Comparison - Manticore vs EQX 800 vs Explorer SE Pro

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Awesome. That's a lot of work.
Are these fresh or old buries ?
What's your soil and GB conditions ?
I guess you'll be trying the difference single frequencies ? Wonder how gold mode plays the gold jewelry ?
Thank You Charles.

Accept for the Kennedy Half, and 1964 quarter and dime these are all dug coins. These results are in air tests, no soil mineralization in play. Soil mineralization will impact the results, to the degree depends on the soil mineralization and condition e.g. bone dry, damp, sopping wet rusty iron infestation etc. My soil here in the pacific NW U.S. is nasty. We have magnetic volcanic black sand that's difficult to punch through and get depth. Worse, it enhances rusty nails falsing. This soil will be a torture test, we'll see how the Manticore stacks up against it.

No plan to use single frequencies. It has the higher gold prospecting frequencies but I'm getting a bit too old to be hiking through the back country doing that. I'm mostly interested in saltwater beach gold so I'm going to be doing a lot of testing of features specific to that.

 

[sube]

I sampled a bunch of targets today with the Manticore and made some observations. I used mostly default settings...All-Terrain, General, Sensitivity 26, Multi IQ, All Metal

Observation 1 - The numeric display becomes a jumble of jumping around numbers (useless) well before max detection depth is achieved. The good news is target tone remains quite consistent almost to the max detectable depth, long after the numeric ID becomes useless. Some variance of tone pitch at the very extreme detection depth.

Observation 2 - Higher swing speed improves detection depth and tone, significantly, that's new. There seemed to be no upper limit, the faster the swing the more depth achieved and the more the target tone improved. Faster than I'd ever swing an Explorer.

Observation 3 - Manticore has finer granularity of target ID. Tone and ID vary even within a single coin type. See the silver dime samples below, tone and ID varied from 72 to 83.

Observation 4 - Coins at 45 degrees produced a distinctive tone shape. When swept from one direction the tone was solid and steady, monotone. When swept in the opposite direction the tone began at the same pitch then sloped down as the swing was completed. So say a steady 78 tone from one direction then a 78,76,74,72 from the opposite direction. That distinctive tone behavior will be a tip off that the target is sitting at a 45 degree angle. Though that is with the coin angled 45 degrees left to right. If the coin was angled 45 degrees front to back when swept that might produce a different behavior. I generally circle a target so no big deal but I will re-test.

Observation 5 - Hits coins straight up on edge quite well at significant depths. Greater than I recall the EQX 800 achieving. Strait up on edge coins also produce a distinctive tone shape, a double beep as you sweep across it. As if it's striking one side of the coin, then the other. Another thing, the ID and tone pitch was consistently a few points higher than when the same coin was swept sitting flat to the coil. Perhaps certain frequencies are weaker on a coin straight up on edge, leaving other frequencies stronger and that is pulling up the ID and tone pitch. The manual states different frequencies can change the ID so there you go.

Observation 6 - The Manticore with these settings is a nickel thumper, really good thick/strong signals on them. Like silver dimes I saw some target ID/tone variance even within the batch of nickels sampled.

Observation 7 - Not so great all small gold with these settings, I think the EQX was stronger so I'll have to experiment with settings to improve that.

Observation 8 - Thumps gold rings strong, crazy depths on those especially that thinner womans gold band about the diameter and thickness of a nickel.

Observation 9 - As the manual states the numeric target ID can vary typically +-1 point even when sampled at shallower solid signal depths. I gave up recording the range at some point and just posted the middle or most consistent ID below.

Coin Samples

View attachment 44184

Gold Jewelry Samples

View attachment 44185

Thanks for the chart was wondering where copper penny's memorials came in at are they close to or same as the silver dimes . sube

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Thanks for the chart was wondering where copper penny's memorials came in at are they close to or same as the silver dimes . sube

Modern coins and common trash targets are up next.

