longbow62

Great finds, congrats!

Thanks guys!

I headed back to the old school yard this afternoon where I had found 8 silvers there on two trips this year before today. I got 4 more bringing my total there to 12. This was my first hunt with the Manticore update. This ground is really mild. Not a lot of surface trash, and while you here a lot of iron grunts it's not much of a nuisance. As far as the update goes from what I could tell the detector seemed more stable. For whatever reason I had to check less falsing iron. I did not have the Stabilizer turned on. I run a pretty simple setup. Ferrous limits 8 high, 3 low. 5 tones with the bins setup to be louder on nickels and silver. AT-HC with sensitivity 23-24, and Recovery on 4. The ground was pretty dry so I tried to limit my digging. I dug no nickel signals. I only dug one Wheat cent because it was right next to one of the Mercs. I posted some photos of the quarter depths, but the Merc without the hole in it was about as deep. These were no brainer solid dig me tones and I.D.'s Silver in this mild ground rings higher. Even the worn almost slick Barber quarter rang up 88-90. The Washington rang up 90-92. I'm pretty sure there is more there. These deep signals have a rather tight field of detection, and quite enough you just about need to swing right over them to avoid passing them up. So after today I'm up to 32 silver coins for the year. All with the Manticore.

I took mine in the back yard day before yesterday, on a very deep quarter it was banging it on 20 sensitivity AT-HC. I compared with my 800 also on 20 sensitivity Park1 and the Manticore seemed to hit the clad quarter somewhat better. I could get the coil a little bit higher off the ground with the Manticore. So I guess my update went fine.

Well not to brag, but I did both the detector and headphones in under 15 minutes on one computer. So there!

I have heard the same thing, but I'm not sure I would believe it without actually seeing a Deus II and a Nox swinging over the same target in loose dirt and one doing better than the other. It would seem to me the more fluff there is the more air there is which should not make any difference. I just don't get how fluff can be tougher than compacted ground when air test are always deeper than in the ground test.

Amazing! Dream find for sure.

I got my Manticore Jan. 10th so I have been waiting on the smaller coil a long time. So long that I have just quit fretting about it. I don't have ultra mild soil. I'd say 80% of the places I hunt the soil mineralization would be medium. I don't get these excessive fluctuating I.D.'s with my Manticore. I can't speak about the 900. I can call silver dimes from clad dimes more times than not. Even clad quarters from silver quarters. So what do you guys mean exactly by jumpy I.D.'s?

Basically I am very impressed with the Manticore. I have not been digging much lately due to very hard dry ground. Up until it got dry I was really doing great with the Manticore even in some hard hunted spots I thought were pretty much hunted out. I'm just surprised I have not seen a lot of post mirroring my experiences with the Manticore. I expected more praise based on what I have seen so far.

Seemed like most of it was before it was actually in people's hands though. On the other forum I frequent it's been pretty much the same thing. Not a lot of post about finds or settings. Not like it was with the Equinox.

Yes it's very dry here. We have mostly red clay. I have not turned my Manticore on in two weeks. It's going to take a real toad strangler to soften things up. I was on a real roll with the Manticore until the ground got hard.

I have dug several silver coins slightly above or below the center line that were not the perfectly round dot. Also there have been even more that are on the the center line that were also a small blob or smudge. When centered over the target these silver coins never had a consistent red line under the I.D. as I circled and hovered over the target. If the red line ever popped up under the I.D. on these it was not consistently there at all. I swear this has happened several times in places with older iron. The scenario goes something like this. You get a high tone blip during a swing and investigate. You get a good tone and number one way. You turn 90 degrees and it's gone. You the pivot back to the direction you initially heard the target, and now it is either gone completely or a very random blip of a high tone that is not remotely as consistent as it was when it first stopped you. These frustrate me as I feel I am wasting time. I have found the Manticore to have more of these disappearing ghost signals than the Equinox 800. It's AT-HC that produces these the most from what I have seen, but AT-HC to me is best at finding silver versus the other programs.

I basically do the same. Every time I have dug a signal that is fairly solid one way, then turn 90 degrees and I start getting a red line under the numbers it has been iron. I was basically wondering if that had been everyone's experience.

