phrunt

That Gold Bug 2 chart is real and carries over to all types of detecting. I've had nuggets that a small coil picks up where as a bigger one won't see at all, and I've had coins where the 11" coil hits on them and the 10x5" coil misses them entirely. Most of my coins are deep, If I use a smaller coil I'll only find the junk modern targets that are often more shallow and next to no silvers as they are deep. Even with the GPX 6000 I found a nugget with the 11" stock coil that's JW's 17" GPX coil had no response on at all as the 17' just didn't have the depth of the 11" on this size target. I've seen people wondering if the new 12x7" Nugget Finder coil for the 6000 will be as deep as the 11", I'm confident it is not in the right targets, but it will be deeper on smaller targets, there will be a sweet spot target where the 11" shines over the 12x7", that's just a fact and it's how coils work. You use the coil that suits the job you do, for gold with my gold mostly being small but also quite deep I increase my finds by using smaller coils, for coins mostly being deep and not a whole lot of trash the bigger the coil the better. I'm fortunate to have a rather large collection of coils so I've had a lot of time using a variety of coils to work out which coils suit me best, especially with my GPZ where I'm fortunate to have almost every coil ever made for the detector so you get a bit of a feel about coils performance with target sizes and depths and if only buying one coil you want a middle ground coil that's good on everything but not the best of course, this is why VLF general purpose manufacturers have settled on this 11" size.

That's where marketing works, getting their name to be household name not just an industry name, Garrett has done that to an extent especially in USA, Minelab has done a fantastic job of it in our part of the world, Aussie Gold Hunters is a well known show, on prime time TV, very few people haven't seen it and it's one of the more popular shows around and mostly to people who have never metal detected, it's all been about Minelab and has Minelab advertisements in the commercial breaks. Brand recognition works. There are other things on these detector boxes that sound appealing, waterproof, vibrating handles, flash lights,shrinking shafts, all things someone with no idea about detecting would see as appealing. There is also appearance, the boxes of the detectors being pretty or professional looking helps too. Wild claims about performance or usage purposes are on the boxes though. From what I've seen this is the most popular cheap detector in NZ from our biggest electronics chain store as we don't have First Texas cheapies here. Ideal for beach combing and prospecting they say... prospecting if the gold is almost a gram in mild soil, and beach combing if you only hunt dry sand. Not only is it a popular seller it is often available on the second hand market cheap from buyers who didn't like it or detecting after buying it. The cheap market is a tough one to crack due to claims like that on detectors not capable for the task they're saying they are so brand recognition is more important than ever in the entry level market.

It's just one of the reasons I've avoided buying one, we don't have a service agent in NZ for Nokta that I'm aware of so I'd likely end up having to ship mine off overseas when it fails and that's not acceptable.

That's awesome, and an incredible first ever gold find! Where there is one there is more! Good luck.

yea, they can use Firefox on IOS but it doesn't allow them to disable Javascript.

With Firefox in the box where you enter the webpage address you want to go to you just type About:config and press enter Click on accept risk and continue In the search preference name box type Javascript It will say Javascript Enabled : TRUE change that to FALSE It also gives you any other Javascript options once you've filled in the search.

They seemed to dominate the low end detector market at the big box stores in the US along with Garrett with their detectors but now the other brands are going after that market with very good machines for the lower prices, far superior machines to the First Texas models. All this was very predictable and was only a matter of time. I think they'll survive just fine as they make a lot of things other than detectors and they'll just keep their detectors on the market selling as they are not too concerned about them as they've long recovered development costs so any sale now is a good sale, I just think new models are less likely and expecting anything ground breaking from them is very unlikely as they don't seem to have the desire to do it. They may just fade into the background as just another detector company, there are many manufacturers of detectors we never talk about, the forums mostly talk about high end machines and brands that produce them, with the generic sort of brands producing only the beginners and entry level type detectors never get talked about, most of us couldn't even name many of those sort of brands but there are plenty of them and First Texas still makes better detectors than many of those brands so they still have a place in the market, they're just being left further behind when it comes to detectors most on this forum would be looking to buy, but the entry level market may well be a very good one for all we know.

