A Few Observations On The Manticore, After About 50 Hours (and A Few Recent Nice Finds)...

[UT Dave]

If you have the red numbers turned on running the update, and don't turn them off or do a factory reset as part of rolling back, they'll still be there after the roll back.  Which, makes me wonder what else might still be lurking after a roll back.  So as advised by several members here, I've taken to doing a factory reset before and after the roll back.

- Dave

[fishersari]

On 7/28/2023 at 9:46 AM, Dug D said:

Not sure how anyone is running tones, but I am using 5 tones, but my highest tone begins at 55 and runs to the top. I did that out of frustration because I could not hit on anything that was consistently a high or even stayed in the range of high tone.🙄 

I'm running 1 region all tones.. until last 2 week I'm still in the state of figuring out what the machine tells me, add it up with 98-99 ID signal and ground/iron falsing.. Now the machine 'speaks' to me and I'm much happier so much so it put a smile on my face . I guess my problem with Manticore tonal language is the default setting is 'too tight' (default pitch starting at 30 and end with 50). 20 point pitch differences between the lowest ID to the highest ID are not expressive enough so I modified the 1 region all tones as in the picture

I discriminate 0-2 and 98-99 tonally to make it sound like like iron, start pitch at 20 and run all metal.. I get all the info I need tonally and much clearer picture of what its tell me. I also start running AT General (from AT LC) in iron and can identify some of the false tones much better. 

Maybe much later I will decrease the start pitch to get more 'contrast' of the manticore tonal language

BTW this is yesterday find (mid 1700 to 1800 ring)😊 and its missing the main stone 😒

 

[JCR]

@steveg Maghemite is in your Oklahoma red dirt, same as my East Texas dirt, I also have some sites with Hematite hot rocks. You probably do to.  It is huntable if you are careful about your Ground and Signal balance. My biggest problem is deep coin size targets get swallowed up by the ground signal after 7 inches or so.  It also up averages TID at depth even to the point of Iron wrap.  Recovery speed seems to be the key available adjustment, and it is a pretty narrow window for best performance. Soil moisture is a big factor in how it effects the detector.  True All Metal is less effected than Motion Disc but you still can't trust the ID system at moderate depths  .In a Mixed Mode even the Disc Audio will have some Iron response approaching fringe depth on a clean Non Ferrous target.  You just have to dig those Iffy signals on a good site.

None of this may help much with the Manticore if the Tx signal is too strong.

Have you played around with any of the Beach Modes? They may have some interaction between the measured Mineralization and the TX output. That would help on your hot ground sites.

[RSmith]

That’s a great point JCR brought up about the recovery speed being one of the most important settings. In my opinion THIS setting affects the Manticore more than any other setting. 
We need to find a way to know how to adjust this quickly at each site. A mineralization meter on the Manticore would help a lot. 
On one site I was at I was running I think 2 maybe 3 recovery speed. I hunted for 1-1/2 hours with no targets I went to my truck to get my Equinox 800 and immediately had 4 good targets in 5 minutes searching the same steps as I jut left. So I grabbed the Manticore to see what was going on I tried changing all my settings one at a time. Setting the recovery speed to 6 the Manticore jumped to life and started out preforming the Equinox 800. 
so now I think recovery speed of 6 is the magic setting so I started using it as my goto settings. A couple days later at another site the same thing happens. I am using recovery speed 6 and no good signals. Remembering my last experience I started adjusting the recovery speed and once I set it to 3,  I was getting great sounding signals. 
Now the best idea I came up with is to set it at 4 and when I find a target (the deeper the better) I play with the recovery speed before I dig to find the number that gives the hardest and clearest tones. 
If anyone has a better strategy I would love to hear about it!

This Manticore has been the hardest detector I have used to understand and try to learn it’s language. Like Steveg mentioned  it false a lot and it sounds and looks so good on the screen. ——But at the same time it is finding me great finds in spots I have been over many many times with multiple detectors  

WE MUST LEARN TO TAME THIS BEAST!!!

RSmith

[TampaBayBrad]

I would love going dirt hunting for relics and old coins up north just to find some old stuff for a change. But I'm glad I don't have any of the hot dirt problems you guys are describing. I'm very happy with the way Manticore performs at the beach, so much so that I'm not going to do the update. But I'm not going to find any civil war relics on the beach! 😒

[abenson]

RSmith you're onto something. The first thing people need to realize is the Manticore is not an Equinox 800 and shouldn't be setup like one. I've been doing hours and hours of testing with the Manticore and I'm finding some interesting things out about it. Problem is until they fix the issue I'm having in my ground, there's little point in saying anything about it here. Because the two software versions are so different from each other in performance. 

[steveg]

16 hours ago, JCR said:

@steveg Maghemite is in your Oklahoma red dirt, same as my East Texas dirt, I also have some sites with Hematite hot rocks. You probably do to.  It is huntable if you are careful about your Ground and Signal balance. My biggest problem is deep coin size targets get swallowed up by the ground signal after 7 inches or so.  It also up averages TID at depth even to the point of Iron wrap.  Recovery speed seems to be the key available adjustment, and it is a pretty narrow window for best performance. Soil moisture is a big factor in how it effects the detector.  True All Metal is less effected than Motion Disc but you still can't trust the ID system at moderate depths  .In a Mixed Mode even the Disc Audio will have some Iron response approaching fringe depth on a clean Non Ferrous target.  You just have to dig those Iffy signals on a good site.

