unlike single frequency detectors it responds really well to the full range of metals. If I’m having a bad unproductive day, time is short and signals common then I’ll ignore the 13/14 variable signal and be more choosy!
Iron Bias. FE and F2 modes The Nox is brilliant at detecting Iron and good finds such as silver. If two such items are close together it will tell you about both. However Iron seems to “bleed” other signals when it corrodes so you can be misled. The Iron Bias. FE and F2 modes are meant to help, but they are a two-edge sword. At one extreme setting they will detect a good high vid item (Silver) when it is heavily masked by Iron, i.e. very sensitive to high VID signals, but that makes it responsive to Iron falseing so you dig a lot of false iron, but at least you have not missed any good items. At the other extreme setting, it dulls the iron falseing, so you only dig certain good signals, but then miss the good stuff that is close to Iron. Your shout as to which you prefer. I’ve given up on varying it and just go with the FE default setting. – I’d love to know what you others think. Perhaps in a heavily detected zone I’d want to know about good stuff close to Iron that others would have disregarded, whilst in virgin site with sparse signals it would be more productive to go for the clearer signals.
If anyone is confused about the Iron Bias FE and F2 settings on the Nox, here is an explanation:- Originally there was only FE and it covered a certain range of effectiveness. But one of the NOX developers (Tom Polish surname I cannot remember) had developed a wider range of IRON BIAS settings that go lower than FE 0 and higher than the top FE setting. So when a new software release came out (V1.2 i think) they added it as F2 to the NOX. So you can only be in FE or F2 not both at the same time, and F2 covers a wider range of settings. Somewhere on the web is a graphic that shows how the two ranges overlap.
That’s the core issues. Another time I’ll post a list of typical VID numbers and finds.
We have several NOX experts in the Club who excel in other settings - Beach and Park, I would love your feedback.
Cheers Clive