Ground balance yea or nay?

[Wild Colonial Boy]

Just reading Andy Sabisch book, and I noticed a few experience detectorist go for 0 Ground balance

also I was listening to a Mine lab engineer at Detectival in UK when he was explaining Vanquish and that multi alone can read through most soils,

I always ground balance the numbers go usually from 16 to 24 in this area, CT, NY sandy stoney soil usually acidic

should I be doing it at all, and is there a big advantage to running 0 ground balance with reading tricky signals or good stuff trapped in iron or depth?

would be interested to hear peoples perspective on this

 

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[vferrari]

Just reading Andy Sabisch book, and I noticed a few experience detectorist go for 0 Ground balance

also I was listening to a Mine lab engineer at Detectival in UK when he was explaining Vanquish and that multi alone can read through most soils,

I always ground balance the numbers go usually from 16 to 24 in this area, CT, NY sandy stoney soil usually acidic

should I be doing it at all, and is there a big advantage to running 0 ground balance with reading tricky signals or good stuff trapped in iron or depth?

would be interested to hear peoples perspective on this

First off in the context of Equinox it is important to understand what ground balancing is supposed to accomplish. Minelab looks at ground balancing the Equinox as a means to minimize ground noise. Ground noise manifests itself as constant negative digit noise while swiinging (typically lots of -9, -8, -7 grunts if you have discrimination turned off). You can only hear and see that explicitly when discrimination is turned off in the ferrous region (typically by using the horseshoe button). Does that mean it doesn't matter if you can't hear or see it when you ARE using discrimination? No - it DOES matter because ground noise has the potential to mask weak targets at the limits of detection depth from being processed by the Equinox as non-ferrous targets (i.e., being heard as a non-discriminated target) or falling within the discrimination range. The affect of a less than ideal ground balance is that some desirable targets will be processed as iron and discriminated out which effectively decreases detection depth slightly. This effect is made worse in highly mineralized ground where the mineralization interferes with the detector's ability to punch into the ground limiting depth overall. Or in other words, shallower targets run the risk of being masked by ground noise. Now multifrequency machines like Equinox have the ability to better deal with a less than ideal ground balance than single frequency machines because of the way they use multiple frequency signal reception to ID targets. That is why Minelab states that you only NEED to do a GB if you are experiencing excessive ground noise. The final thing to realize is that on Equinox, each mode uses a different multifrequency or Multi IQ spectrum which means each mode will see the ground phase slightly differently and that is why if you DO ground balance, that balance is only applicable to the mode in which you did the ground balance. So if you Ground Balance in Park 1 mode and then subsequently switch to Field 2, you will need to do a Field 2 ground balance also. You can sometimes see this mode specific ground balance effect by noting that if you ground balance in one spot using two different modes, each of those modes will possibly come up with significantly different ground balance or ground phase numbers. This typically happens in moderately to highly mineralized ground although the Equinox ground balance number alone cannot help you to determine whether the ground is highly mineralized (i.e., high in magnetite content, ferrous oxides that distort the detector transmit field that is transmitted into the ground). High numbers usually correspond to more mineralized ground but that is not always the case as other non-mineralized ground constituents can drive that number. The only way to tell if ferrous oxide mineralization is the culprit is by using a detector that has a mineralization meter. The Equinox lacks a ground mineralization meter. Many higher end Fisher and Teknetics detectors have these as well as the XP Deus and other or you can use a standalone mineralization meter if you are really concerned about this. Or you can just do a ground balance.

So all that info is well and good, but it still does not answer the question - should you ground balance with the Equinox or leave it at the 0 default (especially in mineralized soil).

This is were the opinions vary, so I will give my opinion/philosophy.

Bottom line is that a ground balance is not always necessary with the Equinox because as a multifrequency machine it does a pretty good job compensating for a less than ideal ground balance especially in mild soil mineralization situations such as on white sand beaches or sandy soils, as mentioned previously. But I always ground balance anyway because it can't hurt (can't make things worse) and takes all of 5 seconds to do and it is the only way to know that the GB setting starting out is close to ideal since if you have previously ground balanced, the machine remembers the last GB number unless you have done a factory or mode reset. So you may have ground balanced to 70 in Park 1 mode at the site of your last outing and that number may be WAY off for the site you are at today. So I just do a Ground Balance as part of my normal startup routine or when I first use a new mode for the day. I even do a ground balance if I am using tracking GB just to get the number close to balance as the starting point because tracking has a relatively slow response time to prevent "over tracking" GB. I often use tracking GB in hotter ground to prevent having to constantly manually initiate an auto GB due to frequent changes in mineralization that affect GB - and contrary to some of the rumors out there, tracking DOES NOT null out non-ferrous targets if you repeatedly swing over them because tracking has slow responsiveness as I noted above and it only keys of sensed changes in mineralization which usually cannot be fooled by non-ferrous targets. I think Andy's book mentions this tracking ground balance drawback, but that is more of a general legacy holdover precaution of how ground tracking algorithms have been implemented in detectors in the past and is really not an issue with most of the more sophisticated ground tracking schemes used in the latest model detectors from ML, XP, and others.

HTH

 

[Wild Colonial Boy]

Thank you, for putting the time into this.....This is Fantastic
so its no harm or adverse effects to get a read on the current soil conditions by pumping and ground balancing,
it seems to make machine see items better,

I sometimes get a low long hume when i sweep when balance is off and I redo it on un contaminated ground,
O don't track that much as I mostly do Colonial farm sites, and the nails seem to confuse it

 

[Wild Colonial Boy]

I was reading some of your old discussions, regarding single frequencies, as i am a desperate man, as most of my colonial sites have been well hunted, I am open to try any concoction of settings to find and weed out some keepers

I went over a site yesterday 6" coil, field 2, F2. 4, SPEED 7, ALL METAL, 5 TONE, SENS 19 A 20x20 area, then i went back over using 5khz and found some deeper small lead balls and bullets and one pair of cuff links.

On the subject of ground balancing on mineralized soil an idea came to mind on my way home

, what if the heavy iron granular coating could be considered
similar to mineralized soil, and what if I ground balance on this soil and then ran both 5khz, then 20khz, and then Gold over the same spot?

any input, or additional approaches most welcome, as i am thinking of trying this when I go back over the weekend

 

[vferrari]

Running multiple modes (or detectors) over the same patch or plot is always advisable if you have the means and time to spare. So, yeah, I recommend that. It is one of the advantages of Equinox as it can be set up with such diverse configurations it is like having multiple detectors in a single machine.

 

[Wild Colonial Boy]

Thanks, will let you know how I get on

 

[cudamark]

Not knowing the degree of mineralization or iron target density in your hunting area, it's hard to give you exact modes and numbers to use. Generally speaking, if you need max depth, you want to use a bigger coil, slow swing speed with a slower recovery speed, all metal, iron bias at 0, and as high a sensitivity setting as you can stand and still keep it stable. If the iron is the main problem, you'll probably want to up the iron bias, and have a faster recovery speed. If ground mineralization is the problem, putting it in auto track, or, regularly adjusting the ground balance manually might help. Trying different modes (and whatever other adjustments you need to make in each mode) is something you'll have to decide by experimenting with them. Find a weak signal that you think might be something good and try several different setups to see which one gives you the best signal.

 

[jamest64]

Vferreri, thanks, I'm new to Equinox too. Had some confusing signals. Read your peace. Thanks for your help.

 

[jamest64]

piece, sorry.
HA.