Daniel Tn

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.  

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.  

I have the 11 and 9.  I don't have the 11x13.  Between the 11 and 9, I haven't found a target with the 11 that the 9 couldn't also obtain, as far as depth goes.  But the same can't be said vice versa.  I've definitely found targets with the 9 that the 11 didn't get because of lots of trash, iron, etc.  The 9 is now a semi permanent attachment for me.  I don't really know if the 11x13 would be much different than the 11" round....I'd like to know though.  I would REALLY love a smaller elliptical for it.  A 5x8 would have me slobbering.

My first breast plate was found at a site a logging crew was cutting trees off of. I was working my way through a spot, and got a overload signal on the F75. I kicked the dirt and out rolls a drop 3 ringer. A few steps away, another one. Then I realized it was also the place the workers had apparently been taking their breaks at, as flattened soda cans were everywhere where they'd ran over them with the big machinery and mushed them into the ground.  I found a few of them and was almost about to move out of the spot...got one more overload signal and kicked the dirt expecting to see a shiny mtn dew can.  Instead, out rolls what I first thought was the zinc lid to a Mason jar.  Went to pick it up to put in my pouch and there it was....eagle breastplate.  Sounded just like the shallow bullets and cans and was in the same small area.  A house now sits on the exact spot it came from.  

Yes yes yes!!  Not ground balancing, and then also doing comparisons with 2 or 3 (or more) detectors with ALL of them on at the same time, right beside one another.  It drives me batty.  I also agree that the noise a lot of them are hearing is feedback/blow back from not balancing.  I was running Auto Tracking on the Manticore this past hunt and could hear the ground changes way before the machine actually auto tracked to it.  In that regard, by manual balancing, I could keep up with it faster than Auto could, and stay on top of it.  

19 minutes ago, JCR said:

I actually like digging lead. Makes nice shiny new bullets.

I throw them into my melting pot and pour them into other fishing stuff.  My hobbies are fishing #1 first and foremost, Indian artifact hunting, and then metal detecting.  I don't mind digging them either...especially when it's time to start pouring jig heads for crappie.

I asked her why she hadn't ever mentioned that ring before.  She said she'd told me about it when I first started hunting. I can't remember but...that has been a long time ago. I can barely remember to take my daily medication and have to keep a box handy to make sure I do. Haha 😄 

I was caught off guard with how much the water had came up.  Jan 4th it was completely empty as seen in the pic below.  Compare that to the view in the post above looking in the same direction.

Why didn't you opt for a Garrett Axiom?  You were one of the pulse machine forerunners for relic hunting...was using them long before anyone else was.  It looks like Garrett has the waterproof machine that could handle the beach AND the red Virginia dirt, that doesn't weigh a lot.  That would have ticked more boxes for me if I lived up there vs the Manticore.  

I didn't even notice until I saw this thread.  Mine is much the same.  It won't be warm enough to dunk mine until several months from now anyway.  I'll worry about it then I guess.  

12 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Good to hear Daniel. I must say you are one of the very few relic hunters I pay serious attention to. This is because you hunt very difficult ground, and although you hunt relics, and I hunt gold nuggets, our thoughts about detectors often mirror each other due to the ground we both hunt in. So much so that when you say anything is good in your ground, it carries a lot of weight with me as to how it may work out in my own ground. Thanks for the report.

Steve,

I'm flattered to hear that from you...that means a lot coming from someone with your expertise.  Don't get your wallets out just yet...this was just a 1st time out, in a honeymoon phase.  But it certainly caught me off guard.  Me and my hunting buddy was talking about it last night and we think the last time we found any minie balls at that site, was when we hunted it with the GPXs back in the 2016-2018 time frame.  That's about the same time I took a break from serious detecting and got more into fishing.  That would certainly account for the clad finds that I found, as we've had a couple of snows big enough for people to use the hill to sled down since then.  But...that don't account for the minies, camp lead chunks, button, etc.  The last period find I made there was with the D2 in the iron patch and that was a brass buckle.  My D2 came with a 11" coil so I've been wanting to try a smaller coil on it.  Was hoping for a 5x10 elliptical by now but got tired of waiting and bought the 9 inch.  Still haven't tried it yet.  🙃   I have several sites lined up for the Manticore this coming Tuesday.  I'll know more about it at the end of those hunts for sure.  For now...if you are familiar with an Equinox, you'll already have a leg up on the sounds and very similar behaviors.  But...it does seem like they have refined the ID capability in higher mineral dirt and that should open up a whole lot of potential for being able to grab deeper targets in places most other machines are IDing non ferrous things as ferrous.  We'll call this first hunt just a good trip.  If the same thing keeps repeating itself everywhere I take it...then we'll know it's definitely something with the machine.  