 

[Odanscoils]

Accept for the Kennedy Half, and 1964 quarter and dime these are all dug coins. These results are in air tests, no soil mineralization in play. Soil mineralization will impact the results, to the degree depends on the soil mineralization and condition e.g. bone dry, damp, sopping wet rusty iron infestation etc. My soil here in the pacific NW U.S. is nasty. We have magnetic volcanic black sand that's difficult to punch through and get depth. Worse, it enhances rusty nails falsing. This soil will be a torture test, we'll see how the Manticore stacks up against it.

No plan to use single frequencies. It has the higher gold prospecting frequencies but I'm getting a bit too old to be hiking through the back country doing that. I'm mostly interested in saltwater beach gold so I'm going to be doing a lot of testing of features specific to that.

Yes. The ground anomalies was why I asked.
I have a beach nearby that reads 98 GB on my old whites mxt and atpro. Right next to and downstream of the Grand River. An old iron ore shipping dock a hundred plus years of use.
It's like you describe. You can see the black sand on the surface. Only my old explorer xs and sovereign gt penetrate well. The Tesoro Mojave actually did quite well there. Haven't been able to get the Manticore out there yet. Disabled.
Be interested to see how it works on your beach.

 

[BigTony]

I sampled a bunch of targets today with the Manticore and made some observations. I used mostly default settings...All-Terrain, General, Sensitivity 26, Multi IQ, All Metal

Observation 1 - The numeric display becomes a jumble of jumping around numbers (useless) well before max detection depth is achieved. The good news is target tone remains quite consistent almost to the max detectable depth, long after the numeric ID becomes useless. Some variance of tone pitch at the very extreme detection depth.

Observation 2 - Higher swing speed improves detection depth and tone, significantly, that's new. There seemed to be no upper limit, the faster the swing the more depth achieved and the more the target tone improved. Faster than I'd ever swing an Explorer.

Observation 3 - Manticore has finer granularity of target ID. Tone and ID vary even within a single coin type. See the silver dime samples below, tone and ID varied from 72 to 83.

Observation 4 - Coins at 45 degrees produced a distinctive tone shape. When swept from one direction the tone was solid and steady, monotone. When swept in the opposite direction the tone began at the same pitch then sloped down as the swing was completed. So say a steady 78 tone from one direction then a 78,76,74,72 from the opposite direction. That distinctive tone behavior will be a tip off that the target is sitting at a 45 degree angle. Though that is with the coin angled 45 degrees left to right. If the coin was angled 45 degrees front to back when swept that might produce a different behavior. I generally circle a target so no big deal but I will re-test.

Observation 5 - Hits coins straight up on edge quite well at significant depths. Greater than I recall the EQX 800 achieving. Strait up on edge coins also produce a distinctive tone shape, a double beep as you sweep across it. As if it's striking one side of the coin, then the other. Another thing, the ID and tone pitch was consistently a few points higher than when the same coin was swept sitting flat to the coil. Perhaps certain frequencies are weaker on a coin straight up on edge, leaving other frequencies stronger and that is pulling up the ID and tone pitch. The manual states different frequencies can change the ID so there you go.

Observation 6 - The Manticore with these settings is a nickel thumper, really good thick/strong signals on them. Like silver dimes I saw some target ID/tone variance even within the batch of nickels sampled.

Observation 7 - Not so great all small gold with these settings, I think the EQX was stronger so I'll have to experiment with settings to improve that.

Observation 8 - Thumps gold rings strong, crazy depths on those especially that thinner womans gold band about the diameter and thickness of a nickel.

Observation 9 - As the manual states the numeric target ID can vary typically +-1 point even when sampled at shallower solid signal depths. I gave up recording the range at some point and just posted the middle or most consistent ID below.

Coin Samples

View attachment 44184

Gold Jewelry Samples

View attachment 44185

Thanks for sharing, you did a ton of work there - were these in soil test garden or air tests?
Tony NJ
PS -I’m still deciding on this machine mainly I don’t hunt as much as I did in the past

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Thanks for sharing, you did a ton of work there - were these in soil test garden or air tests?
Tony NJ
PS -I’m still deciding on this machine mainly I don’t hunt as much as I did in the past

All air tests, I wanted to take soil out of the equation for these tests. First establish the ID on a rock solid signal. How the signal behaves at different target orientations (45 degrees, 90 degrees on edge) effects on ID, tone shape. Observe the behavior from the iffy signal range up through the extreme limit of the machine's ability to get a signal. That is quite a distance in air tests with these new machines, several inches. Explorers go from solid to iffy to not there in half or less of the distance. Swing speed which was an eye opener on the Manticore.

