I have a two table join, one table (table1) holds only a record an the other (table2) holds 400.000 records, the match give me 400 records. The index are three numerical on both tables and the DELETED().

Why if I index with a SET COLLATE TO "GENERAL" is faster (very far away) than if I do a SET COLLATE TO "MACHINE". I thought that MACHINE would be always faster than GENERAL?