One thing I did notice was I was having trouble with precise pinpointing with it. It will take relearning from the Equinox.  Every hole I dug, I would dig in front of where it actually was, if that makes sense. If you look at my picture of the silver ring with it still in the hole, you will see exactly what I mean.  That picture is actually turned sideways...the ring was in the wall of my hole, closest to my feet if I were standing sweeping over it. Picture needs to be rotated 90° clockwise to see it how it actually was.  I wouldn't miss stuff left or right but would overshoot.  By that, the sweet spot of the coil is actually just under or behind where the coil attaches to the lower rod.  On the Equinox, it was just in front of where the lower rod attached.  It's a minor thing I will have to adjust to.  

6 hours ago, steveg said:

LOL -- I understand!

Meanwhile, UPS seems to have decided -- despite my package being on the truck and "out for delivery" today -- not to deliver it.  Sometimes, it gets late in the day, and our UPS driver just decides they are "done for the day," and today was one of those days.  And now tracking shows "delivery attempted" (a complete fabrication), with delivery now re-secheduled for the next business day.

So, we'll see if the driver decides to show up on Monday.

Steve

Ohhh man I hate that for you. I can relate! I live in a rural area and we actually get that quite a bit from UPS.  I've sat at home all day waiting for signature required packages that were out for delivery and they never come...later, get the same message about delivery attempts.  Very disappointing.  Especially if it's something you really need or wanted.  FedEx seems to be much better for getting packages on cue...at least they are here.  

7 hours ago, deathray said:

Well, that's a good first impression man. Do you think it handles your funky soil better? Or better with EMI? Or just too soon to tell? Looking forward to more of your post, as I think we hunt similar sites. I'm in no hurry for a Manicore at this point, everything is waterlogged here in NoCal at the moment.

Too soon to tell for sure.  I will get a better feel for it when I get some days off to really open it up and go to some different places.  EMI was quiet while swinging the coil but when I would lay the machine down to dig, I could hear it coming from somewhere. Then when I would pick the machine back up to hunt, it would go away. This particular site is in town with underground utilities and the property owner next to it, has one of those underground dog fences.  That fence used to drive our pulse machines crazy when we would hunt there.  I was shocked for sure.  I figured if I found anything at all there, it would probably be with the D2 in the heavy iron and coal cinders/coke.  

I did not dig any iron that fooled me with the Manticore.  I think being familiar with the Equinox helps with that part of it. When playing with a new machine I will intentionally dig some bad one way signals just to see what is in the ground. In all those cases, it was iron. Everything I dug today that was good, gave a good signal all the way...circle around it and get clear repeatable audio and ID.  The minie balls, camp lead, and button were over pinpointer length deep.  This coming week I am going to go back to the drained lake where I've been finding the rings and see how the Manti does there.

The audio is why I also parted with my MDT.  The disc mode audio in particular: the audio is too clipped or short and I describe it as more of a *ping* instead of a beep.  It's what you hear on other machines as a simple high chirp false.  It may be that I also have hearing loss, so that's just how I hear it coming through.  In Mix mode, the audio was better for my ears because I could hear the slight ramp up in audio AND then the ping.  If he could fix the audio and keep everything else the same, it would no doubt still be in my arsenal.  It was one of the better machines for depth in bad mineral soil.  But...in sites with a lot of trash or iron, hearing everything in Mix mode was way too much bombardment on my ears.  

Nice finds!  I actually took your settings to a local Civil War camp site yesterday that we've hunted since the late 1990s.  Getting a non ferrous target there, no matter what it is, is a good achievement.  To my VERY big surprise, I dug a large piece of old brass that's approx 5-6 inches long and heavy but no idea what it is.  I've walked and swung over it dozens of times with dozens of other detectors.  It was actually rather deep...something I discounted with the Fast program because I thought it was only for picking out shallower stuff in iron. I need to go back and hunt some more...it's on a hill and the wind was so hard and loud yesterday I couldn't hardly hear with headphones on and the wind would blow me backwards.

That's the thing now...when a machine malfunctions, you don't go through a dealer anyways.  You deal directly with the company. I work in the automotive industry and that is actually what the plan is for vehicles too...there won't be any car lots or dealers so to speak. Everything will be ordered by the customer.  

To my surprise...look what arrived a little bit ago.

10 minutes ago, Dan(NM) said:

It's coming from a warehouse in IA,via Fedex Express, I got mine in 2 days and I'm in Texas.

Mine says it shipped from Prairie Du Chien, WI US.  Never heard of it but currently says it's in Chattanooga, TN with a ETA of today around noon.  But...I did order mine through Bass Pro Shops and not from Cabelas.  Bass Pro owns Cabelas so I would think they use the same warehouses now but maybe not.