Soil is so variable that's best left for discovery in the field imo. Bone dry, moist, damp, sopping wet. Target halo influence, rotting iron influence, mineralization influence on deeper targets that's just going to require digging some real targets.

I hear you on not hunting as much. For me it was the weight of the old machines as I got older. 60 year old shoulders, hips I needed a much lighter machine, Minelab has solved that. This Manticore really is a step forward on keeping the weight to a minimum. Sites were also pretty pounded with Explorers. I needed a machine with new capabilities, again Minelab has made some significant advances, the Manticore can get signals on targets that are invisible to an Explorer. Also processing power, electronics are just much faster. The Explorer is quite slow in comparison. Target separation is much improved in part due to just how fast the new machines are.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Yes. The ground anomalies was why I asked.
I have a beach nearby that reads 98 GB on my old whites mxt and atpro. Right next to and downstream of the Grand River. An old iron ore shipping dock a hundred plus years of use.
It's like you describe. You can see the black sand on the surface. Only my old explorer xs and sovereign gt penetrate well. The Tesoro Mojave actually did quite well there. Haven't been able to get the Manticore out there yet. Disabled.
Be interested to see how it works on your beach.

There's a popular river swimming beach near me that's so nasty, you can't even get an Explorer 8" coil near it. The machine squeals like a stuck pig. The less intense areas are still quite challenging. Signals are pretty bad at 6 inches, in some areas even 6 inches is nearly impossible. There's an old park here, and a section of that park that's quite old. I felt there should be some coins there. After an hour of the worse nail falsing I ever experienced and nasty ground signal and no coins I had a meltdown. Cranked the sensitivity to max and the machine was going nuts falsing even with the coil not moving. I managed to deal with that for about 30 minutes but dug half a dozen wheats and 1 silver dime at 6-7 inches. I backed off the sensitivity and those targets vanished. That's why the EQX and Manticore interest me. Already confirmed the EQX 800 can get diggable signals just a bit deeper than the Explorer SE Pro. I hunted a small area first with the Explorer, really crappy signals on WWII coat buttons. Then the Deus, better signals and a few more buttons. Then came in a third time with the EQX and started getting targets all over the place the other two machines missed, not perfect signals but good definitely dig signals.

 

[BigTony]

All air tests, I wanted to take soil out of the equation for these tests. First establish the ID on a rock solid signal. How the signal behaves at different target orientations (45 degrees, 90 degrees on edge) effects on ID, tone shape. Observe the behavior from the iffy signal range up through the extreme limit of the machine's ability to get a signal. That is quite a distance in air tests with these new machines, several inches. Explorers go from solid to iffy to not there in half or less of the distance. Swing speed which was an eye opener on the Manticore.

Soil is so variable that's best left for discovery in the field imo. Bone dry, moist, damp, sopping wet. Target halo influence, rotting iron influence, mineralization influence on deeper targets that's just going to require digging some real targets.

I hear you on not hunting as much. For me it was the weight of the old machines as I got older. 60 year old shoulders, hips I needed a much lighter machine, Minelab has solved that. This Manticore really is a step forward on keeping the weight to a minimum. Sites were also pretty pounded with Explorers. I needed a machine with new capabilities, again Minelab has made some significant advances, the Manticore can get signals on targets that are invisible to an Explorer. Also processing power, electronics are just much faster. The Explorer is quite slow in comparison. Target separation is much improved in part due to just how fast the new machines are.

