Cal_Cobra

Nice digs!  Your CW reb button is one we'll never dig on the left coast, congrats!

4 hours ago, deathray said:

Nautilus did. And yeah, I think Blisstool too. 

Ray did you ever use the Nautilus? 

Just curious how useful this feature is?

On 10/13/2022 at 2:35 AM, steveg said:

I am wondering if the mixed audio will be like running both "conductive tones" and "ferrous tones," as you could on the Explorers and E-Trac, but AT THE SAME TIME (one in either ear).  Now THAT could be interesting...

Steve

Didn't the Blisstool do that also?

It's a somewhat rare feature as far a detectors go.

7 hours ago, UtahRich said:

To make things more interesting is the new polyphonic audio.  Separate audio scales for the X and Y axis. So now i will have the audio and visual X-Y axis indicators to sort out multiple targets. 

 

That's interesting, I think there are very few machines that offer similar mixed audio, but to have mixed mode audio along with the target trace graph that could get interesting.   I think I'll make a user profile setup like I have my EQX800 to get my feet wet, and then another profile with polyphonic audio so I could switch back and forth to understand the differences. 

I wonder if in a sea of nails how that 2D graph will work out, graph all the nails and if a coin or button's hiding in the mix?

Nice digs, like the silver ring!

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

On the flip side, as big boy hobbies go, metal detectors can be seen as a trivial purchase. Ever buy a good dirt bike? Side by side ATV? Boat, or watercraft, or snowmobile? A big trailer or RV? A top notch gun, or a fine set of golf clubs? Compared to any of this, a new metal detector is nothing really.

So a guy buys one, turns out to have issues with it, or does not like it. Buy and try. Lose a few hundred bucks. Big deal. So I get it, and can't fault anyone for wanting to be the first with a new toy, good or not. Minelab is responsible for their own behavior, it's not our fault.

Yep pretty much how I look at it.  Not only is it a relatively inexpensive hobby, it's also one of the few that pays you back.   Besides if you don't like a detector, they're generally easy enough to resell, sometimes at a premium if you time it right.  But you still got to test it out for less then what you'd rent a Bounty Hunter for from a detector rental outfit.

My cousin's into bass fishing, semi-pro level I guess and he spends butt loads of $$$$$ on his "hobby" not to mention $75-100K every what 5-6 years on a bass boat.  Yeah I'd say we have it pretty good compared to most 👍

5 hours ago, strick said:

A lot because I wont be using the Nox that much any more. 🤣 

Seriously with the enhanced target ID screen those that have ran the Etrac and the CTX previously realize the value of this...what those machines lacked...speed, ergonomics and light weight are now in the new machine...I'm on the list as well..

strick

You almost sound excited about the Manticore 🤔 

I have my order in, #1 on the dealers list 😁 

We should get together and test them out at the springs if that's possible?  Ground's fairly tame, don't believe I've ever encountered EMI out there, so that extra depth, no matter how minimal, could come in handy 👍

12 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

will Manticore be better than Equinox and other other detectors.... Yes, that's really a question for 1950 euros....

  ...since several of my colleagues will have Manticore from the first shipment, I will see how Manticore can perform in comparative tests and also in Detection..

my colleague Mike from Top Digin.. had the opportunity to test and briefly detect Manticore at a presentation event in the Czech Republic.. so he ordered it..

 

I'd love to detect in the Czech Republic.  I've spent a lot of time there, but regrettably never took a detector there with me. One time there, I drove to a glass museum inside a castle out in the countryside.  Beautiful area.  Once I arrived at the small village where the castle was located the castle immediately came into view as the prominent feature of the village.  The street to the castle, the main promenade if you will, lead to the front doors of the medieval castle on the other side of the bridged moat, had been completely ripped out for hundreds of feet and piled up on the sides.  I could see three different layers of cobblestone.  I so wished I'd brought my detector for that, a medieval sidewalk tear out, ugh.

6 hours ago, rled2005 said:

Looks like a lot of fiddling with the screen and settings when you could spend more time hunting. What more will you find over what you’ll find with your Equinox?

