What Are The Best Settings On The Manticore For Civil War Relics?

[cookie58]

Someone who uses the Manticore for relics, which search program do you use and how does a minnie ball ring up, a button, and square nails. I have only used the manticore for coins----- 5 silvers in 2 hunts (1 rosie, 3 mercurys, and a washington quarter) and several clads. It does a bang-up job with coins and I have great hope that it will be as good for civil war relics. All information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[TampaBayBrad]

I'm a beach guy, but I'm sure some relic guys will chime in here with some help. If not, try asking in the relic subforum where there is a bit more traffic.

[okara gold]

These are Tom Dankowski's Settings for inland hunting.

He doesn't say if they are specific for relics but it's something to try.

All Terrain - High Conductors
Recovery Speed = 4
Nothing Notched
1-Region, All Tones
Iron Volume = 2
Volume = 25
Ferrous Limits - Upper/Lower = 3/3 (Insane settings.... with stipulations/qualifiers)
Left Softkey shortcut = Noise Cancel
Right Softkey shortcut = Ground Balance
Upper-Right side button shortcut = Iron Disc
Audio Theme = Normal -- Profile = Simple
Ferrous Tones = Stabiliser = 0 // Stabiliser Filter = Off
Sensitivity = As high as Sens can go...... after a LONG-PRESS Noise Cancel

A few stipulations =
If I am in an area whereby: targets are very sparse/few....and far-in-between...... I run Recovery Speed = 2.
If EMI is hard to mitigate..... I'll switch over to All Terrain = Low Conductors.
If I have rationale/justification to use a smaller coil (say: M9 or M8 coil)....... I'll always run a Recovery Speed of 4.
If there's too much iron falsing (usually attributable to: different era nails)..... I will adjust Ferrous Limits - Upper to 4, 5, 6 or 7.......determined by my level-of-falsing-tolerance AND iron target level of falsing.

 

[abenson]

I relic hunt with my Manticore almost exclusively, except when gold prospecting. My settings are

AT General, recovery 5, 1 region all tones, normal audio with a simple profile, stock upper ferrous limits, lower ferrous limits at 2, all targets accepted, sensitivity at 20-22, iron volume 4, stabilizer off and at 0.

Here are the ID'S I see for most relics and coins.

25 small pewter
37 Large pewter
44-46 fatty IHP
54-56 bronze IHP
51-56 trime
61-62 half dime
51 .58 minie
40 Small cuff button
68 Coat button
79-82 Dime
88 Quarter

[Chase Goldman]

3 hours ago, abenson said:

I relic hunt with my Manticore almost exclusively, except when gold prospecting. My settings are

AT General, recovery 5, 1 region all tones, normal audio with a simple profile, stock upper ferrous limits, lower ferrous limits at 2, all targets accepted, sensitivity at 20-22, iron volume 4, stabilizer off and at 0.

Here are the ID'S I see for most relics and coins.

25 small pewter
37 Large pewter
44-46 fatty IHP
54-56 bronze IHP
51-56 trime
61-62 half dime
51 .58 minie
40 Small cuff button
68 Coat button
79-82 Dime
88 Quarter

Mine are similar to Andrew's except my personal preference is Enhanced audio (Simple Profile) and sometimes I will go to Depth (Pitch) in thick target areas to better differentiate individual targets. 

I also experiment with 2 and 5-region all tones. 

I rarely see a need to go above 5 or below 4 on recovery. 

I don't fret too much on customizing ferrous limits because the trace is more important to me than whether I am hearing ferrous when in horseshoe (all targets accepted).  If I am hearing screwy non-ferrous or ferrous audio, then I am glancing at the trace to help make a dig determination while circling the target; so whether or not the trace actually moves into a ferrous limits region really makes little difference to me.  It should be noted however that the upper ferrous limits can affect your ability to separate ferrous from non-ferrous if you are solely relying on the upper limit to reduce ferrous falsing and aggressive lower ferrous limits to minimize big, flat ferrous falsing can limit your ability to "hear" deep non-ferrous in mineraluzed ground if the target pip gets drug down to the lower ferrous limit threshold.  If you accept all targets and study the target pip trace, this is less of an issue.  If you don't use the target trace, you'd probably be better off with the D2 and it's more expressive audio and excellent relic mode (micro gold prospectors are better off with the Manticore, though, regardless of whether they prefer visual or audio).  Also, you can use Manticore's best in class pinpoint function to trace the footprint of large/flat targets to help factor into your dig decision.   If the XP D2's pinpoint functioned like the Manticore, it would be amazing, but I digress...

