Target ID Chart Differences Between Equinox 600/800 And Equinox 700/900/manticore

[strick]

3 hours ago, RickUK said:

Here in the UK as our silver hammered coinage can vary by a massive margin ie silver content,quality of silver and various sizes of the coins and also i guess the same could go for artefacts as well,TID is in my mind a waste of time and audio is far more reliable especially when hammered coinage is concerned,of course if the coinage is a consistent milled coinage then one can rely on the TID and what the screen is telling you.

For me Audio is and always will be king,its far more reliable at depth over a screen and also that very last indicator which is often overlooked is the audio threshold.....on my machines that have screens on i just dont look at them as i use my ears instead of my eyes to make that 'dig/no dig decision' if you rely on just using a screen to make the decision then you could/would leave some desirable targets in the ground.

Yep nothing wrong with that...but doesn't hurt to have more features does it? and what if you are a deaf person? 

strick

[RickUK]

2 hours ago, strick said:

Yep nothing wrong with that...but doesn't hurt to have more features does it? and what if you are a deaf person? 

strick

I have absolutely nothing against 'more features' i am basically just saying what i do here in the UK and the specific reason why i guess....regarding what if you are a 'deaf person' well that has always been a major issue since detectors have been made as all early detectors and even modern non TID machines have had that problem for folks who have hard of hearing or infact totally deaf,most modern nugget machines are mainly audio only with the odd few like this new machine that has just come out recently,but even then once again when that machine get to a certain depth level the screen become unreliable and folks then rely on audio and of course the very last resort the audio threshold which only gives a indication that a target is in that location but cannot of course dicriminate.

TID on a detectors are absolutely fine and i have nothing against having extra features,but it is only reliable to a certain depth and that is solely the reason why i use audio,any folks who has a hearing difficulty of course has a massive disadvantage but as i recall correctly Nokta have/did produce a vibrating handgrip that may help folks who have hearing loss.But for my detecting and our hammered coinage detecting here in the UK audio is far more reliable than across the pond or infact any other country that solely has milled coinage.

[midalake]

10 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The notes that were cut off:

Is there an easy example?  Why would this be something more effective? 

[Steve Herschbach]

7 hours ago, midalake said:

Is there an easy example?  Why would this be something more effective? 

I’m just the guy who posted the more complete graphic. Expanded target id range seems self explanatory to me. Whether it’s useful depends on the person and what they are doing. Seems like lots of people complained the Nox 800 range was too limited. Now the question seems to be why did it need to be expanded. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I’m not one who has an issue with the original range so maybe somebody who thinks it was too limited will chime in with the specific examples you want. The chart includes a generic example.

 

 

[Jeff McClendon]

The heading for the chart says "Enhanced" which to me normally means "made it better". If the heading said "Expanded" I would accept that as factual. For me so far the "enhancement” of adding 50 extra target IDs between the ferrous non ferrous tone break and US dimes compared to the Equinox 600/800 is total overkill and for me anyway overload.

"Enhancing" that target ID area by 10 to 20 target IDs would have been more reasonable in my opinion. That overly expanded range of target IDs is the only thing that I don't particularly like about the Manticore.

[GB_Amateur]

On 3/9/2024 at 2:36 AM, phrunt said:

Adding extra Target ID's while benefiting a small few has proven to be a mistake, I don't see a lot of satisfied customers by this "improvement", I think they got it right the first time, sure they could have rearranged things a bit, but the extra range was a step backwards, detectors a decade or more old had 99 ID's, they moved off that for a reason.   Sure, some advanced users may think or even benefit from a larger range at the cost of stability, yet a bulk of their customers won't.  The lesser ID's is more of a dig it all approach which the end result is more successful detecting.

Hey, aren't you the guy who posted Minelab Marketing's 'perfect' TID conversion chart (my words, but their illustrations tend to do that -- make things look better than they are)?  😁

One thing we all (almost -- there's always an exhibitionist or two) can agree upon is the desire for the option of choosing between the (old) 800's [-9,40] scale and the new 900's [-9,100] scale.  That didn't happen and it's very unlikely to happen, at least until another new model (CTX is what many are hoping for) is released.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't feel like I dig more with the Manticore -- [1,99] conductivity scale with ferrous reported separately -- than I did with the Equinox.  Yes, there's an initial time period where I have to learn where certain targets appear (especially USA coins but also the repeatable TID trash targets such as the many kinds of aluminum pulltabs), but that was true when I got the Equinox, whose TID scale was fresh and new to everyone.