That's the $1599 question here.

24 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I jumped right into the fire by getting a Legend and Deus 2 fairly early. I got called all sorts of things for reporting what I experienced (not so much on this forum). You couldn’t pay me enough to be the brunt of that kind of crap again. 

I also got burned with iffy performance from one of those detectors compared to all of the other glowing reports and the same happened with a different Minelab detector that now basically has a recall. I can wait……

I hear you, been there, done that, but at the end of the day the only way to really know is to take the Pepsi challenge yourself. 

I skipped the entire D2 debacle, my personal testing will be Manticore versus the EQX800 and the Legend. 

In the past I've watched tons of test videos, and very few have represented the environs that we hunt.  If a detector's a turd, that tends to come out quickly (ACE Apex from Garrett comes to mind), but when it's a high performing detector with lots of bells and whistles, instead of the proofs in the pudding, it can be more of an exercise of the minutia.  It's up to us to decide if that minutia is worth the $ or not. 

14 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I agree with you on the rest of your prerequisites except for the count me in part. That will have to wait in my case until some really unbiased users who aren't fan people, hunt with it for 100+ hours and make some coherent reports. Those users also need to be very familiar and unbiased towards Deus 2 and the Equinox.

 

Geesh that sounds like a job, what's the going salary rate? 🙄

17 hours ago, CoinShooter1 said:

I really dont care what they call it !

Manticore is fine with me.

And as long as its truely waterproof, seperates just as well, and detects a few centimeters deeper than the Equinox, you can count me in! 

 

I don't care what they call it either, and while I personally wouldn't have called it the Manticore, I find all the name bashing silly. 

ML's not without fault, but been that way for years on various products, but even given their blemishes they still tend to produce cutting edge detectors that push the envelope in some way, shape or form.  Minelab's produced a lot of game changer detectors over the past few decades.  Now they finally have competition in the SMF field, aside from the CZ and V3 SMFs they've had little to no serious competition in that arena until recent new entries from Nokta and XP. 

I put my Manticore order pre-order in ☔  When it comes out I'll test it myself, at my sites in my dirt.

At a particular western frontier site I've enjoyed over the years that I started hunting with the F75 LTD which did okay in the beginning but it petered out.  Then I started taking the Makro Racer/Racer2/Multi Kruzer there and it really opened up, but after a few years started to die out again to the point that my hunt partner wouldn't even go with me anymore. 

The Equinox completely opened the site up for me landing a very rare $1 US gold coin, a seated dime & half dime cache (19 coins total), several semi-key date seated dimes that weren't part of the seated dime cache, Phoenix buttons, early military and civilian buttons, trade silver, and other period relics.   We'll see what the Manticore brings to the table at a "hunted out" site.  I look forward to it's increased depth as I've located several silver coins that were at the fringe depth of what the machines were capable of (and missed by Tom's Explorer2 🙂  So no doubt there are a few stragglers that my current detectors simply haven't located, and there's no shortage of iron of all sorts and other stuff (flat rusty tin for example).  Nice thing about this particular site is that the ground is pretty tame as far as mineralization goes and EMI free, so it could be the perfect candidate for the Manticores extra depth capabilities.  We shall see this winter 🌵🤠🐍

Nice early one!!  Odd it was only 4" deep.  I once hunted an old town square on the east coast, and three quarters of it was practically sterile, and the other square, err rectangle actually with a band stand in the center.  Anyhow one quarter was hot, several old coins and relics.  Like someone had hoovered clean the first three, and saved this one for last or moved or who knows.  I'm sure all those parks have dried up since I was there over ten years ago.

20 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Love it! I just pulled out over $5 in nasty old clad among the pull tabs at a campground with the trusty 600. 😀 I couldn't dig the deep stuff because no shovel, there are literally hundreds of coins there.

It was my first "real" detector, it will always be handy as a pillage machine.

I have a friend that lives by a popular beach campground, and hoovers up tons of coins, including an occasional silver coin or ring. 