All in all you did a lot of testing there, thanks again. The swing speed is an interesting item. I will try that next time out.
I hurt my shoulder using the 15 inch coil. I’m waiting for cooler weather, its too dry
Tony NJ

 

[Odanscoils]

There's a popular river swimming beach near me that's so nasty, you can't even get an Explorer 8" coil near it. The machine squeals like a stuck pig. The less intense areas are still quite challenging. Signals are pretty bad at 6 inches, in some areas even 6 inches is nearly impossible. There's an old park here, and a section of that park that's quite old. I felt there should be some coins there. After an hour of the worse nail falsing I ever experienced and nasty ground signal and no coins I had a meltdown. Cranked the sensitivity to max and the machine was going nuts falsing even with the coil not moving. I managed to deal with that for about 30 minutes but dug half a dozen wheats and 1 silver dime at 6-7 inches. I backed off the sensitivity and those targets vanished. That's why the EQX and Manticore interest me. Already confirmed the EQX 800 can get diggable signals just a bit deeper than the Explorer SE Pro. I hunted a small area first with the Explorer, really crappy signals on WWII coat buttons. Then the Deus, better signals and a few more buttons. Then came in a third time with the EQX and started getting targets all over the place the other two machines missed, not perfect signals but good definitely dig signals.

Have you tried the little 4" hockey puck coil ?
Loved mine. Someone helped it walk away.
Finally came across this 6" coil and received it a couple days ago. Haven't even tried it in the yard yet. I may be able to swing this a while. Ripped out both of my shoulders awhile back. Still having issues. One of the main reasons I picked up the Manticore. I wish I could find the little coils for it.
When I said the Explorer and Sovereign did well.
It was with the small coils. Like your location 8+ inch coils didn't work. Thanks again Charles.
Love reading your post.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Have you tried the little 4" hockey puck coil ?
Loved mine. Someone helped it walk away.
Finally came across this 6" coil and received it a couple days ago. Haven't even tried it in the yard yet. I may be able to swing this a while. Ripped out both of my shoulders awhile back. Still having issues. One of the main reasons I picked up the Manticore. I wish I could find the little coils for it.
When I said the Explorer and Sovereign did well.
It was with the small coils. Like your location 8+ inch coils didn't work. Thanks again Charles.
Love reading your post.

I never really tried coils smaller than the Minelab 8" digging in NY because old coins were 6 inches minimum and deeper. So smaller coils than that don't really work if they can't also hit that depth. Shoulder pain is beyond annoying, my left has some arthritis or something setting in. Both my brothers have had shoulder joint replacements. I'm taking it easy on mine.

I think I'm going to take the Manticore over to the beach today for it's first field test. It's too hot and dry here around the house, the coast will be 20 degrees cooler and beach sand is EASY digging. I hunted a beach over there a couple times recently with my Explorer. I was stunned how bad coin signals were, UGLY bad on nickels and even a bit deeper quarter signals were awful. That black sand is my guess. I would be interested to see how the Manticore does. Just checked the weather, mostly cloudy, 65 and 8mph breeze perfect! Low tide at 5pm.

 

[Odanscoils]

I never really tried coils smaller than the Minelab 8" digging in NY because old coins were 6 inches minimum and deeper. So smaller coils than that don't really work if they can't also hit that depth. Shoulder pain is beyond annoying, my left has some arthritis or something setting in. Both my brothers have had shoulder joint replacements. I'm taking it easy on mine.

I think I'm going to take the Manticore over to the beach today for it's first field test. It's too hot and dry here around the house, the coast will be 20 degrees cooler and beach sand is EASY digging. I hunted a beach over there a couple times recently with my Explorer. I was stunned how bad coin signals were, UGLY bad on nickels and even a bit deeper quarter signals were awful. That black sand is my guess. I would be interested to see how the Manticore does. Just checked the weather, mostly cloudy, 65 and 8mph breeze perfect! Low tide at 5pm.

Be happy to hear how it does. Raining here. NE Ohio.
Those little coils still hit well at 8 inch's. I loved that thing. Hoping this coiltek 6" does as well.
Good Luck.

 

[Odanscoils]

Hmmm. I guess it was 5". Been years since I saw it.
It was this one. I was surprised at it's depth.

