Daniel Tn

That's a good question. Neither one are perfect but each one has things I like about them vs the other...BUT neither one has that edge that makes it a TKO over the other. If I had to pick one to sell today it would be the Manticore but that's because I could sell it fast and get more for it vs the Deus 2 due to the availability of them. I could always get another one when they become more available down the road. I've actually been thinking on doing just that. I've got a big week long trout fishing trip coming up in a few weeks in Arkansas and extra $ wouldn't be a bad idea. *hint hint for those looking for a Manicore*.

Yep, that's what I meant by you'd have to run an open screen to hear them. There's a lot to unbox with the Manticore settings for customization. They made most everything simple and straightforward for people that like turn on and hunt but with enough room for tweakers too. So yes it is possible to open that area up...but at the same time you're gonna let in iron too that falls in that block.

The shallow ones were on the center line and painted an egg shaped dot. The deeper ones were NOT on the center line. Here's a couple screen grabs of some videos I did while going over a deeper one and a shallow one. You can see the blob up there in the upper ferrous zone on the deep one. The shallow ones that read good will be directly below that, on the center line.

I'm wanting one of those 11x13 coils pretty bad!

Yeah, but I was confused about you saying a Sens of 29. I never had it that high. I started out with it at 25. This place is similar to how it is in Culpeper, VA in that the fields are extremely mineralized but the woods are not as bad. In the woods I could run 22-25 sensitivity. In the field, I was getting too much mineral blow back so I dropped it into the teens to get rid of that.

I thought the Axiom was basically the GPX in a waterproof housing? Speaking of weight...I just recently re-acquired the first target ID machine I ever owned. The Fisher CZ-70. Back when it was first introduced, it was cutting edge. I've not had one in over 2 decades now. I put the 10.5 coil on it...and you want to talk heavy and unbalanced? Wow. That joker is a wrist strainer. I fired it up and went outside. Ground balanced it and it will only beep on 1 target in my test garden. 1 out of 7 targets. *Most* all the newer machines will get them all. I agree though...I'd love to have Deus 2 performance and adjustability, with a Minelab menu and screen. And Minelab's coil attachment area. I didn't buy the Deus for the wireless stuff; I bought it for the outstanding reputation for hunting iron and the newest SMF technology for hunting beaches. For the record, I wasn't a big fan of the Deus 1. It was mostly an audio thing for me. If the D2 wouldn't have offered the Square tone audio option, I probably wouldn't have bought one. As odd as that probably is.

Don't think I kept either detector in one mode without trying other settings or search modes. After all, it is a giant 160 year old test garden. That's where I like to go to learn. In the Goldfield mode, the audio is different but the default ferrous upper limit is 6. The bullets want to come in at the upper ferrous zone. If you run All Terrain General, the default upper ferrous limit is 9. The bullets want to come in at what would be the 7-8 upper ferrous range. You can open that up and hear them but your also opening up all the iron that falls within that range too. On the D2 I used Relic mode as a starter program but then figured out General mode was just as good. I was more impressed with the ID than anything without having to do any elaborate setting changes.

I agree! I'm actually not a fan of the wireless stuff. If the Deus 2 had the menu and screen layout of the Manticore, along with a wired coil, I'd be one happy dude and have just 1 machine and no real need for anything else.

That was actually the coil Dimitar sent to us to try. No, it did not seem to help any. In disc mode there were too many high pinging false signals. The only way to really hunt with it was to use the Mix mode audio and listen for the all metal "ramp up" sound to a target. The Deus 1 was horrible at this place which is why I really was surprised at the Deus 2. The best VLF machine for it though is still the F75/T2 with aftermarket coil. A coil like the 13" Ultimate and those machines in Motion All Metal is probably the deepest I've had there for a VLF. You can't go by ID though...you have to just hunt by audio and dig a lot of iron. The trick to it was that 90° turn in which you could pass up most nails and wire by simply ignoring the rapid double beeps. The bullets would sound good all the way around but the ID might only be an 11-13 down in the iron range. Even though that was a great technique, it still pales in comparison to how much superior a pulse machine is in dirt like that. I'm glad not all of our dirt here is that severe. If it were, a pulse machine would be all I would have. Fortunately it's just places here and there and more common in fields than in woods. I was hoping the Manticore would be better than that, as it seems to really handle well in our more common soils.