@Tom_in_CA

My hunt partner Tom loves the Sun Ray probe on his Exp2, and claims it's one of the reasons he's stuck with it for so long.  I've seen him dig some ultra deep holes and the Sun Ray definitely aided in the recovery.  Detecting depth is superior to a Carrot Top, full tones/disc of the detector, but I'll hold out for a wireless version on the Manticore.  I had one on my F75 LTD, it has it's pros and cons, but I agree that I don't want added weight and wires as sometimes I hunt in the thickest areas of the woods where you can barely move, and everything growing there either wants to kill you or your detector, grabbing for anything it can get, like coil wires, and wired probe wires alike.  I also recall some user inflected wounds when forgetting to flip the switch on the break-out box back to coil from probe, and you walk around for a few minutes thinking to yourself that it go very quite  🙄

Once the Manticore joins my arsenal, the EQX800 will eventually be relegated to my backup machine, with the Legend being the cleaner machine.  Once I get the Manticore I'll likely do a few 50/50 hunts to compare notes with the EQX800, and the Legend.  Our relic sites start to open up in a few months, we're fortunate to have so many top notch SMF machines to ply to the trade 🙂

Make sure to do a factory reset after you did the update, that's the #1 reason for what you're reporting after updating to 1.09.

Nice recovery and return 👍

With the exception of educational tips and tricks type videos to better learn the settings and the new graph and whatnot, I've decided not to watch any further Manticore versus the D2 (or anything else for that matter) "test" videos as the proof will be in the pudding, and out here Minelab SMF machines have an excellent proven track record going back to the Explorers, and the D1 ended up being popular with some relic hunters as well.

I have my Manticore order in, and when it comes out I'll test it myself, at my sites in my dirt.  Like dogodog said most of us have multiple machines, and for good reason.  I've always been of the opinion that all machines do things different, even coils, and as such they will all find things other machines may not.

My hunt partner see things differently, he's of the opinion that a single machine can do it all.  He's been using his Explorer2 since it was new and is so dialed into it that he just sticks with it at 99% of the sites we hunt, although he finally broke down and bought a Deus1 (sadly not too long before the D2 came out, doh!).  He does fine with his Exp2, but I like to try different machines, especially when you start to see diminishing returns from an existing detector. 

At a particular western frontier site I've enjoyed over the years that I started hunting with the F75 LTD which did okay in the beginning but it petered out.  Then I started taking the Makro Racer/Racer2/Multi Kruzer there and it really opened up, but after a few years started to die out again to the point that my hunt partner wouldn't even go with me anymore. 

The Equinox completely opened the site up for me landing a very rare $1 US gold coin, a seated dime & half dime cache (19 coins total), several semi-key date seated dimes that weren't part of the seated dime cache, Phoenix buttons, early military and civilian buttons, trade silver, and other period relics.   We'll see what the Manticore brings to the table at a "hunted out" site.  I look forward to it's increased depth as I've located several silver coins that were at the fringe depth of what the machines were capable of (and missed by Tom's Explorer2 🙂  So no doubt there are a few stragglers that my current detectors simply cannot locate, and there's no shortage of iron of all sorts and other stuff.  Nice thing about this particular site is that the ground is pretty tame as far as mineralization goes, no EMI, so it could be the perfect recipe for the Manticores extra depth capabilities. 

Nice recovery! 

I would've taken the $100 and not thought twice about it.  Factor in your experience, cost of your detecting gear, and scuba gear (how many detectorists also have the ability to scuba?) and I bet the ring looser wouldn't have had a second thought about the $100 finders fee.  Hopefully he leaves a nice feedback for you on your Facebook page.

On 9/26/2022 at 2:59 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

I remember events going down differently than Tom does as regards that subject. He generally seems to forget he is just one small cog in a very large machine, and about the last person Minelab is going to consult with as regards gold nugget prospecting modes. Sure, he noted that Multi was stronger on gold than single frequency, but he sure was not the only one saying that, as he seems to assume.