First thing I'd always do is try a different browser, plenty of choices there, it could even be to do with font sizes/screen scaling seeing it sounds like the reply box is there but scaled incorrectly so can't be used, if people are using larger than standard fonts or have any resizing going on to make things larger for them to see better it may end up being the issue so I'd try shrinking things back to normal sizing and see if that helps. It could be something fixed up on newer IOS or Safari versions but an issue with older ones. Worth a try for anyone stuck unable to post to see if it helps.

I've almost had mine 4 months now, it's had quite a bit of use in that time mainly for looking for silver coins, it's had 1 prospecting trip and found me one single small nugget that was 0.06 of a gram, it performed reasonably good finding it considering I was using an 11" coil,, and if I was using the Nox with it's 11" coil I'd expect similar results, the jury is out until a smaller coil arrives there, so far everything is fine for that, the ever so slightest edge to the Nox 800 on the very smallest bits of gold, As for coins, hands down happy with the Manticore for a few reasons, I hunt in very mild soils and don't have a lot of trash so my opinion on mineralized soil or high trash areas would be worthless, however for my conditions its proving to be a great detector, it's better than the Nox 800 for EMI, I would say very noticeably better there, and the long EMI press actually works, and works very well. and I believe that's missing off the 900? Keep in mind I have no idea about the 900 so all I'm comparing to is the 800. The 2D target trace I find is a valuable tool, that's coming from soneone that liked the Target Trace on the CTX so I'm more familiar with using it and find it very helpful, the more information I can get about digging targets the better as I do dig in places I prefer not to dig many holes. The Target ID's are more bouncy than the Nox 800, I suspect mostly due to having the bigger ID range and also the higher sensitivity settings available on the Manticore, so if I keep my sensitivity lower I can get my Target Id's to perform on par with the Nox for the most part, even with having the bigger target ID range. Keeping lower sensitivity seems a good tip for the Manticore, if you're chasing depth it really doesn't even matter if you lower it, the Manticore is very deep even in lower sensitivity so if you have to stabalize the machine by running lower sensitivity you don't have to be worried you're losing depth. I at first didn't like the bigger ID range as it does cause more movement in Target Id's but the more I used it the more I found the benefits of it, prime examples were my common pull tabs, on the Nox they show up 16/17 sometimes flicking to 15 and on the Manticore they're coming up 42 to 44. The NZ silver threepence comes up 15/16 on the Nox but comes up 36 to 40 so with the Nox the silver and pull tab was coming up the same numbers, the Manticore has moved the Silvers slightly below the Pull tabs in the numbers so I can dig more silvers with less pull tabs. This obviously doesn't help with coins on edge but it sure helps dig less holes and less pull tabs than with the Nox. With the Nox I used the depth meter to try dig less pull tabs and more silvers, and the silvers were often deeper having been there longer. Now I have more ID information along with the depth meter so more information helping me dig less. Digging less is important to me as I don't like digging in the areas I detect as I want to annoy people as little as possible to retain access. The build quality is a lot better, I have no fear of breaking my ears and if I do its a lower shaft not a new coil so that's much better, everything about it seems better quality. It's got some messy adhesive around the seal area on the control pod, but looking at it closely it's not going to affect the waterproofing, it's cosmetic, the glue is doing it's job just fine. It appears they applied the glue, fixed the pod together and when dry trimmed off the excess glue that was protruding so it makes it look quite messy. It's more comfortable to swing than the Nox, perhaps the new raised arm cuff and different handle design. I've only had it at the beach for 5 days when I was staying near a beach area, it performed very well, unfortunately didn't find me much as my beaches in that area are very desolate of targets, so few people doesn't make for good detecting but I got a good feel for how it works in the salt and I was impressed, depth was great as was stability, the coil moved through the water just fine too. I wasn't concerned at all about drowning it which was a nice feeling not having that in the back of my mind all the time. So yes, I'm very happy, glad I purchased it and I suspect I'll be even happier when the other coils arrive. Is it worth the price difference between the 900? That's one only the buyer can answer as the value difference means more to some than others, for me it made little difference as it's just like buying another coil or something and the difference between the two detectors for me personally is well worth paying for. I'd have a lot more trouble justifying buying the 900 than I did the Manticore as an upgrade to the 800.

