Minelab Manticore Or Minelab Equinox 900 Which Better Detector?

[giorgi]

Friends..I discussed one topic and was advised by people here and professionals and experienced people.  But I will still make a choice between these 2 detectors and I want your help.  Which one should I buy, which one do you recommend and which one will be useful for me?  I am going to search in the mountains by the rivers on the rocks by the river banks in the forests in the fields and so on.  I want.to search for gold.more shares.I want to search for gold..but at the same time I want to search for coins,relics,jewellery and jewelry.  Which detector do you guys recommend or which of these 2 detectors will be useful for me for all this? Thank you in advance.

[phrunt]

Seeing nobody has answered and you're chasing gold nuggets at the moment I would say the Equinox 900 purely as it has the 6" coil and Coiltek 10x5" coil available for it, ask me again "if" the smaller coil comes out for the Manticore and "if" Coiltek make coils for the Manticore and my opinion may change. 

Seeing the stock small coil for the Manticore is going to be bigger at 8x5.5" over the Nox 6" coil I would not hedge my bets on the Manticore being more sensitive than the Nox 900, although it's entirely possible it will be, they have recently improved small gold sensitivity on the Manticore and in my testing 11" coil on the Nox 800 vs the 11" coil on the Manticore they're very close now, prior to the update the Nox won.  In saying that my testing wasn't done in a remote area where I could wind up the Manticore sensitivity, it has higher sensitivity settings than the Nox 900 and in remote gold locations running these higher sesntivity settings may well be possible, at least here I can run in maximum sensitivity on my Manticore with the 11" coil and it be perfectly stable.

So in summary, too soon to know, if you're desperate to buy now the Nox 900 is the safe bet, if you're willing to wait and see I wouldn't be surprised if the Manticore wins.

When it comes to coins/jewellery and so on they're all so close, including the Nox 800, yes the Manticore has advantages and also disadvantages (poor target ID compared to the Equinox 800, the 900 is similar to the Manticore with more unstable ID's)

Realistically you could buy a Nox 800, 900 or Manticore and end up happy.  I think the Manticore is very over-priced given it's benefits or lack thereof over the others.

[PimentoUK]

I would suggest the Equinox, purely based on the cost of the two machines. Just buy it, get out hunting, and you'll eventually work out if there would be any benefit to upgrading to the Manticore at a later date.
All detectors "pay for themselves" at some point, but the Equinox is going to achieve this more comfortably, and it will be just as fun and rewarding to use whilst doing so.

[Gold Catcher]

10 hours ago, phrunt said:

Seeing nobody has answered and you're chasing gold nuggets at the moment I would say the Equinox 900 purely as it has the 6" coil and Coiltek 10x5" coil available for it, ask me again "if" the smaller coil comes out for the Manticore and "if" Coiltek make coils for the Manticore and my opinion may change. 

Hey Simon, I am thinking to upgrade my VLF capabilities, and your comments are timely. What do you think, is the Nox 900/6 inch significantly better than the GM/5 inch when gold is the sole focus? Or should it be the Manticore with a little wait for better coils? Would both punch deeper with better meter read in mineralized soil compared to the GM? I like the GM but its capabilities when using the iron meter are severely limited. I would only upgrade if the newer VLFs really beat the GM in every aspect on gold. I do not care too much about the other useful features that clearly favor the much more modern and versatile Nox or Manticore. Just which one would make my pill box heavier in the VLF world? I thought I'd ask the expert; I see you have posted a lot of great stuff about the ML VLFs (and many other topics...). I am good with PI/ZVT, but when it comes to VLFs I am a bit "on ice".... Thanks! 🙂

GC

 

[phrunt]

26 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:

Hey Simon, I am thinking to upgrade my VLF capabilities, and your comments come in really timely. What do you think, is the Nox 900/6 inch significantly better than the GM/5 inch when gold is the sole focus? Or should it be the Manticore with a little wait for better coils? Would both punch deeper with better meter read in mineralized soil compared to the GM? I like the GM but its capabilities when using the iron meter are severely limited. I thought I'd ask the expert; I see you have posted a lot of great stuff about the ML VLFs. Thanks! 🙂

GC

I haven't used the 900 however the 800 is very close to the same for this purpose,  The reason I prefer the Nox over the Gold Monster even though the GM has a slightly smaller coil is purely because of features and Multi-IQ, having the ability to change frequencies is very handy especially when it comes to EMI,  I use Multi-IQ when I can, under power lines I switch to 40kHz, I find multi-IQ best for gold hunting which the GM lacks.

