Jeff McClendon

Supposedly $239 for the M8 in the USA. I am not interested in the M15 so I haven't checked the price yet, sorry.

My BAD. I forgot that I had an earlier version of the Avantrees. It looks almost just like the Audition Pros. It pairs just fine. The Audition Pro set will not. My apologies.

Some things to think about with the Vanquish models and the 540: No, they do not have automatic ground balancing or user ground balancing. They have a preset ground balance range that can internally shift in the background just a bit since they are always running in multi frequency. They do not do very well on high iron mineralized ground. They do okay on salt and moderate iron mineralization. The Vanquish models do not have particularly good target separation so if your hunt site has a lot of iron or modern trash these detectors are not very appropriate. Only the 540 has a high/low iron bias switch and even that is not going to help much in thick iron trash. The 440 and 340 have the equivalent of the 540's high iron bias only. All three models can only run in Multi frequency. There is no single frequency option for a high EMI area. These detectors are battery hogs. You will need lots of spare throw away AAs or good quality rechargeables. These models have outstanding depth and outstandingly accurate non-ferrous target IDs on stand alone targets. They are not very sensitive to sub 0.5 gram targets. The 540 has 5 tone operation. 5 tones might be a bit much for beginners. The 440 has 3 tone operation and is much easier for most newbies and infrequent users. The X-Terra Pro unfortunately only operates in 4 different selectable single frequencies. Its 15 kHz frequency is very close to the Lobo's operating frequency. X-Terra Pro has excellent audio, number of tones, recovery speed, and ground balance options. X-Terra Pro has internal rechargeable battery operation so no need for extra batteries. X-Terra Pro is very good at target separation but not as good as the Vanquish models for target ID accuracy on deeper targets.

I currently own two Avantree Audition Pros. They pair up easily, so not sure what the problem is in your case.

What search mode and settings were you using? Equinox 800 and 900 Gold modes using multi with high sensitivity settings will respond to the human body and organic stuff like manure. The Gold modes will also detect just about any visible metallic detectable object including very small bits of magnetite sand and magnetite grains that are still in host rocks for instance. Frequent manual ground balancing may be needed instead of using tracking ground balance.

I have been able to pair Avantree and Aukey compatible BT wireless headphones and earbuds with my Legend with no issues using software versions 1.09 and 1.11. I do have to make sure that they are not first pairing to my phone when I am trying to pair them to my Legend and that I have cleared out the previous pairing memory in the Legend by holding down the pinpoint button until seeing FP while the Bluetooth settings icon is highlighted, setting the BT setting to 0 after the reset and then back to 1 before leaving the BT setting. I think you noted that you had covered those pairing steps in your post. Just making sure.

1. Did you notice the size of the other coils in the test. 2. The Coiltek Goldhawk 10X5” coil handles EMI much better than the stock 11” mono coil in my area. 3. The GPX already had sensitivity “dialed back” in relation to the other detectors even using the Coiltek Goldhawk 10X5”. 4. This testing was not about making one detector win the test. Running all of these detectors in a no EMI situation with their gains on maximum…….GPX 6000 wins. It was just a comparison of the three PIs I happened to have in my possession at the time that had similar sized coils. 5. I mostly did this test for me to help me make some detector ownership decisions. I just couldn’t afford to keep three PIs and I wanted to know what I could expect on those size targets. I decided to post it since the results were so close on some of the targets.

I know this topic was seemingly started by a water hunter. I am glad that XP improved the smaller nugget gold prospecting possibilities for Deus 2 with the improvements to FMF Goldfield in version 2.0. At the moment, using Goldfield with the available 9" coil, testing performance on sub 0.5 gram gold nuggets is about the same using FMF Goldfield and Deus 2 Mono setup similar to Goldfield but just using 45 kHz. That's a big improvement and lets the FMF multi frequency Goldfield program move ahead due to its much better simultaneous multi frequency iron mineralization handling. The available 9" coil acts more like the X35 Deus 1/ORX version coils than the HF 9" coil in my opinion however. To me it is noisier and less sensitive than it needs to be and could be improved. The 9" white HF round coil and the HF 9X5" coils were hyper sensitive in my opinion. Using an FMF 9X5" coil similar to the concentrated sensitivity of the HF elliptical coil on really hot ground coupled with really rough terrain should improve the situation even more. I don't see much of a use for a 9X5" coil for water hunters unless I was hunting a boulder strewn creek or small river bed or a really rocky saltwater shoreline and needed to get the smaller footprint of an elliptical coil into some tight spaces. At a wide open beach/surf area, I don't see the point of having one. Imagine how much easier to swing and just better a small 9X5" or so elliptical coil performs opposed to a 9" or 11" round coil in a place like this where I often hunt:

Yes but not 6” or smaller. That’s all I’m going to say.

