Jeff McClendon

Palzynski and I are both former Ace Apex owners. We both had some legitimate problems with our purchases that had to be addressed by Garrett. I really like the Ace Apex. It is one detector that I miss owning because of its excellent display and controls layout. That display and controls layout are one reason that I really like my Garrett Axiom. Another reason is that my Axiom works really well at all of the sites that I have used it. I just can't say that for the Apex. There are many detectors that simply don't fit the ground conditions that I most often hunt in and the Apex is one of them. The same goes for the Minelab Vanquish models and even the Equinox 700, 900, CTX 3030, Etrac and the earlier White's SMF detectors along with every single frequency VLF that I have ever owned. So all of this is just to say that sometimes its the operator, sometimes its the detector, sometimes its the quality of the location but all of the time, ground conditions rule over all three and the detector I'm using has to be able to first and foremost handle the ground conditions.

After owning and loving 5 Equinox 600/800s, I thought I just couldn't survive without one. Now I own the Legend and Manticore. I simply do not miss my Equinox 600/800s at all. I don't even think about buying another Equinox or have the slightest bit of seller's remorse. The Legend and Manticore easily out perform the Equinox 600/800 where I detect the most and I don't have to worry about leaking and build quality either.

I also have Deus 2 WS6. I can fully understand why you say you want something more easy to use and relaxing. I personally like the WS6 Master setup very much for specific types of hunting. I do not like that setup as much for hunts where I need to make settings or mode changes during the hunt or for using the pinpoint function or actually easily seeing the screen's ferrous/non ferrous meter which I use both for conductivity and depth of the target. If I am at a site where I need to switch from for example the Sensitive program to the Mono program for target interrogation........that is a lot of button pushes and unlike the Deus 2 full remote, I can't save those two programs next to each other if I choose to. As long as I can basically put the WS6 in my pocket, it's fantastic. I own a Legend and have also owned an F75 original, LTD and T2. The way the Legend feels on my arm reminds me of those detectors especially the newer Legends with the LG30 coil and full carbon fiber shafts. The Legend is not hard to setup for basic detecting. Most of the necessary controls like discrimination pattern, sensitivity, frequency choices, ground balancing and pinpoint function are done with the buttons on the control unit with no hidden menus. The only settings changes that need to be used often are the noise cancel function, recovery speed and iron filtering which have to be done from the settings menu which does have two levels to navigate. The only default setting that generally needs to be changed by anyone doing some serious detecting in iron infested areas is the default iron filter setting which needs to be lowered. It is easy to do with a little practice. The Ferro Check feature on the Legend is really outstanding and so is its recovery speed options, quality of the audio tones and tone pitch/tone break options. The Legend is definitely easier to use in rain or submerged than the F75 or Deus 2 WS6. The Legend being online updatable is really fantastic and Nokta have definitely made it better and better. The F75s and T2s that I have used here in the western USA have had trouble with urban and suburban EMI in recent years. They do have small frequency shifts and added shielding for EMI mitigation, but they were unusable at several places that I like to hunt. The Legend also has small frequency shift noise cancellation along with M1, M2, M3, and 4, 10, 15, 20 and 40 kHz to choose from. If I run into any issues with EMI, one of those frequency options usually keeps me detecting. I have taken the Legend to all of the sites that made me put the F75 and T2 back in my car since EMI was killing them. The Legend has handled those sites with no issues. There are two other options that you haven't mentioned. You could just buy the full Deus 2 remote and add it to your WS6. That is more than $400 US however. You could buy a Nokta Double Score. It does not come with wireless headphones, there is no Ferro Check and it only has M1, M2, M3 and 15 kHz along with having a few other less features than the Legend. Good luck with your decision.

That is a fantastic price for the Manticore. Anyone who has been on the fence about the Manticore needs to get off that fence and do it.

I was just testing MBe mode.

I am going to guess that performing both ground balances creates a ground balance "window". This dual ground balancing when it wasn't necessary was causing me to not be able to detect some targets that the Legend should have detected in Beast Mode. To prove that, I did a little testing earlier today with a US half dime at 7" depth. Previously Beast mode missed that target when doing both ground balances. Today just doing a "normal" ground grab after going into Beast Mode, the US half dime was easy to detect. Park M1 in the A discrimination pattern struggled to hit that same target and just had faint ferrous responses.

