New To Prospecting - Equinox 800

[scarsdale_gold]

Hi all,

The wife and myself are new to prospecting. We've been living in the Golden Triangle for a while now so thought it was time to try our luck !

We purchased an Equinox 800 and gave it a run on our property today. We actually live at the base of some old diggings in Scarsdale.

I'm after some advice on using the Equinox and what settings to use. When using it today in the back yard, I turned it on, set it to Gold 1 mode and went through the noise cancelling routine and started to swing it over our yard. Our ground is made up of probably an inch or two of soil before it turns to clay. The detector was constantly beeping when moved over ground. You could tell when it hit something as the beep or tone was much higher in pitch and the display would show numbers in the range of 20-30 but in general, the tones would sound nearly all the time and numbers on the display would be in the range of 1-5. I'm sure there is a way to minimise sounds but haven't found out how to do that yet, so any advice would be much appreciated.

On a positive note, we had a hit and dug up the below, so that was exciting. I thought it might be an old spoon handle but I wouldn't think spoons would be numbered, so not sure what this is. We only found this piece, not the whole thing.

Thanks, Scott

 

[bob]

I cannot help with the settings for the Equinox but I think that you have found part of a spoon. I found the same thing some years ago at Heathcote but I also found the matching spoon bit in the same hole. I think that the symbols are a kind of hallmark.
Hope someone can help with setting up the detector.

Cheers Bob.

 

[Dave79]

Until you get the hang of it, I would get well away from powerlines and any other sources of EMI, eg mobiles, phone towers, as noise cancel won't get rid of these totally.
Then put it in gold mode 2 and run it over the ground and dig everything, you will soon find out which numbers are hot rocks and ground noise and if you press the tick/cross button while that number is up on the screen it will discriminate it out and that number signal won't make a noise any more. Any numbers that come up for bullets, birdshot and small bits of copper and brass will be the most likely gold numbers so try not to discriminate them out.

 

[scarsdale_gold]

Had my first day out in the goldfields around home today with the Equinox 800. Lots of diggings and mullock heaps around but no luck finding anything though. Did get a couple of hits on some trash (ring pull, bottle cap) but the otherwise it was fairly quiet so I'm guessing the area has been hammered pretty well.

 

[Hawkear]

Hi all,

The wife and myself are new to prospecting. We've been living in the Golden Triangle for a while now so thought it was time to try our luck !

We purchased an Equinox 800 and gave it a run on our property today. We actually live at the base of some old diggings in Scarsdale.

I'm after some advice on using the Equinox and what settings to use. When using it today in the back yard, I turned it on, set it to Gold 1 mode and went through the noise cancelling routine and started to swing it over our yard. Our ground is made up of probably an inch or two of soil before it turns to clay. The detector was constantly beeping when moved over ground. You could tell when it hit something as the beep or tone was much higher in pitch and the display would show numbers in the range of 20-30 but in general, the tones would sound nearly all the time and numbers on the display would be in the range of 1-5. I'm sure there is a way to minimise sounds but haven't found out how to do that yet, so any advice would be much appreciated.

On a positive note, we had a hit and dug up the below, so that was exciting. I thought it might be an old spoon handle but I wouldn't think spoons would be numbered, so not sure what this is. We only found this piece, not the whole thing.

Thanks, Scott

The area south of Ballarat is much underrated as people do not necessarily associate it with the Golden triangle although it also had much nuggetty gold.
The area south of Ballarat seems to have suffered more erosion than the gentler slopes further north and a lot of the gold is in the alluvial deposits both deep and shallow. One exception near you is the Jubilee reef and whilst I have not found gold in the shallow heaps there myself I have heard of others doing so.
I have found gold in some of the other shallow gullies in the area.
Here is a an old goldfield map of Scarsdale that might help.
Looking forward to an update.

 

[Mike678]

Hallmarks on the spoon can be translated by using Google . One of the marks should be the maker and another the year it was made .

 

[grubstake]

Hallmarks on the spoon can be translated by using Google . One of the marks should be the maker and another the year it was made .

That applies to silverware, but this broken handle is the remains of a cheap, plated item, with the plating long corroded away. The symbols aren't actually hallmarks at all, they're just meant to look like them so it wasn't obvious that the owners were using cheap cutlery.