I did forget to mention the program I use 90% of the time is AT-HC. GB_Amateur when you get a chance and I will try to do the same. Try to GB and swing over your test garden coins. Then raise and lower your GB manually to see if you get any iron grunts or red underlined I.D.. I'm wondering how much the GB being not exact can cause the detector to misinterpret targets. The weird thing is I dug some super deep stuff last weekend in mild ground zero red line. The ground was really mild. Sandy farm land near the Mississippi river. It may take more mineralized ground to get the red underlined I.D. on deeper targets that could be coins. Like I mentioned the Manticore does a good job on deeper silver/coins, and when the target is actually a coin from what I can tell all signs of determining targets, I.D., Tone, and Non-Ferrous Line are pretty spot on.

I am not a dig it all guy. I'm 60 years old and in great health for my age, but I'm still particular about the targets I dig. The less I dig equates to longer overall hunts. Has anyone dug a good target with the Manticore where one way you had a great tone and I.D., but when you turned 90 you got a red line and not quite as solid an I.D.? What I have dug in that situation has turned out to be iron. My Ferrous Limits are 8 upper, and 3 lower. It seems all my silver coin finds are pretty solid. Many are really deep, but they are solid. No red lines at all. I hate to walk away from silver coins, but I don't like digging dry holes.

Thanks, good luck! Thanks, it's been very rare for me to ever find two silver coins in the same hole, but twice this year so far.

I've been on a tear with the Manticore lately. 10 silver coins the last three weekends. This afternoon hunting at a school yard I got 6 silvers and a silver ring earlier this year it was tough to say the least. I thought I was going to get skunked. Mild sandy soil with a lot of clad deep enough to be silver. Also a lot of crazy deep Wheat Cents ringing up 76-78. Some times I pass them if I'm tired of digging, but today I was digging anything silver deep. Finally I got a pretty solid very deep beep ringing 88-94 depending on the angle I swung over it. When I removed the plug I my pin-pointer beeped in the bottom of the hole. I dug with my fingers, and I saw the Merc in the bottom of the hole. I thought dang that was ringing high. Stuck the pin-pointer back in and heard another target in the bottom side and flipped out a Walker half. It all made sense then. My second Walker from this school yard.

I mentioned in another post I was kinda surprised there were no real bugs with the Manticore software. Meaning they had it pretty well sorted out before release. I do hope there are updates that either add a feature or improve some things. I thought the F2 update on the Equinox was a very nice update. In my opinion there should be a team that would be working on Manticore improvements for a period of time after a release. Whether or not I'm being realistic about that or not I'm not sure. I'd hope they just don't call it good and move on without investigating improvements. Adding one more thing. If a known machine is good and selling is it better to update that machine to make it better if possible vs. releasing another detector? It would seem to me if you could update detectors with positive performance updates that would trump releasing another model. That way your not retooling and diluting models you might still be selling. I'm not in the business of designing and selling detectors. So what do know.

I'm waiting for the small coil myself, and also hoping they send out an update to improve it where possible. Surely there will be a few tweaks possible. I am amazed there have been no real software bugs found so far.

I've really been surprised there has not been as much discussion about the Manticore as I thought there would be since it came out. That is much other than the ability to find one initially. I don't know how hard they are to get presently. Have they not sold that many I wonder? I'm doing what I consider great with mine. I'm far from a detector expert, but have detected long enough with Minelab detectors, and especially the Equinox to understand the Manticore decently well. I'm pretty sure it bridges the gap between say the CTX and Equinox. The Manticore's upgraded EMI mitigation as others have said really sets it apart. I have used AT-HC most of the time, and I personally think it's better than Park1 on the Equinox for silver. I have pulled silver from places I thought there was none left. Places that I had really worn out with the 800. Not like one silver, but several in one hunt. Five this past weekend from a park. The only reason I made the 45 minute drive was because weekend before last I had a 4 silver hunt from another site I was pretty sure I'd be wasting my time at. I ran the Equinox at both these places on the ragged edge settings wise. Park1, F2-0, Horseshoe on, Recovery 3-4, and Sensitivity as high as I could stay stable. I run the Manticore the same way basically AT-HC, lowered Ferrous-Limits, no discrimination/horseshoe on, Recovery 3-4, and only like 22-23 sensitivity. The crazy thing is mostly the silver I dug was not like really iffy. It was straight up I think I need to dig that for sure. A few were that's silver no doubt about it. One particular Merc I dug last Saturday was in horrible trash, but when I hit it I was stopped in my tracks. It was really tight not a lot of wiggle room. It was about 6"-7" inches deep, but I could circle it getting dime numbers a the way around despite there being trash pretty close by. I have also noticed I have no problem calling silver dimes and quarters for the most part. Silver just on average I.D.'s higher than clad in my dirt. I always thought silver rung up higher on the Equinox did too, but to me the Manticore seems to do it more often. It makes it a bit more easy to tell. For instance silver dimes seem to hit 83-84 for me. Silver quarters 90-92. Half dollars 94+. Anyway the more I use the Manticore the more impressed I am with it.