Yes we did....that's how long ago it has been since I've been at that site. The Tarsacci had JUST came available to purchase. We didn't do so well with it and Dimitar sent us a prototype coil to try at the site, and some setting suggestions so we revisited it with that coil and a new arsenal of settings to try. We had about the same result as the first time. My buddy owned the Tarsacci at the time and I still had the GPX. I'd locate bullets with the GPX and then we'd try to come up with settings to check out the Tarsacci. Pulse machine still reign king of the heap in that stuff...matter of fact, it is shocking at just how many bullets you can locate with a pulse machine at that place that the VLFs give absolutely zero indication of something being in the ground. And not all of the bullets are deep either. It's always an eye opener for sure. But....was quite impressed with the D2 today. Of course there's no telling how many I walked over and had no idea of them.

This started out as *not* a battle between the two. The site I like to test detectors recently sold and I was finally able to get in touch with the new owners and re-acquire permission for it. I have about another yr before it gets turned into a housing development. What it is, is a practice range from the Civil War. There are minie balls everywhere on it...the problem is, they are in 4-5 bar dirt and on most every VLF machine they will read as iron. We figured this out years ago and it has just always been my place to test new detectors in a 150+ yr old test garden. I started out here with the Manticore. All Terrain General with Normal audio profile, 5 tones. Sens was at 25. Long press noise canceled and ground balanced...off I went. Observation number 1...it behaves a lot like the Equinox in hot dirt in that it is real chatty and falses a lot. I hunted with it quite a while and found 2 really shallow bullets and a whole lot of non digging time between them. I just wasn't locating signals 😕 My plan was to try and get back on the bullet site...and if that had failed, I was going to go down the road to a farm I have permission for, and hunt some iron patches with the D2 and 9 inch coil. After hunting about an hour with the Manticore, it dawned on me that I hadn't had the D2 at this place either and I might as well give it a try since I was there. I went back to the truck and got the D2 out. I went to the factory Relic program and bumped the disc up to 4. Ground balanced it and started swinging. Right out of the chute I noted it was very quiet. I probably didn't go 20 feet and had a really good 70s signal. Banger signal. Out came a bullet. Filled that hole...4 feet from it another 70s. Another bullet. Both of those were relatively shallow...4 inches or so. Then a few yards away, another great signal but a little weaker audio. Still 4 way repeating. At this point I walked to the truck and got the Manticore. I wanted to see what it would do on this signal. To my surprise it was crap. On the graph, it drew a smear up in the upper ferrous range and would occasionally blip about every other pass across it. So we had one machine saying non ferrous all the way...and one that was mostly sure it was iron. I dug and a mid depth bullet was in the bottom of the hole. By mid depth I mean from the tip of my Garrett pinpointer to the on/off button. I'm not sure the exact measurement of that but 6 inches would be a fair guesstimate. And this is how it went for the majority of the rest of the bullets I found. I tried different modes on the Manticore...the only way to locate and find the bullets with it, would be to hunt a totally open screen and dig EVERY THING. So in that regard...the Manticore *IMO*, falls into the lump of the vast majority of other VLF machines for hot dirt. Remember I said that it was "well rounded"...well that still holds true. It can do a lot of things pretty well...but hot dirt is not one of its strong suits. What is surprising to me is how well the D2 ran in it. I started in Relic mode but quickly found out that General mode hit them just as easy with a bit more pleasing audio. I did NOT dig any deep ones...about pinpointer deep was the deepest but I had several in that range. All were great signals and this being with the 9 inch coil is even more impressive. Right now...if you told me I could keep only one machine. I would keep the D2....despite hating that stupid antenna for hunting in water. The Manticore is well rounded...but the D2 has a bit more strengths in the types of hunting I do.

In my CTX case, the same cause of death info could have been achieved from the unit. It wouldn't have mattered who sent it in...the dealer or me. They did much the same with me as they did with you...they sent me a return label and it went to Illinois and upon arrival, processing, etc they sent me a new unit. Yes it was resolved: but I was still without a machine I'd paid over 2 grand for, for around 2.5 weeks. In my mind, I would have rather drove 45 mins to the dealer's shop and swapped units to a working one and only had about an hour or two down time. Especially since I knew he had one in the store. That's probably a good thing I'm not a dealer. I'd feel terrible about something like that and end up giving the customer a free coil, pinpointer, or something just as an apology gesture.

True. But if you have a bad machine and or warranty issue, most dealers are going to deflect you straight to the manufacturer warranty department. Meaning you do all the legwork, and a dealer is of zero assistance. I ran into it with a CTX 3030 that I had bought new. It had a bad display out of the box. Naturally, I contacted the dealer I had bought it from and he was like "sorry to hear that but it's out of my hands, here is the number for Minelab's service". I won't lie. I was pretty ticked off. Definitely not how I would have handled it had I been a dealer. I would have swapped that unit with another one I had in stock (which he did have others in stock) and made sure my customer was up and going, then dealt with Minelab on my own about the defective unit. But, it is rare to find service like that. That's why I don't hesitate to order from Cabelas and such. I go by whomever has it in stock at the time I want one.