The only losers in this are Minelab, with the detectors costing similar to make they end up losing their profit difference between the two detectors which is quite significant. I'm sure you're not alone doing this. Can't loose either way, both are good detectors.

Those unable to post probably can't post a reply here? 🙂 I know @Jim Hemmingway was having trouble posting for some time, but I think he's got it sorted out now. Hopefully any tips given out here give those with the problem the clues they need to resolve it.

I really like my Vanquish and in my area can do as well or even sometimes better with it than my Nox, no regrets at all buying it, love the thing. The Simplex on the other hand I do not like and regret buying it. Different strokes for different folks. If I had a choice I'd never choose a Simplex over a Vanquish, the X-Terra looks promising. If they just added ground balance by a firmware update the Vanquish would meet many more peoples needs, for me it makes no difference but clearly some people need it, so that was a goof by Minelab from the start.

I don't know if you have anywhere selling these nearby but they're the perfect pair up for the Carrot. I've been using the same battery for years in mine and never had an issue, they run for a long time between charges too, https://mahaenergy.com/powerex-9-6v-230mah-1-pack/ They have a slightly higher capacity than a standard 9v non-rechargeable battery which is a good thing. I run them in everything that needs a 9v battery with great success. The other fantastic batteries are the Panasonic Eneloops, but they're in the AA and AAA sizes, a true test for them for me has been my weather station which is now 9 years old and still on the original white eneloop batteries, it's out there in winter being frozen for months then in summer in the heat and the weather station only has a tiny solar panel but they've stayed charged and working broadcasting the weather data back to it's base station 70 meters away for 9 years now and still going strong. I use them in all my detectors that require AA batteries also with great success.

Thanks for the report, it truly sounds like the X-Terra Pro is a real bargain detector. The entry level detectors now are giving some of the high end older models a real workout.

I thought @Geotech said they're not working on anything that he knows of... ? It doesn't help they struggled to get the Impulse out the door, and if they can get the Impulse Gold to market that would be a good start though, I have high hopes for that reaching the market and if it comes in at a good price it has potential. A multi frequency T2/F75 type detector would be pretty good though, and others have been able to do it when it was once thought Minelab had it all patented up. It's one detector other than making it carbon fiber and putting a more modern interface and screen on it I wouldn't overly want them to change the design of the shaft, arm cuff and handle. It'd be a good idea to move the power/volume knob though 🙂

Sorry I should have been more clear in what I was saying, Turkish websites are often the ones hosting detectors such as this one, and this company also has a Long Range Detector section on their website which eats deeply into any credibility they have. Certainly nothing against Turkish people or the country itself, these companies may not be in Turkey and just host their websites there for all I know. Nokta is a fine example of an exemplary company making detectors out of Turkey. Please if you're looking into buying detectors like this do a lot of research first, you will very likely find out you're better off sticking with the main known brands such as Nokta, Minelab, Garrett and then as long as you pick the correct model for the task at hand you know you're getting a product that works as described.

😞 Another one from Turkey.

They are certainly extremely overpriced in today's market.

Get in quick

There is a lot of good salesmen out there and with detectors with a solid history they can ignore the current detectors on the market and talk about the past. Fishers website has had a VERY RARE update with some wording changes to their models no longer lying about being the best detectors on the market but they've also discontinued a number of detectors, the F19 series is one of them, this will be because they were ripping people off I guess selling the F19 for an expensive price when it's also a Bounty Hunter. http://fisherlab.com/hobby/deetectors-f-series.htm#f75Ltd The only F19 models on their site say they're new, but also say they're no longer available. As for the model series itself, it's one of my favourites of the older detectors I own, it has really stable Target ID and quite accurate too, it is capable of pretty small targets, not quite suitable for me to use for prospecting as it's just not sensitive enough but decent none the less for general use being able to find small stuff. Being a detector designed for gold it's obviously going to be pretty good on gold jewellery. I repurposed mine by buying the Detech Arrow coil for it, by having an 18x4" coil on it it's absolutely perfect for going to areas after events scanning the ground for recent drops, it's very EMI resistant which makes it perfect for this as events are largely in high EMI areas. Combine that with it's accurate ID's and ability to turn the sensitivity right down and and cut the depth down it really does a good job at this. It's iron disc works well and easy to adjust, it's light and easy to swing. It pairs very well with the Detech Ultimate coil, it provides it very accurate ID's to depth and it can hold that ID until near the edge of detection of targets, it doesn't just detect with a good ID on shallow targets then go wild with deeper ones like the Simplex does. Their business model of having one model detector and disabling minor features on it to create other models no longer washes in today's market so having 4 or 5 models of the same detector with slight feature variations and different looks just doesn't work, they need to only keep their most highest spec models to stay in the game even at the lower end of the market.