Congrats on the nice finds in what sounds like very tough dirt.

I'm up to 26 silver coins for the year. All dimes except for 3 quarters and one half dollar. All with the Manticore. I got mine Jan. 10th. I only really get to hunt weekends. I don't live in a part of the country with endless rows of houses that are of the age to produce silver. All of my silver is from previously hunted places or public spots I know have been hit pretty hard before due to there just being deep silver dimes left. The silver I do find at these places being either in pretty heavy trash or close to edge of detection deep. There is a less of a fine line between my digs and no digs compared to the equinox. I don't know yet if the Manticore is giving me more positive dig info than the Equinox did. As of right now I expect it is because it seems I have more confidence on the ones I do decide to dig. I do have to scrutinize more falsing iron with the Manticore. I have a lot more great sounding one way targets with the Manticore. Only to turn and it go either straight to an iron tone or jumping up into the ferrous line underlined in red. I still feel I have a lot to learn about this detector.

Not long ago I found a 1965 Washington about 2 inches deep. It had about the same wear as the suspect quarter. It was not even corroded as badly. It looks to me like it's a somewhat fresh drop with little corrosion. Plus it has way more corrosion than what is normal for silver. Almost every silver I dig has no visible corrosion on it. When they do have corrosion it's almost always a little black staining. I'm not even sure the black staining would even be considered corrosion.

He says basically what I've been saying all along which makes me glad it's not just me thinking this. The Manticore is really a tough machine to use mentally. It's more work. It's more fatiguing. The 800 is more pleasurable to use in my opinion, but I have not used the 800 since I got the Manticore. The Manticore chirps on a lot of stuff, and one way falses quite a bit. On the right iron object it can 2-way false. That being said I really think it's doing some things other detectors maybe can't. The last 6 silvers I've found came from previously hunted spots. 4 today from a school yard playground I and a couple of more people have worn out many times with the 800, Etrac, and even the DII has been there some. It's mild sandy ground and the coins a deep. Some very deep. If I had just found one silver today I might have said yeah we just missed that one, but not 4. The same thing a couple of weeks ago. A yard I and a buddy hit really hard a couple of times. We got several silvers a piece on the initial hunts. We decided to hit it again. It's an empty rental. We got mostly fresh drops but in the area we got most of the silver 2 years ago I pulled 2 more silver dimes from the side we really scrutinized. It wasn't that large an area either. We don't normally leave much because we go back over each others side of the yard. There is no way to say the Manticore hit them while others couldn't, but that hunt and again today was very surprising. Anyway AT-HC Recovery 3-4 is my go to. I've lowered the ferrous limits to what Tom D. equated to F2-0 on the 800. I did this right off the bat so I'm used to it. I think it's 8 upper and 3 lower. If I was in shotgun iron I would be using AT-LC with the same ferrous limits settings.

I my dirt which is mild to medium I am calling pennies from dimes with ease with the Manticore. I do not get wildly fluctuating I.D.'s. either. I think I can call all coins as good with the Manticore as can the 800. Including IHP's from Zincolns. I never minded the compressed I.D. of the 800 either. I was quite good with calling most coins, except maybe nickels. Just a guess, but it must be the dirt, and the compressed I.D. on the 800 makes it appear more stable than the 99 scale of the 900.