phrunt

WOWOWOWOWOW they've made the 6" Concentric coil. I'm so glad they're including coil covers, the covers are just impossible to get in NZ otherwise, and importing a coil cover from the USA costs what you guys pay for the coil 🙂 I guess they felt the other sizes were not going to be good sellers, but in reality that Concentric is the must have coil for 24k owners. This is great news, thanks Garrett.

At least VLF's have plenty of competition, if it was anything like the lack of competition for PI type gold detectors the Manticore would be on offer for $8000.

Probably true, Target ID's are certainly a shortcut to some success. For the average beginner learning the usage and nuances of a no-ID detector would be enough to put many off the hobby although a lot of the entry level type no ID detectors just have a beep or door bell with no way to discern targets.

Have you just considered doing a factory reset to see if it changes it back?

I don't know why but it seems difficult soil people are less happy with the update perhaps and mild soil people and finding it fantastic. I personally am happy with it, in fact I'm now pretty happy with my Manticore and it has potential to be my favourite VLF once I get more coils for it, that's my sticking point at the moment, no big and no small coil. I was a bit disappointed at the start with it's bouncy ID's and now that's come pretty good with the update. The small gold sensitivity now looks to be at least equal to the Nox when testing 11" vs 11". It will be interesting if it can pull ahead when it's got the small coil as if the smaller coil = less EMI and I can crank that gain up further I think the Manticore may win. As a coin hunting detector all I care about is deep coins and the update has maintained its depth, I'm seeing no difference in depth at all, with the only difference better ID's. I'm really pleased Minelab listened about the small gold thing, when I emailed them in Australia about it and they said they would look into it and try improve it I thought that was just a way of blowing me off, then the firmware comes up with it improved I couldn't believe it. They weren't aware on very tiny gold it was worse than the Equinox, I guess being Aussies they're used to bigger gold so all comparison tests would have been done with 0.0.3 of a gram and up or something, calling that tiny gold, but I was after the 0.00X of a gram stuff which the Nox was good at, now the Manticore seems like it is also. I like the idea of the big red numbers, if you're using the detector underwater they're much easier to see on the screen too than a little line.

I had forgotten about that, I must revisit it, thanks 😉 For anyone wondering, a time saving link

You make some sense there, however volume of sales eats up development costs, by charging so much they're limiting the volume of sales. It's long been a struggle of the business owner, to come in at cheaper prices and get massive volume of sales or try give the impression of high end and charge more knowing less sales. Either method can work, I think the Equinox hit the sweet spot of affordably vs performance then Nokta came in and has largely taken that away from them with cheaper prices due to their manufacturing costs and whatever other reasons, clearly they're still making a great profit growing to be one of the big players in a small amount of time and this hasn't been unnoticed by Minelab and their lawyers. Many of the US manufacturers can't compete in a global market because of the costs of producing product at home, Minelab if made in Australia would encounter the same problem with some of the highest wages in the world which is why they moved to a much cheaper country for manufacturing using Malaysia's cheap labour among other things, truck drivers in Australia can earn more than doctors in many countries. So while manufacturing costs may seem like they could be much more, in the right countries they're really not all that much different. I know a guy that invented some odd contraption to use a chainsaw for wood carving, to manufacturer locally it wasn't going to be viable, people won't pay over a thousand for it, so he took a gamble and outsourced as a small business manufacturing to Asia, it ended up costing him a very small amount per unit just over $100 even with shipping included and it has turned into quite a good business. Imagine how good this process works for bigger manufacturers.

Wonder if our buddy @strick can x-ray some Manticore coils to see what's going on in there 😉 I don't think they should cost that, they proved with the Vanquish they can make Nox coils a lot cheaper than they do, then the X-terra comes out and further reassures us we are being taken for a ride. I'm sure even if Manticore coils are slightly more complex the cost to make them wouldn't be all that much more. If XP were aiming at doing cheaper prices with their gear the Manticore would be a lot cheaper than it is, XP kept the pricing high thereby opening up Minelab to do another high priced detector, if it was just Nokta vs Minelab you would watch the Minelab prices fall off a cliff.

I wonder why you were only finding big nuggets with the stock coil? For me it's been very sensitive and easily finding 0.03 of a gram nuggets and similar more often than any others. Maybe your stock coil is one of the many duds.

Keep us updated when you've flashed back if your detector comes right, very interested in this as it's such a weird thing. I guess Minelab USA being just middle men didn't know, that's why it's best to speak to service@minelab.com.au for stuff, they know what they're talking about. I don't know how we all missed the dots 🙂 The ML105 have the same dots for it.

Just put the video up, you won't hurt Minelab's feelings, they don't have any 🙂

Yup, whoops, just woke up. 🙂

Are you getting this many nuggets on a day trip Mitchel or is this a bunch that you've found over time? I'm quite jealous of the quantities. Rarely do I come home with as many at a time as you're showing in these past few outings.

