Big Boys Hobbies

My thoughts on the Minelab Manticore after 50 hours and beyond!

On another forum, steveg suggested trying ATLC at sites that have a lot of iron to help cut down on falsing, so I tried it out last week, paired up with the Silver Shooter pattern and it worked great. Very quiet, stable and no falsing issues whatsoever. It also allows running a higher sensitivity. Definitely a big difference compared to ATHC, and seemed even quieter than ATG. If you’re having issues with falsing iron, this is worth trying. It will still tag high conductors very well, though not quite as deep as ATHC. Like I mentioned before, the ID may also be a little more jumpy, but still very usable.

The more I use the Manticore, the more I like it. Scored two more silvers with it today. I haven’t been able to get out a lot lately due to all the rain but my Manticore silver count is up to 13 (15 FTY overall).
 
Mike K Ohio said:
I've also noticed this, check out the video as it shows the 2D trace and the TID numbers before Digging and what else was in the hole.... For those who didn't see the other post....

Manticore In ATG Low Conductor

Mike K Ohio
Click to expand...
That was an impressive dig Mike! Not sure why my notifications aren’t working on YouTube but I hadn’t seen that until now. Congrats on the Seated and IHP!

Coin shooting with the Manticore using ATLC is very similar to using a Fast based coin shooting program on the D2.
 
Rattlehead said:
Coin shooting with the Manticore using ATLC is very similar to using a Fast based coin shooting program on the D2.
Click to expand...
I should clarify what I meant by the statement above. What I should have said, is the Manticore using ATLC behaves similar to the D2 running Fast as far as being quieter at higher sensitivity levels with less falsing. On the D2, running Fast or Sensitive Full Tones allows the machine to run much quieter with less falsing while using higher sensitivity when compared to Deep HC. Seems to be the same on the Manticore if running ATLC vs ATHC. I can't say how these two programs compare as far as performance on actual targets. I haven't tested. Only used ATLC once so far.
 
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I have used both HC and LC about a dozen times. I would say for the most part just thinking about the targets I've dug that were similar I would say HC is Probably a little deeper than LC. But keep in mind that I have less than 40 hours on this machine. Also in the real world finding the same target as the same depth is very hard to do. I don't believe in test beds as the real world targets is where you see the true data my opinion. I also didn't switch between HC and LC to test But I'll add that to my list of items to test this coming up weekend. I will do a video showing the screen and you will be able to hear the audio and I play with the different settings and then Dig the target to see what it was nails and all. I have an 1879 1 room school site where a wooden school sat. So lots of square nails and no modern trash to speak of unless you get next to the road. Its in a grassy area with undisturbed soil. Which the grass is dead and I can scrub the coil right now.

Mike K "Ohio"
Rattlehead said:
I can't say how these two programs compare as far as performance on actual targets.
Click to expand...
 
Mike K Ohio said:
I have used both HC and LC about a dozen times. I would say for the most part just thinking about the targets I've dug that were similar I would say HC is Probably a little deeper than LC. But keep in mind that I have less than 40 hours on this machine. Also in the real world finding the same target as the same depth is very hard to do. I don't believe in test beds as the real world targets is where you see the true data my opinion. I also didn't switch between HC and LC to test But I'll add that to my list of items to test this coming up weekend. I will do a video showing the screen and you will be able to hear the audio and I play with the different settings and then Dig the target to see what it was nails and all. I have an 1879 1 room school site where a wooden school sat. So lots of square nails and no modern trash to speak of unless you get next to the road. Its in a grassy area with undisturbed soil. Which the grass is dead and I can scrub the coil right now.

Mike K "Ohio"
Click to expand...
Looking forward to your test results. Would you mind posting them here as well? For some reason I'm not getting notifications on YT lately.
 