The GM is quite slow at ground balancing, the Nox can be manually ground balanced, or tracked, not having to use tracking like on the GM I think can be an advantage.  The Nox 900 has higher sensitivity settings too than the 800 so maybe slightly better if they can be used in some spots.   The sensitivity levels on the Nox have a much more defined scale so you can get it just right to get the most out of it.

Being able to change the recovery speed can be advantageous too, in my milder soils I can lower it a lot for low and slow detecting to pick out the little bits at depth the GM can miss. 

Another bonus which may appeal  to you is the target ID's and the ability to notch out hot rocks,  yes of course notching comes with the risk of missing some gold IF the gold comes up the same Target ID as the hot rock but in a high hot rock content area by notching out the hot rocks can be the difference between finding some gold and being put into a mental asylum.   Most hot rocks come up in the iron range but a few come up at about 12 and 13, most small gold comes in well under that with tiny bits 1 and 2 and slowly going up in the numbers as they get bigger.  It takes over a gram size bit to get up into the hot rock number and your GPX or GPZ should have found those bits anyway.

I think of it a bit like the GPX 6000 and GPZ 7000 with the GM being the GPX and the Nox being the GPZ, one having features and settings, the other being automatic and lacking control. 

The GM meter is all over the place even in my milder soils, it only locks on with rather large targets, the Nox target ID's are vastly different, on small gold they'll be a 1 or 2 only bouncing into iron if the gold is extremely small or deep, I find the Target ID's much more accurate than the probability meter, especially when using Multi-IQ.   As your soil seems quite nasty I'm not sure how well that will stand up but @Jeff McClendon would likely be the person to talk to on that.  Multi-IQ does seem to handle bad soil better than single frequency machines and offer more stable ID's than single frequency.

I can't see a single reason I'd use my GM over the Nox and other than as a pinpointer I've never used it again once I made the switch to the Nox.

At the moment it's so unknown for the Manticore with no small coils, but for the price even if it is better in the end it won't be much better, certainly not the price difference better and I'd not be surprised if I just use my trusty 800 with 6" coil over my Manticore even when it has smaller coils, the Nox 800 is just that good for prospecting.

I think Minelab will come out with a multi-IQ Gold Monster at some point and they may take it a bit higher on the frequencies to make it a bit better than the Nox, if they don't do that they may as well discontinue the GM as anyone with an Equinox is unlikely to want to use the GM anymore.

If I was you I'd just pick up a second hand Nox 800 with 6" coil from someone "upgrading" to the 900 or Manticore, as a land gold hunter you're not going to care about the risk of leaking and the coil ears on the 6" are robust being a tiny coil so the main negatives of the older model don't really matter to you.

[Gold Catcher]

Thanks a lot for the detailed response. Really helpful and great insights!

GC

[Steve Herschbach]

Personally I think the Nox hands down beats the Gold Monster for general purpose nugget detecting. The Monster may have an edge on the smallest bits, but frankly that's about it. The ferrous discrimination, as Simon notes, is far better on the Nox, as is the ability to notch out hot rocks, something you can't do with Monster. The focus tends to be on small gold, but the larger the nuggets get, the more the Nox shines over the Monster. If I was to hunt any sort of trash laden tailings looking for discarded larger gold, the Nox with 12x15 coil would be my go to detector without hesitation. I wish I had it back in my Alaska tailing pile heyday, perfect machine for the task. There is no large coil option for the Monster. Long story short I ditched my Monster not long after I started prototype testing the Equinox, and have never regretted it.

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/7468-my-tips-on-nugget-detecting-with-the-minelab-equinox/

 

[Gold Catcher]

Many thanks, Steve. I am sold. There are times where I don't mind digging up alot of trash (where there is trash, there is gold), but I just got back from a trip yesterday where I was pretty close to be admitted to that mental asylym that Simon was talking about....With all caveats understood, a VLF with smart IQ might be the only productive strategy in areas where 1000's of miners have worked for years.

GC

[Steve Herschbach]

Just wanted to add that so far I’ve seen nothing to convince me that the Equinox 900, Manticore, or Deus 2 are truly any better than an Equinox 800 when it comes to nugget detecting.

[phrunt]

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Just wanted to add that so far I’ve seen nothing to convince me that the Equinox 900, Manticore, or Deus 2 are truly any better than an Equinox 800 when it comes to nugget detecting.

I agree.