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The young lady below lost her favorite sterling silver ring on a sports field playing lacrosse a couple days ago. Once she demonstrated approximately where she was on the field and where/how she was throwing the ball when the ring popped off, it look less than a minute to find it. Right on the surface under the unmowed grass, and multi-repeat 42/43 on the Legend. It took longer to power on and set up the machine than it did to find the ring!

Not sure what makes the D2 not relaxing or difficult. Once you set it up it's a turn on and go machine. Actually one of the easiest machines to run. 5 tone pwm in single frequency is pretty easy to follow. I often use 2 tone or 5 tone when relic hunting and full tone square for coin/jewelry. D2 does have a good advantage of being able to range the smf as well as run it in a wide range of single frequencies which makes it incredibly versatile. I always wanted an F75 but weight is a downside, D2 has me spoiled 🙂

No doubt just what Minelab was thinking. So far with Storm it has been just like a Storm in the distance - lots of noise but nothing happening. I hate these long drawn out tease releases.

Yeah true 3d prints can be pisspoor or they can be 5 star, unfortunately I have not used a Goldseekr Swing Arm if you do get one Jin please gives us a review.

I have all 3 of the coils. Each has it's place. Withe M8 you have to slow you roll so you can cover everything. The 15" is like swinging a garbage can lid in terms of coverage and on my beaches it's deep like a PI. If you're dating the manticore you can get away with just having the 11". If you're getting married to the Manticore you will regret not having the 15".

Actually there was an anything goes sub-forum for years that finally got nuked as even Bill got fed up with it. That plus the “sooner or later” and “habitual offenders” is why I made the comment. Action here is immediate, and more than once is a ban. Sorry, not trying to be a jerk to new arrivals. I just don’t want anyone being caught unawares by my evil draconian oversight.

I think we are all addicted to having the next best detector. For me to love one and dis others is a bit unfair. I don't mean to influence anyone's decision, because another person might not see and feel the same way about a detector. But, I think constructive comparison is good informative talk for forums and free critique for the manufacturers. Everyone has their favorite brand, I'm no different. Right now we are mostly left with the big three... Garrett, Minelab, and XP. We should be all glad we have different manufacturers to choose from and not just one. We used to have a lot more! My only intention here is to help those who chose the Apex themselves and not make anyone buy one because I like it. I've owned a lot of different detectors over the years and tested even more. I would have loved to settle on just one and had it become my "right arm", but there was always something I didn't like and it shoved me to look further. I have known people early in the hobby that stayed with only one brand and model and learned it well. Well enough to often times outperform the latest gadget detector. It's only because they long-learned how to operate and interpret signals with incredible accuracy. Many years ago, I tutored an older women club member who asked for my help in how to better use her detector. She had an incredible place to hunt, but did poorly her different times out. After she was shown the right way to use it and got more comfortable with her detector (old White's non-motion), she came to the next meeting and plopped down a medium-sized jar of silver coins! I swear I could almost hear jaws hit the table! To be honest, the art of the hunt is a little more than just the detector!

Nugget Shooter forum members welcome for sure! Just a friendly reminder for those not used to how this forum works…. it is an absolutely zero politics zone. I don’t warn I just delete. I set this place up as a refuge from all that and if people want it there are plenty of other places to get it. This forum by design sticks to dry boring topics like gold prospecting and metal detecting.

