New Minelab Manticore

[la torche]

On 04/09/2022 at 13:45, Dan(NM) said:

Voici une autre vidéo mettant en vedette Mark Lawrie... Un peu de questions-réponses. .....

 

I notice one thing on the Manticore at 23.33mn it takes a target ''just under a gram'' and mounts it about 20cm above the disc.

[palzynski]

1 hour ago, la torche said:

I notice one thing on the Manticore at 23.33mn it takes a target ''just under a gram'' and mounts it about 20cm above the disc.

It is a ring then a quite conductive target due to its circular shape , then it is normal to get 20cm in the air for such a target with a VLF in the air I think ... But it is difficult to assess exact distances from a video ...

[palzynski]

12 hours ago, vive equinox said:

mandible gives me the impression of not being super fast in reactivity

in view of this and its high price I doubt that it is a best seller on European lands except among beach hunters

I have the same feeling concerning the reactivity too  .. Future will tell

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, vive equinox said:

mandible gives me the impression of not being super fast in reactivity

Depending upon what someone means by "super fast", this might be 100% true or 100% false for every detector ever made.  Please elaborate.

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I do think this is intended to fill the empty slot left by the departure of the E-TRAC, but it may also very well replace the CTX for a lot of people. If it hits silver as well, and has better waterproof integrity, in a lighter, less expensive package, why not? Kind of begs the question then of what would be good enough to replace the CTX at $2500?

As you note, the CTX3030 misses today's coin detector market in two ways:  weight (5.2 lb) and price ($2500 in the USA).  That's 2 lb heavier than the Nokta/Makro Legend (and even more vs. other modern multifrequency choices) and $900 (in the USA) more than its most expensive competitor -- XP Deus 2.

You've pointed out multiple times that Minelab seems to cycle new product development+delivery among dedicated gold detectors and coin/relic/jewelry detectors.  Among its bread winning space, gold detectors, it has three different types to fit into the cycle.  From your database, here are some relative release dates:

CTX3030 (high priced coin/relic/jewelry IB):  10 years ago.

GPZ7000 (top end gold ZVT):  7 years ago.

Gold Monster 1000 (gold IB):  5 years ago.

Equinox 800,600 (intermediate priced coin/relic/jewelry + gold IB):  4 years ago.

Vanquish 540,440,340 (low cost coin/relic/jewelry IB):  2 years ago.

GPX 6000 (gold PI):  1 year ago.

Manticore:  (intermediate coin/relic/jewelry + gold IB):  late this year?

A couple things seem to jump out (and again I'm not the first or second or... to point this out):

A) the GPZ7000 appears to be due for an upgrade, after 7 years.  The fact that it doesn't seem to have competition may explain that long time period.

B) the CTX3030 is the oldest detector on this list, and furthermore, the Equinox has not only been introduced in the meantime , but so has its successor, the Manticore.

Like the White's Vision (V3i, etc.), it seems that the detector world has spoken:  KISS.  And Minelab apparently has reacted accordingly.

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Maybe the direction of the market no longer supports such high priced coin detectors, and Minelab has seen that writing on the wall.

That is my conclusion, too.

[phrunt]

Yet they price the CTX and Mandible almost the same price in NZ and Australia so they're not concerned about high priced coin detectors in our markets.

The CTX has no competition being the only detector using FBS2, nor does the GPZ being the only ZVT so they're pretty safe and they don't seem to be in a rush to replace them, deep silver hunters tend to prefer the CTX over anything else from what I've seen and that holds true for me and deep gold is still the GPZ for sure.  The Mandible may eat into the CTX market even further after the Equinox chewed into it pretty severely but really, it's Minelab vs Minelab so they don't overly need to care about that. 

They may as well hold back releases until the competition starts to catch up.  It seems that's what happened with the Muncheros, once Nokta and XP started to stir up the market a bit doing an Equinox competitor they release a detector to take them on, they'd been working on it for 3 years so I guess they wanted to make sure it was finely polished and not release it too early when XP and Nokta first did their releases,  Nokta released the Legend too early in my opinion probably to try beat XP with the Legend having to do a bunch of firmware updates fixing up many problems.  I haven't followed the XP much as I didn't like it from the start with it's wireless coils but it also appeared to need many updates to fix problems.

