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Manticore Discrimination Capabilities


PSPR

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While waiting for Minelab to announce the release of the Manticore I've been watching a few hunting/review videos of the competition - Specifically the Deuc II and the Legend.  My main concern that I mentioned in my introduction post is determining when aluminum, specifically pull tabs or parts of tabs, is under the coil.  In my common hunting grounds pull tabs are common everywhere.

It seems those machines are totally unable to tell if aluminum is under the coil or a gold ring.  To eliminate tabs a huge part of the jewelry TID's also must get eliminated.  In one example I watched the reviewer scanned dozens of pull tabs he had collected and a dozen or so gold and silver rings that all varied in a range of 17 to 37 on his machine.  Other than on a beach, if I even had the desire to dig up every pull tab the area would look like a bombing range when I was finished.  And, with the greater depth of new detectors many the holes would be a foot deep or more.  I really have no desire to dig up thousands of pull tabs.

So, the question for me is whether the Minelab Manticore is going to be able to identify a pull tab or part of a tab vs. a gold or silver ring?  I don't see how the TID's are going to be any more accurate in this regard than existing detectors.  The only advantage it my have is the Target Trace which shows the shape of the electromagnetic field around a target.  While this is going to help eliminate aluminum cans and slaw, is it going to provide an advantage in identifying the various pull tabs vs. a gold ring.

I'm thinking pull tabs are going to come in with a similar shape to rings and coins on target trace and be of little value distinguishing between the two.  I'll go ahead and order a Manticore as soon as they are released but I'm feeling very disappointed that I'm going to probably not be able to identify pull tabs from jewelry with this machine.

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I would guess that pull tabs and beaver tails will still be read the same by the Manticore. I don't know, that but I'm guessing they would. Until you can distinguish the "element" of gold from aluminum, it will always be the same. Aluminum tabs come in many different numbers. I just tried to do the same thing on my E Trac and found that many gold rings would have to be eliminated because they read the same as aluminum tabs. I have the E Trac, CTX 3030 and Equinox 800. The 800 is the worst of the bunch 😄 for target ID. I also don't think the target trace is going to be that accurate to see the shape of a pull tab vs a ring. Just my opinion with nothing to back it. Our only hope is that there is some bounce to the numbers for gold (doubt it) or some tonal quality that would distinguish them (doubt it again 😄)

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40 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

I would guess that pull tabs and beaver tails will still be read the same by the Manticore. I don't know, that but I'm guessing they would. Until you can distinguish the "element" of gold from aluminum, it will always be the same. Aluminum tabs come in many different numbers. I just tried to do the same thing on my E Trac and found that many gold rings would have to be eliminated because they read the same as aluminum tabs. I have the E Trac, CTX 3030 and Equinox 800. The 800 is the worst of the bunch 😄 for target ID. I also don't think the target trace is going to be that accurate to see the shape of a pull tab vs a ring. Just my opinion with nothing to back it. Our only hope is that there is some bounce to the numbers for gold (doubt it) or some tonal quality that would distinguish them (doubt it again 😄)

I think you are right, schoolofhardNox.  However I did run across an interesting video from a guy who had some tricks to identify maybe 80% of the pull tabs and trash.  He does use a Deus II but maybe some of this will apply to the Manticore.

 

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1 hour ago, PSPR said:

However I did run across an interesting video from a guy who had some tricks to identify maybe 80% of the pull tabs and trash.  He does use a Deus II but maybe some of this will apply to the Manticore.

(Warning:  I'm neither a jewelry hunter nor a Deus user.  Pretty sure he's using a Deus 1, though, not that it matters so much in what I say below.)

OMG.  If this guy were in my scientific investigation&analysis class I'd give him a D.  (BTW, I don't teach such a class.)  So he can tell zinc pennies and clad quarters from aluminum trash?  The only jewelry (gold band) he digs is one he already knew what it was?  Well, at least he was honest (which helped him get a D instead of a D-minus).

As you note there is way more aluminum trash in parks (and on modern beaches) than all good targets (coins, jewelry, relics) combined.  I could go out and dig 12 targets and have a decent chance of getting 100% prediction just by using VDI (which is a big although not exlusive part of his predicting).  Whoop-dee-doo.

Annular shape targets (finger rings but also washers and ring-only pulltabs) give the best signals (strong and consistent dTID) because the eddy currents which generate the return signal are most easily set up and cleanly maintained.  Other gold jewelry (ear-rings, pendants, ear posts) are not going to give perfect signals, in dTID or tones.  Do they sound like various aluminum trash?  (Do I need to answer that?)  Disc shaped targets aren't as good as annular shaped ones, but they are the next best which is why coins (when horizontal and not too deep) also give consistent dTID's and consistent tones.  But even rings will not give a characteristic dTID such as a coin so using that to make a dig/no-dig decision is just fooling oneself (or anyone watching your video...).

Notice I haven't even mentioned trash and treasure simultaneously under the coil, nor the mineralization of the ground.  (Well, now I have.  😁)  Targets at or near the edge of detection?

PSPR, you seem to be quite knowledgeable about detetecting but you also seem to be searching for a unicorn -- detector capable of distinguishing aluminum trash from jewelry.  I don't say that to make you feel bad but rather to try to bring you back to reality.  Maybe someday, but we may all be long gone (and hobby detecting may be as well).

Regarding the Manticore -- none of us knows anything more than what's shown in the (good) videos (or if an official tester is here, s/he isn't allowed to speak up).  I do hunt USA nickels (something many who don't want to dig aluminum avoid -- including the guy in the video by his own admission).  I've worked out some decent mental algorithms for the ML Equinox 800 to help distinguish but I still dig about as many pulltabs as nickels (so I'm roughly 50% accurate).  I also admit it's likely I've left a few nickels in the ground when my methods have failed me.  I can go into those (I've done so before) but since you are a jewelry detectorist I'd be misleading you if I were to give the impression that these 'tricks' will work for jewelry. 