None of this may help much with the Manticore if the Tx signal is too strong.

Have you played around with any of the Beach Modes? They may have some interaction between the measured Mineralization and the TX output. That would help on your hot ground sites.

Interesting post JCR...thanks for the detail.

One thing -- what do you mean when you say "be careful about your 'signal balance'".  That's not a term I am familiar with.  Ground balance is something I've been trying to play around with when I locate a target that is suspect; my thought is that if I can be sure that balance is SPOT ON, in the immediate vicinity of a tricky target, I have the best chance of removing whatever amount of ground signal that may be "dirtying" the target response.  This is somehting I am testing to see if this approach has any effect.  But "signal balance" is not a term I am familiar with...

Thanks!

Steve

[steveg]

5 hours ago, RSmith said:

That’s a great point JCR brought up about the recovery speed being one of the most important settings. In my opinion THIS setting affects the Manticore more than any other setting. 
We need to find a way to know how to adjust this quickly at each site. A mineralization meter on the Manticore would help a lot. 
On one site I was at I was running I think 2 maybe 3 recovery speed. I hunted for 1-1/2 hours with no targets I went to my truck to get my Equinox 800 and immediately had 4 good targets in 5 minutes searching the same steps as I jut left. So I grabbed the Manticore to see what was going on I tried changing all my settings one at a time. Setting the recovery speed to 6 the Manticore jumped to life and started out preforming the Equinox 800. 
so now I think recovery speed of 6 is the magic setting so I started using it as my goto settings. A couple days later at another site the same thing happens. I am using recovery speed 6 and no good signals. Remembering my last experience I started adjusting the recovery speed and once I set it to 3,  I was getting great sounding signals. 
Now the best idea I came up with is to set it at 4 and when I find a target (the deeper the better) I play with the recovery speed before I dig to find the number that gives the hardest and clearest tones. 
If anyone has a better strategy I would love to hear about it!

This Manticore has been the hardest detector I have used to understand and try to learn it’s language. Like Steveg mentioned  it false a lot and it sounds and looks so good on the screen. ——But at the same time it is finding me great finds in spots I have been over many many times with multiple detectors  

WE MUST LEARN TO TAME THIS BEAST!!!

RSmith

RSmith --

This is a highly interesting post, to me.  The way you explained what you did, at the one site, running recovery up to 6 and then seeing the difference it made (WOW)....and then when you carried that over (Recovery 6) to the new site, and what you explained happened there (double-WOW)...

I treated recovery speed on the EQX as basically a "set it and forget it" setting, for reasons I won't get into so as to not veer off into the weeds (i.e. away from the issue at hand).  But, suffice it to say, I have not though much about adjusting recovery speed on the MC, as a result of my "bias" from the EQX.  So, this is a highly interesting/intriguing post, especially the resultant that you described...

It seems that while abenson is keeping things "close to the vest" for understandable reasons, he seems to imply in his post that he also feels that this "recovery speed" thing has merit as well, in his dirt/in his experience.  This is some great information, and provides an avenue for me to go down, in terms of testing that is obviously in order at this point...

Thanks!

Steve

[UT Dave]

22 minutes ago, steveg said:

It seems that while abenson is keeping things "close to the vest" for understandable reasons, he seems to imply in his post that he also feels that this "recovery speed" thing has merit as well, in his dirt/in his experience.  This is some great information, and provides an avenue for me to go down, in terms of testing that is obviously in order at this point...
 

In this video from @abenson  he shows clearly how much of an effect recovery speed has on targets.  That part starts a bit before 500.  Which way to go with recovery speed, does seem dirt specific.  

I left my 800 on recovery 4, almost all the time.  But I'm learning to try up and down a notch, just to see, on the Manticore.  Recovery 4 still seems a pretty good starting point on the Manticore, but I often do end up running it at 5 or even 6.  And occasionally, 3.

- Dave

[JCR]

What I mean by Signal balance is matching the available adjustments a detector offers to the specific site conditions, day to day and even during the same hunt. The more challenging the conditions, the more important is is to run the detector in an optimized configuration.   Signal balance is the combination of frequency choice,  sensitivity/gain of the RX,  Tx power level,  recovery/reactivity, filtering,  disc level,  ground balance/suppression,  iron bias,  threshold level/ISAT,  coil size/type......... all the wonderful, adjustable controls we have in our modern detectors effect the performance of the unit. The only way I know to learn is to have a basic understanding of what each adjustment does, in theory and in my real world. Thoughtful time in the test garden & in the field. The goal is to use all of these factors in harmony to get the most out of the detector for the site you are hunting right now.  None of this applies to easy sites with easy targets. Factory default settings are a good starting point.  It is more about understanding what the detector is reporting and why and what you can do to improve performance to be more successful.

In practice, I am usually running a bit too hot, but I can listen thru a little noise.