Yes, I find the 17x13" is quite well balanced on the CTX, some don't like it, I find it good. I rarely use my 11" on the CTX.

So as we sit waiting impatiently for Minelab to bother to release the promised accessory coils for the Manticore it occurred to me that perhaps Coiltek already have the ball rolling in the background at least thinking about which coils they will make for it, assuming like the Nox and CTX Coiltek actually make coils for it. This means now might be the only opportunity we have to try and influence their decision as to which coils they provide.... So hopefully @Coiltek join the conversation and follow on with interest in our discussion. For me personally with Minelab releasing the 8x5.5" I'm not so sure I'd bother buying a 10x5" if they released that size, the 10x5" on the Nox series by Coiltek is a great coil, but with it being so similar in size to the standard offering for the Manticore and the standard coil being slightly smaller I'd personally buy the Minelab coil. I never bought the 14x9" as it seemed more designed for water hunters and was weighted for doing so and the 15" round although I would absolutely love to own that coil I thought it was possibly a bit heavy when compared to the 15x12" standard Minelab coil which I use the most on the Nox. On the CTX I love the 17x13" coil and use it a lot, rarely using the 11" coil so with the Manticore so far appearing to be a very deep machine too perhaps it would benefit from this size also, so in that case my decision would be the 17x13" For the Manticore, along with a 6.5x3.5" especially if it was a solid coil, perfect for prospecting and would be excellent for high trash coin and jewellery hunting too. I wouldn't buy a mid sized coil, the 11" stock does that job well enough. So feel free to do the poll, if I'm missing an obvious one let me know and I'll add it on, and please comment below about your choices and reasoning as I hope we can in some way influence which coils Coiltek make, or at least give them some information from a users perspective which coils we would prefer.

Well, it's been over a year now, so I'm wondering if @Nokta Detectors would be ever so kind and give us an update on the project, if it's in the works yet or not, if it's still on the cards, and if they expect to release it at any point in the near future? Plenty of us are looking forward to this one, myself included.

Is it a case of possibly found somewhere else, wasn't meant to be there so said it was found there maybe? 🙂 There have been remarkably good nugget finds in our "public fossicking areas" here.

As fine gold is one of the settings you will miss that's probably not too big of a deal as it's ideal purpose is finding very small gold in difficult soils, and I am guessing the meteorites you want to find aren't going to be in the very low end of the sub gram weight. Older 4500's tend to run a bit more rough on the threshold than the newer 4500's which seem to be based off the newer 5000 hardware, and the newer ones appear to run similar to the 5000 with that, my older 4500 was much more wild to tame than my 5000 is. How old is the 4500 you would be looking at? Some prefer the older Australian made ones as it's thought they maybe slightly more sensitive/deeper than the newer Malaysian made ones, how much of that is a placebo and based upon the theory the older ones run full power and the newer ones have been tamed to make them more stable. I've done some pretty good testing on my older Aussie 4500 and the newer Malaysian 5000 and couldn't overly find a performance difference in that regard in my soils. The Enhanced timing was slightly improved on the 5000 too over the 4500 which is a timing often used in difficult soils. I don't hunt in very difficult ground so can't tell you exactly how much difference there is, but the 4500 was a very successful detector and appears to have very good difficult soil handling, it sure handles the difficult hot rocks in my area very well compared to more modern detectors like the 6000 or even 7000.