Daniel Tn

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.

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.

Here are some pictures of the ring. Mom cleaned it up some. It's the one on her pinky.

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.

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.

That ring was the first ring to come up yesterday when I was trying to figure out if I was in the right spot for the beach. I had just dug a few coins from the mid to late 1960s and was actually just hoping for a silver dime. I guess you could say I was cherry picking the best high reading signals first. There's so many targets (lots of fishing sinkers) in the low to mid range, that I believe there's also going to be gold to eventually come out of there...but it's going to take some work digging every signal. Why there are so many fishing sinkers there is the bigger mystery to me, because there's absolutely nothing for the fishermen to get snagged on in that area. Mom said she remembered that ring so well because she had a fit over it when it was given to her sister. The stone is a red garnet and that's mom's favorite color and birthstone. Her sister was older but the red garnet didn't have anything to do with her birthday month or anything. I don't think she had it long before she lost it either. It is a pretty amazing story. That would have made it my great grandmother's gift. Mom didn't think it was one of her personal rings but was a gift she got for her...but who knows. Most times when you find a ring, it's just a ring and you don't know the background story to it. When I found that one, it was the same way. I could tell it was silver and had a stone but that was it until mom saw it and filled in the back story to it. When I go back to the site, I'll start right there at the "old" beach and not move. I didn't have much time left yesterday. Hopefully the water doesn't come up any and that I did a good enough job filling my spots to not arouse curiosity from other hunters that are going to hunt the "new" beach. Even if they do try it for a bit, if they are like most around here, it won't take but digging a few fishing sinkers or pull tab and they'll abandon it.

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.

I opted to put this on this page vs the Manticore specific forum because I plan on talking about other machines in this post. I FINALLY was able to get back to the site of the drained lake...the one where I posted about hunting with the Nox 900 and Deus 2. Well they've fixed the problem at the dam and the water has came up quite a bit from the last time I was there. In fact, it's up so high it actually covered about 1/3rd of the area I hunted with the previous two machines. I wanted to see how the Manticore handled this particular place. As noted in the other thread, this beach is man made and is pretty much this bedrock with sand and lake Muck on top of it. I took a picture of the exposed bed rock for you guys so you could see what I am referring to. So what did the Manticore find there after having previously hunted it with the 900 and D2? How about.....nadda. That's right. Nothing. I will tell you that it behaves similarly to the Nox 900 in that it is very chirpy and falses a lot in the iron that is on this beach, and even with tracking ON, it seems slow at keeping up with the changing ground. I tried a couple different modes here...using the All Terrain General and All Terrain Low Conductor modes. I didn't dig any non ferrous trash, nor coins, nor jewelry. I'm not kidding when I say...nadda. I did try digging some of the very obvious iron false signals just for the heck of it and they were indeed iron. I had the D2 with me and the 9 inch coil on it. I fired it up and rehunted the same area and I will tell you hands down...the D2 is smoother and quieter on this site. It's actually a joy to use there. I did dig two non ferrous targets with it and both were small BB fishing sinkers. ‐---------------- Now here is where things turn. I had been telling my mom about hunting the drained lake and she said something that blind sighted me. She asked "where you hunting the new beach or the old one". Huh? Say what? Well come to find out...the beach I have been hunting is what she refers to as the "new beach". It was built some time in the 1970s. The beach she swam at as a kid...during the 50s and 60s is the old beach. I never knew it existed. She showed me on Google Earth where it was. I said "mom, I've been metal detecting for 30 years and you just now come up with the info of TWO beaches?!!" Haha. and that's where I went to after hunting the "new beach" today. It actually took a bit to locate and I wasn't sure at first. It is loaded with fishing sinkers and such. But then...I started getting deep high tones and started digging coins from the 60s and 70s and then old style ring pull tabs. I was pretty sure at that point I had found it...and signals are everywhere so I'm sure it hasn't been detected much either. I actually just barely scratched the surface there...dug a whole pouch of older clad and 3 rings. Two silver and 1 copper. I am confident more is going to come out of here...just have to work through the trash to get it. I am more than willing to do that. So I stop by my mom's on the way home from the hunt to show her the rings and let her have her pick if she wanted one. Immediately she grabbed one with a red stone in it and ran to the kitchen sink. I didn't think anything of it. Then she came out of the kitchen crying. What happened? Well...unbeknownst to me, I had found her sister's ring that she had lost when they were kids. She passed away last year. Mom never mentioned her losing a ring but she sure knew it as soon as she saw it. It was their grandmother's ring and their grandmother had given it to mom's sister. She lost it swimming back in the 1960s. It was a 925 silver ring with either a red garnet or ruby...I couldn't tell you because it's firmly in mom's possession now. I am stoked to have found a new spot to hit. I didn't even hunt this one with the D2...the Manticore seemed to be doing fine at it. There's no bedrock on this end of the lake...just sand and mud. Some of the coins were rather deep...pushing 10 to 11 inches and sounded very good.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I work 12 hr midnight shifts but couldn't wait to try that Manti out after work. I took it to a little Civil War camp that in modern times, is a hill the people sled down on the rare occasions we get snow in East Tennessee. It's one of those places that's near home and has been hunted so much that you probably really won't miss anything learning a new machine...in fact my last 4 out of 5 times there, have resulted in my going home without digging a single signal. The last time I got anything was when I went to it with the 15 inch CoilTek coil on the Nox, and pretty much dug any questionable signals in hopes of something deep. There's a couple of spots on this place where some kind of forging went on. There's coal cinders, pig iron, and a bunch of iron. My plan for the morning was to play with the Manticore for a while, then break out the D2 with 9 inch coil and hit the iron patches. Well...I never got the D2 out of the truck. Didn't need to. I took the Manticore, turned it on, noise canceled it, ground balanced it, and that was it. Everything else was factory settings. I took about 4 steps and got a signal. 4 way hit...put pops the big piece of brass. I thought it was a folded sword plate at first but don't know what it is. Then the fun began. I was happy with that one recovery. But that wasn't all for the day. I am VERY pleased so far. Ring is a 925 wedding band...no doubt from a sled day. A couple drop minies, camp lead, eagle button, and several clad coins. I like it so far and haven't even dug into the special sauce settings. I was sending my buddy pictures as this stuff was coming out of the ground and he had to come by because he thought I was BSing him on where I was.

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.

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.

Holy cow I got a tracking number through Cabelas/Bass Pro. FedEx says delivery of today the 12th. I don't see how...I just ordered it the 11th. But I'll take it if it comes.