I also disagree with Tom's comments on the Equinox default modes, which are based on his use in low mineral ground, whereas the defaults are set for Australian and western U.S. conditions. It’s a fairly nice swipe at Nox users that nobody has been able to figure it out yet without his help…. but oh gosh because of that he is now going to help us poor rubes with Manticore.

Unfortunately, Toms settings and depth commentary have always been at complete odds with my experiences in the west, with my depths running 2/3 to half what he gets. There are similar disconnects in his various observations about detectors over the years that don’t jive with my results, so frankly, I don’t think his commentary is extremely useful, unless you are a Florida beach hunter. Just my opinion though. Some people almost worship the guy as some kind of everywhere, all the time, detector guru, so maybe I’m missing something about it all. Just a kid with a high school degree myself, nowhere near being a NASA engineer.  I defer to beach hunters when it come to beach hunting, relic hunters when it comes to relic hunting, and Aussies when it comes to what detectors do in their ground. Context and ground conditions are everything when it comes to detecting. Now doubt though that Tom is a guru in his ground, on his targets.

Now, DanielTN has posted a lot on Tom’s, and that guy knows what detectors do in bad ground. It’s worth tracking down and reading his older stuff, as he was absent for quite some time, busy with other interests.

Difficult at best for most of us to comment on most of what you've stated as we simply weren't involved in the behind the scenes stuff.

I learned long ago that his inert Florida soil is akin to doing an air test for the most part, and as you stated has no translation into real world usage for those of us in areas with unlike soil conditions.  This was a realization I came to after using the F75 for many years, which is a great detector in the right conditions, but throw in ground mineralization and/or rust flakes which are common in most relic environs out west, and you have one handicapped detector.

Personally I don't think he's trying to mislead anyone.  His heart's in the right place, his detecting experience and passion are almost second to none.  Steve, you and Tom D. hunt very different types of sites for the most part.  When you were sharing your test experiences with the Equinox, I followed you closely because many of the western sites I detect have very similar ground conditions to what you were dealing with, so for me it's a much more apples to apples comparison.  That said, I don't discount what he shares, but after two decades of reading his information, one certainly learns where to draw the line.

His constant passion for moving the ball forward is seemingly focused mainly on EMI mitigation, better iron unmasking and of course increased depth.  I can't fault him for trying to move the ball forward in the detecting world.

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Do the ML Equinox gold modes work on the (dry) ocean beaches?  That may have been his motivation -- to be sensitive to the small chain links.

It probably does have something to do with this.

I still hold out hope that Minelab and Nokta will build a wireless inline probe, but this is the next best thing. 

28 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I don't know much about Tom D, is he a prospector?

I wonder why they'd consider going back to a single frequency gold mode, most use multi for their gold hunting only dropping back to single when they have to usually due to EMI.  I find multi better for sure but I do use 40 or even 20 in high EMI areas especially under power lines.    If I could change anything in gold mode it'd be fixing up it's ability to handle hot rocks to be on par with the 24k which really balances them out well. it can cruise over hot rocks the Nox constantly reacts on and also I would try make it a bit less knock sensitive in high gain again, the 24k has no knock sensitivity at all where as the Nox is quite bump sensitive when cranked right up, not quite as bad as the GM though.  I doubt they can improve sensitivity, it's already fantastic but I'd never be upset if they did 🙂

I'm sure they're saving the best of multi-IQ for the Gold Monster 2000 though possibly incorporating higher frequencies.  I don't think they expected the Nox to be as good as it is for prospecting and it quickly made the GM redundant for most people, not their usual tactic of keeping detectors far enough apart we want both 🙂  I just don't use my GM anymore, just as a pin pointer sometimes as I converted it to a tinyGM ®️ but other than that it spends its life in the cupboard as I can't think of any reason I'd use it over my Nox when looking for gold.

My understanding is that originally they were going to release the Equinox with single freq gold modes, and Tom D. was able to get the SMF gold modes working to satisfaction.   While I don't think that Tom D. is as plugged into prospecting as say Steve H., he seems to be pretty well grounded in all aspects of metal detecting, and design.