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I've seen this behaviour when air testing for the first time some targets. Bad weather outside, being inside home, forced to keep no more than 7 as sensitivity level, in beach LC and prospecting audio mode... No matter the items, an amazing faint treshold wisper was giving a clear chance to listen for a target by a third more of distance before an ID and a proper trace showed up. It happened with a silver 0.37g ring so thin to be hard to believe. With the 8x5" coil this means like almost 12" without ID but clear treshold variation. I repeat, 7 sensitivity on M8 coil and prospecting audio mode. Soon realised that wasn't the ideal setup for me in saltwater...But on the wet and dry sand, keep an ear on those "pre signals"....

My experience is that different modes create different IDs not as much with coins as with trash signals, but a shift of 1 or 2 IDs up or down is common for me on coins. Trash seems to generate + or - 5 on the IDs, I use the difference to decide on dig or no dig.

This is an awesome upgrade for the 600 or 800. I use this rod with a 600 and use the counterweight with the 11 inch coil and no weight when swinging the 6 inch coil. The s-rod shape is great!

The detectors you’re looking at are about the best on the market for low mineralized gold fields. Hopefully you have mostly lower mineralized ground that you go to then you’ll do just fine with the 900 or Manticore or other comparable brands. Once you get into more mineralized ground then the PI detectors are going to come into place for getting any depth. The Algoforce E1500 is the first detector that fits the low cost PI option but is not available in the US quite yet. The older second hand low cost PI detectors do not have very good sensitivity to the sub-gram gold, so not a good choice unless you know there’s some bigger nuggets where you’re detecting. Most goldfields are picked over pretty good, but if you have private permissions all bets out off. sorry for getting off topic a bit 😖

If you are married to the Manticore or Equinox, go with the Manticore. If you are serious about gold you can always look for a good used Minelab GPX, or even an SD.

FirstTexasProducts on ebay. 5 and 11 coil. Got an offer and took it. I did it because of coil options.

I've been curious about how lead compares to gold in depth testing. This was done with my garrett atx with both the 11x13 DD and the 8" mono coils. On a 3.8 gram gold nugget, both coils maxed out at 7.75". On a 10.25 g lead slug, maxed at 7.8 ". On a 19.5 g lead slug, max was 8.5". The 11x13 maxed at 2.6" on a 0.23 gold nugget, and 2.25" on a 0.25 g lead shot. The 8" mono maxed at 3.1" on the 0.23 gold, and 2.95 " on the 0.25 lead shot. The 8" mono also maxed at .295" on a 0.13 gold picker. Conclusion = when testing with lead, expect to get better depth on gold. It does show me that the 8" mono out performs the 11x13 DD on gold up to 4 grams and under. So the 8" mono is going to live on the ATX most of the time. The dirt was moderately mineralized, and targets were buried. It's not a perfect experiment, but it's information I didn't have before. Hope this information is useful to someone.

Howdy back and welcome to the forum.Man you are poking around all of the rite places gold and relic detecting?

One of the first cabs off the rank when the Manticore wasn't even available in the US I believe. Makes me realize how bad I am at putting on screen protectors. 😛

So yours is a 21 Simon? Mine is not the latest from the factory, more like a last fall model.

Hang in there - We're almost home.

Most likely a rehabbed drill site. All of the drill cuttings have been pushed aside with a dozer and the bags collected and dumped. Lots of these in the district. The discolorization is due to the drill cuttings being green such as diorite, serpentine or green shale. Often, Nickel deposits are in a green zone there I've noticed.

I had a panic when I first saw that thinking because I was an early adopter, I probably had a version they've now changed with revisions since it hit the public and the bugs show their little ugly faces, it appears the version has yet to change as new ones still have the same number so that calmed me down 🙂 It is abnormal they would let you see that information if they were doing hardware changes over time though, you'd normally see that in a secret diagnostic menu that requires a certain combination of button presses or connection to certain software via USB to see, which the detector probably also has.

I'm enjoying watching your & your friend's new Channel. Well done.

the M8 (small Manticore) coil is very similar in performance to the 6" Equinox coil on small gold although it will likely go a bit deeper as the gold gets bigger, I am not thinking there would be any benefit going to the 18" coil for prospecting purposes, the 15x12" both models have would be as big as you'd ever want to go and that has very limited application. The 11" both models have is a good prospecting coil though as they're both very sensitive detectors to small gold even with the abnormally large 11" coil for a VLF for prospecting. It gives very good depth on gold for a VLF using that coil in the right ground conditions, and obviously the smaller coils have their benefits for tiny gold. The only good coil for prospecting missing from the Manticore that the Equinox series has is the Coiltek 10x5" although the M8 isn't all that much different in size so it's not critical. I was wary at first about the Manticore coil limitations for prospecting, but quickly found because of the increased power of the detector that the shortfall in coil options is made up for by the detector itself, and there is still the chance Coiltek will come out with coils for it, I think they might have a waiting period for doing so, so Minelab can gather up the sales of their coils first so it could be a couple of years.

a dip in the ground where water settles more causing it to be greener?

Howdy, I've been learning and panning the last year and a half. I've got sluices, wheels, and buckets of material. Now I want to get into detecting too! I'll be working in and around the CA motherlode, Nevada, northern Idaho, and hopefully making a trip up to Alaska. Thanks.

Howdy All, With the recent Minelab sale I'm looking at either the Equinox 900 or the Manticore, primarily for gold prospecting. One of the appeals of the 900 is the wider variety of coil sizes from 6" all the way up to 18". Does anyone have any thoughts on the differences the 900 may offer with a wider selection of coils while prospecting? The 6" should find smaller gold more consistently, and the 18" should find it deeper, but does the Manticore beat the 900 even without those coil sizes? Are there better detectors in the same price range that may be better suited for gold prospecting? Thanks for any thoughts and feedback!

Under General Settings and the Software Version you will also see the Hardware Version listed. Mine is Hardware Version 21 - anyone see anything different? I'm not saying a higher number is better as I don't know what this really means. Maybe different countries have different hardware versions for some reason? But if we all have 21 then it's moot. I thought it was interesting though as usually something like hardware changes, more common than people think, are kept secret. Otherwise people tend to go nuts over it. The Gold Bug 2 for example has had many hardware changes from early days until now due to changing parts availability.

Hi team, just found this on Geoview map near Laverton. I have had a look and there is no mines or old works logged nor old GML OR P OR PA etc. is this something natural or? kind regards, ethan

Texas vs Texas, maybe that’s the storm a comin’. I would enjoy reading future posts about an Impulse AQ and the Axiom Lite at $2,500 US. How about an upgraded ATX WP lite version with TID for coin, relic, jewelry, beach & salt water plus gold?

Absolutely, I sat down for a couple days and did a complete chart for the D2, Manticore and Legend for all my coins.

Thanks for the chart, maybe I’ll find one of those numbers one day as that’s the main reason I still use a VLF and that is to find a gold coin.

Back in the day when a kid could purchase caps by the roll, missing the old Fanner Fifty with its hand crafted plastic ivory grips. Slap leather pilgrim.

Yup. The silence is deafening. Is it so hard to just tell us what is coming and about when it will arrive? I have the attention span of a gnat and have already moved on.