 

[BigTony]

Hmmm. I guess it was 5". Been years since I saw it.
It was this one. I was surprised at it's depth.

Just go real slow to get deeper coins. I love mine still have it but not used now

 

[Odanscoils]

Just go real slow to get deeper coins. I love mine still have it but not used now

Thanks Tony.
We were getting into blacksands Beach's and heavy mineralization. And what punched thru.
I was having good luck with the little puck coil.
I have that big oll 15" WOT coil too.
Just can't swing that anymore.
I have the Legend and Manticore though haven't been able to get out to the beach.
Hopefully this year.

 

[Odanscoils]

Hey Charles.
Here a coil I put on my Sovereign and Tejon.
May interest you.

Detech 4.5”x7" Excelerator Elliptical DD Search Coil for Minelab Metal Detector 9068009307 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Detech 4.5”x7" Excelerator Elliptical DD Search Coil for Minelab Metal Detector at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

FIELD TEST: I took the Manticore to the beach Saturday for it's first field test. It was a Manticore vs Explorer SE Pro hunt with my buddy using my SE Pro with my settings. I found the Manticore surprisingly simple to use. I selected the default Beach mode, upped the sensitivity at 25 and ran in All Metal. During the hunt I really did nothing but ground balance and noise cancel. It was a bit noisy with the sensitivity at 25, no shortage of blips of salt/mineralization falsing but that's how I run the SE Pro I'm used to it.

SETTINGS: The Manticore has a LOT of configurable settings. That concerned me. Prior field tests confirmed you can screw up E-Trac and CTX settings to the point that they can't get a signal on targets that are screaming on the SE Pro. The Explorer SE Pro is pretty much foolproof when it comes to settings. In all cases the users were able to adjust/fix their settings and the E-Trac and CTX were able to get just as good a signal as I was getting on my SE Pro, once I pointed out the target and let them listen via the SE Pro. The Manticore? It hit deep targets the whole hunt while the SE Pro struggled so check.

SITE CONDITIONS: Torture test. We drove out onto the north end which was horribly sanded in 3 weeks ago, there was a big trough eroded out upper mid-beach parallel to the water. The hump of sand between the trough and lower beach was like 30 inches high with a cliff on the lower side of the trough. The water had dug a big hole in the beach basically. Unfortunately, this put us much closer to the thick layer of magnetic black sand, it was only 2nd scoop down. Worse all the heavier targets were deep in that black sand layer, with more black sand beneath them. Most of the targets I dug were a minimum 2 scoops deep, frequently 3 scoops, a few more. I have a 6x12 inch scoop and I was digging straight down.

Results...

• Manticore bested Explorer SE Pro. The 2nd scoop of sand was BLACK with the black sand and more black sand below it. All the heavy targets were sitting in that stuff. Even quarters down in that black sand were heavily impacted by the black sand on the Manticore. The tone was black sand/quarter mixed, not great to down right ugly signals on the Manticore but diggable. I dug a bunch of quarters at that depth, the Explorer SE Pro dug none. Just like inland the SE Pro struggles to punch through that black sand.
• Crown Cap Tone Shape - Confirmed, you can hear the crimped crown cap ridges in the tone, nice. On the SE Pro you can hear some shape to the ridges (sometimes) but it's less defined. Manticore has high definition tone shape, SE Pro low definition tone shape.
• Target Trace - The target trace screen is quite interesting. Watching the crown caps especially false from iron (top) to crown cap (bottom/left) with some smearing across the coin area (middle). Hard to imagine ever digging a crown cap with that much target info. More on target trace below.
• ML 105 Headphones - Quite comfortable. Love the wireless. But I need to test a pair of my Sunray Gold headphones because the quality of the tones was lacking. A bit oil drum, thin, tinny. I don't know if that's the ML 105's or just the Manticore tones. For example I couldn't hear much difference between silver and clad coins during testing. On the SE Pro silver has that bit of extra in the tones that tells you silver. Not sure I heard any bell like tones or silver ringing during testing now that I think about it.
• Depth even in this black sand mess, excellent. It took two hands to drag some scoops back out of the hole, that kind of depth.
• Overall - Great beach machine!