Nokta sent you a properly working system control unit. You tested it with your coils and everything looks good, right? You put the same coils on your other two Legends and things are not good, right?. If the coils are good then your two Legend system control units are the issue. Put all three system control units in one box and ship them to Andy O’Neal at the Nokta USA Repair Center and let him figure it out. Make Nokta fix it instead of you trying to make videos. Let Andy make a video. I’ll send you the money for shipping. Your purchase prices for your Legends included a little money for 3 year warranty coverage. Make Nokta honor that warranty.

The phrase "better compatibility with your devices" refers to the AccuPOINT pinpointer wirelessly pairing with all Legend models and the most recent 15 kHz Simplex models. I assume it will also pair with the new Score and Double Score models too. Your uninstall all previous update tools suggestion is a good one. I always do that whether I am using a Mac or PC just to be safe and to get the latest update tool. I have several current computers that have successfully downloaded and installed software updates on my updatable detectors. I offered to do that for D Smith's Legends. Maybe he will take me up on that offer.

I had to solder loose battery terminals on my Lobos too. Just part of life with a detector with old solder joints.

I am really glad that there are university archeology departments that are willing to employ the use of metal detectors for some of their projects. That is a big improvement and helps with the negative opinion that some "professionals" have held about using metal detectors for easy metallic object recovery during university or historical society sponsored projects. I like the Lobo Super Traqs. I owned the Lobo and the Super Traq. They are very sensitive on smaller targets from my experience and easy to use. However, parts availability, coil availability, weight,............there are so many comparable detectors available right now that are every bit as good or way better than the Lobo. I have worked with Colorado State University on a few projects. The times that archeology students and their advisors arrived with metal detectors to help those of us that metal detect for real, those people showed up with old, beat up Bounty Hunter Tracker 4s because someone in the department had recommended that detector! We had Equinox and Deus detectors. They found next to nothing. We (7 people) found over 400 period legitimate targets in two 8 hour days of detecting. In all, we recovered over 4000 targets during the Julesburg Project. How would those students do with several $259 Minelab X-Terra Pros...........Just something to think about.

If you happen to have a pencil with eraser, an eraser can clean off any scum or buildup of crud too.

Bill, I really enjoyed reading your post and I agree with most of it. Bill, these sentences are about me by the way: "They are constantly searching for the one detector that will do it all and are discouraged that it doesn't exist. They are consumed with the idea that they are missing good targets, insisting on searching in all metal in trashed-filed parks so they don't miss the "carpet of gold" that is hidden below the layer of foil and tabs." I haven't been able to find "the One". I have four VLFs right now that come pretty close. I definitely hunt those four in almost all metal (I notch out the two or three lowest iron numbers to take care of magnetite) and I definitely hunt a lot of full auto machine gun fire carpeted levels of aluminum and steel trashed parks and school yards where the amount of targets I hear is impossible to count even in a minute of detecting. And yet, I am having my best year ever both for the amount of US clad, silver jewelry and especially deeper silver coins. Gold jewelry has fallen off a little but it's still happening. I have already found more in the ten months of this year than I did all of last year and I was out of commission for the entire month of January. I did better last year than the year before and I couldn't walk during most of November and December of 2022. Ever since I got my hands on an Equinox, my finds have steadily increased, not decreased and these newer detectors like Deus 2, Manticore and the Legend just keep finding deeper, good quality targets even through a sea of modern trash. That Is what saddens me or at least makes me feel weird. I am cleaning up with the same detectors, running the same software, on deep targets in way worse ground conditions than many of those that are reporting depth issues.

Hi Joe, I think some of this lack of depth perception can be lack of deep targets related, weather and seasonal changes, grass is taller in the spring and summer.......stuff like that. I have to say however, at least where I hunt, these newer detectors are absolutely amazing compared to what at the time were outstanding single frequency VLFs that I used even 10 years ago.

Simon, thank you for answering these questions so carefully. I literally am just a digital electronics end user with zero experience beyond ancient analog/beginnings of digital component experience where I literally had to physically set binary switches on simple PC boards, replace easy to handle board level parts and run crude spectrum analyzers back in the early 1980s, day after day. So, could software after its loaded into a modern metal detector or the detector's memory integrity degrade quickly enough to cause some of these issues?