Thank You Dilek, the engineers and field testers and Nokta. That was an outstanding set of videos. They answered two big questions for me. 1. Do I need to do a ground balance in Beast Mode using the normal ground grab procedure? Yes, especially where I detect since without one my Legend just howls if I even move it a couple of inches left, right up or down. After doing a normal ground grab, my Legend in Beast Mode was very quiet. 2. When do I need to use the second ground balance for MBe? Since the soil I hunt in has high iron mineralization I assumed I needed to do the second ground balance and I found that to be very tedious. So, no I don't need to do the second ground balance unless I am experiencing actual detectable as targets hot rocks and/or changeable ground conditions that can be detected as targets. I was able to try MBe at a site with very little EMI but with high iron mineralization. I used my Manticore to find 6 wild borderline targets that could be a rusted nail or a US high conductor coin like a wheat penny, copper memorial penny, clad dime or silver dime. All of these targets sounded very iffy using the Manticore but I would have recovered them if possible. I flagged those targets. They all seemed to be at least 7" deep judging from the Manticore's depth readings and from the less intense lower tone when pinpointing those targets with the Manticore's pinpoint function. I was using the Manticore in All Terrain General with its preset upper and lower iron limits, All Metals accepted, recovery speed 5, 5 tones, Normal audio, sensitivity 24. I got out my Legend and had it setup for Park M1, A discrimination pattern sensitivity 24, recovery speed 5, iron filter 1, iron stability 4, bottle cap 0, 6 tones with tone breaks at 10, 20, 29, 43 and 50. I also had Beast Mode setup with the A discrimination pattern, sensitivity 24, recovery speed 5, iron reject 0. I went over each flagged target using Park M1 as setup. All 6 targets gave very faint to no response with the responses being mostly iron responses and target IDs of 1 to 4 or 59/60. These responses were much more iffy and tending towards iron than the Manticore's. The targets were also a bit difficult to pinpoint using the Legends pinpoint function, meaning that getting all of the pinpoint graph bars to fill up was hard to do which usually means the target is iron from experience. Using the Beast Mode as setup, all 6 targets were very easy to isolate with distinct high tones with iron reject on 0. Adjusting iron reject to 2 helped to determine which targets were probably iron and which were not. Target IDs were 1 to 4 on these targets with the occasional 55 to 60. Much like the demonstration video, targets that had a non ferrous response and target ID of 2 that were actually iron, had ferrous responses when I turned up the iron reject setting to 2. Those iron targets still had a target ID of 2. So, as Nokta has repeatedly said, do not depend on the target IDs when using Beast Mode. The Legend in Beast mode correctly identified all 6 targets as far as ferrous or non-ferrous. 4 targets were rusted nails in the 8 to 10" depth range and 2 targets were US wheat pennies again in the 8 to 10" range. Well done Nokta!!!!

I haven’t bothered to even test it since realistically I never user Disc IAR above setting 1. I guess I should find out but like you said, yours doesn’t show this “bug” and all of 2 people have commented on his YouTube video about it and on other forums, there is very little traffic about this “bug”.

I don't want to go off on a detour. I will just say that using Goldfield for hunting micro gold jewelry will work but if there is a lot of modern aluminum trash in the same area, it may be very frustrating since Goldfield only has 1 tone VCO audio.

Just use the Gold Prospecting mode in Multi M on the Legend for small gold nugget prospecting. It works really well. Lower the sensitivity to just below where the Legend with the smallest available coil runs a tad noisy, lower the iron filter setting to as low as possible (0 or 1), set the recovery speed between 3 and 6, run threshold anywhere you like or can stand as long as its above 0 and don't notch anything and ground balance when needed. No Boost or Beast mode that Nokta has put on its detectors was really for smaller targets less than 0.5 grams or so. In more mineralized ground, the Boost mode on the Gold Kruzer just boosted the ground noise.......

The iron filter saga is complicated. I'll just say we are lucky that it's adjustable. The default setting is for total Legend beginners or for total newbies to detecting hunting for 6" deep or less targets who don't want to dig any iron. Couple that high default 8 setting with all iron targets rejected and you get the picture. Even running the G discrimination pattern will put a damper on deeper, fringe of detection targets. That default 8 setting or anything much above 2 will simply make deeper, very challenged non ferrous coin sized targets detect like iron targets or just be completely masked in iron mineralization. I guess they were taking their cue from the Equinox 600/800 which has a default iron bias setting of 2/6 in its Beach modes and even has a default iron bias setting of 6 on the 800 in both Gold modes........totally ridiculous.

WS5 works with Deus 1. They don’t work with Deus 2 WSAll-XL works with Deus 2. They don’t work with Deus 1.

Gigmaster owned 5 Equinox 800s. All were used in saltwater and all 5 leaked. He tried Deus 2 for a while. Now he exclusively uses his Legends. No leaks and no other significant issues.

According to TNSS it already existed in previous software versions.

I literally don't even try to use ATHC since I can only run it at about 14 sensitivity before it goes nuts. I can run ATGeneral between 20 and 24 sensitivity with no major issues even on badly mineralized ground and still get great depth and fairly solid target IDs. Prospecting mode I can run between sensitivity 18 and 20. I have never used my Manticore at a saltwater beach or in saltwater so I have no clue how any of this applies to Skull diver.

