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A little update, after a bit of testing I'm seeing it as more sensitive than the XP Mi-4 so the only one more sensitive than it out of my pinpointers is the TRX when set to maximum sensitivity, and even then the TRX for me at least can't be used in maximum sensitivity as it reacts to the ground too much and is unstable, so far the Sphinx remains stable and doesn't react to the ground on maximum sensitivity. I'm yet to test how it affects the GPX 6000, 5000 and GPZ 7000 but I believe it doesn't cut off the coil like the Pro-Find and XP-Mi4 do when turned off so it's likely to be problematic with the GPZ. I'll try get a video or two up next week, I'm very busy at the moment building myself a little cabin for my detecting stuff to go into and when not doing that I'm skiing so I just have no free time to make videos.

Yes, I now have mine. It was a pretty funny little marketing video for the pinpointer.

To their credit they listened with the tiny gold complaint on the Manticore, which I'm thankful for. I can't imagine too many people contacted them saying it's not as good as the Equinox 800 on tiny gold nuggets when comparing 11" coil with 11" coil. When I contacted them to discuss it, they were fantastic and then, a couple of months later a firmware update comes out that largely sorted it out. Their issue is lack of communication with their customer base on a global scale, yes individually if you contact them, they're great and tell you what you need to know, I speak for Minelab Australia rather than a middle man like one of the overseas branches largely there to handle sales and distribution. They have the means to do it with their website and they're active on Facebook for marketing so keeping customers updated on delays in product, eta's, problems etc would be cheap and easy yet they don't do it and it just annoys people. They need a middle ground between Nokta that are excessive with communication and that it itself can be problematic. They should have never killed off Treasure talk and moved onto social media detect-spurts either, big mistake. They went from technical experts writing excellent informative documents to marketers doing a poor job of representing a product. I'm a massive Minelab fan, they're my favourites by far as by and large are their products but they're certainly not perfect, nor are their products so they should appreciate constructive feedback to help improve themselves as a business and their product, and surveys or feedback forms are a way to do so.

I haven't found a solution, even with my little Keene A52S sluice in the Arrow I can fill a large coffee jar in an hour with black sand. It clogs up the sluice in no time. I've tried magnets up the front, they're useless with the amount of black sand. My daughter liked to keep it so I bag it up for her. With the gold being small I just have to do a lot of clean outs. Your pan resembles my issue except you've got more gold in it than I get and if I try suck the sand out of the pan with one of the magnet clean up tools plenty of gold goes with it as it seems to get stuck in the black sand.

Yes, it would just go to them, nobody would see it.

They should do a submit informaiton form on their website where users can report what they're finding with firmware updates or with detectors in general, a bit like a feedback form, that way they'll gather more information along with not having to search through various forums and Facebook posts to find out information about users' thoughts, if end users could just submit what they're finding it would be beneficial for them, I think and cut down the number of complaints on forums. It's the ultimate way of showing they care. As many know I do a lot of skiing over winter, I scan my pass going onto lifts and then the ski field knows where I've been and how many runs I've done and I can see my statistics for the season, another benefit of this is they gather informaiton about where people are going and what they're doing, more often than not after a day of skiing I get an email asking me to fill out a survey on my day, it asks various questions about my thoughts on things that matter like if I used the cafes and how my food was, if I used the toilets and how I found them for cleanliness etc, along with my thoughts on the snow conditions, grooming of the snow and how the lifts were organized with any queues and so on. They also have a feedback field at the end where you can type anything about your day, and to ensure people fill it out they randomly give away passes to people who have done the survey. Imagine how much valuable information Minelab could gather easily doing something similar, when you register your warranty they have your email address, they could send out a random survey link asking how you're going with your detector, any changes or improvements you would like to see, any problems you're having. The same with firmware updates, a month or so after you've updated, they could send out a survey to see how it's going or even just have a form on the website you could fill out and submit any video of your problems if any. It might even keep a lot of the complaint videos off Youtube damaging their brand. If they're going to make us beta testers they may as well do it thoroughly and take advantage of it in full, it would benefit us all including them to have a better product.

Sorry to hear, was he on this forum and if so which name did he use? 😞

Yes, I've bought a few Detech coils off them, they're good, fast shipping considering and I was provided tracking details. Trustworthy seller.

I love pin pointers, they're my hidden addiction. I even buy spares of my favourite models. I have two Garrett AT's and 3 TRX's, admittedly the 3 TRX's were to try buy one that works as well as people say they do thinking I must be getting bad ones 🙂 The best thing about them in park type situations is you don't need to make a mess, you can do neat tidy holes and often not even need a digging tool to do the least damage possible to be a good detector user and leave the place as good or better than you found it. My dig hole without a pinpointer and my dig hole with one I never leave home detecting without one, I'm one of the few that use them for gold prospecting too, and find them beneficial for that also. You'll see me take advantage of it in this short video, knowing where to bash the rock out, no easy task so knowing where to do it makes life easier.