I did. Paid for it and had it the next day. My dealer still hasn't received any, to my knowledge.

Some people can be control freaks. They think it's THEIR world, and we are just privileged to live in it. It was such a Karen that single handedly took out gold prospecting in the national forests here in TN. We used to be able to get a free permit and where good to dredge, pan, etc. Nobody ever had an issue until Karen and her entourage were visiting the river and didn't like the noise from some guys that were dredging. This actually happened to a couple of guys that were in a local GPAA claim that I was on. She confronted them and they told her they had the right to be there. They got into it prettt bad from what I understand. She just happened to be a control freak Karen that knew some people and didn't stop climbing ladders until she got her way. When I am detecting in public and on public ground, I wear a bright florescent safety vest. Don't ask me why...but for some reason this seems to satisfy the Karens and Kens that you must be a worker. I used to have some approach me and or call the police on me for detecting a park that has a popular walking sidewalk route on it. The Karen walkers would see me and not like me there. Once I started wearing the vest, I never had another issue.

It's not an attitude or state of mind. Having a different mindset doesn't magically make what isn't there just appear. You must not know much about rural Tennessee and its history.

Yes!! My top 4. 1. Tesoro Eldorado uMax -- I had a Bandido 2 uMax and loved that little machine. The Eldorado was to be the replacement for it. So naturally I had to have it. I hated it from day 1. Was just something different about it. I always had plans to get another Bandido 2 but by then, they weren't cheap and still really aren't when they come up. 2. Minelab Quattro - My first FBS machine. It and me...did NOT jive well. 3. Fisher Excel ID - Was a spinoff of the CoinStrike, which I really liked. I was one of the first to get one and immediately it had bugs in the display. Fisher sent me 2 of them and both were the same way. I ended up just getting my $ back. 4. Nokta Impact -- I bought into the hype. Meh.

I tried watching one of dude's videos before I was able to get my Manticore and I couldn't finish it, despite trying to soak up what I could about the detector. He annoyed the crap out of me. I saw the ones titled above and just kept on scrolling. You can tell he definitely likes hearing himself talk.

I don't have to worry about it where I'm at. Folks around here were so poor they couldn't tell the depression was going on. If they had a dime to lose, they spent all week looking for it til they found it. If I find a silver, it's normally always a 1940s Merc or Rosie that barely made the silver years. That is unless I travel away from this immediate area.

I know this is an old thread but I started thinking back to all the detectors I've owned and sold. I've been detecting for 30 years now and have had nearly ever top of the line machine produced from every top manufacturer in that time. That's a lot of machines. I've not really *regretted* selling any of them though. Steve said it best IMO...there's been a few that I remembered as being better than they actually were. Meaning when I bought the same machine later on down the road, it wasn't as good as I remembered it being. One machine I feel absolutely outmatched by not having any more is a GPX for relic hunting. If I did more of it and had more places to go, I'd definitely have one still. Unfortunately for me and this area, it came along much too late and most of the sites I could have used it and to its fullest potential, are now covered with subdivision homes and or buildings.

I would say I'm in the middle as well. Using the mineral bar on say the F75 units, my soil here can range from 5 bars at the worse sites to 3 bars at the best of places. The specific thing that makes the area of the "new beach" difficult is that I think it would be similar to the mining camps out west. The place was logged during the same period of time of 1880 thru 1900 gold rush out west. Except for here, it was for trees instead of gold. The same iron tools and trash would be present from a mining camp to these logging camps. I think those places are just where the Deus shines and shows its strength, and is precisely why I have one. I think the Manticore has the capability of being setup to handle sites like that too; I just haven't gotten into the whole ferrous limits setup. I think widening those might take care of a lot of the falsing/noise and quieten down the machine considerably. I've yet to try it though...every day off from work I get, it pours the rain.

Just for giggles I put the MI6 and Garrett AT on a measuring stick. I used a US copper penny as the test piece. The MI6 is in "unpaired" max sensitivity mode. It doesn't begin to make noise on the penny until the 1 inch mark and of course gets louder as it gets closer. So the "almost touching" thing is better than I thought. It's better when paired with the Deus 2. By comparison, the Garrett AT is straight out of the box sensitivity...whatever that is, and it starts sounding off at the 1.5 inch mark. FWIW.