I’m originally from Georgia and I have trouble understanding the video maker too. Same thing happens when some people make my name…Jeff….have 4 or more syllables. When I visit some of my relatives I don’t realize they are talking to me sometimes. Anyway, moral of the story using V2.0 software is, don’t run the Relic Program with disc IAR on 5, then switch to Sensitive FT and change silencer to 1 and then switch back to the same Relic program. The bug may also involve using Goldfield and other programs alternately with a similar configuration. I have never used disc IAR set on 5 in real life using the Relic or Goldfield programs. A setting of 1 is plenty for me. Hope that helps. I know this link is not about metal detecting but listening to some of my relatives and not knowing what the hell they just said reminds me of this:

I have found the Iron Filter setting to be very effective if I don't run it above 4 in some cases. If I am trying to avoid shallow to mid depth iron and steel trash while searching for coin sized objects at the same depth it works well. If I am trying to hit anything at fringe depths or with a smaller, poorly oriented or partially masked profile that has a good chance of its ID being skewed towards ferrous just because of depth, I am running 0 or 1 at the most. If I am deliberately doing a maximum depth test/comparison in sand or dirt with even low amounts of magnetite dirt/sand, iron filter is on 0. If I run IF any higher, I will just hear faint iron or nothing depending on ground balance. So, IF doesn't directly mess with depth. However, if a deeper target is being somewhat masked by magnetite it could be totally masked if Iron Filter is set too high.

Yep I assumed it would either be a boosted mid frequency weighted mode or a lower weighted “Cache” mode which is now more likely. Putting it in Goldfield makes no sense on the surface since they appear to be polar opposites but the explanation from Dilek also makes sense.

Same here. How awkward does setting up Beast mode have to be.... If I used it as it stands right now, I would have it in a User Profile already setup for emergencies so I wouldn't have to stop everything and spend 5 minutes making sure I had it setup right. I can't tell what its weighting is either. All I have seen so far is that it doesn't really hit sub gram targets at depth at all. Goldfield M had no trouble with clear two way hits on the same US Seated Half Dime and a 0.5 gram Burundian gold coil at about 8" depth. Basically next to nothing on those targets using Beast Mode properly setup. I was hitting US dimes and nickels easily at 7 to 8" depth with Beast Mode but not as hard as Goldfield M and Gold Field M had very accurate target IDs. Beast Mode was way off on the low conductive nickels I tested and was pretty close on higher conductive coins. Sensitivity was on 21.

At least for me, Beast Mode is a beast to setup for high mineralization. There are a truckload of hidden menu button pushes to take care of....... Deep Target is totally awesome. What a great, easy to use and very effective feature.

Knowing your preferences, I assume that you were using the A discrimination pattern right? Just for me (I tend to agree with you about the Legend not being as deep as the 900 and Manticore BTW) what depth was the ring and what size and karat value? I still think IF 5 is way too high for an iron mineralized beach with lots of black sand. I would be running IF at 1 or 0. Running IF 5 is just going to mask deep targets in the iron sand especially since the Legend tends to shift deeper non ferrous targets into the ferrous range anyway even on mild beaches. Same with Bottle Cap 1. As far as Manticore, it has taken me and Abenson almost 6 months to get a handle on that detector. I know you are a brilliant guy and I am not, but I doubt you can do it in 1 hour.

The stock lower rods on all Legends are carbon fiber. They make a tall man carbon fiber lower shaft. Yours must have been altered if it doesn’t have a CF lower shaft. Did you adjust the iron filter settings to a lower value than default 8? Same for bottle cap reject. Gigmaster’s beaches have very mild black sand levels. I think he uses IF 5 and Bottle Cap 1. That may be too much iron bias for your beach. Same with recovery speed 1. You may have to raise it a bit to work better on a highly iron mineralized beach

Thanks for posting about the release of V1.14 Beta. Some very interesting added features besides just Beast Mode. Could give a really good detector even more performance improvements!!! Look forward to loading it and testing it. I still can't believe how good the Legend is even head to head with detectors like the Manticore and Deus 2. I have two Legends for backups, water detecting and for friends and family to use. I think I paid less for both of them than what a new Equinox 800 costs today. Thanks Nokta!!!!

You didn’t hijack anything. I just posted the air test results of those three pinpointers like a public service. Do whatever you want with it. Since the F-Pulse and Tek Point are both pulse induction pinpointers, they get really unstable around large iron/steel things like refrigerators, EMI sources like power lines and cell phones and they sound off on highly mineralized dirt too. They drive me nuts sometimes but nothing I’ve used comes close to those two when I need the ultimate depth. I haven’t owned the Accupoint enough to experience it going nuts but I also wouldn’t try to run a detector at 20 kHz while trying to use the 20 kHz Accupoint and expect it to behave.

I got my brand new F19 that I bought off of FTP's EBay USA listings. It was definitely brand new, works great and actually had an 03 24 08 serial number so instead of being "old stock" this one appears to have been produced last month. I really wasn't expecting that.