Chase Goldman

Just another thought, there has to be a reason why ML is doing that (they may "have" to do it for some reason) because the reason other manufacturers don't is not because they can't, but because it results in a huge penalty in run time. ML went with a higher capacity battery to compensate for the drain just to keep run times reasonable. Manticore AND Deus 2 have certain program modes that result in higher power drain. So this more power thing may only be invoked during certain modes.

Beat me to it, Thomas. For F350 Platinum - Since SteveG's system is totally CF it may not be a problem to bring it further up the shaft, and may better for preventing drop outs when submerged. Not sure how those velcro wraps will hold up while scraping against hard packed sand in the surf wash. Not saying they won't, I just have no idea vs. plastic zip ties.

Bottom line, we don't know what 50% more power precisely means, ML and people supposedly involved with the design (e.g., The ML Chief Engineer, Tom Dankowski) have explicitly stated/written 50% more power to the coil as well as more power overall, ML has explicitly stated both that the power increased is in relation to "traditional detectors" and also, explicitly mentioned the Equinox. We know that from a physics standpoint this DOES NOT translate to 50% increased depth (not even close), and finally we can only speculate on what all of this really means or translates into regarding performance or capability. And that's exactly where ML wants us to be - speculating on how much magic is in their latest magic wand. Plenty of us here have seen this play out numerous times before, and it is always the same story, there are no great leaps or game changers here. Just a well designed detector that has some desirable features that some may or may not find useful and, of course, now a higher price point.

There is no question Manticore has higher gain but I can't see why that would require a 50% increase in power. I also tend to believe the lead engineer/designer of ML would want to be more precise than the marketeers and I do not believe he would repeatedly put out erroneous information about a very specific aspect of the design (i.e., power to the coil). I do agree ML is "selling it" by touting the more power thing as fact because it implies greater capability or performance, without having to actually specify what that actually is which, in turn, enables them to hide behind the ambiguity of something that sounds impressive (so they can't be held accountable for a false performance claim). There have been valid reasons postulated for increasing the coil power (specifically current) including as a means to improve EMI mitigation and because they had to to simply keep the transmitted magnetic field strength for the Manticore simultaneously transmitted discrete waveforms on par with single frequency transmitted field strength (though it seems Nox would need the same boost). Again, since ML chooses to withhold more technical information than it provides and has little regard for the intelligence of their end users based on their laughable, ambiguous marketing materials like the Equinox frequency cloud diagram that made no sense whatsoever (and were forced to amend with disclaimers and footnotes), it's indeed all just speculation and probably mostly hype.

True, but in this specific case (Manticore) ML is takling specifically about transmit power as they consistently touted "50% more power to the coil" compared to Equinox. Also, with digital signal processing it doesn't necessarily take more power to "amplify" the received signal in the sense of applying electric power to bias solid state amplification circuits, though it MAY take more processing power. But it's really all semantics at that point... Point is the Manticore "more power" thing was related to coil power. And all the tradeoffs referenced by Steve in his previous post apply. There is also some relevant discussion in this thread: Since we only get the very incomplete information the marketeers feed us, it's hard to determine what any of the mumbo jumbo really means in terms of actual performance. At this pointcwe rely solely on the documented empirical performance reports of, hopefully, unbiased, knowlegeable, and skilled end users.

Link?

I'd say within 6 mos or so based on how long it took for the Equinox accessory coils to show up after the initial release of the Nox.

If it were easy, a lot more people would be doing it...and there wouldn't be any targets.

A CW "Plate" (sword plate, breast plate, box plate, other belt buckles) is comprised typically of brass with lead backing holding tin or iron fasteners. They will typically ring up with the same audio and TID as a smashed aluminum can. On the D2, 89 to 91 depending on if it is fully intact. I dug about 50 or 60 beer cans and other trash under roadside power lines in hot Culpeper dirt before I scored the Breast Plate below. It sounded like all the rest of the cans - I found each broken half separately. Just pure determination and a hunch something like that might be hiding there because all that trash and EMI tends to repel the detectorists running Pulse Induction machines. It was a mustering area (on private farmland) for Union soldiers preparing to participate in a battle that was fought in the area.

Yep. Not talking air tests. See these threads...