I have quite a few hours on mine now as well and agree with just about everything you mentioned. It's pulling deep silver in areas that's already been cherry picked over by other machines. So far a dozen or so silver and a ridiculous amount of deep wheats. 90% of these targets were all 8-13" range. The Core gets extremely deep for just a stock coil, and I haven't even cranked my sens up past 23 or 24, usually running around 22ish depending on power lines and emi. If they make a 13" for this baby I'm gonna need a bigger shovel. For the price tag though, I agree the cams are nice but should have just been one large nicely made cam like the CTX has and a diamond shaped carbon shaft that can't turn on you with the wire running inside. Not to mention, why all of a sudden 10 years ago did every company just decide to stop doing trigger pinpoint? It's so much more convenient and who wants to smoosh their muddy gloves or fingers all over the front of the screen every time to pinpoint? Just doesn't make sense. I mostly use the wiggle back method anyhow but once in awhile when you do want to pinpoint it's nice to just be able to grab the trigger on the CTX. Headphones are very very comfy on the Core although not water resistant. That's not an issue to me, I used it in a light rain a few days ago and just threw my hoodie up over them no problem all day. Anything more than a light sprinkle I don't wanna be out in it anyway getting soaked. The VDI spread drives me nuts a bit. I'm used to the accuracy of the CTX which is why I was a bit confused when they hyped the Core up with a picture of a scorpion and says "deadly accurate". What I've been seeing is wheats coming in mid 70's all the way to high 80's. Deep silvers have read 76 all the way up to 95. Kind of aggravating because just about every coin is in between but if you get a good solid high tone with the depth meter pegged you just dig. With the old Etrac and CTX I can cherry pick much better and pretty much tell a wheat penny and even a clad dime from a silver dime. Core is also killer on nickels, probably even better than the CTX and Nox. 26/27 solid seems to be a nickel most of the time. So far I'm pretty happy with it, it's a solid machine that finds deep deep coinage. If they do an update to make that VDI a little more dialed in then it will really be amazing.
 
I noticed that when switching to AT-LC I actually seemed to be able to find more legitimate targets in a carpet of nails situation. Like a lot of stuff in the ground that AT-HC was constantly chirping on was tamed by AT-LC. With the constant chirping along with the barrage of iron grunts with the horseshoe on in AT-HC ear fatigue can set in pretty fast. Speaking of the horseshoe button I still have not found running with it off to be a help in either HC or LC. I think the Manticore may be a little better than the Equinox at sniffing out silver, but I think the Equinox might overall be easier to use. By that I mean you just don't hear as much of the stuff you don't really need to hear. I'm doing well with the Manticore, and the two silver dimes I found this weekend were really tough targets found in nails with numerous nails in the hole with them. One Barber dime found with AT-HC, one Rosie found with AT-LC.
 
Azmodeus said:
I have quite a few hours on mine now as well and agree with just about everything you mentioned. It's pulling deep silver in areas that's already been cherry picked over by other machines. So far a dozen or so silver and a ridiculous amount of deep wheats. 90% of these targets were all 8-13" range. The Core gets extremely deep for just a stock coil, and I haven't even cranked my sens up past 23 or 24, usually running around 22ish depending on power lines and emi. If they make a 13" for this baby I'm gonna need a bigger shovel. For the price tag though, I agree the cams are nice but should have just been one large nicely made cam like the CTX has and a diamond shaped carbon shaft that can't turn on you with the wire running inside. Not to mention, why all of a sudden 10 years ago did every company just decide to stop doing trigger pinpoint? It's so much more convenient and who wants to smoosh their muddy gloves or fingers all over the front of the screen every time to pinpoint? Just doesn't make sense. I mostly use the wiggle back method anyhow but once in awhile when you do want to pinpoint it's nice to just be able to grab the trigger on the CTX. Headphones are very very comfy on the Core although not water resistant. That's not an issue to me, I used it in a light rain a few days ago and just threw my hoodie up over them no problem all day. Anything more than a light sprinkle I don't wanna be out in it anyway getting soaked. The VDI spread drives me nuts a bit. I'm used to the accuracy of the CTX which is why I was a bit confused when they hyped the Core up with a picture of a scorpion and says "deadly accurate". What I've been seeing is wheats coming in mid 70's all the way to high 80's. Deep silvers have read 76 all the way up to 95. Kind of aggravating because just about every coin is in between but if you get a good solid high tone with the depth meter pegged you just dig. With the old Etrac and CTX I can cherry pick much better and pretty much tell a wheat penny and even a clad dime from a silver dime. Core is also killer on nickels, probably even better than the CTX and Nox. 26/27 solid seems to be a nickel most of the time. So far I'm pretty happy with it, it's a solid machine that finds deep deep coinage. If they do an update to make that VDI a little more dialed in then it will really be amazing.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, that's a great point about the trigger pinpoint button. I agree 100%! It's just more natural than using your thumb and getting crap all over the face of your detector. White's got it right all the way back in the 90s with their detectors, and then the CTX had the trigger as well. Why they moved away from it, I have no idea. If anyone from Minelab or any other manufacturer is reading this, BRING THE TRIGGER BACK!