And what's to stop someone with a 100 point scale from taking a dig-it-all approach, regardless of whether or not that truly leads to "more success"?

Just to give a bit of evidence (again, my personal experience so may not be true for everyone), here are two USA coins with their nemesis trash items that I've hunted with both the Eqx 800 and the M'core:

1) USA 5 cent 'nickel' (25% Ni, 75% Cu) -- the sweet spot on the 800 is 12-13 (usually both showing in an alternate pattern).  Sometimes 11 and/or 14 would appear too, but 12 and/or 13 were present and dominant even in those outlier cases.  (Orientation, corrosion, depth all seemed to have the effect of pulling the TID away from the sweet spot.)  Meanwhile, the 'rolled over' beavertail (beavertail broken off the ring tab and then bent over itself) were the worst immitators.  I dug/dig a lot of those.  Some detectorists claim they can hear the difference.  Maybe, but not I.

With the Manticore the TID sweet spot for this coin is 26-27 but 25, 28 and even 24 (maybe some 29) can not only be present but I've even seen 24-25 dominate in some cases).  Is that worse or better?  IMO, it's the same, given the factor of 2.5 in scale expansion (40 point of conductivity vs. 100 points).  Is it difficult to remember the new scale?  Not IMO.  Meanwhile the pesky rolled-over-beavertails are right there with them, hitting in the 24-27 range.  Better?  No.  Worse?  No.

Second example is the Indian Head Cent (95% Cu with additions of tin and zinc, last minted in 1909) which due to varying amounts of tin added, can read a rather wide range.  On the Equinox it's something like 17 to 21.  On the Manticore it's low 50's (I dig 51's) to mid-60's (I dig 65).  Yesterday I got one at 58 and another at 63.  Here there may be some improvement for the Manticore in separating out the background trash as the ring only pull (what is left when the pests removed the beavertail) hits ~40-42 on the Manticore (well out of copper IHC range) but 17-18 on the Equinox (right in the lower IHC range).  However, there are still other targets (the old large 'square' tabs from the early days of beavertail pulltabs, zinc cents over a wide range of deterioration, and other aluminum trash, particularly screwcaps of different sizes) that fall in the same range as the IHC's, for both Eqx and M'core.

[phrunt]

I've learnt to live with the higher range of the Manticore, although it's 0 to 99 and also has the 2D charting to give more information on the targets and seems more stable than the 900, the earlier Manticore firmware was also more unstable on ID's for me than the more recent update, The 900 has -19 to 99 so even more and no 2D chart and perhaps why so many complaints are about ID stability on the 900.   I've not used a 900 and the Target ID is what's holding me back, I'm often a cherry picker out of necessity so favour detectors with accurate ID's for coin hunting.  

I would have bought a 900 if it had the ability in the firmware to switch between legacy IDs and extended ID's, that would be an awesome feature.  Best of both worlds.  I'd also of course love the Manticore to have the same feature, as I can see in a few situations the extended range helps.  

I think they gave the 900 the expanded iron range for the Europeans and perhaps in their situation often digging iron intentionally it is beneficial, you can't please everyone, yet you can, by giving both ID ranges on one detector, perhaps it opens them up for their next generation Equinox's and Manticores by doing just that, if they see demand for these things they love it, as it gives them an excuse for a new model, rather than a firmware update. 😉

A competitor used a ferrous range of 1-10 and a non-ferrous range of 11 to 60, from what I've been reading they have hit a sweet spot between a bigger range spreading targets out while maintaining more stable ID's.  The best incarnation of a large ID range detector I've ever used is the CTX, biggest range by far yet also the most accurate, so that's why there are always hopes and dreams of a new CTX, if they can get FBS3 working in worse soil conditions with faster recovery so those customers see how good I see the CTX that would be a great detector for them to add to their stable. 

At the moment I'm worried they're going to discontinue the 800, the 600 looks like it's going the way of the Dodo, with discounting happening in the US selling off the stock.  If the 800 goes on sale too I'll be very worried.  I don't particularly want to replace my 800 with a 900 as the ID's are the thing I like best about it, I'd just use my Vanquish if my 800 died and my only option for replacement was a 900.  Instead of discontinuing the 800 I'd prefer they just keep it on the market and put it in the 900's body and have the range they do now with the older Equinox models still existing but with their known hardware flaws fixed by incorporation of the 900's build.

