I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to test out the new Minelab Equinox 600 for a week. Since detecting in salt water has always been an issue for my X-Terra 705, I spent the week detecting on the beach. There was a lot of hype around the Equinox and I can say as far as saltwater detecting goes it is well deserved.
We spent the week doing some beaches around Bribie Island, a place I know gets done over a lot. The idea was to go out at low tide and see what was left to find. Some of our finds are below, not all the coins we found made it home to be photographed.
I found this very worn 1941 threepence when I was calf deep in the ocean and the coin was about 6 inches deep in the sand. Finding it by myself was difficult and some sort of sieve is needed if you want to hunt in the water.
After what seemed a thousand sinkers I managed to find my first ever gold ring. Only a couple of inches deep stuck in the rocky bottom.
We found a few coins where the water was running out in channels on the beach at low tide, suggesting the coins were moving down from higher up on the beach. Also picked up a silver bracelet and silver necklace piece.
This penny was right out on the water line at low tide, has been in the water awhile.
Picked up a lot of random stuff as well. Below we have a WW2 military buckle; a teardrop piece of copper that looked very much like gold; possibly a token, it has letters stamped on it but is heavily corroded; 2 junk rings and a silver ring; a Mexican dollar.
The most common item by far were sinkers, here is a picture of just some of the ones we got in a week. We have over 5kg of them for our efforts.
I got my second gold ring high up on the beach but in wet sand. Almost didn’t dig this as I was getting sick of pulling up sinkers and I had only found a couple of dollar coins for the day. Both gold rings were in the 12 – 14 range on the Equinox.
After the ring came up it helped to inspire us to continue and we ended up with a few more coins for the day.
Overall the Equinox is a very impressive detector for the beach, far more capable in the wet sand than the X-Terra 705. The depth is also surprising, I got a couple of coins and numerous sinkers a foot deep in the wet sand. I didn’t get a chance to get it into trashy areas for a test but early reports are that it excels over the X-Terra’s there too. Looks like an upgrade is going to be necessary.