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Minelab Equinox 900 Or Manticore For Prospecting


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I might actually get the Manticore myself, for the reasons Steve was describing.

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For fun any speck is a win, but 0.3 gm means I would have to get 7 plus nuggets every day for 2 weeks to make minimum wages. When on the gold 0.3 or less is bread and butter but when on gold there is a few pieces a ¼ ounce or more to make it worth while. 

In new patches depth is not a major factor in finding them.

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I think the two (main) reasons why VLFs have done so well in the past are that (1) there was no PI technology around for comparison and (2) a lot more easy gold was still in the ground. Now, it's getting much more difficult to recover gold, a fact that requires some good depth performance in addition. With 50% more power output the Manticore holds promise in this aspect, hence this would be my choice over the Nox (if I had to choose a VLF....). I personally would use it mostly with a small coil though. But then again, why not the Axiom? 

GC

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43 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:

The point is, they are not. VLFs are no match for the SDC when it comes to shallow gold hunting in difficult soil. You've got to come here to the Motherlode, Phrunt, or to most parts of the CA desert for examples of gold-typical difficult soil conditions to understand this issue a bit better. I doubt that many places on earth have the ultra-mild soil you are having, so less experienced DP members should not be misled when reading the thread. VLFs do have severe limitations in most gold bearing areas (unless in NZ), this is why the SDC was designed and why it has been so successful ("PI-GB2"). I don't say they are entirely useless, and especially with very small coils (GM5, Nox 6) the performance can be reasonable. But not anywhere close to what VLFs can do in super mild ground.  In addition, discrimination hardly ever works and you will miss gold, unless the gold is literally touching you coil.

Good point Steve. I see the opportunity to use the Manticore (or Nox) for surface scanning and to then perhaps follow up with PI later on. For super trashy areas this might be a good strategy, with the caveats of discrimination understood. But from that perspective, why not using the Axiom right away? Also, for the Manticore discrimination, I wonder what depth would be for the "cliff", where discrimination stops working altogether beyond hope. For the GM it is about anything great than 0.2 inch.

GC

Because PI disc is not even remotely as accurate, fast, and efficient as VLF disc.

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Thanks. I am looking forward to the Manticore disc ability. Old wisdom says: either trust your ears by the sounds the targets make (if you really know your machine well-but no guarantees), or dig it all, but do not rely on disc, unless perhaps the targets are huge and shallow. Let's see if things will change. If not, I just have to find huge shallow gold. 😁

GC

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On 12/2/2022 at 9:14 PM, phrunt said:

This line from the Manticore manual suggests it's probably not much different, "Goldfield Mode is suited to finding smaller
surface gold nuggets (and some larger deeper ones) in mineralised ground."

phrunt,

Thanks for pointing this out.

I.'m hoping the Manticore can hit on a .5 grain nugget or smaller filling in the gap of PI's, if so then I will be down to one VLF prospecting detector only, also like all it's other other capabilities which is a huge plus this detector offers. Never thought that would be an option, If only someday I could own one VLF and one PI. 

It also looks promising that they added the Goldfield option on the Manticore and the 5.5x8 coil. I am familiar with the Vanquish 5.5x8 inch coil and feel its size would suffice my needs for nugget snipping in tight areas.

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That's true, you pointed out something those not familiar with the Vanquish likely don't know, it already has the 8 x 5.5" size the Manticore is getting.

1393549542_Vanquishcoil.thumb.jpg.c83002a7a430e4ba6e4018a8dd98f233.jpg

This is the V8 coil in the middle, I guess it's what we can expect from the Manticore.  Probably the exact same mold.

I haven't used it on my Vanquish other than to try it out, same with my GM10 10x6" Gold Monster coil, that's actually a replacement for one that the plastic cracked on and I've not used it at all since getting it replaced, I prefer the 5" by far.

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One thing I haven't seen mentioned vis a vis prospecting usage is that non-ferrous discrim seems useful when hunting ore piles, and this is where some of the most amazing speci gold we've seen has come from. There are all kinds of shards of copper/brass from blasting caps though which render ferrous only discrim half useless. Gold VLF's don't differentiate between gold and non-ferrous, it's "all good", so you have to dig every bit of copper/brass, and in some places these far outnumber birdshot in placer fields. Being able to discrim both ferrous and non-ferrous seems like a win to me. I don't know since I've only used gold-only detectors on ore piles before, but this is one use case I plan to explore more when I get one in hand.

Also, in many cases some of the minerals themselves such as chalcocite are ringing up on my GB2 as non ferrous, and I'm curious to see what TID discrim has to say about that.

I'll also note that detecting ore piles, the "soil" is incredibly mild, since it's usually just quartz. So VLF's and discrim excel here. The same goes for lode areas in general which often (though not always) tend to be far less mineralized than the placer areas further down, since heavy mineral concentrates have not yet formed in such quantity.

I haven't spent a lot of time on ore piles other than just for fun up to this point. But it's something I plan on doing more and going after some killer museum quality specis. I've found a lot of piles that clearly have gold in them, but are so trash laden that I can tell numerous people have tried and quickly given up, I view these as relatively untouched targets still.

 

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10 hours ago, jasong said:

I'll also note that detecting ore piles, the "soil" is incredibly mild, since it's usually just quartz. So VLF's and discrim excel here. The same goes for lode areas in general which often (though not always) tend to be far less mineralized than the placer areas further down, since heavy mineral concentrates have not yet formed in such quantity.

I understand the first two sentences, but am confused on the last sentence.  (I'm sure those familiar with the type of areas you refer aren't confused....)  Could you go a bit further in explaining this?  Just to emphasize my ignorance, I wasn't aware that lode gold and placer gold can be present in the same location -- vertically separated.  Also the part about "heavy mineral concentrates (being) formed..."  I can guess/surmise what this means as it seems self-explanatory but I can also think of other interpretations.  (All or this may be in Chris Ralph's book, so maybe time for me to reread.  Not having been trained in geology nor having a lot of experience searching for native gold, I've missed a lot on first and even second reading.)

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32 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

I understand the first two sentences, but am confused on the last sentence.  (I'm sure those familiar with the type of areas you refer aren't confused....)  Could you go a bit further in explaining this?  Just to emphasize my ignorance, I wasn't aware that lode gold and placer gold can be present in the same location -- vertically separated.  Also the part about "heavy mineral concentrates (being) formed..."  I can guess/surmise what this means as it seems self-explanatory but I can also think of other interpretations.  (All or this may be in Chris Ralph's book, so maybe time for me to reread.  Not having been trained in geology nor having a lot of experience searching for native gold, I've missed a lot on first and even second reading.)

I am by no means an expert, far from it. How would old timers have known to start digging for lode if there wasn’t placer present to give them an idea of where to start digging?  Second, if you look at claims maps if there are lode claims, there are usually placer claims as well. Now the science and what not is someone else. 

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