PSPR

After reading some of what happened during the Equinox release, I've lowered my delivery expectations for the Manticore. I'll now be surprised if I see one before Christmas.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but the battery life of the Manticore on the Minelab website specs has been changed from 9 hours to 10 hours. I guess 9 hours sounded too short. I doubt there has been any physical change to the detector reflecting that change.

I've been reading some old posts from when the Equinox was released and it doesn't look good for the Manticore. Minelab even made some release announcements in December 2017 about "coming soon". Then they said shipping by late January. Then they announced they were shipping detectors on February 2nd. But I think it was late February before your normal Joe pre-order saw his Equinox.

Yeah, she was asked specifically about leaking around the charging port and she sidesteps answering that directly. I hope it was redesigned as well but maybe not. I'm not going to submerse mine in water beyond the coil until I see what happens to some others. Maybe I won't be going in water beyond wading anyway. I was at a beach in murky water up to my chest with a CTX3030 shortly after it came out. I couldn't see where the coil was so I would scoop and nothing. Check again and it was still there. Scoop again and nothing. Check again and scoop and now it moved. This went on for about 25 minutes until I gave up chasing what ever it was. That was my last water hunt up to my chest. LOL After that summer I sold the CTX and gave up metal detecting. I couldn't find anything with it. A couple friends had Garrett At's and they would detect circles around me. I don't remember there being a graph on the CTX but I'm sure there was. I just didn't spend enough time with it to learn it and I had to keep switching arms with it because of the weight. It was just a frustrating summer detecting for me.

Yup! I'm excited for the Manticore to ship. It's going to be awesome.

If you go to youtube and do a search, minelab+manticore, then open Filters (above the vids on the left side) and select, Sort By / Upload Date; it will bring up that video and all the others pertaining to the Manticore sorted by upload date. Bookmark the page after you have entered those parameters and you can easily check if any new Manticore videos have been uploaded.

Coils are EXPESIVE!! I see some around $400. There are probably others that are even more expensive. I noticed the extra coils on the Legend are only a little over $100. I'm not sure what that says but it says something. I probably won't get any extra coils for the Manticore unless I have some specific reason I think it is going to help me find a lot more targets somewhere.

I hope you have a reliable source, strick. It only been about a month since my order but I'm already hyperventilating. LOL Jeff, I read your recent Legend posts in the Nokta forum and I ordered a Legend with the pro pack and even got a little bit more off from the current crazy low price. I noticed on the product page that it says Pre Order, Aye Yai Yai, (I like that phrase) I hope not that again. I've got a message into them to see if that was an oversite or if it will ship next week.

Exactly what I am thinking, Jeff. I'm still hopeful that Minelab won't let me down but I'll decide soon if I want to go that route. I can see the wife saying to me, "you've got a detector you haven't used in years and now you bought two new ones? Are you nuts?" LOL

Aye Yai Yai!!! If we are talking about a year from August 25th you'll find me in the Psych Ward early next year. Maybe I should buy a Legend while they are cheap to tide me over if Minelab doesn't get the Manticore out this year.

BTW, I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes here. I know I can be very opinionated and sometimes I come across that way. If anyone is offended by what I have posted anywhere here, please accept my sincere apology. I don't intend to offend anybody.

No, Steve, I'm not familiar with new metal detector releases. You guys are much more knowledgeable about this than I. But the "release" you are referring to, I believe, was what happened in August. The release coming, I would think, is the OK for dealers to start selling the product they where sent to customers. I could be wrong but I'll go by the advertisement Minelab put in the "Gold Prospectors" magazine that Manticore will be available in time to be under the Christmas tree.

I don't think Minelab can stop CoilTek from making their own coils for the Manticore. Although, from what I've heard, it takes CoilTek a year or longer to get something into production. How do you know the Manticore isn't already being shipped to dealers or about to be shipped? I suspect if the Release Date is November 30th that the first shipments will be in national distributors warehouses and maybe dealers hands before they announce. It would be silly to announce release and have no product for customers to immediately buy. I don't think dealers close down for weeks on end here in the U.S. for the winter or Christmas. The dealer my order is with said they ship directly from the distribution centers to the customer so the dealer never even sees the unit. In Oz aren't you in the beginnings of summer there? Surely dealers will be open over there.

You are right, of course, Steve. I am hoping between the expanded TID, the target trace and maybe a couple nuance tricks that the Manticore will enable the identification some aluminum objects and some pull tabs. If you can avoid digging even 50% of them that would be a big advantage over digging everything. On the beach there isn't much reason not to dig everything non-ferrous. It's just a scoop away, so to speak. Back to the November Manticore release, I firmly believe the release date for the U.S. and Europe will be November 30th with shipments to customers arriving by December 15th. That still means waiting over a month to get your hands on one. I just don't quite understand the radio silence out of Minelab nor the lack of a PDF manual to download. I can only imagine that there is some information in the manual that Minelab doesn't want in the hands of competitors until the last moment.