Who says it isn't (or wasn't) already there? Feedback from D2 users who also have the M-core are reporting similar, significant depth on deep beach targets. But having the ability to manually adjust it (esp. down if it is maxed out) like with the D1 x35 coils, would be helpful in mineralized soils.

I thought I was the lucky charm based on what you find whenever I come down. I've had the situation of finding a square nail pounded through a grommet. See lower left in the pic below:

Yes. This is exactly how D2 works and why I find it can be best set up to suit my style of iffy target interrogation best of the MF detectors mentioned (Equinox, Manticore, Legend). I think the arrow navigation buttons and soft keys on M-core are an improvement versus the Nox in this regard, but still of limited usefulness. The OP makes a good point regarding the lack of multiple customizable profiles that combine discrimination and ferrous limit settings that can be applied to any mode as ML chose to solely provide this feature/capability for the ferrous limit profiles.

Thanks, Gary. I've considered that and will do a comparison.

This is what XP says in the user's manual regarding why manual GB adjustment is not available for the FMF programs: To me it seems that since Grab is based off the displayed numeric value, you should be able to manually bias the setting by simply inputting another number. But I suppose that was why they included the Ground Stabilizer setting only for the FMF modes. Apparently some secret sauce stuff going on for the individual frequency constituents of FMF when you do a ground grab in FMF, and perhaps that's what takes so long. Who knows...

Predicore!

Agree. I wish metal detectors used something other than technology.

What I saw was two targets completely surrounded (i.e., 360 degrees) within a few inches by iron at 6 and 8 inches deep that the 6-inch round coil could sneak in there on the 8 inch target (he said that neither coil would stop you on the 6 inch target) while the 9.5 inch long coil struggled. No big surprise there. Right tool for the job. That's not an overall demonstration of the LG15 outperforming the LG24, it's simply confirming the fact that a LG24 will have more targets underneath it in a 360 machine gun iron environment and you'd be better off with the LG15. No kidding. Would really like to see a clean, in-ground depth comparison between the two (and the 11" stock for that matter). Those nightmare 360 degree iron surrounded target conditions are few and far between and I really prefer the benefits of the small elliptical without the large round coil weight and swing penalty or small round coil coverage penalty. If I'm going to bolt that coil on, would prefer it to be more versatile than a specialty one-trick pony like the 6-inch round. JMO

Your phone my be the issue. Does your phone support the Bluetooth LE and the LC3 codec? You typically have to set that up in advanced developer settings. I think Pixel 7 supports BT LE LC3, but not sure about the Pixel 6. I have yet to see anyone verify that the non-proprietary Bluetooth LE LC3 codec is NOT supported by the ML-85/ML-105 phones. Until then, it's hard to judge whether ML has gone the propritary wireless route (i.e., lame) or not.

I do find it takes bit longer to get a stable GB number where there is minimal mineralization. In those cases I just run with the default (doesn't seem to affect depth in mild soil) or do an instant ground grab (hold the pinpoint button) to match the "actual" GB reading it settles to after swinging the coil for awhile.

Understand the frustration, but I think they do care because it ultimately will affect their bottom line with the competition if they don't address the known issues. But the XP Go Terrain app issue is ridiculous and borders on comical because they have been promising it as a feature for all their Deus/Orx/Deus 2 detectors for at least 5 years, without delivering on that promise. So I could see a backlash if Go Terrain is still not functional after the next big D2 update.

Clock is a known issue and should be addressed in the update which I know is currently being tested in the field (no, not by me) as well as several other issues that have been identified. I am not directly involved in this effort but know folks who are testers. Regardless, I have no information on when it is going to be ready for release or specifically what fixes are being addressed as well as any new features. FWIW - I am having no issues with ground balance functionality and have not heard other complaints about that function, so if you can be more specific about the issues I can see if there is a setup/setting issue or pass it along. Also, the EMI cancellation allows me to work with the D2 where I can't with the Equinox, so scratching my head on that one too. About the only place it doesn't work is when I turn the detector on inside my house. I hunt regularly with another D2 user and his experience with EMI cancellation and ground balance mirror mine. Specifics would be more helpful vs. generalizations that imply these functions don't work "at all".

