Cal_Cobra

We only have four primary sites of interest on our radar, hopefully one of them is the #10 👍

haha nah not scared in the least, just find it to be a waste of time. He did the same thing after poo pooing the Equinox, but then wanted to flag and check signals with his Exp2 vs my EXQ800. No need to waste valuable hunt time flagging and checking signals when you can compare notes at the end of the hunt. Invokes the old saying "you can lead a horse to water..." you know the rest 😉

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My hunt buddy is an interesting fellow. I've tried out a lot of detectors over the years, and he's seen which ones performed well and which ones did not. He's been a hard core Explorer (XS and then 2) fan since I've known him, and I can't fault him for that as he's does great with it, even in the iron infested relic sites we love hunting. He would routinely out hunt me when I was using my F75 LTD/LTD2, AT Pro, etc. a decade ago But he really raised his eyebrows when I was heavily using the Racer/Racer2/Impact/Multi Kruzer as I was finally consistently keeping up, and even besting his finds (meaning total number of period conductors per hunt). This continued and even improved when I started using the EQX800. Still for some odd reason I couldn't get him off his Exp2. The closest he came was when I orchestrated a group buy for the EQX800 (got them for $720 each when they were released!!!) he bought one, but he cashed in on the frenzy and dumped it on fleabay to make a quick buck when people were paying a premium over MSRP. He talked himself out of it because in his mind it just couldn't perform in deep turf park hunting like an Exp2. I know @stevegdispelled that, and had great success deep turf park hunting trashy parks. Tom tried it a few times (believe he borrowed a couple) and did his best to talk himself out of getting one, despite all of his friends having great success with the Equinox he just couldn't break away from his trusty Dino2K Exp2. Fast forward to now, and even though he knows the Manticore is about to be released, he jumped on the XP D2 bandwagon and has one on order. I asked him why on earth he didn't simply wait a couple of months to see how the Manticore shaked out, and he claimed one of his friends (that rarely even hunts anymore) go to the U.K. and that's the "cats meow" over there. Okay, whatever, we don't hunt in the U.K. and I simply cannot fathom how a life long Explorer fanboy couldn't wait....now he wants to do all kinds of head to head tests when he gets his D2 and I get my Manticore....I think not 😏

Nice job 👍 Like the rosette, and how can you go wrong with seated half dime!!!

Thanks El, it was a fun hunt. There's more there, hopefully we get back there one of these days.

Thanks, I like it too. There may be more gilt, but it seems that the areas the lemon juice couldn't revive eroded past the gilt. I have aluminum and naval jelly, I'll try a little aluminum jelly and see what happens. Love bring these old buttons back to life.

That's a great hunt, congratulations!

Absolutely correct.

I have detecting friends that are hard core Minelab users and they've been very successful on the FBS machines in full tones, especially when sifting through trash and locating deep turf silver other machines walked over. When I got the Equinox I was coming from three and four tone detectors, but forced myself to use full tones. It took a while, but it really helped to sniff out deep silver and relics at sites others have missed. Would those same targets be heard in the lower tone modes? Perhaps, but once your ears muscle memory reconciles what the full tones convey, I feel there's enough extra intel that make the struggle worth mastering.

There may or may not be a physical change, but they may have optimized code to realize this change.

Good hunt, can't go wrong with a silver thimble! Surprised no coins have ever come from there 🤔

Thanks! Hopefully the upcoming adventure produces more than rim-fires and square nails LOL We shall see.

Where is that? Seriously, great work from both of you, and that includes the research which allowed you to get your detectors over those historic finds in the first place. Fun to let your imagination take over with images of what life was like in those far off outposts of 'civilization'. And a few finds that you can't figure out until later (if ever) just adds to the positive experience, IMO. This post will probably look weird with the quoting I used, but I totally agree these oldest contact period sites in California are not only hard to find, and few and far between (most are now built over 😞 but it's almost an honor to touch the history these explorers left behind.

I was impressed with them. We took them off roading a bit and they did seem to do okay in muddy soft soil on inclines, but I'm sure mine would do better after I shed a few lbs 😏 I can see these being really useful for some of our detecting excursions, and fun to ride at home as well. I like the peddle assist as you can still peddle them and get a workout, but you're not going to stroke out trying to go up a hill 🤕

I like those early buttons too (this one is the Marines), and it's great to be able to date them. It fits the site perfectly, 1840's-1850's. We haven't found anything newer then the 1850's at the Buckle Village site. Tom was the one that took me down the ebike path. I started off thinking a little commuter ebike from Costco would do the trick (only had a 250W motor). It would be great if you're just riding paved roads to/from work with minimal inclines, but it became pretty clear that it wasn't likely going to live up to the job to haul my butt through off-road environments. So I started researching them. Tom was convinced that we needed fat tire ebikes, but I felt they were a bit extreme and extremely expensive so I started looking at regular mountain ebikes which typically had 500W motors,, but decided that Tom was right (shhhh 🤫 don't tell him I said that) and that the fat tire ebikes with 750W motors would effectively be electric dirt bikes for our needs, better suited for desert terrains, cow pastures, and areas that wouldn't have paved road access.

