Manticore @ The Drained Lake

[Daniel Tn]

Here are some pictures of the ring.  Mom cleaned it up some.  It's the one on her pinky.  

[F350Platinum]

9 hours ago, Daniel Tn said:

Here are some pictures of the ring.  Mom cleaned it up some.  It's the one on her pinky.  

I took this one to a jeweler to see if they could clean it up, unfortunately garnets scratch. Sadly she told me she couldn't, as the way they do it they would blow the stone up. She did the best she could.

[Cal_Cobra]

Nice job, what a great story with a happy reunion ending! 

Too bad W&E went under, they'd print this.

 

[Steve Herschbach]

On 1/17/2023 at 4:48 PM, Daniel Tn said:

So what did the Manticore find there after having previously hunted it with the 900 and D2?   How about.....nadda.  That's right.  Nothing.  I will tell you that it behaves similarly to the Nox 900 in that it is very chirpy and falses a lot in the iron that is on this beach, and even with tracking ON, it seems slow at keeping up with the changing ground.  I tried a couple different modes here...using the All Terrain General and All Terrain Low Conductor modes.  I didn't dig any non ferrous trash, nor coins, nor jewelry.  I'm not kidding when I say...nadda.  I did try digging some of the very obvious iron false signals just for the heck of it and they were indeed iron.  I had the D2 with me and the 9 inch coil on it.  I fired it up and rehunted the same area and I will tell you hands down...the D2 is smoother and quieter on this site.  It's actually a joy to use there. I did dig two non ferrous targets with it and both were small BB fishing sinkers.  

 

On 1/26/2023 at 5:45 PM, Daniel Tn said:

For what it's worth, I think the Manticore is probably Minelabs most rounded and complete detector to date for a coin/relic/jewelry hunter.  We've only scratched the surface of settings and capabilities.  Just running it in stock programs, they've done a A+ job in my opinion.  If it holds up in the water without leaking...then they've knocked this one out of the park.  My one wish with it...is I wish it had the red backlight like the Nox 900. And that's it.  With the incoming coils for it, I couldn't think of anything else I would add to it.  

So can you elaborate on this a bit Daniel? I realize ten days passed between the first post and the second. The first seems a bit iffy on Manticore. The second seems surer about it. Seems like I’m missing a little bit of the story somewhere, so was wondering if you had anything extra to add on D2 and Manticore. Thanks, and good on you again with the ring find!

[Daniel Tn]

I can try to fill in.  The "new" beach at the drained lake site is just a difficult spot to take any detector, and isn't the best of places to take a brand new machine for one of its first trips out. Every detector (except the D2 with some tweaking) I've ever ran on it, has been bad about mineral blowback and iron falsing. The ground there is shallow bed rock with a high iron content, and sand/mud on top of it. The D2 stands top of the heap for that particular spot.  At the same lake, the "old" beach doesn't have any of that bed rock and is natural dirt, mixed with sand.  There...the Manticore is insanely quiet and deep. I need to measure my pinpointer to verify, but on it, I was digging correctly IDing coins down past the pinpointer.  I would guess 10-11 inches deep assuming the pinpointer is 9 inches long, and hitting them very well. No doubt about it coin signal and ID. That's running stock program All Terrain General.  No tweaks to settings.  The D2 on this spot also runs smoothly but...requires some setting tweaks to make the depth comparable.  I only got to run the Nox 900 once at the old beach...I've already sold it now, so there won't be any more hunts there with a Nox.  The 900 has to also be setting tweaked to get a coin signal there on the deeper targets.  Namely, recovery speed has to be lowered significantly and little to no iron bias turned on, and even then, you're just getting *a signal* with occasional "ball park" correct ID.  

Moving from the drained lake site to Civil War camps.  I've hunted two camps with it thus far. Both are in town and one is right beside a subdivision with all underground utilities.  I've been running the Manticore at Sens 25 and it is really smooth and non chattery.  I could probably bump it up a few digits but 25 seems to be really smooth.  All I'm doing at this point is noise canceling, ground balancing, and swinging the coil.  I've not altered program settings, etc yet.  I have played with the different programs on various targets to see how they react. For what they give you out of the box, it's probably their most rounded machine to date. 

