New Minelab Manticore

[Jeff McClendon]

11 hours ago, NAGANT said:

From a dealers Q&A.   What does the term "50% more power", exactly mean? 

 Statement from Dr Philip Wahrlich, Minelab's principal technology physicist, about a key difference of Multi-IQ compared to the demodulation taking place in conventional single frequency VLF detectors:
 

“Within the Multi-IQ engine, the receiver is both phase-locked and amplitude-normalized to the transmitted magnetic field – rather than the electrical voltage driving the transmitted field. This field can be altered by the mineralization in the soil (in both phase and amplitude), so if the receiver was only phased-locked to the driving voltage, this would result in inaccurate target IDs and a higher audible noise level. Locking the receiver to the actual transmitted field, across all frequencies simultaneously (by measuring the current through the coil) solves these issues, creating a very sensitive AND stable detector”.

 

 

Nothing new in that answer. It is a quote from the original article published by Minelab in 2018 “Multi IQ, What Is It” when the Equinox came out. The quote from Dr. Wahrlich is referring to Multi IQ……not the improved (?) Multi IQ+.

[Daniel Tn]

21 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Eh, 4+ years is kind of a long time…

But they did deliver, finally.

Not for me any more.  Seems every time I turn around, another year has came and gone. I go to sleep on New Yrs eve and wake up and it's almost Christmas again.  Where does the time go?  

[CPT_GhostLight]

22 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

 E-Trac was discontinued. Manticore at same price replaces it. CTX continues to be flagship machine.... for now.

The Edison light bulb in my head just went on... The Manticore is actually the Equi-Trac! 😲

I'm a little slow sometimes... 😏

[dsb]

I put that Statement from Dr Philip Wahrlich, Minelab's principal technology physicist just to help people (like me) to get familiar with the conversation going on.  old joke about greatest inventions,  one guy said the thermos is the greatest invention because it keeps things hot or cold. when asked why that's so great he said "but how does it know?"😄

[longbow62]

Two camps here. Always going to be people who just buy it on faith. Always going to be skeptical people who won't buy it right off the bat who want to see good honest reviews before they take the plunge. Again they've had 4 years to make the Equinox better from a performance and build quality standpoint. How much better is anyone's guess. You know it has more features. Minelab appears to have incorporated build improvements and things people ask for. Look at this detector as kind of the difference between an Etrac and CTX performance wise. Not a lot, but the CTX has more features. That's the way I look at it and basing my decision to go ahead and pre-order. I personally don't think the U.S. price is out of line or unreasonable. 

I hope that in the near future Minelab will come out with a better pinpointer. Maybe like the MI-6 which could pair with the detector.

[Chase Goldman]

4 minutes ago, longbow62 said:

Two camps here. Always going to be people who just buy it on faith. Always going to be skeptical people who won't buy it right off the bat who want to see good honest reviews before they take the plunge. Again they've had 4 years to make the Equinox better from a performance and build quality standpoint. How much better is anyone's guess. You know it has more features. Minelab appears to have incorporated build improvements and things people ask for. Look at this detector as kind of the difference between an Etrac and CTX performance wise. Not a lot, but the CTX has more features. That's the way I look at it and basing my decision to go ahead and pre-order. I personally don't think the U.S. price is out of line or unreasonable. 

The chart below lifted from Steve's post on technology product early adopters.  

 

 

 

 

[cudamark]

14 hours ago, Erik Oostra said:

I was trying really hard not to make the comparison.. 🙂 That's also what I paid for my Deus II.. I was hoping for something a bit cheaper as well, that price would have to justify a hell of a performance gain.. 

I suspect the MentalBore will be better in most areas over the Nox, or why would anyone buy it? It'll be up to us to decide if it's $600 U.S. better in our personal detecting needs.

[phrunt]

If there is one thing Minelab are good at it's delivering performance, the likelihood of it not being reasonably better than the Equinox are very small, of course it's better, it's added features will do as advertised, it should ID targets better as it provides us more information taking some of that from the CTX, it may even provide people like me in milder soils some extra depth.  In bad soils if you're chasing better depth a VLF probably isn't your best bet.  They priced it where they did as they were confident we'd find value in it to consider the price reasonable once we use it.

It's got other features like a flashlight and vibration suitably taken from the Equinox clone the Legend as a bit of payback that two can play that game.  It's build quality and waterproofing has been improved, significantly by the looks of it which might be part of the price jump.  We all know Minelab demand extraordinary profits and they get them by delivering, if it's not worth what they're asking people have plenty of other options now.

If you look back over the years since the Equinox the things we complained about, they've largely been addressed, Minelab seems like a mute although they can listen and they do, they just can't speak 😛  I even know high up people at Minelab read this forum, one of them once told me so, so our complaints don't go unnoticed.

What we have here is a more well refined Equinox, a version 2 and it will be fantastic I have no doubts, and it looks to be everything I've wanted in a new Equinox, I doubt it's going to be a total replacement for my CTX but it's moving the two technologies closer to the point having both the CTX and Equinox isn't as necessary as it once was.

[CPT_GhostLight]

The new MonteHall (some will get that reference) is not replacing the Equinox or the CTX. It is, as SteveH pointed out, priced the same as the now discontinued E-Trac. I think it's the new SMF version of the E-Trac and it should be called the Equi-Trac. 😉

[phrunt]

That maybe true, but it's more replacing the E-trac in price than DNA, it's a better Equinox on the inside.  The reason it's not replacing the Equinox is that's still competitive in its price range and a good seller, no need to replace it and they wouldn't want the Mandible at the Nox price anyway.  The E-trac wouldn't have been selling well, with the Equinox taking it's glory and the CTX being the better version of an E-trac still fills a niche that it doesn't seem the Mandacole is set out to replace.

The way I'll decide is using the Munchable and then seeing if I think I'd use my Nox again over it, if not or in very little cases then it's a Nox replacement for me, and I'll do the same with my CTX.   I suspect it will be the Nox it will replace, not the CTX (or E-trac if I had one) being such different technology.