So An Mcore, Deus 2, And T2 Go For A Walk At The Bullet Site

[JCR]

This is a great how to example that shows the value of real site testing to learn for yourself how to best set up & run on your own ground.  All the written info & secondhand experience available to us nowadays is a valuable jump start, but until you get out there & test for yourself, it doesn’t become real & applicable.  I have done the same type of setup using the Tarsacci as the lead. It is surprising to see what you just thought you knew & other things you hadn’t even thought of.  Thanks for the post.

[Steve Herschbach]

A concern I have with the Manticore believe it or not is the 50% more power thing. Boosting transmit power in bad ground can overload the detector and shut it down. In worst case scenarios the shut down is silent. I've been saying since day one to anyone that would listen that the Manticore is geared more to turf and beach detecting than anything else. It was fine tuned for Florida beach conditions, not high mineral ground. It was fine tuned more for silver coins than for small gold. None of this is surprising to me at least, nor should it be to anyone that listened.

Anyway, it would not surprise me also that what in theory should be the deepest settings on Manticore will backfire in the worst ground.

[Jeff McClendon]

Thanks for the fantastic write-up Daniel.

Thanks to the others that regularly hunt in moderate to high iron mineralization for adding your comments.

It looks like the Manticore can't be setup like an Equinox or Deus 2 with every target accepted with a few other tweaks and excel at high iron mineralization sites like yours compared to detectors with all metal or hybrid all metal modes. That is important information to know for people like me and the places I hunt most often.

That long post I wrote earlier with Equinox related strategies can be disregarded completely.

I agree with Chase, I would have tried Deus 2 wide open discrimination Sensitive (recommended by XP for higher iron mineralization by the way in the manual) using Pitch tones and using PWM audio. 

I am a big fan of Deus 2's Relic mode but not with the default settings. Reactivity 1, Audio Response 6 will absolutely not work where I detect for similar reasons to what you noted Daniel. For maximum depth and slightly better target separation, I have to raise reactivity to at least 2, lower Audio Response to 5 or below and switch Relic Mode's VCO audio to PWM.

Not saying you should have done any of this stuff Daniel. It's just what I have found out for my sites and might help somebody else get an extra 1/2".

[schoolofhardNox]

Thanks Daniel for all the hard work. I too have found that discrimination on is going to be my starting point at beaches and parks. Mineralized soil with the Manticore is probably never going to happen. I'll try what was suggested from Steve and others, but I'm guessing I'll always switch rather quickly to the GPX and not waste time trying to make something out of nothing. If all goes well tomorrow, I will be running disc on the Manticore and a moderately quick pace, chasing that low tide down. I guess we are always hoping that we can just bring one machine to do it all, but that's not how things seem to end up unfortunately. If they could just update that T2 to be a little deeper, the pulse machine may just stay home 😄

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The worst ones to teach are often the ones who have been at it the longest since they have the most to unlearn. It's hard to break old habits. With newbies at least I don't have to fight ingrained misperceptions.

This property permeates all knowledge/learning.  I think it's especially difficult when what was learned early on was the best that could be done for the information available (as opposed to shortsighted/incomplete learning where important info available was ignored or simply missed).  "I did everything right (given the best information available at the time) and I'm still wrong?!"

It's not just highy mineralized vs. non-mineralized detecting, either.  It's the old detector I know inside and out vs. the new detector where if I'm honest, I'm completely ignorant about.  Extreme and exaggerated, probably.  But IMO, carrying too much confidence due to past knowledge is a (figuratively) dangerous approach.  (The real key/difficult part comes from Kenny Rogers 😁 "...knowing what to throw away; knowing what to keep.")

 

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, abenson said:

So far only been using High Conductor but I'm thinking Fast might be a better opinion to try next time as there may be some unrecognized blow back happening on High Conductor in high mineral dirt. Been running... recovery at 3,...

(Hope I'm not being a pest.  Please keep in mind some of us are 'homebound', either waiting for good weather or waiting for the new toy to arrive.  All we have to do is read, think, and pester.  😉)

I'm focusing in on a couple things, one which Steve said just a couple posts above yours (not quoted here) and what you say about planning on changing recovery speed.  I first summarize the mode defaults for recovery speed (from page 78 of the Manticore Instruction Manual):

2 -- Beach Deep;

3 -- Beach Low Conductors;

4 -- Beach General and Beach Surf & Seawater;

5 -- All Terrain General, All Terrain High Conductors, All Terrain Trash Reject;

6 -- All Terrain Low Conductors, Goldfield General;

7 -- All Terrain Fast.

It seems you've been using a rather slow recovery speed (full range being 0-8).  If these recovery speeds are anything like the Eqx 800 recovery speeds (maybe a questionable comparison, I realize) then I'm surprised in your 4-bar F75 mineralized ground you can even make sense of the signals from RS = 3.  I say that because in my 2-3 bar ground, switching from RS = 5 to RS = 4 made a moderate, noticeable but positive difference.  But taking the next step to RS = 3 broadened the signal to such an extreme level that I couldn't handle it and had to quickly return to 4.