I'm seeing the same sort of spreads on the ID. Most copper pennies are 70-80 but I've had a few jump well up into the 80s. I figured it was up-averaging. The spread ID can be useful but I also loved how easy it was to tell a penny from a dime on the CTX. ATHC seems to give a more stable ID on US coins than other programs. Keeping the sensitivity reasonably low and narrowing the sweep down to a short wiggle over the target seems to help as well.
 
longbow62 said:
I noticed that when switching to AT-LC I actually seemed to be able to find more legitimate targets in a carpet of nails situation. Like a lot of stuff in the ground that AT-HC was constantly chirping on was tamed by AT-LC. With the constant chirping along with the barrage of iron grunts with the horseshoe on in AT-HC ear fatigue can set in pretty fast. Speaking of the horseshoe button I still have not found running with it off to be a help in either HC or LC. I think the Manticore may be a little better than the Equinox at sniffing out silver, but I think the Equinox might overall be easier to use. By that I mean you just don't hear as much of the stuff you don't really need to hear. I'm doing well with the Manticore, and the two silver dimes I found this weekend were really tough targets found in nails with numerous nails in the hole with them. One Barber dime found with AT-HC, one Rosie found with AT-LC.
Click to expand...
I've only used ATLC for coin shooting once, and it did seem very stable, but not nearly enough time using it for me to draw any conclusions on performance. I'm looking forward to using it more.. I'm not sure about the video posting rules here nowadays so I won't link directly to someone else's video, but TNSS posted an interesting comparison on YT today. Congrats on those silvers BTW!
 
Rattlehead said:
Oh yeah, that's a great point about the trigger pinpoint button. I agree 100%! It's just more natural than using your thumb and getting crap all over the face of your detector. White's got it right all the way back in the 90s with their detectors, and then the CTX had the trigger as well. Why they moved away from it, I have no idea. If anyone from Minelab or any other manufacturer is reading this, BRING THE TRIGGER BACK!

I'm seeing the same sort of spreads on the ID. Most copper pennies are 70-80 but I've had a few jump well up into the 80s. I figured it was up-averaging. The spread ID can be useful but I also loved how easy it was to tell a penny from a dime on the CTX. ATHC seems to give a more stable ID on US coins than other programs. Keeping the sensitivity reasonably low and narrowing the sweep down to a short wiggle over the target seems to help as well.
Click to expand...

I haven't played around with the HC much yet, mostly getting used to the ATG running recovery around 4 and bumping to 5 in trashier areas. I may give the HC a try next time I'm out. what do you run your recovery on? I'm surprised the guy in the video above was able to pull those coins with only a recovery of 2 completely surrounded by 8 or 9 big nails.
 
Azmodeus said:
I haven't played around with the HC much yet, mostly getting used to the ATG running recovery around 4 and bumping to 5 in trashier areas. I may give the HC a try next time I'm out. what do you run your recovery on? I'm surprised the guy in the video above was able to pull those coins with only a recovery of 2 completely surrounded by 8 or 9 big nails.
Click to expand...
I also run mine at 2 or 3 with a slightly slower sweep speed on most sites. If its super trashy I'll bump it up to 4, but I rarely go higher than that. I like the longer tones and extra bump in depth with the lower reactivity. Still seems pretty dang fast at those lower settings to me.
 
Well I posed this question to Tom Dankowski just to double check before I spoke. I don't want to mislead anyone. This was his response to Recovery speeds.

"The higher the Recovery Speed....... the faster the AUDIO reset of a target. Also......... the shorter the audio response of any target. There is indeed moderate improvement using a higher Recovery Speed in trashy areas; yet, many times........ a slower Recovery Speed in concert with a slower coil sweep-speed........ will give really good separation AND better (overall) depth."

I've pretty much have been swinging Minelab products for the last at least 20+ Years so I'm use to the slow swing speed as we had to back in the day. I hope this helps anyone wanting to know about recovery speed.

So there probably isn't a perfect speed as that might be site dependent. I use to run 3-4 on the NOX 800 and had extremely good luck. I would venture to step out on a limb 2-4 maybe 5 I've done tests where when you have a target in the ground and you keep bumping up the recovery speed and sometimes you will loose the target all together and other times its a very nasty tone. Give it a try sometime.

Mike K "Ohio"
Azmodeus said:
what do you run your recovery on? I'm surprised the guy in the video above was able to pull those coins with only a recovery of 2 completely surrounded by 8 or 9 big nails.
Click to expand...
 
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