I visit several Facebook (Meta) group specific VLF detector sites along with making it a point to regularly come to this awesome forum while also checking in over at Friendly. I am saddened by what I see being reported as depth issues after performing online available software updates for detectors like Deus 2, Equinox 600/800 and of course, everyones whipping post, the Legend. I have not been to a Manticore Facebook site yet. Maybe there are depth issues being reported there too. I am sure there will be similar issues with the Equinox 700/900 if there ever is an update. I am saddened because being able to do an online software update is one of the real advantages of these detectors that are offered by their engineering teams. Plus, these really are state of the art, excellent detectors. It also saddens me because after reading these reports, I wonder if there is something wrong with my software updated detectors, the software itself, the downloaded update tool or are there different board level components or different main PC boards being implemented by some of these manufacturers post production due to supply chain issues that simply work better than the original parts/boards or just the opposite. My last reasonable wondering is: are the variables in computers and their capabilities, operating systems, firewalls, virus prevention software along with the differing quality of various internet data services just too big of a hurdle for these company's software engineers to plan for properly? Then there is the remote possibility which is just nuts.........are these companies trying to sabotage each others detectors online by infecting each others software and update tools or is there a third party source for this malign behavior. Please tell me that is not going on. There certainly are a few unfortunate people like D. Smith on this forum and his Legend issues which are real. There seem to be others that simply are setting up their detectors to fail judging from their postings and supporting videos which usually show improper settings for the task they are trying to do. Then there is the piling on/placebo effect. Just to put my mind at ease, I took both of my Legends, Manticore, Equinox 800 and Deus 2 with their biggest 11" coils out to my test area to detect some 8"+ deep in the ground small high conductor US coin targets. Even in their most basic/conservative settings BUT with lowered iron filter/iron bias settings and with the iron target IDs/audio accepted, they easily and fairly equally hit all of those targets. Whooooh, that feels better.

REM sleep for me......

I can only speak for myself. I liked the 900 for saltwater beach hunting, for gold prospecting and for any kind of detecting where digging basically every signal was OK. For any kind of coin, jewelry or relic hunting where digging every signal was absolutely not OK or literally impossible and where precision of target IDs, audio responses using multi tones and estimated target depth were the most important features needed, the two Nox 900s that I owned and used for 4 months and over 100 hours of use, were a messy nightmare. If Minelab does an Equinox 700/900 update, I hope they will address some of the instability issues I experienced both for target IDs and audio anomalies. I am not seeing any of these issues with the Manticore that I have been using for the last week.

my bad, trying to do two things at once is not good for this old head.

I was doing a Deus 2 project for someone else at the same time. Thanks for catching that. I'll fix it.

I have recovered around 100 US coins so far with the Manticore but have mostly been concentrating on copper pennies, clad dimes and quarters with around 10 nickels. Most have been in the 4 to 6" depth range but a few of the high conductors have been as deep as 8 to 10". At the 8 to 10" depth target ID spread will get wider in the dirt I hunt in but audio still stays mostly within the tone bin with an occasional drop below 77. Deeper nickels also have stayed in the 16 digit tone bin I set for them from 21 to 36. I basically discount the wild zinc penny target IDs if they have some depth and especially corrosion. With these much more powerful, sensitive, and less stable simultaneous multi frequency VLF detectors like the Manticore, Deus 2, Legend and Nox 700/900, I really concentrate on coil control and on not fully deciding on dig/no dig on deeper targets until I have onboard pinpointed the target and centered the coil over the target. The Manticore's pinpoint function is outstanding and makes that really easy. I get pretty tight numbers circling deeper US high conductor coin targets after doing that so far. I have not dug any deep iron yet. Maybe I am being too conservative.

So far, I am using AT General, 5 tones and I am seeing no more than a 4 target ID spread once the coil is properly centered over the targets on targets deeper than 5". The 8 to 10" high conductor targets I have dug have had slightly wider numbers but still stay within the high conductor 5th tone bin. My high tone bin starts at 77 for high conductor coins and jewelry. I am going to totally defer to ABenson for any gold info since he has an 8" coil and is doing very well with it judging from his latest video of his trip to Nevada. I am trying to get down to Arizona the second week of November with the Axiom, Manticore, Nox 800 and Legend for a short gold prospecting trip if the weather cooperates.

The “perceived” target ID stability advantage of the Nox 600/800 over the Nox 700/900/Manticore is one of three pluses for the Nox 600/800. The other two are the situation with wireless audio options and the current available coil options for the Manticore specifically. Otherwise, I definitely prefer the Manticore over the 600/800 and the 700/900.