I open this topic for new users of the Garrett Apex and the Pro-Pointer, a.k.a. "Carrott". There might be something experienced operators might want to ask as well. I had originally planned on writing a huge intense review about Apex features and detail the operation of it, but I think it might be less boring and more productive if users asked me specific questions they have. I have owned the Apex now for 4 years and really enjoy using it. I'm not a water hunter, nor gold prospector... I hunt mostly coins, flat buttons, jewelry, and relics in the oldest locations I can find. If that interests you, I will be happy to share what I know about the Apex and land metal detecting in general. Yesterday (4/16), on a permission I have been hunting (more like beating to death) for 13 years now, the law of diminishing returns is starting to become evident. So I spent the day hunting in random directions over my colonial era crop field... hunting more slowly, hoping to find anything at all actually. So I relaxed a little and removed some pressure from myself by not competing with myself! I have found everything imaginable here from coins, buttons, and relics lost by the people who plowed these fields long ago... Right on through to items people are still losing today. Towards the end of day, expecting to go home empty-handed yet again, I hunted near a good-sized Hickory tree in the middle of the field which likely presented an obstacle to one of farmers long ago. It was probably left standing anyway because it was at the crest of a hill and possibly for its never ending crop of nuts. My target signal (only 8 feet inside the shade from the tree) sounded surface loud. The pitch bounced from "foil to pull-tab", back and forth. Walking around the target, I was able to somewhat isolate the "60-ish from the 40-ish" conductive ID, making it more stable and repeatable in the higher direction. A quick glance of the depth scale in the custom search mode I use showed 3 bars or only 6". I ran my iron technique in Pinpoint and proved the target not to be large iron at least. There were plenty of little iron "grunts" around the location though. OK I thought, one more out of context pull-tab or gnarly foil wad and I'll hit the road for home! Folding a plug back, the "Carrott" started to "Bugs Bunny" in the bottom of the hole... A little more dirt and it's out! I checked the hole depth with the embossed scale on the side of the pinpointer... 6" nearly on the mark. But no pull-tab or foil... It was an 1863 cupro-nickel Indian! Normally the "Fatty's" are oxidized into date oblivion, but this ground was kind. This penny still had some light green patina in the recesses. It must have been dropped not too long after circulation. It was in the same era of a rare campaign button I once found in the other end of this field. Not far from my dig, I got another signal that read "51". I was hoping for possibly a "Shield" nickel, only to be disappointed with a 1981 Jefferson at about the same depth as the Indian! 🙂 Hopefully this little (true) story will invite some questions about how I use and adjust the Apex and get us started!

The Versa is very impressive, the Legend not so much, too fiddly and the Versa just worked better on deep targets.

You can’t really go wrong with either the f75 or the Legend. Most will say the Legend has more potential as multi-freq but for simplicity, ease of setup and user comfort and satisfaction, the f75 is awesome. I still want to get another one at some point.

I, too, was hoping for Garrett to release an update to refine the code of the Apex as well. The core program is good, but could use a little tweaking to make it even better. Tweaking it would be a great way to increase the value to the current users and lure prospective buyers to consider the Apex. Simply allowing limited adjustability of the recovery speed, audio enhancements as mentioned in this thread, toggling the backlight on when changing detecting modes etc., would be beneficial to the all users. That notwithstanding, I have spent many hours with the Apex in the last 3+ years too, and found many, many desirable targets with the Apex, some of my best. As Bob and others mentioned, working slowly around iron infested sites can yield some nice non ferrous targets. With the Apex, one has to spend a little more time working amongst the iron sounds to hear the non ferrous targets. The D2 can locate these targets a little faster due to the adjustable recovery speed. Recently I was at an old homesite where there was plenty of metallic trash in the ground. I went over the sight with the D2-9” and was able to recover 5 coins and some relics. Then, on another afternoon, I went over the same area with the Apex equipped with the Ripper coil and extracted two more coins, a key lock, and more relics. In my Ohio soil, I find the D2-9” hits an 8” buried dime sized target better than the Apex with the Raider coil. But, again, the D2 cost 3x as much as the Apex. Both machines offer great performance and easy-on-the-arm and shoulder swinging for extended periods of time.

Last monday I finally started the test phase with the Manticore and the M8 underwater. After a minimum of settings adaptation, I recovered three small and light pieces for a total amount of almost 6 grams in total. Tuesday underwater again and Wednesday wetsand workout, nothing to register...Until today on the wetsand...I was again with the M11 and after the usual coins and an unexpected sinker on the slope, minutes after a solid 17 screaming to dig it. It was a 4.45g 18k piece. What else can I say...Jeez...If there's something left, this is the most similar tool to a vacuum cleaner 😅

I’m using the ws6 master on my Steve’s detector shaft. It is a super light combination.

I've been interested in gold prospecting since the early 1990s (especially in the southwestern states). Retired now just turned 68, but my goal is to eventually get back to active prospecting.