Finding any news or videos on the Manticore is next to impossible right now. I did find a video from Gold Rat Prospecting Supplies in Australia telling customers that today (6 days ago) was the last day they were taking pre-orders for the Manticore. He said anyone not getting their order in today will have to wait until the second shipments come. He also said he has a tentative release date of the end of November and a delivery date of Mid December. Wow!! The video is on this page. https://www.facebook.com/Highbankers Here's the final clue. There is a German metal detector retailer on eBay who is offering the pre-sale of the Manticore. In the description it states the following: "Pre-order now! > According to Minelab, the first shipment of the Manticore will reach us in November." "NOTE: We cannot guarantee that the detectors will definitely arrive in November. As you know, there can always be unforeseen delays."

If I were going out in that salt flat, or what ever it was, I would invest in a gas powered trail bike not a slow, short range e-bike. You could probably find a dozen meteorites out there with something that could get you around a little better.

Only a couple non-English videos out of Minelab in the last month or so. I even asked them when a PDF manual would be available and they never replied. The silence is deafening, Minelab.

I'm not sure I would think of the Manticore as a new model detector since it takes the basic Equinox physical system and improved the flaws of that system like the coil ears, arm rest, water leaks and lack of robust material strength. Then it takes the good features of the Equinox and adds some useful features of the CTX then improves upon those features. So, even though Minelab says it was built from the ground up, it is actually the next generation of the Equinox. The Equinox was the initial iteration with a few flaws. I would be very surprised to find a major flaw in the Manticore due to oversite. The Manticore IS the "flaws fixed" second generation.

I think Gerry's who is a sponsor here is probably a good place. Before I knew about Gerry and since I can't take advantage of the military discount, I placed an order with a place that offers no sales tax out of state and a few goodies to go along with the Manticore. I don't think I should say the name here but they are on the first page if you google "buy minelab manticore".

I see a few used Equinox's showing up on Ebay lately. Looks like people selling them to help pay for their Manticore to me.

Yeah, phrunt, one can't expect a VLF, no matter how advanced, to compete with true PI gold machines. It was a silly question from someone getting too excited over the Manticore's potential. Here in Texas there isn't many places to look for gold. I read an analysis on looking along a river (forget the name) that branches off the Colorado. It said you might find a few flakes on the river but any nuggets have long been located and taken. It doesn't sound like natural gold hunting would be anything but an effort in frustration here. Let me correct something I said in my last post with the video. I mentioned surprise that the Minelab Rep was talking about discriminating out pull tabs (which I would love by the way). As you all know, many modern detectors can discriminate out pull tabs --- but it comes at the expense of also discriminating out many gold objects including rings. But I am hoping the wider range of TID's might help at eliminating some aluminum junk without losing out on rings and jewelry. The FvsC plot might help identify rings even with some discrimination if it shows them as nice circles. There will be a lot of experimenting that needs to be done with the Manticore when we get it.

I'll bet Nasa Tom also knows when the release date is set for. How about twisting his arm a little and finding out for us before I go nuts!!

It does seem odd that they are on the eve of releasing the machine but they can't talk about it. Another poster elsewhere said he was talking to another Minelab engineer and asked him to compare the Manticore to the CTX3030 and he said he couldn't talk about that. Why not?

Minelab seems to have gone out of their way to not say much about the wireless headphone tech nor about the discrimination tech other than iron discrimination. And, a poster on another forum mentioned that he talked to a Minelab Engineer and was told that the Manticore is going to "change the way we detect." Something revolutionary supposedly. So, I think there is something awesome coming in the Manticore that the Reps and the videos have not divulged. That could be why the manual has not been released yet. They don't want to give away the big advantage of the Manticore until the last moment. Again, we'll see.

There is a new video of a Manticore demo being done in Mexico. Not sure why they are hitting Mexico and not the U.S. market. Anyway this video is about 45 minutes (mostly in Spanish) but the guy in the goatee takes over and speaks in English but I would turn on the closed caption button and then settings/translate/English. The translation gets a ton of works wrong like medical for Manticore quite often. Actually it is entertainingly funny as you follow along. At about the 27 minute mark the Minelab host is discussing the discrimination of the Manticore and says a remarkable thing. He talks about discriminating in trashy areas and pretty much states that it will discriminate out pull tabs and aluminum!!! I'll believe that when I see it personally.