Manticore Dark Magic #01 - Co-located targets, this is the strange realm of detector weirdness. Take crown cap/silver co-located targets. The crown caps above older deeper silver. Silver hiding in the umbrella of crown cap target signal. I observed something quite strange on the SE Pro one day. I had crown caps notched out because dang they were everywhere at this site and I was sick of them. Running ferrous tones they were giving high tones like silver. With the crown cap textbook 'pop' as the coil came off the crown cap but I was just tired of listening to the things. Then...a crown cap managed to rise just above my notched out area. It was way down below silver, still very much in crown cap territory. Switched to all metal and BAM the target ID dropped down square into crown cap territory. Switched back and walked away about 3 steps then said, wait a minute...come on no crown cap sounds quite that good. Went back and observed the same thing again. In all metal textbook crown cap. Notch out the crown cap and the target ID uplifted in the direction of silver, but no where near the silver ID locations. SE Pro users know both crown caps and big silver (quarters, half dollars, dollars, large cents) all ID with half the cursor off the right edge of the screen, and are located vertically up/down the right edge depending on the target.

So I dug a plug, on the bottom/center of this plug was the crown cap. Went in the hole with my X1 probe and it was screaming silver. Below this crown cap was a Barber half dollar, also centered. My theory is in all metal the crown cap portion of the signal was so large relative to the silver hiding below that the machine software opted to ID it as textbook crown cap. But with the crown cap portion of the signal notched out e.g. ignored, what was left was a bit of silver through the thick fog of notched out crown cap which pulled the ID down out of the silver area.

The target trace on the Manticore (unlike the SE Pro) puts a LOT of space between silver targets and crown cap targets and it's not on the same axis. That's very good news. If it's getting both crown cap and silver target info, it will be easier to spot what's going on. The only question is, will the Manticore behave like the SE Pro in all metal, will the crown cap completely drown out the silver below it. I'll have to do some testing both ways. There's a zillion crown caps out there polluting sites, with good targets hiding under them. This Manticore gadget made just sniff them out.

 

[Ted S]

Great report Charles! Thanks for taking the time to do this!

 

[Odanscoils]

FIELD TEST: I took the Manticore to the beach Saturday for it's first field test. It was a Manticore vs Explorer SE Pro hunt with my buddy using my SE Pro with my settings. I found the Manticore surprisingly simple to use. I selected the default Beach mode, upped the sensitivity at 25 and ran in All Metal. During the hunt I really did nothing but ground balance and noise cancel. It was a bit noisy with the sensitivity at 25, no shortage of blips of salt/mineralization falsing but that's how I run the SE Pro I'm used to it.

SETTINGS: The Manticore has a LOT of configurable settings. That concerned me. Prior field tests confirmed you can screw up E-Trac and CTX settings to the point that they can't get a signal on targets that are screaming on the SE Pro. The Explorer SE Pro is pretty much foolproof when it comes to settings. In all cases the users were able to adjust/fix their settings and the E-Trac and CTX were able to get just as good a signal as I was getting on my SE Pro, once I pointed out the target and let them listen via the SE Pro. The Manticore? It hit deep targets the whole hunt while the SE Pro struggled so check.

SITE CONDITIONS: Torture test. We drove out onto the north end which was horribly sanded in 3 weeks ago, there was a big trough eroded out upper mid-beach parallel to the water. The hump of sand between the trough and lower beach was like 30 inches high with a cliff on the lower side of the trough. The water had dug a big hole in the beach basically. Unfortunately, this put us much closer to the thick layer of magnetic black sand, it was only 2nd scoop down. Worse all the heavier targets were deep in that black sand layer, with more black sand beneath them. Most of the targets I dug were a minimum 2 scoops deep, frequently 3 scoops, a few more. I have a 6x12 inch scoop and I was digging straight down.

Results...