The F75 would be far easier to setup than the Legend, the Legend has pretty complicated menu system. I even get annoyed at my Simplex for difficulty of adjusting things and remembering all the little icons meanings and its far less feature rich than the Legend, in saying that I rarely use it so I don't get a chance to let them sink into memory. A big reason for the F75 being simple to setup is it has very few options, the Legend is loaded with options, if that's good or bad depends on the end user. I like detectors simple but not missing too many features. The Legend comes across as a bit complicated to use to me, mainly due to it's cumbersome menu system and trying to pack too much onto a screen and menu system that just can't handle it. The F75 having so few options can be learnt and understood in no time at all but lacks a lot of features the Legend has. A detector like the Legend would have really benefited from a screen like the Manticore. In saying that, I'd still pick the Legend, more features and features I find appealing especially the multi frequencies, it's like having a bunch of detectors in one, whereas the F75 is very limited there with its single frequency. The Legend will also have more ways of avoiding EMI than the F75 which seems important to you, as it is for everyone. The Legend is a whole lot of detector for the money.

Here is dry glaucophane, it looks more greenish. When wet you get more bluish of a color. Appears to have a spindel concave perfectly rounded.

Just wondering if he watched the Nokta video on how to use Beast mode.

A few, yes. I'm just south of the line where the Wisconsinian and Illinoian glaciers halted, and some of the creeks draining that area can yield chunkier gold. I've found three chunky flakes (<0.02g) that ring up on the 800 and Legend in their respective gold modes.

It IS the new machine! The fact that this seems like a U.S. only thing would seem to indicate weak sales here combined with the U.S. managers desire to boost the end of quarter reporting. This kind of sale though does less to generate new sales than rob from future Manticore sales, so the job gets even harder next quarter. I think the Deus 2 is proving to be stiffer competition than Minelab ever thought would happen with Manticore. @Bill (S. CA) reports lots of D2 and very few Manticore on So. Cal beaches. The relic hunters seem to favor the D2. Maybe the scene is different on Florida beaches?

Nice recovery, her smile says it all

Too late! Besides, nobody believes me anyway - HA! I have never seen another Apex on the West Coast except mine. Fine by me. It is an exceptional performer on our saltwater beaches.

The QED gave me a phobia of 3D printed stuff 🙂 He gives it a good beating in that video and it handles it well.

On the average of the 5 returns of my AQ to FT under warranty the turnaround time was about 1 month. On one repair it was reaching 2 months and the reply from Felix was ... Things move slow around here. If they had a longer warranty, I would have kept the machine and hoped for the "bugs" to be ironed out. I once requested a new machine due to the high number of returns but was denied. I am sure that you, Joe were familiar with my dealings with FT as I kept you in the loop. Oh well...Lesson learned.

This must be Minelab’s way of dealing with the competition, about 30% off of their top multi-freq. detector is quite rare of a sale for sure. Manticore $1199 about 30% off plus another 15% military off for those who served for a total of 45% off. Equinox $999 and also the veterans if you qualify. Free shipping and Oregon is a no tax state. Ron’s Detector’s 208-739-8079 rrlmmc@gmail.com Please support your local small dealers as we are going to be going to the wayside pretty soon with most companies going direct sales. With that being said I will always remember when Gerry, Doc’s and Rob were always the ones to ask technical questions as they usually had the answers.

Minelab Manticore Only $1199, not an April Fools joke. Minelab Equinox 900 with 2 coils only $999. Yes I have a few M8 and M15 coils left. Call Gerry's Detector now at 208-345-8898. Why you evening looking at Mail Order & Amazon dealers who don't actually use these detectors for a variety of hunts and has Success? But some of you will and that's ok as it leaves much more treasure for those of us who know how to properly use these detectors. Call Gerry's Detectors 208-345-8898 now and get them ordered. I already know a few places have run out. As you can see from my Success, I use the Manticore for a variety of detecting styles and hunts. I can help you learn the detector sooner and hopefully shine with some wonderful Treasures of your own.

Metal detector sales must be slow. Fisher has the fire sale going on eBay and Minelab has dropped the price drastically for a few weeks on what should be their most popular models.