Garrett now has the Axiom so how Minelab responds to that will be interesting especially in markets where its priced significantly cheaper than the 6000, will they update the GPX 5000 to a new form factor and at an appealing price to combat the Axiom? Maybe, it's still a current model and excels where the 6000 and 7000 don't so it's not ready to be discontinued but it is very dated and could use a refresh.

[Steve Herschbach]

4 hours ago, Geotech said:

This was a good differentiator until the GPZ came along. In traditional PI the TX current is turned completely off during the RX sampling. In the GPZ it is not, but it is also not changing (the TX current is a bipolar square wave) so the result is exactly the same: there is no changing TX field during RX sampling. So now my definition of PI is a system that receives during a TX dead time, whether current is zero or a DC value. Put another way, during sampling there is no reactive signal.

*Inside the Metal Detector, 3rd ed, Ch 2; pub. 2023 (I hope)

Does the fact the sampling takes place when there is no reactive signal, preclude the possibility of discrimination in the GPZ based designs? In your opinion only Carl. Hard to know what the wizards down under are up to.

[Shelton]

The CTX 3030 can't handle iron. Here in Europe we have a sea of iron filled with modern trash. Therefore, for me, better separation and identification of iron is an opportunity. It convinces me.

[brys]

10 hours ago, vive equinox said:

mandible gives me the impression of not being super fast in reactivity

in view of this and its high price I doubt that it is a best seller on European lands except among beach hunters

agreed and too   heavy for uk users

[Cal_Cobra]

14 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

In my limited experience in Western ghost towns it's not just the rusty cans (and worse, pieces of them), although those do play a roll.  Even worse in some places are the pieces of sheet metal (iron composition but possibly originally zinc coated by the galvanizing method).  Sheet metal was quite common in construction, particularly for roofs.  (Sometimes copper was used, but that seems less frequent.)  In some ways these are similar to old crown caps, except for the dimensionality (flat or 2-d for sheet metal and unless severely decomposed, 3-d for crown caps with that raised rim).  Also it seems that rust preferentially attacks edges and maybe this is where a ferrous+non-ferrous readout can really help.  Small pieces have a higher percentage of edge compared to large pieces.

By all means, the various types of metals you described are exactly what we're fighting in these western frontier type sites.  They differ based on age for the most part.  The sheet metal you describe tends to be more limited to later period mining camp type sites including some mining ghost towns.  Pre 1850 sites are more tin cans, and large iron like tools, spikes, I've found hand hammered chains of all sorts (sadly I often leave them, although some of them are cool), all sorts of hoes, and other interesting iron tools.  Not really what I'm looking for, although they're interesting in their own right.

14 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

(Note:  The following paragraph is just my impressions; not carefully studied so may be way off.)  For me often the modern rusty nails are worse and I think those might be easier to distinguish.  There seems to be a misconception among many that 'ferrous' and 'iron' are equivalent.  From an historical (and chemical) standpoint that is understandable.  But in metal detecting (as in many pursuits) the lingo that develops and becomes standard isn't particularly conforming to historical or scientific usage.  I think 'ferrous' refers to the magnetic properties if ferromagetic materials.  Iron (and its common alloy -- steel) also has conductive properties and those can dominate the response of a detector.  Where we win is for thin, rusty materials when the ferromagnetic part of the signal can dominate the conductive part.  My hope is that with rusty bits of sheet metal (as found scattered thickly in many Western ghost towns) will give a 'tell' on the new ML Manticore.

I've hunted all kinds of sea of nail sites.  Once you plug into them, they're actually not too bad to hunt.  I even did well using the Equinox 800 w/the 15" coil at a sea of nail site pulling three seateds from a hammered site that I've been skunked at multiple times.  I would not be surprised to see a small gold coin found next to a square nail or small arms shell at this site. It would be well earned.