I've never used a detector with a graphical readout and look forward to that.  I'm confident the Manticore output will help some, particularly with iffy signals that turn out to be nails (and maybe even sheet metal scraps 🤞).  But I'm fully expecting that going too far relying on that feature will be costly, too.  "Everything in moderation."  (credit to the guy with his image on our late 40's-50's-early 60's silver half dollars.  😉)

I hope some more people, particularly with jewelry detecting experience can add (or even subtract) from what I've said.  schoolofhardNox gave a good answer (but more diplomatically than I did) and he truly is a jewelry hunter.  You've probably seen his extremely well presented trash+treasure photos.  Even when using a discriminating IB/VLF (such as the Equinox) he digs tons (well, not literally) of trash.

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Wow!  GB_Amateur I hope I didn't post a video in the Minelab section I shouldn't have.  I didn't mean to upset you or anyone else.  I just thought there was some info on IDing aluminum trash that I hadn't seen before in the video.  

Of course, we don't have a lot of info on how the Manticore is going to perform or even its overall capabilities.  All we've seen are a few brief hunts in fields with pretty much only iron trash.  There have been no videos, to my knowledge, of hunts in heavy pull tab trash areas or even on the beach.

I've got my order in for the Manticore but I'm feeling a dearth of information/testing of the machine coming out of Minelab.  I guess I'm feeling we are not being given information many of us need to make an informed decision and I'm wondering why.  I wish they would put a couple Manticores in dealers hands for testing but I guess that isn't how a new model release works.

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Silver where I live is usually decently deep. That goes for nickels too. Depth is the best discriminator where I hunt. I pass all shallow/surface targets listening for the deeper targets. I have a Manticore on pre-order and doubt I will use a discrimination pattern. At least not for awhile. I will hunt with the horseshoe button engaged just like I do with the Equinox. I will probably use 5 tones like I do with the Equinox too. I have never jelled with more than five tones.    

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Pull tabs have existed for a long time, you won't see a machine eliminate them for a long time after I'm gone.  We have all had to learn to live with them one way or the other.  When the time comes that a machine exists that can cancel out pull tabs/aluminum and not gold, then metal detecting will die.  The parks will be completely cleaned out in a few years.  Just my two cents worth.  GaryC/Oregon Coast

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Good points longbow and GaryC.  I never thought about pull tabs being so light that they don't sink very fast.  I've always thought that the low mass of aluminum objects would provide some way to identify them with a detector, EM field.  I guess in reality it's not so easy.

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5 hours ago, PSPR said:

Wow!  GB_Amateur I hope I didn't post a video in the Minelab section I shouldn't have.  I didn't mean to upset you or anyone else.

You didn't upset me.  His video did, but that wasn't your fault.  (Not a big deal having posted it in the Minelab sub-forum.)  I happen to be sensitive to misinformation and that's what this video represents.  The bottom line is many of his aluminum targets could have been non-symmetric jewelry yet he acts so proud of himself that he calls them aluminum and gets them right.  If you want to be right 99% of the time then just call these signals aluminum because that's in the ballpark of the ratio of gold jewelry to aluminum:  1 to 99.  (It's probably worse, actually.)

Sorry if I took this out on you.

6 hours ago, PSPR said:

I've got my order in for the Manticore but I'm feeling a dearth of information/testing of the machine coming out of Minelab.  I guess I'm feeling we are not being given information many of us need to make an informed decision and I'm wondering why.  I wish they would put a couple Manticores in dealers hands for testing but I guess that isn't how a new model release works.

We actually have some good information on the Manticore because ML sent one of the design engineers (whose also a detectorist) to Europe for two weeks and explained how it works, particularly where improvements have been made over the Equinox.  He accompanied several locals in different parts of Europe when they hunted with it and explained what they were seeing.  This is more than we got before the Equinox was released (at least as I remember).  The Legend had less exposure, too.  The pre-release public testing of the Deus 2 was a bit better than those two but the problem was that one of those testers was as biased as they come.  (Another wasn't so his videos were meaningful.)  IMO it's not that easy to find objective, knoweldgeable dealers, either.  (One obvious exception here but I don't need to name names.) 

The other thing is that even the most expert user (hard to be an expert on a new detector without quite a bit of time in the field anyway) is that he's one person with his own detecting style and expertise and his particular sites with their type and distribution of trash, good targets -- both at particular depth distributions -- and specific mineralization.  It really takes several reliable testers who have had the instrument in their hands for ~100 hours to really get a good cross section of user reviews to make a decision, and even then it may not be obvious if it's going to produce enough at your own particular sites to be worth the cost compared to competition and/or the detector you already have.

The advantage a lot of us here in North America have is that winter is approaching so if we can get some reviews by the warm weather detectorists (e.g. Australians and warm weather residents here) then by the time the ground thaws we'll have some decent info.  I'm on the list also as life is getting short and I really like what I see.  I know the Equinox pretty well and this looks like a very similar interface that I should have little trouble working with.  Finding the optimal settings for my sites will certainly take a while but that will be true whether I get it early or wait awhile.  I'm aware of the possibility (which I think is small) that it won't provide me anything more in my present and future sites than what the Equinox is already capable of.  I'm willing to take that chance.

It's a decision for everyone and unless people are skipping the house payment or Christmas gifts, probably not going to make a major impact whether s/he jumps at first chance or waits for more (reliable) info to arrive.

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