I think the change in flash tool is related to the processor change to the Nordic, the Equinox was a different tool for the different hardware, it flashed the bootloader and as part of the flash and if it fails or is corrupted then kiss it goodbye, which is why if with your Equinox and detectors like the Legend if your flash is interrupted from a power loss or you knocking your USB cable out you can brick your detector, with the Manticore you can rip your cord out in the middle of the update all you like, multiple times, all you have to do is plug your detector in and start the process again, the worst case scenario doing this is you may lose any saved settings. The Manticore doesn't seem to update the firmware on an EEPROM at all, it seems as if it's copying files onto some internal storage more like how the operating system runs on a computer and part of this process would always be CRC checking just like it is with an EEPROM firmware flash, if a file lands on there and CRC checks incorrectly the tool would reattempt the transfer and if it keeps erroring on the CRC check the tool would report an error and say update failed. Minelab won't be the ones making the flash tool, they're customizing a manufacturer supplied tool, putting the user interface onto it basically. They could easily release an older version tool for people to roll back if they wanted to, they'll have that readily available, they've been chopping the firmware around on test detectors for a year or more. I believe you'd have to roll back your headphones too as the headphones don't seem to connect to the new firmware until they're updated as well so they would have to also release a rollback headphone firmware. I have no doubt Daniel has a problem, but I wonder if the problem was preexisting and the new firmware made it apparent, like a slightly out of spec coil or something. It would be so good if someone lived right near him and could troubleshoot it together swapping coils and playing around to directly compare the two. It would be good if Minelab put an initial release firmware on their website for people to roll back if they wanted to for whatever reason.

The story under it with the history of gold thieves in Australia was a good read https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-03/gold-stealing-history-western-australia-perth-mint/102170820

They took your money for a product that doesn't even exist? That's crazy.

It's good to see it's doing the job for you Mitchel, aside from the 8" the 15" CC is my favourite X-coil, each have their strong points though, I'd be hard pressed to choose 😉

User preference, I can run mine 35 out of 35 if I want to in some locations and it runs pretty stable considering, I've found 20 my sweet spot out of 35 in most cases as it gives the best target ID's with the new update, anymore and EMI and possibly the ground can interfere with the stability of ID's. Low end detectors tend to be wound back so they run stable even at maximum sensitivity, detectors like the Manticore, Axiom, possibly the Legend (I've never used it) allow you to go well above stable sensitivity settings so in the odd occasion you can use it you can really crank it up. If a detector runs perfectly stable at maximum sensitivity I'm more concerned then I am missing targets than if it runs wild at maximum sensitivity. I think 25% of sensitivity is too low, and I wouldn't run that low, but running the Manticore at 16 out of 35 gives great depth I think Equal to the Equinox, and very stable operation.

If there is one thing Minelab are good at it's annoying customers, it would not surprise me at all if they've made their Bluetooth LE use a custom connection protocol so only their headphones work, it's how they roll, just look at their coils. I wouldn't expect anything less, perhaps they want to make a few bucks licensing out headphone manufacturing rights to some company willing to pay them. Fortunately for me I'm a speaker user so this time I don't need to care.

Contact these people. https://www.centrevilleelectronics.net/

Sorry I wasn't saying you were odd, I was saying the occasional person is saying the 12x7" is more sensitive than the 10x5" so I wanted to find out as I want to use the most sensitive coil for the small gold I have around here. The 12x7" appears to be a great coil.

I think it's really cool you're in these shows Steve, I like the shows, they're entertaining, they don't have to be 100% real to be worth watching and in fact if they were they'd likely be a lot less popular as they're be quite boring. No show would want to follow me on a days gold detecting digging thousands of pellets to find a few crumbs 🙂 They're entertainment, not a documentary. Some happy snaps from the episodes They didn't like your shirt obviously and blurred it out, but were happy to keep the AT Gold hat on display 🙂 It's good to see Garrett getting on these TV shows, Aussie Gold Hunters is all about Minelab marketing, Garrett got their foot in the door once with the ATX when the Gold Gypsies dropped their Minelabs and used them for one season but it caused a bit of a ruckus. Now the Axiom is out it would have been a better time to do it. It's funny they call Steve a gold detector, but in a way I guess you could say he is 🙂 Cool detecting area, I'd be having a ball there. Just a 22 shell! I'll keep an eye out of Hoffmans, It's only up to episode 2 but no sign of you yet.

I think your soil conditions have something to do with that Daniel, I find the 17x13" deeper on the CTX, just like I find the 15x12" deeper on the Nox. I like the 17x13" for the CTX so much I bought a spare one in case they discontinue the CTX and they become hard to get which they already are here , neither of the NZ dealers bother to import CTX coils as they just don't sell I guess or if mine fails with ears snapping off or something as that coil is my perfect coil on the CTX for my needs.

buying one! Where this pinpointer begins to walk away from others is in its sensitivity to sub-gram and micro jewelry invisible to pinpointers like my Bullsye TRX

It's getting pretty cheap for people to get into the hobby and get a reasonable detector, they don't need to scrape the bottom of the barrel anymore with detectors with no target IDs.