Lol. It's definitely a personal choice. Used square FT yesterday with SS but quickly switched out of it. PWM, for me, gives more dynamic audio and nuance especially to aluminum targets and square seems to make iron audio and my MI6 pinpointer audio more muffled to my ear. But note that I also prefer pitch to FT (there are multiple reasons for this primarily having to do with how FT handles discrimination than with the audio). Bob and I both hunting together yesterday with significantly different D2 audio setups on similar programs with similar results. If you have to force yourself to use it, then that might be telling you something. That's why I say personal choice and the best thing is D2 gives you multiple audio options because our level of hearing is different as is the way our brains process the audio after we "train" them certain way.

A lot to unpack here technically, because there are some definite misconceptions and conflating of technical characteristics here. First of all, TampBayBrad - Strick is right in the sense that in highly mineralized (i.e., hot) ground, increasing coil transmit power is often counterproductive because it tends to "light off" the conductive particles in the soil. The analogy often used is that it is like turning on high beams in the fog. This is what George is alluding to, also. I started typing this before your last reply, so I see you understand that. Furthermore, I have not seen folks who do use the Manticore in hot dirt complaining about its capabilities with this increased coil power capability. They seem to be finding stuff just fine. But the issue with Manticore is that we really do not know what ML means by 50% more power to the coil. It's a marketing tag line, and while I don't believe it is a false statement, I do believe that ML had to crank coil transmit power up to compensate for something else and not just for raw depth ability (although testing somewhat backs up the notion that the Manticore appears to have marginally better depth than Equinox). They may have had to do it so that they could more efficiently distribute power in the simultaneous multi-frequency waveform (MultiIQ+) but they may have also done it to combat EMI. More transmit coil current means the signal-to-noise ratio can be improved, thereby, improving EMI mitigation. That approach involves a number of other arcane technical tradeoffs, but the marketing folks just ran with 50% more power because is "sounds" great to us - and it obviously worked because, well a lot of folks are waiting for Manticore boats to show up and all that. Furthermore, some folks in the thread are mixing up coil power and sensitivity (I think that is what you are driving at Brad). Sensitivity can be adjusted as necessary to mitigate noise, overload, etc. But you are NOT adjusting coil transmit power when you adjust sensitivity, you are merely adjusting the sensitivity of the detectors receive circuit to the received signal. As a matter of fact it is not clear that that the user has any explicit means of adjusting the amount of transmit power to the coil other than through the selection of various modes which likely utilize different (but undocumented) amounts of transmit power. For example, it is a known fact that on Equinox, coil transmit power is reduced in the Beach modes to enhance stability in salt and black sand (because the black sand issues present similar challenges as mineralized soil). I don't own a Manticore and don't plan on getting one anytime soon because my Nox 900 and Deus 2 cover my bases for now, so I have not done a deep dive into the manual to determine if coil power is adjusted with mode selection, but I suspect the same approach for beach detecting used in Equinox Multi-IQ is used for Manticore Multi-IQ+. So yes, Brad, your final quoted statement is true in the sense that adjusting sensitivity on Manticore has nothing to do with adjusting coil transmit power, but because of that higher transmit power, sensitivity might have to be adjusted down to compensate for increased ground noise in hot dirt vs. say the Equinox, all other things being equal. It is a good thing that ML saw fit to provide a lot of headroom on sensitivity adjustments as that enables you to run the machine on the ragged edge regardless of the site conditions. I actually get concerned when I hit max sensitivity and all is quiet, that means that the designers likely left some capability on the table. If nothing else, hope this clears up the difference between coil power and sensitivity for people.

I now own George's Tarsacci for the past 2 years and often hunt in the same dirt. So that might tell you something... I'll let him answer too, but I think we both have the same impression of it - as far as VLF's go, it has the best raw depth in hot soil of any non-PI machine I've used. The discriminated audio leaves a lot to be desired but mixed mode audio is useful and optimizing salt balance and other settings for hot dirt involves a lot of trial and error. I've often considered selling it because I seldom find a situation where Tarsacci is my only option. Either I can get the job done with less frustration with the Deus 2 or I'm pulling out my GPX. But I occasionally pull it out when I just don't feel like hassling with the GPX, so I continue to keep it around...FWIW.