My buddy with his Nox 800 joined me Thursday at one of the camps.  We by no means set the world on fire with finds.  I found two flat buttons and some camp lead and a small pistol ball.  My buddy didn't find anything with his 800 and has owned it since they first came out with them. The place I was scanning where I found the buttons, he couldn't even get near it even with my machine off.  He was getting a ton of EMI and had his machine backed down to around 10 sensitivity.  I bumped mine down from 25 to 22 and after doing the long press noise cancel, it was quiet. One of the buttons was approx 12 inches deep straight down in the hole and he swept over it before we dug it and listened to my machine.  He said he couldn't tell if there was a signal there on his 800 or just the machine going crazy. He actually was the one to dig it and just shook his head. He put his 800 in the truck and I let him run the Manticore. He found another flat button in that area with the Manticore and in his words as we were talking at the truck "Well I'm selling that thing tonight and gonna keep looking on Cabelas for a M Core" lol and he did.  Listed it for $400 on Facebook and sold it the same evening.  Keep in mind that's just my opinion.  I'm not trying to sell units and don't have anything to peddle.  The more I use it the more I like it.  It still has a lot to uncover and understand with settings, what all exactly they do, how big of an effect they have, etc.  All that is still unknown to me. I'm very much in the learning phase.  If Nokta wouldn't have already used the Simplex for a name...that would be the perfect name for the Manticore.  Simple menu. Simple design. Simple to turn on and go find stuff.  

[Redneck]

That last paragraph says it all!  Tom might appreciate that on his forum. 

[Rick N. MI]

Great info Daniel. I don't have the Manticore but I'm liking it more & more from what I'm seeing and hearing. Both the Manticore & Deus 2 would perform great on my mild ground and sandy lakes. I'm leaning toward the Manticore being it's hotter on gold jewelry.

Did you have any problem with the Manticore with false hits on iron on your relic hunt?

My Detectors:

Nokta Legend, Xp Orx, Tesoro Tejon, Tesoro Vaquaro, Nokta Gold Kruzer

[Steve Herschbach]

17 hours ago, Daniel Tn said:

I can try to fill in.  The "new" beach at the drained lake site is just a difficult spot to take any detector, and isn't the best of places to take a brand new machine for one of its first trips out. Every detector (except the D2 with some tweaking) I've ever ran on it, has been bad about mineral blowback and iron falsing. The ground there is shallow bed rock with a high iron content, and sand/mud on top of it. The D2 stands top of the heap for that particular spot.

For where I hunt it’s the first paragraph that says it all. I’m not surprised though. My own use of the Manticore made me believe it would shine best in low mineral ground (turf) and white sand beaches. Not so much in high mineral ground. The Florida beach hunters will be gaga, west coast beach hunters scratching their heads. Nice to see more confirmation.  Thanks Dan.

[schoolofhardNox]

I'm somewhere in the middle. Not white sand and not extreme magnetite sand. I have found that the Manticore performs best on the wet saturated sand and does not do as well in the dry areas (with black sand showing/mixed in) In the wet areas, on my beaches, it ups the numbers closer to 99 (even on copper pennies), where as on dirt the numbers are lower and better separated. It does go deep, but I think it's best characteristic so far is the clarity and sharpness of coin signal, even at depth. I haven't posted yet, but above a beach, (grass dirt area), I hit coin after coin. I usually walk the same path back to the car when I hunt there and I was shocked at the number of coin hits the 800 missed. It's the clarity of the signal that impresses me the most. I agree that there is a lot of potential to unlock on this machine.

[Steve Herschbach]

The really simplistic answer is Manticore targeted the $1599 E-Trac as a replacement and as such is aimed at FBS type detecting i.e. surf and turf. It should excel in particular as a U.S. deep turf / park detector.

A big selling point on the Manticore is boosted transmit power (TX). I see the new Quest V80 and V60 are going a step farther with adjustable TX output, something I have not had on a detector since my V3i.