Thanks! We're in the midst of planning a potentially epic adventure that's coming up soon. I remain cautiously optimistic about the sites we have lined up, as in previous experiences we tend to find that for every ten sites we recon, seven have been strip mined or didn't actually exist (have encountered a few of these), two have only a few scant leftovers, and one will might be great. We shall see.

I think another point to keep in mind is that MInelab sold oodles (make up your own number) of Equinoxes, it may have been the single most sold detector ever made. They really didn't have to open up the coil market to aftermarket people because even with it's limited selection of coils, customers were lining up to buy the Equinox. Given the price point of the Manticore, sales will be nowhere near what they were on the EQX, so that alone may incentivize them to work with the aftermarket crowd as it could potentially be viewed by Minelab as an enticement to sell more Manticores to those with special coil needs.

Good Manticore backup machine 😏

Thanks for the useful help on leveraging the Lidar site/tools, I’m looking forward to checking it out.

You can't beat that 👍 Validation of your research paid off! Please tell me about the Lidar maps? I've seen that there's some sources for govt. produced Lidar maps, but you have to use some special mapping software to use them. After seeing Josh Gates and others show the results of using Lidar to map out the history we cannot see on the ground, it's intrigued me that this could be the "next" research tool to use out west to locate old forgotten stage stops relegated to footnotes in the history books, and other similarly "lost" sites. I'd love to learn how to leverage publicly available Lidar data to use for our research. We've developed "methods" to deal with overgrowth (small bushes, small sucker trees, etc) 🙂 I'm with you on snakes. TomCA has no snake caution, but having grown up in rattlesnake country, I certainly do.

TomCA and I decided to test out our new fat tire ebikes integrated into some detecting earlier this week. The bikes are awesome, I can see these really being useful in the future for some of our adventures where you simply cannot drive, and may have several miles of ground to traverse before getting to your detecting objectives. So we have a Fur Trading site and a Gold Rush era encampment that aren't too far apart from each other that we were able to get to. No doubt that TomCA made the find of the day, but I was (fairly) happy with my take as well. The Gold Rush era encampment we call the Buckle Village because we're found several Gold Rush era tongue and wreath style buckles that were prevalent to the Gold Rush 49'ers flooding into the west coast to make their fame and fortune. They simply don't seem to be found at sites from different eras (I'm sure there's exceptions as always). This encampment has produced several for us, as well as a beautifully decorated powder flask, buttons, TomCA got a nice reale, I got what's considered the first trade token minted in California from 1850, a stunning 1820 United States Militia one piece button, and plenty of other period relics. At this site, Tom bested me with his prize and I'll let him have the honors of sharing that when he shares his finds. My best find from this site was an 1840s and 1850s early United States Marines two piece button backmarked "SCOVILLS & CO / [dot] WATERBURY [dot]". A few buckles, and what appears to be a knife or dagger hilt. This site has really dried up since our first few visits, but there's still finds there if you work your a$$ off 🤠 The next site has been a fun one, early California fur trading post site that digs deep into early California history. At this site you just never know what you'll find. It was my day for green copper, I dug a butt load of it, possibly more then I've ever dug there before. The larger pieces sound so good, beautiful high tones with high 20's to low 30's TID's on the EQX800, so you dig each and everyone anticipating a reale or bust coin, only to be let down with a green copper whatsit. Still fun history BUT it's getting stingy with non green copper items. This trip I managed to get a small, thin copper coin of some sort. I'm sure it's not a button or whatnot, but it's so corroded it's unlikely to ever be ID'd. I also dug a period bronze wedding ring, which while not as showy as a gold or silver ring, is still fun to me as it was likely a very personal effect that someone wore from the old world to the new world in their great adventure only to leave it behind to be found centuries later. Also got the obligatory black powder round ball drops and a few fired ones (I actually like finding those) and some later period rim-fire shells. Dug a bunch of bronze nails/spikes. I don't mind digging these, their not like square nails that litter most of our relic sites out west, these are hand forged bronze nails/spikes with old world forged rose heads. Also a couple of interesting bits they made for some special purpose use. I'm sure Tom will proudly display his buffalo and war nickles 🤣 so I'll show my wheat cents and fluke clad too 😁

LOVE your Colonial buckle! I've NEVER seen one dug on the west coast. Given our earliest European contact period influence goes back to the Spanish in the 1700's, I suppose it's theoretically possible, although those buckles seem to be more of an English influenced item then Spanish (I could be wrong).

Thanks Ron! Have you been tearing up the beach? Not sure if that big storm that rolled through here Monday night worked to your advantage 🤔

I'm surprised at so many negative ML80 headphone critiques, but I get that everyone's different. On wired headphones I always though the Sunray Golds had the best audio, tried other headphones and they just didn't have comparable audio. I really gelled with the ML80 audio, but the build quality could be a bit better. I had to use some black electrical tape wrapped around the plastic bits where the metal extensions protrude as the black plastic bits have cracked. Aside from that they've worked great. I did try some ear buds that were suggested here a few years ago. I didn't like the audio, and ear buds just aren't my bag. Like longbow I've definitely heard some very deep/faint signals with the ML80 headphones that other machines walked right over, so aside form the plastic bits that cracked, I'm good with the ML80's, if the stock headphones on the Manticore sound as good, I'll be a happy camper.