• Manticore bested Explorer SE Pro. The 2nd scoop of sand was BLACK with the black sand and more black sand below it. All the heavy targets were sitting in that stuff. Even quarters down in that black sand were heavily impacted by the black sand on the Manticore. The tone was black sand/quarter mixed, not great to down right ugly signals on the Manticore but diggable. I dug a bunch of quarters at that depth, the Explorer SE Pro dug none. Just like inland the SE Pro struggles to punch through that black sand.
• Crown Cap Tone Shape - Confirmed, you can hear the crimped crown cap ridges in the tone, nice. On the SE Pro you can hear some shape to the ridges (sometimes) but it's less defined. Manticore has high definition tone shape, SE Pro low definition tone shape.
• Target Trace - The target trace screen is quite interesting. Watching the crown caps especially false from iron (top) to crown cap (bottom/left) with some smearing across the coin area (middle). Hard to imagine ever digging a crown cap with that much target info. More on target trace below.
• ML 105 Headphones - Quite comfortable. Love the wireless. But I need to test a pair of my Sunray Gold headphones because the quality of the tones was lacking. A bit oil drum, thin, tinny. I don't know if that's the ML 105's or just the Manticore tones. For example I couldn't hear much difference between silver and clad coins during testing. On the SE Pro silver has that bit of extra in the tones that tells you silver. Not sure I heard any bell like tones or silver ringing during testing now that I think about it.
• Depth even in this black sand mess, excellent. It took two hands to drag some scoops back out of the hole, that kind of depth.
• Overall - Great beach machine!

Manticore Dark Magic #01 - Co-located targets, this is the strange realm of detector weirdness. Take crown cap/silver co-located targets. The crown caps above older deeper silver. Silver hiding in the umbrella of crown cap target signal. I observed something quite strange on the SE Pro one day. I had crown caps notched out because dang they were everywhere at this site and I was sick of them. Running ferrous tones they were giving high tones like silver. With the crown cap textbook 'pop' as the coil came off the crown cap but I was just tired of listening to the things. Then...a crown cap managed to rise just above my notched out area. It was way down below silver, still very much in crown cap territory. Switched to all metal and BAM the target ID dropped down square into crown cap territory. Switched back and walked away about 3 steps then said, wait a minute...come on no crown cap sounds quite that good. Went back and observed the same thing again. In all metal textbook crown cap. Notch out the crown cap and the target ID uplifted in the direction of silver, but no where near the silver ID locations. SE Pro users know both crown caps and big silver (quarters, half dollars, dollars, large cents) all ID with half the cursor off the right edge of the screen, and are located vertically up/down the right edge depending on the target.

So I dug a plug, on the bottom/center of this plug was the crown cap. Went in the hole with my X1 probe and it was screaming silver. Below this crown cap was a Barber half dollar, also centered. My theory is in all metal the crown cap portion of the signal was so large relative to the silver hiding below that the machine software opted to ID it as textbook crown cap. But with the crown cap portion of the signal notched out e.g. ignored, what was left was a bit of silver through the thick fog of notched out crown cap which pulled the ID down out of the silver area.

The target trace on the Manticore (unlike the SE Pro) puts a LOT of space between silver targets and crown cap targets and it's not on the same axis. That's very good news. If it's getting both crown cap and silver target info, it will be easier to spot what's going on. The only question is, will the Manticore behave like the SE Pro in all metal, will the crown cap completely drown out the silver below it. I'll have to do some testing both ways. There's a zillion crown caps out there polluting sites, with good targets hiding under them. This Manticore gadget made just sniff them out.

Thorough wright up. Nice tests. Thank You Charles.

 

[Odanscoils]

Can't wait for the rest. Awesome Work !!

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Beach field test #2 tomorrow low tide! It's going to be 101 degrees here at the house so I'm escaping to the coast, high of 70 over there!

1. I'm going to adjust some iron tone stuff and look into the Stab feature to make sure it's off.

2. Coil cover is now OFF. I thought about taking it off before the last hunt, standard practice for beach hunting but the machine is brand new. I took it off for cleaning and yep it was packed with sand. Sand (especially black sand) and salt water sandwiched between the coil and the cover is bad news. That explains why I thought the signals got crappier and falsing worse as the previous hunt went on.