Anybody Seeing Depth Issues With The Manticore Update?

[Ringtail]

I updated my Manticore and did a factory reset. I haven’t used it on land since the update, but now I’m on big vacation and using a Manticore for the first time at the beach. I’m alternating between beach low conductors beach, deep, and surf & seawater. I’m getting good depth in all three modes. Lots of deep coins, unfortunately, I haven’t put my coil over any gold yet. I did find a really nice toy Ford bronco truck!

Ringtail

[TampaBayBrad]

4 hours ago, Ringtail said:

I updated my Manticore and did a factory reset. I haven’t used it on land since the update, but now I’m on big vacation and using a Manticore for the first time at the beach. I’m alternating between beach low conductors beach, deep, and surf & seawater. I’m getting good depth in all three modes. Lots of deep coins, unfortunately, I haven’t put my coil over any gold yet. I did find a really nice toy Ford bronco truck!

Ringtail

Welcome to my world Ringtail! ?

[GB_Amateur]

Finally got around to loading the update (painlessly, thanks in part to Mark Dayton's -- aka 'Brass Medic' -- YouTube video).  My sole goal was to compare in my soil how the update performance compared to the original software.  First some background which should help in understanding the result:

1) My soil here at home in my test garden pretty well matches the conditions in nearby parks and schools I've been detecting for the past 5 years with the Equinox.  The Fe3O4 mineralization meters on the Fisher F75 and Gold Bug Pro (not quite the same scale) both show 2-3 bars depending upon exact location.  I interpret that as 'moderate' ferrous mineralization.  Regarding my in-field results at my 100+ year old sites (at least five of them I've hunted hard), I've only found two coins at 9" depth (Jefferson nickel and Wheat cent) and none deeper.  I've found a few 95% copper cents and silver dimes at 8" -- by "a few" I mean on the order of 10 or so.  Silver quarters have been few and the low statistics dominate -- 7" about the deepest.  Ages go back to Barbers (dimes and quarters) and 95% copper Indian Head cents.  I bring all this up as evidence that my 2-3 bar dirt likely *does* cause loss of depth compared to pristine, dry white beach sand, although I can't say with 100% certainty that other factors (coins just aren't any deeper or detectorist skill level) aren't the contributing or even the primary cause.

2) My testing in this case had one goal -- to see if the update affected the depth in my test garden.  I have three buried USA coins to check -- 5 inch deep 95% copper Memorial 1 cent, 6 inch deep 25% nickel, 75% copper Jefferson 5 cent, and 8.5 inch deep clad (outer layers same composition as above Jefferson nickel; inner layer pure copper) 25 cent coin.  I used the Equinox 800 with 11" coil as the control.  Neither it nor the Manticore has any trouble signalling strong and stable with those three targets with 'reasonable' settings (see more below).  As such I do a hybrid (ground + air) enhancement to get to the detection edge.  I stack wood blocks / shims of size 1/2", 1", and (multiple) 1.5" thickness to measure coil height above the ground in 1/2 inch increments and add them until I reach what I consider the largest distance which gives a diggable signal.

3) Back in mid-May I did some tests with the Equinox 800 and 11" coil (for baseline/control) and the Manticore with 11" coil, the latter in different searchmodes.  So far I'm withholding reporting absolute results as I need more experience with different settings before I'm confident they are representative.  However, today I repeated a subset of those tests with the Mcore's update installed.  Here are my corresponding, relevant settings both in May and today:

Equinox 800:  Park 1, five custom tones (customized in volume, pitch, and breaks), sensitivity = 21, recovery speed = 4, Iron Bias F2=0, no notching (aka Minelab "all metal" so all VDI hits correspond to actual tones transmitted), ground balanced and noise canceled.

Manticore:  All-Terrain High Conductors, five customized fixed tones, sensitivity = 21, recovery speed = 4, iron mask upper 8, lower 3, no notching (aka "all metal"), ground balanced and noise canceled.

Headphones were used in both cases (Sunray Pro Golds with WM08 for the Eqx and ML 105's for the Manticore).

For the updated Manticore I turned off the new (iron) stability features (NOTE:  there are two new settings options as seen in the new manual on page 51 -- 'Stabilizer' which is a number 0-12 where '0' indicates OFF, and 'stabilizer filter' which is a supplementary feature which only applies if the Stabilizer value is non-zero.)  My screen showed Stabilizer value of 0 and the stabilizer filter OFF.

Bottom line is that even with possible changed ground conditions (due to soil moisture changes between mid-May and early July), both detectors showed similar performance, (hybrid) depthwise, today as they did back in May for all three buried test targets.

I didn't try doing measurements with the Stabilizer turned on.  In the future I will do more tests where I actually vary a coin's depth (my setup can go down to 14" which is way deeper than either detector will be able to sense a USA 25 cent piece in my ground).  I plan on varying the Manticore's sensitivity and search mode in particular as well as experimenting with the Stabilizer settings.  But for now, based upon my limited testing so far, I feel the update hasn't degraded the Manticore's core (i.e. Stability OFF) depth performance.

One last note about my update procedure:  I did not do any factory resets, either before or after installing the new update.  It's nice not to have to hand record and then redo all the many customization settings I've made.  (It seems all those are preserved during the update, something that has been mentioned here in this thread as well as in Mark Dayton's videos.)  I know some feel factory resets are safer in terms of getting the desired result of a smooth, properly operating detector but for now I'm going this easier route until I see/hear reliable reports that it's necessary in the case of the Manticore.

[abenson]

Minelab sent me a replacement Manticore which I received yesterday. I really appreciate Minelab going the extra mile to make sure my machine wasn't the cause of the depth loss I was seeing. Initial testing in my coin garden with the old software confirms to me it is performing the same as my old Manticore. Tonight I will download the new version of the software and re-test it in my coin garden using the same settings as before. One thing I plan on doing is a factory reset before I download the new software just in case that was an issue the first go round. Hopefully I will get better results this time.

[Chase Goldman]

Factory Reset it after the upload, too, Andrew.  Shouldn't matter, but it also doesn't hurt, just in case.

[abenson]

I did the update this evening and ran the new Manticore though my coin garden and got the same results as the old Manticore. So it's pretty clear to me that the new update doesn't work as good as the old version on the particular soil conditions I have in my area. There's got to be some kind of averall stabilization in the new software causing this issue. I've reported this to Minelab and I'll wait to see what they have to say. In the mean time I'm going back to the old version. I did a video of the process without even knowing what the results would be that I may post later to show that nothing has changed. At least I can run the older version of software. I doubt I would have used the stabilizer at the sites I hunt anyway, so no big deal. That being said the improvements to the gold program will be missed. I will be doing some testing with the new software on some nuggets in 7 bar dirt just to see what happens and if there is a difference between the 2 software versions. 

[matt]

Well that sucks.

[phrunt]

Well hopefully Minelab America pass the information onto Minelab to be looked at properly as it sounds like another version of the firmware will be on it's way once they work it out.

[abenson]

23 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Well hopefully Minelab America pass the information onto Minelab to be looked at properly as it sounds like another version of the firmware will be on it's way once they work it out.

I've been working directy with someone in Australia.