[Steve Herschbach]

Many Fisher and Nokta models employ 0-99 target id scales. Almost all White's top end detectors from the very first had a 100 point target id range, expanded not long after into 190 points. -95 to 0 ferrous and 0 to 95 non-ferrous. This is an almost exact match for the phase shift reality that underlies most VLF discrimination systems. I liked it then and like it now and fail to see why more numbers rather than fewer is an issue. If the numbers are jumpy it's from too much sensitivity or EMI. You can set audio tone overrides on most machines now to make it a two tone or three tone detector and just ignore the target id if too many numbers is a bother.

The CTX 3030 has 1750 possible dual target id combinations and 100 is too many?

White's XL Pro target id range

White's target id scale XLT MXT DFX V3i etc etc

[schoolofhardNox]

I like the expanded scale, coming from a White's before owning a Minelab, but I don't like the fact that the new machines expanded both the pull tab range and the gold range, so they blend a lot more than previously. On the CTX, a large number of women's gold rings came in at 6 or 9. I never found a pull tab at 6 or 9 on the CTX, so I would get excited to see those numbers knowing it isn't going to be a pull tab. I guess I'm saying that previous technology seemed to better group targets, but now you can dig a zinc cent from anywhere 65 different numbers. I've had them read as low as foil and as high as just above an Indian. I may pull out the CTX if a lot of sand is removed or if I want better odds in cherry picking small rings in a field. I'm all for more numbers, but a better classification of targets would help.

[Chase Goldman]

6 hours ago, phrunt said:

I've learnt to live with the higher range of the Manticore, although it's 0 to 99 and also has the 2D charting to give more information on the targets and seems more stable than the 900, the earlier Manticore firmware was also more unstable on ID's for me than the more recent update, The 900 has -19 to 99 so even more and no 2D chart and perhaps why so many complaints are about ID stability on the 900. 

You are correct in your observation of Manticore TID stability vs. the Nox 900 but it is not because the ID scales are different (not that you were necessarily making that direct assertion, Simon).  It is mostly due to different Multi-IQ (Nox) vs. Multi-IQ+ (M-core) target processing, especially ferrous with the 2D ferrous limit processing.  And I'm glad you and GB pointed out the nuanced difference between the Nox 900 and M-core scales.  But the difference is purely related to how ferrous IDs are displayed.  The Nox 900 TID scale does not actually have more TIDs than the M-Core.  In fact it is quite the opposite.

Note that for non-ferrous targets, both Manticore and Equinox actually use the same 99 point scale.  And in single frequency, the Manticore will display non-falsing ferrous as limited to 0 to 19 with a ferrous indication (red or red underlined numbers) which is effectively identical to the Nox 900 0 to -19 scale for ferrous in both Single and Multi-IQ. 

But in M-Core's Multi-IQ+ implementation, ferrous can show up as any ID (0 to 99) but with a ferrous indication (red digits or underline) if Manticore interprets the target as wholly or partially falling within the upper and/or lower (2D) ferrous limits.  This is a very powerful implementation and enhancement over the Nox but is also often misinterpreted by experienced Nox users (but who are new to M-core) as "falsing" because iron can show up with the "high" TID numbers (and tones if the ferrous target "smear" touches the centerline) but with the less noticeable red underlines, until the option to use red digits was added in the last update.

Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that the non-ferrous TID scales between the Nox 900 and the Manticore have the same non-ferrous scale range and resolution. This is in reaction to your "even more" comment regarding the Nox 900 IDs.  In fact, since ferrous can correctly ID anywhere from 0 to 99 on the M-core, it's like a -99 to +99 TID, so M-Core actually qualifies as the "even more" TID detector over the Nox 900: 199 possible M-Core TIDs vs. 119 for Nox 900.  So it has more in common with Steve's favored Whites +95 to -95 TID scale but with the added tonal and visual target information facilitated by Target Trace.  FWIW.

At least that's how I "think" it works.  M-core experts feel free to correct any misperceptions I have.

These Minelab centric TID posts probably fit well in Phrunt's TID chart thread...

https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/25711-target-id-chart-differences-between-equinox-600800-and-equinox-700900manticore/?do=findComment&comment=271193