They did a doozy of a "we are beta testers" moment with the Vanquish, included rechargeable batteries with the 540 yet hadn't even tried them in it or something as the battery meter was all out of whack so it flicked off as flat when there was plenty of battery left with the NiMH batteries having a lower starting voltage, they were not showing full on the charge meter when full at their 1.2 volts instead of the usual 1.5 volts of AA's and dropping out as flat before they needed too. Fixed in the only Vanquish firmware update, it really felt like they made a last-minute decision to include the batteries with the 540 model to further justify a higher price yet had never even put any in it or considered the different voltages at all.

As gold prospectors and gold rushes dwindle, they're rapidly moving their focus to where the money is and they've said so in their investor reports so it's not a surprise, coin, jewellery and relic hunters. This is another example of that and probably something they need to do. They'll sell many thousands more Manticores than they will 6000's, they'll sell far more Nox 700 and 900's than they will anything else on their books. A bulk of the 6000 sales have already happened and this was evident with many dealers around the world still selling EMI problem models many months after the fix was introduced into all new detectors and many still selling them now. 6000 sales will be at a trickle now where as the Nox 700/900 and Manticore are still in their peak sales period so they'll focus events and marketing on them.

I'm buying both as soon as I can get them as I have confidence in the Manticore, I will likely grumble about price regardless as I know they'll charge more for them than the Nox versions just because they can and we get a NZ tax here, well that's what I call it, everything is more expensive to live in such an awesome place but it's really because we are one of the most isolated independent countries in the world with a small population. 🙂 I guess I'll just be like a Legend owner and take the gamble the detector will become what I want it to be, it took them until the current firmware to really get it how most people are happy with it, so Minelab have some time up their sleeves to fix up the Manticore, it's very close to being a great detector, just not quite there yet. It seems all new detectors now that have an update feature are released in their beta phase and we the buyers end up being the global testing program and then reports of problems gradually get fixed and make the detectors great and I believe Minelab will get the Manticore where it needs to be, they're close so it's worth the gamble on it.

Thanks, interesting they went with 9.5kHz rather than the usual 12 most pin pointers sit on and the lower frequency would normally mean less sensitive to small stuff.

It performs how you would expect a 10x5" coil to perform in comparison to the other coil sizes, not near as deep as the bigger coils on bigger deeper targets and will miss or miss identify a lot of deep targets the 11" and 15x12" can get easily much like the 6" in that regard and that is to be expected, deeper than the bigger coils on very small targets, not as sensitive as the 6" to tiny targets, covers more ground than the 6", similar ground coverage to the 11". Has a hot nose for prodding and poking for those looking for small gold. Quality appears to be good so far, is bump sensitive if improperly ground balanced or in ground the Nox struggles with, as are the other coils especially the 6" so ensuring good ground balance and appropriate sensitivity levels are the solution. To me it was a no surprises coil, acted how a 10x5" should and met expectations. Happy with mine. I think once you've used enough coils you get a pretty good understanding of what to expect from a coil of a certain shape, size and type and rarely do coils deviate from those expectations when it comes to performance.

Out of interest, how would have the Equinox 800 handled that little test? The difference between pre-update and after is very obvious in that video, can't really deny there isn't something wrong with the update in your conditions. They've obviously changed something that's not gone to plan. If we look at the changelog the only thing it could be is number 7 which is the very generic fixes that they don't want to say directly what they've tinkered with when they say "and more" Programmer speak for too embarrassing to say what we have fixed or in this case possibly messed up, I think they've improved ID stability in milder soils with the update, it wasn't listed but falls into the "and more" I think, and whatever changes has possibly caused your issue. I really hope they can sort all this stuff out with future updates the Manticore is so close to being a good detector yet so far at the same time. WHAT IS NEW? Stabiliser Setting: A new Stabiliser feature has been added to All Terrain Search Modes, significantly enhancing useability in iron trash. It improves the overall stability of the audio and Target IDs at sites where iron falsing may be experienced, and adds nuance to better distinguish good targets from iron. Adjust from 0 to 12 and make false detections a thing of the past. Enhanced Goldfield Search Mode: Take advantage of greater sensitivity to small gold with the power of MANTICORE. Soft Key Shortcuts: Take charge of MANTICORE with soft key shortcut functions added to control Search Mode, Flashlight, Display Brightness, Sensitivity Boost, Clear ID Map, Speaker Mute, Recovery Speed, and Frequency. Customisable Ferrous Target ID: Make it personal by highlighting Ferrous Target IDs in red. Underwater Headphone Boost: Enhanced audio awaits with Underwater Boost to increase headphone volume when using Minelab Waterproof Accessory Headphones (sold separately). Language Customisation: Access the user interface in your choice of language from English, French, German, Czech, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Hindi. General Stability Enhancements: Including improvements to Beach Mode Ground balance on dry sand, Search Mode default settings, wireless audio connection stability improvements and more.