I have a plethora of them. My favorite is the TRX but it has started to go bad and has let me down a couple times now. It started to "hang up" while beeping on a target and wont quit beeping until you turn it off and or remove the batteries. The first time it did it I thought the batteries were bad. Replaced batteries and it did it again not long after. So I finally retired it. The Garrett Pro Pointer AT is what I have now. It works decent and is my main probe. I have a XP MI6. It works great when paired to the Deus because of the extra sensitivity modes for it while paired. As a stand alone unit with other machines like the Manticore...even on the highest setting, it basically requires you to nearly touch the tip to whatever it is you're trying to locate. The F-Pulse I have had two go bad for the same flaw and my buddies have had the same issue. Similar to what I am seeing now with the TRX...they get "stuck" and will not quit sounding off. Turn them off, back on, and they start sounding off as soon as you turn them on. Fisher sent me new ones but I eventually parted from those. One of my buddies has the Teknetics version of the F Pulse and hasn't had any trouble with his and has had it since they came out. The Minelab pinpointers...I was excited about those when they first came out but I was not impressed. Probably my most disliked Minelab product to date. Just my 2 cents.

I can try to fill in. The "new" beach at the drained lake site is just a difficult spot to take any detector, and isn't the best of places to take a brand new machine for one of its first trips out. Every detector (except the D2 with some tweaking) I've ever ran on it, has been bad about mineral blowback and iron falsing. The ground there is shallow bed rock with a high iron content, and sand/mud on top of it. The D2 stands top of the heap for that particular spot. At the same lake, the "old" beach doesn't have any of that bed rock and is natural dirt, mixed with sand. There...the Manticore is insanely quiet and deep. I need to measure my pinpointer to verify, but on it, I was digging correctly IDing coins down past the pinpointer. I would guess 10-11 inches deep assuming the pinpointer is 9 inches long, and hitting them very well. No doubt about it coin signal and ID. That's running stock program All Terrain General. No tweaks to settings. The D2 on this spot also runs smoothly but...requires some setting tweaks to make the depth comparable. I only got to run the Nox 900 once at the old beach...I've already sold it now, so there won't be any more hunts there with a Nox. The 900 has to also be setting tweaked to get a coin signal there on the deeper targets. Namely, recovery speed has to be lowered significantly and little to no iron bias turned on, and even then, you're just getting *a signal* with occasional "ball park" correct ID. Moving from the drained lake site to Civil War camps. I've hunted two camps with it thus far. Both are in town and one is right beside a subdivision with all underground utilities. I've been running the Manticore at Sens 25 and it is really smooth and non chattery. I could probably bump it up a few digits but 25 seems to be really smooth. All I'm doing at this point is noise canceling, ground balancing, and swinging the coil. I've not altered program settings, etc yet. I have played with the different programs on various targets to see how they react. For what they give you out of the box, it's probably their most rounded machine to date. My buddy with his Nox 800 joined me Thursday at one of the camps. We by no means set the world on fire with finds. I found two flat buttons and some camp lead and a small pistol ball. My buddy didn't find anything with his 800 and has owned it since they first came out with them. The place I was scanning where I found the buttons, he couldn't even get near it even with my machine off. He was getting a ton of EMI and had his machine backed down to around 10 sensitivity. I bumped mine down from 25 to 22 and after doing the long press noise cancel, it was quiet. One of the buttons was approx 12 inches deep straight down in the hole and he swept over it before we dug it and listened to my machine. He said he couldn't tell if there was a signal there on his 800 or just the machine going crazy. He actually was the one to dig it and just shook his head. He put his 800 in the truck and I let him run the Manticore. He found another flat button in that area with the Manticore and in his words as we were talking at the truck "Well I'm selling that thing tonight and gonna keep looking on Cabelas for a M Core" lol and he did. Listed it for $400 on Facebook and sold it the same evening. Keep in mind that's just my opinion. I'm not trying to sell units and don't have anything to peddle. The more I use it the more I like it. It still has a lot to uncover and understand with settings, what all exactly they do, how big of an effect they have, etc. All that is still unknown to me. I'm very much in the learning phase. If Nokta wouldn't have already used the Simplex for a name...that would be the perfect name for the Manticore. Simple menu. Simple design. Simple to turn on and go find stuff.

For what it's worth, I think the Manticore is probably Minelabs most rounded and complete detector to date for a coin/relic/jewelry hunter. We've only scratched the surface of settings and capabilities. Just running it in stock programs, they've done a A+ job in my opinion. If it holds up in the water without leaking...then they've knocked this one out of the park. My one wish with it...is I wish it had the red backlight like the Nox 900. And that's it. With the incoming coils for it, I couldn't think of anything else I would add to it.