Here's another of Andrew's excellent videos (from April 2024) showing the Manticore+M8 finding desert gold:

As had been said many times, competition is good! Even the threat of a new detector from a competitor helps bring the prices down! I'm really rooting for Garrett to come through on this! We will see!👍👍

Hi Dennis, Age is catching up with us both! Hard call as the Gold Bug 2 is still an excellent machine and you are familiar with it. I myself am going to the Manticore with 5x8 coil for general detecting and that will also include nugget detecting. I am getting to where just one general purpose detector will suit me fine as long as it is also decent for nugget detecting, and Manticore does well in that area, while also serving me for other uses. I'd still bet on the Gold Bug 2 for the tiny bits. Only real reason to consider the Manticore is if you are interested in it's other capabilities i.e. coins, jewelry, relics, beach. If you do think you want a Manticore now is the time, as it is $500 off until May 6th. Good videos here in Nevada. Having seen it in person I was impressed and next time out in the desert I'll be swinging the Manticore.

Here's my theory... When copper and nickel alloyed coins are dropped closer to the time they were minted, the die strike work-hardens the metal surface which makes them more resistant to oxidation. Hunting ground with lower acidity always helps too, but coins that have been in circulation a long time have that "protective skin" worn away and are very vulnerable to oxidation. I have found Large Cents that look like the day they were minted (found in nasty ground) because they were not circulation worn. Large Cents from the same time period that were heavily circulated are nearly worthless to look at! Yes phrunt, if Garrett can advance the ergonomics, simplicity, and comfort factor of the Apex and make it more all-terrain, they are building on an already winning design in my eyes. I have already easily dug older coins at 10" with the Apex, not sure I need or want to dig any deeper! Many of my best coins over the years have been in the 6-8" depth range with old and new detectors.

Welcome from Indiana!

Welcome Red_desert ... Good to see you back on a forum. Those of us that were Nugget Shooter Forum members miss the old place but this place is a welcome new home base. Look forward to your posts my forum friend.

Greetings from Missouri, there's a great crowd here.

With a sensitivity increase, you will get more reaction with hot rocks but the detector has less ground signal to deal with (its simply not sensing as much square cm/inches per swing) so you'll hear less general mineralization...unless your ground is filled with hot rocks lol.

I found the distance between armcuff and the handle to be too short for me on the lite as I am tall . And this distance cannot be modified as it is a single molded part. I prefer shafts where the armcuff handle distance can be set to my preferences, like on my Quest Q30 mod shaft.

Ha! My larger fuel tank came in the mail today. This one allows me to run my Geo Highbanker for about 12 hours. This new battery is rated at 100 Ah. My current battery is 60 Ah. Both of them will give me about 19 hours run time with the Geo Sluice and 53 hours with the California Mini. And, the new battery only ways 24 LBS. If I add a solar panel, it will be even more run time.

Welcome from East Texas.

As I told last week, I was preparing the Manti for today's session on the seabed. In a few words, "damn it works"... Even if I abused the machine using underwater the beach LC program, I however managed to take with me three pieces. The second attempt will be with surf and seawater, which I think it is the proper way to use it when diving. Not bad for the day one💣

September 20 2002 The weather was in our favor once again today. Conor and I really like running the tom. There are no moving parts to worry about breaking on us. The downside is it will only process about one third of the gravel the trommel is capable of and it is not catching as much of the fine gold. However, it is doing its job and we may build a bigger one for next season. It would be something like a Pearson Box with a big grizzly and hopper capable of running much more pay gravel. The only issue is the fact that you aren't breaking up all the clay. If you are not in heavy clay it would work fine. I plan on getting some good opinions on all of this during the off season. We got a good start this morning and worked until nearly dark to get our 100 yards washed. Tomorrow will be another cleanup. I went up to the dig site this afternoon and Jacob has got himself quite a pit going. He’s down about 35 feet in depth and slowly widening the diggings towards the west. There’s lots of rounded river rock and the bedrock seems flat. He’s having to send upper gravels that are not as rich along with the bottom bedrock gravel. We are definitely on the gold with no end in sight. TO BE CONTINUED ................

Hello Old Miner Don & good to hear from a reader I hadn't seen here before. Early on it was determined that each crew member would receive his share of the gold after a gold weigh was completed. Then it became their personal responsibility to take care of it as best they could. I did not put this in the journal but we dealt with several gold buyers and some of the crew converted part of their poke into good old U.S Dollars. Some held on to most of their gold. As you have read previously, there was a turnover of the members of the crew and Jacob considered the ones who left weak links in our mining machine. I'm not convinced of that and every man must make his own decisions under difficult and sometimes dangerous times. I still have gold from that season & right now I wish I had kept it all but sometimes you need to cash some of it in to live on. Cheers & thanks for reading the journal.