Yes I found keeping sensitivity below 16 improved it greatly and still maintains the depth of the Nox on 25, the extra sensitivity hopefully will be good with the small coil on gold where it’s a dig it all situation anyway. The Nox is still more stable though even taking into account the bigger ID range.

16x10 won’t add much depth at all over 11” if any, even 17” round adds no worthwhile depth on bigger stuff to justify the bigger heavier coil. The 16x10 benefit is a light coil on a light detector to cover ground quickly and for that I think it would be fantastic. A bit worried after using the 14x9 just how good it will be though.

I hope so

Is this pinpointer your creation? I've not had it long enough to form a proper opinion but it seems pretty good, the phone app although not in English is easy to use and excellent to make settings control easier than annoying button and beep combinations of other pinpointers. If someone can use a Nokta detector like the Simplex or Legend they can navigate the app easily enough without speaking Russian 🙂 I suggest making an English app though, it's not that many words to translate and would make a nice difference rather than just using the little icons as a guide as to what settings do. It's not as sensitive to small gold as the Whites TRX (Discontinued anyway) but appears slightly better than the Minelab Pro-Find 35 and better than the Garrett AT. The TRX had the sensitivity in air tests although I was never able to run in maximum sensitivity in the ground as it would be unstable, the Sprinx so far has ran mostly stable for me. Sometimes after large metal it continues to sound off until I turn it off and on but other than that it's ran perfectly stable in maximum sensitivity. It was pleasing to see maximum sensitivity is default, often it's not as you can't run maximum anyway like the TRX. I will be putting up some video comparing it when I get time. I had not yet compared to my XP Mi-4 as I'd lost it, but found it this morning on my GPZ harness. I haven't used the harness in ages or the Mi-4 🙂

Except a lot of electronic components have "powered on hours" that they're expected to last. Here's a story on it regarding computer power supplies and capacitors https://www.xppower.com/resources/blog/electrolytic-capacitor-lifetime-in-power-supplies The placement of components matters too, as operating temperature can significantly shorten their life, and detectors in very hot desert climates with the sun beating on them are likely to last a shorter time than one in a cooler climate for this very reason. So, Frank who goes out and uses his detector in the desert most days in it's black sealed housing to be waterproof with the sun beating on it is likely going to have a significantly shorter life of his detector than Robert who detects weekends randomly and does so in a the not so sunny Scotland looking for relics largely in a cloudy environment with blustery cool Scottish winds. Some components can last as little as a few thousand hours in some conditions. And this would be a warranty under a lifetime warranty.

Finally someone who's noticed or acknowledged the 6000 larger target depth has diminished over older models, it's fine tuned for small gold which makes sense with that being a bulk of the gold people find and it's really stirred up a flurry or excitement with people finding gold they'd missed in the past with their stock GPZ setup or their older GPX model that's for sure so Minelab ultimately achieved what they wanted to with the 6000 and it's a great success because of that, completely makes sense why they never released the small coil that they indicated was coming for the GPZ when you think about it. I'm going to be very wary if a CTX replacement comes out, no longer am I an early adopter, learnt my lesson well and truly. 🙂 I hope one does come out as the CTX really is a brilliant machine in the right conditions, I think some are probably missing out on seeing what the CTX can really do due to their soil conditions and the CTX not quite cutting the mustard in tougher soils, if they can use what they've learnt since to improve that and people in worse soil can see the true beauty of the CTX it would be a great thing. I like the Manticore, but I'm not as excited about it as I should be, I guess my expectations were so high with how great the Nox 800 was and I expected something of a jump over it's performance, not largely a similar machine with a nice 2D target trace feature and worse Target ID's by a reasonable margin. They're going to have to work a lot harder on new models to impress me and take my money in the future, I've said that in the past and caved but I'm sticking to that this time, no longer letting excitement get in the way of common sense 🙂

It's an odd situation really, the more successful manufacturers are at selling their product the more likely they'll kill their own business 🙂

Classic bigger coil vs smaller coil on a deep target, the X-Terra is lucky as it can run the larger Nox coils where as the Vanquish is limited by its range of available coils, I find the Vanquish very deep and very accurate with Target ID with it's standard coil though and great for my needs.

A good collection of finds there. What are all the wooden poles sticking out of the water for?

There is nothing wrong with the Garrett AT, currently my favourite pinpointer. I have my doubts the Sphinx is going to be be my new favourite but it's too early to know. I really like the phone configuration app, so much easier than trying to get these stupid button sequences some pin pointers have to do settings. The Garrett is easy enough on the button, so is the Pro-Find, the TRX and F-Pulse are a pain to do settings on but this Sphinx just has so many settings that having the App just had to happen really, you can set your preferred audio tone and everything. You can even do a custom sensitivity setting by configuring it with a target to get the depth you're chasing on that target, I guess in some situations being able to do this maybe handy. I may end up preferring it for coin hunting than gold prospecting as in early testing it's not showing this incredible sensitivity that was mentioned in the review by Cipher with it blowing the TRX away. Just not seeing that.