I anticipate your response now may be something like "well that's why I say I'm going to change it!"  Fair enough.  Just kind of wondering why you went from AT High Conductors' RS default of 5 down to 3 and if you noticed any extreme changes (as I did when I went from RS =4 down to 3 on the Eqx).

 

[phrunt]

I'd have to agree us mild soil people speak a totally different language, throw the biggest coil on you can, that's how we achieve depth, except the 15" coil on the T2, that things a shocker 🙂 11 to 13" round seems the sweet spot for depth on the T2, I've never tried a really large Nel coil though as I couldn't justify the expense for a detector I wouldn't be using..

I get 1 bar on my T2 in my areas and a ground phase of 64, from memory the gold areas were even the same, it's been a long time though I might be slightly wrong.

I did find a photo of my Gold Bug Pro in a gold area around here, and it had 0 bars on fe304 and a ground phase of 48.

and according to the GBP manual

A thread like this is good insight into how the other half live.  I'm not at all surprised about the T2 and depth, it's always been a deep machine, people in high mineral content probably laugh when I keep saying the Ace 300 is a deep machine, but it truly is a very deep machine in mild soils, keeps up with or often exceeds others once it's outfitted with a big coil.

[GB_Amateur]

5 minutes ago, phrunt said:

...Throw the biggest coil on you can, that's how we achieve depth, except the 15" coil on the T2, that things a shocker 🙂

Uh, well, that might not be the coil size that's the problem.  I don't think I've ever read one nice thing said about that T2 coil (ditto its cousin for the Fisher F75), unless you allow "makes a nice door stop or boat anchor."  Hey, at least they didn't say "a total waste of plastic!" 

14 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I did find a photo of my Gold Bug Pro in a gold area around here, and it had 0 bars on fe304...

Here's what it says in the Gold Bug Pro user guide regarding its mineralization meter:

Compared to a similar but different meter on the F75 (which I posted earlier today), I find their documentation rather sloppy.  The F75 documentation gives magnetic susceptibility ranges for each of its 0-6 bar settings.  Here (GB_Pro) they lump 2-6 bars together.

 

[abenson]

13 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

(Hope I'm not being a pest.  Please keep in mind some of us are 'homebound', either waiting for good weather or waiting for the new toy to arrive.  All we have to do is read, think, and pester.  😉)

I'm focusing in on a couple things, one which Steve said just a couple posts above yours (not quoted here) and what you say about planning on changing recovery speed.  I first summarize the mode defaults for recovery speed (from page 78 of the Manticore Instruction Manual):

2 -- Beach Deep;

3 -- Beach Low Conductors;

4 -- Beach General and Beach Surf & Seawater;

5 -- All Terrain General, All Terrain High Conductors, All Terrain Trash Reject;

6 -- All Terrain Low Conductors, Goldfield General;

7 -- All Terrain Fast.

It seems you've been using a rather slow recovery speed (full range being 0-8).  If these recovery speeds are anything like the Eqx 800 recovery speeds (maybe a questionable comparison, I realize) then I'm surprised in your 4-bar F75 mineralized ground you can even make sense of the signals from RS = 3.  I say that because in my 2-3 bar ground, switching from RS = 5 to RS = 4 made a moderate, noticeable but positive difference.  But taking the next step to RS = 3 broadened the signal to such an extreme level that I couldn't handle it and had to quickly return to 4.

I anticipate your response now may be something like "well that's why I say I'm going to change it!"  Fair enough.  Just kind of wondering why you went from AT High Conductors' RS default of 5 down to 3 and if you noticed any extreme changes (as I did when I went from RS =4 down to 3 on the Eqx).

 

I think everyone's comfort level vs recovery speed is different. Swing speed and trash density  has a lot to do with what recovery speed you use. In the past I would run reactivity on the Deus 1 at 4 in high trash and 3 in open terrain.  But I eventually noticed something. At ghost towns with high trash I would actually see targets sitting on top of the ground that I wouldn't hear. Wow! how much stuff am I passing over I can't see? The audio on the Deus becomes so clipped that you can no longer pick up good target in the trash. And in open fields with moderate to no trash depth was cut at reactivity of 3. So what I did is slow down and drop those recovery speeds. This also translates over to the Equinox/Manticore. I have played with recovery speed over live targets quite a bit over the last few years and found that 3 is doable and gets me the best depth/separation on most targets. If it's real bad I will go up to 4, rarely above that. 2 and below on the Equinox/Manticore is a no go. What works for me might not work for others but I have trained my ears to use 3 in most areas and have done quite well with that setting.

[Rick N. MI]

If there is large iron underground and a coin off to side on top. You will not hear the coin. It's strange. The  large iron overpowers the coin signal. 

I was just testing that with the Legend. Using a very large nail (1/4" in dia) standing straight up with coin about 2" above and 2" to the left. There is no sound. Move the coin over the nail and it hits the coin.

We have a huge amount of nonferrous targets masked with iron. According to Nasa Tom about 5% of nonferrous is found in iron. The rest all masked.