I stay generally in ATG and definitely stay away from AT HC unless I am solely looking for high conductive coins/targets - as a relic hunter, I don't want to suppress buttons and other low to mid conductive targets at tge limit of detection, so Dankowski's AT HC inland settings (see above) make no sense to me as a relic hunter (coin shooting in a park, maybe, but not for relics or gold jewelry).  I also don't like to bias to AT LC unless I am certain no high conductors are present (and it's rare that can you ever be certain of that).  FWIW 

[Jeff McClendon]

Maybe using All Terrain HC vs General is soil mineralization level related.

I can't effectively use ATHC at most of my western USA hunt sites. The falsing both on 1800s iron and on the ground itself is not conducive to a positive experience. Sensitivity has to be lowered too much to make it feasible here. Running ATHC for park and field hunting with sparse target density does stabilize target ID accuracy on higher conductive targets here but the falsing and sensitivity lowering makes it useless since most of the really good older targets are 8" or deeper.

Default ATG reduces the falsing to a usable level even with sensitivity at 24 to 26.

Like others I keep recovery speed on 4 or 5 which may also be iron mineralized soil related. I like 5 tones unless I'm in a bed of 1800s nails. Then I switch to 2 tones or pitch tones. I prefer simple or medium using Normal audio. I sometimes switch to Depth when ferrous targets are really thick.

I use a slightly adjusted lower iron boundary in the steel bottle cap (0 to 40 target ID range......part of that big hump in the preset lower pattern) so that deeper nickels and similar sized lead that rings up 20 to 35 is more likely to sound like non-ferrous. This may just be an effect of the higher iron mineralized soil here. Without this adjustment to the default pattern, I lose overall depth and target ID stability tending towards iron responses too quickly on those non ferrous target IDs in the 20 to 35 range.

I leave the upper iron boundary on default.

I also hunt with the horseshoe button engaged to allow all audio and target ID responses.

There are sites here with bed of 1800s nails and high iron mineralization where even the Manticore and Deus 2 struggle to identify non-ferrous targets even near the surface. Correct non ferrous target IDs are a rarity in those places and getting any kind of repeatable non ferrous response is a "dig me" target. I have dug shallow, late 1800s Seated Liberty quarters that had target IDs in the mid 20s (normally around 90) on the Manticore and their Deus 2 target IDs were between 6 and 10 but with tiny, repeatable non ferrous audio blips.......

There is no way I could use Tom D's settings here. I tried them and it was hopeless even on less iron mineralized ground with sparse targets. 

[UT Dave]

Along the lines of Andrew, Chase and Jeff.  I prefer one region all tones, normal simple for audio.  But ATG, sensitivity generally below 22, recovery 5, stock or slightly lowered ferrous limits.  Horeshoe engaged.

- Dave

[Knomad]

I have not used it yet for relics or coins, BUT my advise is to always try Prospecting Mode with iron on whenever you can and just look at the numbers and visual readouts. I do know you will get far better depth than any other mode in Prospecting with the Nox 800 and very likely also with the Manticore. TRY IT TO CONFIRM.  

[Rattlehead]

I use ATG, recovery at 3-5 depending on the target/iron density, Depth theme with minimum pitch at 0, max pitch at 65. Horseshoe in unless I get into some annoying targets reading in the foil range. In that case I’ll disc out 0-19 or so. Upper limits are set based on the site. I drop them down just enough that iron isn’t bothersome.

.58 cal minieballs tend to read from 49-53. Slightly smaller carbine rounds read 46-50. Buttons can read all over the place depending on type and size. About a week ago, I dug a two piece Confederate coat button that read 58.