Jeff McClendon

Shaft system is trapezoidal and is basically a Simplex mid and lower plastic shaft. 15khz single frequency waterproof detector that just makes the US manufactured offerings look plain silly.

My Manticore has paid for itself with finds already and I traded in another Minelab detector to a great dealer who is a member of this forum and that deal was good for both of us. The brick and mortar dealers are the ones that are really getting the finger. Minelab could show some respect to their “loyal” customers who paid full retail price for their Manticore and gives us a factory direct 30% discount on the coil of our choice or a WM09………. similar to what Nokta did when they released a coil and shaft upgrade for the Legend. I’m not holding my breath on that happening.

A coin/jewelry/relic detector with fixed pulse delay set for larger coin sized targets. It will ignore the really small stuff A gold prospecting detector with fixed pulse delay set for 0.1 gram nuggets and larger. Personally I would like both options in one detector. Waterproof would be awesome.

I don't mind the Apex audio quality or the length of the tones. I do mind it being stuck on 5 tones. When a simple non-ferrous low to mid conductor aluminum coins sized target at 4" deep is sounding off with all 5 tones......that gets old quick. A 1 or 2 tone option would make the Apex a lot more flexible in my opinion.

I love my Deus 2 but I recently sold my remote partly because I absolutely hated screwing on that charging connector and partly because I just don't need the full remote. The WS6 Master setup works good enough for me since I won't be doing any diving or submerged Deus 2 water hunting. I like that new charging cable as long as the pins don't break. Now maybe XP will also come out with a different coil charging clip.....PLEASE!

The OP and another poster started this topic with a direct comparison between the Garrett Apex and the XP Deus 2 on page one. I was going to stay out of it but I don't want unknowing prospective Apex buyers to get the wrong impression. I think the OP did a good job of making it clear later on that the Apex does have some issues in higher iron mineralization. For me it has nothing to do with elitism. I don't enjoy using detectors that don't perform well where I detect. I am too old to waste time wondering what a detector is trying to tell me in a simple park hunt situation on 4" deep or less targets. I don't care who made the detector. If that means I have to buy more expensive detectors because of soil mineralization levels then that doesn't make me an elitist. I am a longtime happy Garrett owner that just wants them to produce a better SMF VLF.

Andy and I both tried to make the Apex work in our western USA soil conditions. My experiences were very similar to Andy’s. I actually bought two different ones hoping that the first one was just a lemon. Lost money when I sold them. I didn’t unfairly dismiss or ignore the Apex. I really liked everything about it except for the way it detected here. I gave it an honest go. It just couldn’t handle the ground conditions that the Equinox, Legend, Deus 2 and Manticore handle easily. I also really hope that Garrett’s next SMF detector will be able to handle the ground conditions here a lot better than the Apex. I really like Garrett as a company, I like the Axiom a lot and would love to own and use an all terrain, fully competitive Garrett simultaneous multi frequency detector.

Anyone expecting the Legend to beat out the Manticore with both running maxed out sensitivity (if that is even possible) is going to be disappointed and also probably needs to really take a good dose of reality with their next aspirin dose. For me anyway, the Legend is an improvement on the Equinox 800 and matches or exceeds it at most locations aside from Midalake's saltwater beaches. Expecting anymore from it is just fantasy.

I have not found Beast Mode to be unstable. I don't find the Legend in general to be unstable either. It is well behaved for me as long as I do a noise cancel, properly ground balance it and don't go much over a sensitivity setting of 25 and if I make sure to take the target IDs for border line deep and for surface targets with the coil actually centered over the target. I can see Beast Mode being a very good tool for double checking areas where deeper relic and coin sized objects may be lurking as long as there aren't any buried utility lines in the same area. So, rural areas with open fields or woods with little to no infrastructure build up. I can easily see me or someone less experienced going after electrical, gas and water line/sprinkler systems using Beast Mode if they use it in the wrong area.

At least where I detect, the Legend if setup for the ground conditions can hit and identify 10" coin sized targets no matter what conductivity they are. Much deeper than that and the targets (similar to the Nox 600/800) start to sound like iron. The Deep Target feature just released in V1.14 may help with that. My Manticore will also tend towards iron in the higher iron mineralized dirt that I hunt in especially on lower and mid conductive coin sized targets at around 10". Anyone just getting 8" max using their Legend must be hunting with iron rejected and with the iron filter on the default 8 setting, one of the smaller coils and/or they have the worst dirt on the planet. There are lots of absolute newbies to detecting giving their opinions about the Legend on Facebook and even making YouTube videos. Some of what they are saying is leaking onto the forums. They obviously don't know much about detecting yet, especially deep target detecting and I disregard most of what they are claiming. I like the name for the Deep Target feature. For me it really helps to clean up the iron/not iron choice on 8 to 10" deep ferrous and non-ferrous targets if I keep the setting on 2. In testing on 8" test garden coin sized targets and on actual 8" deep wild targets it has worked great. So far, I have gotten more information and cleaner hits using it on those targets than the Manticore gives me in ATG All Metal using 5 tones, in places where I really need good information.

Diga gave a really good explanation for the iron filter/iron stability settings. The iron filter settings are like whole numbers and the iron stability settings are decimals like IF 1 and IS 4 is similar to a combined iron filter setting of 1.65 or so, etc.

I forgot to mention that V 1.09 and later work much better at saltwater beaches than the previous versions.

Iffy (Mike) and many posters are hung up on the target IDs produced by Beast mode and the strange tones. Nokta has repeatedly said and demonstrated in their demo video that the target IDs provided by Beast mode will often not be accurate at all. The audio used in Beast mode sounds similar to the VCO audio heard in pinpoint mode with the possibility of 2 tone VCO if enough iron response filtering is used. At this point from my experience with Beast mode AFTER seeing, accepting and doing the operational procedures recommended in Nokta’s demo video, I am using Beast mode as a 2 tone beep/dig mode for extreme situations almost like an extreme depth non-motion pinpoint mode. The Deep Target feature is the “beastly” feature that I will be using the most from the 1.14 Beta versions.

I have an Accupoint and I like how it pairs with the Legend, I want maximum depth, I like the semi live threshold in the latest Goldfield mode, I use the mineralization meter a lot, I adjust the iron filter, iron stability and bottle cap filters a lot, I like the adjustable audio gain feature on every mode, I really like the new deep target feature, I will probably not use M3 or Beast mode very much but who knows? I will be updating to the latest non-beta version when it’s released. I can’t recommend any version before 1.09 since the features I mentioned aren’t included in those earlier versions.

I am just scratching the surface as far as learning the Manticore, especially as far as how to work with the upper and lower ferrous limits and what the 2D screen is capable of. Since January 2024, I am at 34 US silver coins, 8 silver rings and 3 gold rings. All were found in public parks that I thought were on the verge of being hunted out by me and others using the Equinox 600/800 and were at least 7” deep in tough iron mineralized dirt.