Around 24 grams to the yard. Not bad.

September 19 2002 The Gold Vault It was a beautiful morning. The sky was clear and the temperatures were warm. We ran the tom until noon and shut down for lunch after having run 30 yards of gravel. That put us at 100 yards which is what we like to run now before doing the cleanup. I could see visible gold in the black sands and there was a load of it. More than we had ever seen. Jacob told us he had finally hit one area of sloping bedrock as he worked the pit north. Then he backed the excavator back away from the sloping wall and got another five feet deeper and hit bedrock again. He was around 30 - 33 feet in depth. He said the wall looked to be traveling across the back of the pit to the west and he would start following it tomorrow and see how far it went. He had a good feeling about the dig site and so did the rest of us. Conor and I finished up the gold weigh while Jacob and Clay dug and hauled pay. We finished the cleanup around 6:00 PM and set the pan on the table near the scales. There was a lot of gold in that pan but we waited until Jacob and Clay finished up for the night around 6:30. Clay’s eyes glazed over when he saw the pan. Jacob gave me a smile and a wink and said to weigh it up. There were 77.4 ounces. Conor suggested we name the pit and I came up with a name that everyone liked. The Gold Vault. TO BE CONTINUED .................

September 18 2002 We got back to mining this morning. Conor and I got the tom set up while Jacob and Clay started digging and hauling pay gravel. The weather is sunny and warm and things are beginning to dry out. The creek is still running fast but the water is back within its banks. I test paned the first load of gravel before we started processing and the gold is there in spades. We let Clay bring down three loads before we started running at 10:00 AM so as to give a cushion for the transport of material and we won’t run out or have to wait on him. One of the Forest Service people came by this morning as well and checked on us. I showed him the repaired road and he also took a walk down along the creek to check the waters and floodplain. He seemed pretty impressed that we had already repaired the haul road and were ready to mine so quickly. He said there was a mining operation along the creek about ten miles west of ours and they had lost their small trommel in the flood. We had a good day and were able to process 70 yards of gravel. We are going to run until around noon tomorrow and do a cleanup. Jacob has gotten deeper into the dig site with still no sign of bedrock. The gold seems to keep getting better. TO BE CONTINUED ..................

The way I see it SMF is 6 year old technology and most agree that its peaked. To throw just another SMF machine in the ring this late would not make sense. No it needs to something special and I hope it will be. I will buy one. Mark

NIce haul...goes to show that the CTX is a great all around machine.. strick

I am not in the same area of the world as Minton so I am not going to offer any Legend help other than to move away from the default settings since most of them are for basic hunting by people with very little experience who also do not have difficult conditions to detect in. Minton's conditions appear to be fairly extreme. XP ORX with one of the HF coils or even a Deus 2 Lite with 9" coil and WS6 Master would be my choice over the Minelab X-Terra Pro 10 times out of 10.

Me, I guess I just want that HF elliptical running at 81 kHz, it's as simple as that.

I just went the Deus 1 for the same reason, a nice lightweight prospecting detector that shrinks down to backpack, it all pops apart so easily with the control box popping off the shaft and the cordless coil coming off the shaft in seconds, it's perfect for a pinpointer or VLF to complement the big guns and throw into a backpack, even a quite small backpack is no problem. I'm surprised how sensitive that 9.5 x 5" HF coil is too, it's better than I expected it would be. I was even able to turn one detector into 2 by using an old spare Ace shaft and WS4 headphones for the controlling of the coil. I call it my Dace The biggest problem I see so far is it falls over more than a Gold Monster if that's even possible, whoever designed the shaft didn't consider that the arm cuff feet need to reach the ground, and they don't so it rests on the plastic below the handle with the feet up in the air. Weird. This photo is just for show, really it's so wobbly in use I just lay it on it's side. It's like it was designed for coils with a center coil mount and they moved the mount to the rear of the coil. It's going to be perfect being so light for detecting stuff like this, where your detector is up above your head most of the time, I've been detecting it with the GPZ and 8" coil and even that gets hard work, the GPX 6000 was no better, still feels heavy holding it up in the air for hours detecting walls like this, the XP will be near weightless doing it. One of my biggest nuggets came from very near this photo.