14 year Etrac user. Manticore’s maiden hunt

[Bonesquat]

I’ve been a heavy etrac user for a long time and racked up a few hundred silver coins and rings etc with it. It found me my first silver dollar. I have so many countless hours and good memories with it. I’ll always keep it in the arsenal as a backup machine.

The new manticore came today … and wow. I hit up a 4 acre site with a police station that ive been hunting very hard for the last 7 years. About 2 years ago the finds became so slim that I gave up on the site. I used an equinox with 15”. Etrac with 6”, 11” and 13” coils. I’ve found barbers and many wheats and tons of clad.

The manticore in 1:45 or so produced about $3 in clad. A wheat and some other cool stuff including a super deep buckle. The soil is bone dry and hard digging but I’m very impressed with how well this machine performed. It’s unreal. If you have an etrac it’s well worth getting a manticore. It’s much lighter and much faster and I’m already more confident with this machine in just a few hours. It’s that good. I did a lot of research on it before I even turned it on.

I was digging clad dimes and Pennie’s at 8 inches. Etrac seems like it should have seen so many of these targets. I noticed a lot of targets had other rubbish very close by. What a machine. The separation is insane.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Thanx for the report. There's still an army of us that won't part with our Explorers and Etracs (the "kissing cousins" of the incarnations) .

But I notice that you only got a single more wheatie. So in all honesty, do you think that if you had merely gone back with your Etrac, that you could simply have gotten all those same targets ? Because I notice that you had not been there in "two years". So it's possible, when you give a place a "rest", for that long, that you naturally come back without biases, subconscious trends, etc... And so, maybe it wasn't the Manticore that was necessarily getting more, that your Etrac couldn't have also gotten.

The only true-blue test is to : Flag suspected deepie high conductors (assuming you're talking about deep-turf cherry picking strategies) and then take turns testing each machine over the flagged targets. AND THEN ask yourself if you would have honestly heard the signal or not. Otherwise your comparisons could be chalked up to confirmation selective bias, etc....

 

[Bonesquat]

Sorry I should have qualified that I had hunted here again recently with the etrac. Just within the last week or so. I found only a few coins in about an hour and gave up. I had great success initially with it. What I want to do is go back and somehow carry both of them and compare signals.

 

[markinswpa]

I’ve been a heavy etrac user for a long time and racked up a few hundred silver coins and rings etc with it. It found me my first silver dollar. I have so many countless hours and good memories with it. I’ll always keep it in the arsenal as a backup machine.

The new manticore came today … and wow. I hit up a 4 acre site with a police station that ive been hunting very hard for the last 7 years. About 2 years ago the finds became so slim that I gave up on the site. I used an equinox with 15”. Etrac with 6”, 11” and 13” coils. I’ve found barbers and many wheats and tons of clad.

The manticore in 1:45 or so produced about $3 in clad. A wheat and some other cool stuff including a super deep buckle. The soil is bone dry and hard digging but I’m very impressed with how well this machine performed. It’s unreal. If you have an etrac it’s well worth getting a manticore. It’s much lighter and much faster and I’m already more confident with this machine in just a few hours. It’s that good. I did a lot of research on it before I even turned it on.

I was digging clad dimes and Pennie’s at 8 inches. Etrac seems like it should have seen so many of these targets. I noticed a lot of targets had other rubbish very close by. What a machine. The separation is insane.

Congrats on a successful outing and glad to see the Manticore performed well. I too had an Etrac, but only used it for about a year and a half. When the Equinox came out I switched. I agree with you about separation, so far its the best I've seen. Good luck.

 

[markinswpa]

Thanx for the report. There's still an army of us that won't part with our Explorers and Etracs (the "kissing cousins" of the incarnations) .

But I notice that you only got a single more wheatie. So in all honesty, do you think that if you had merely gone back with your Etrac, that you could simply have gotten all those same targets ? Because I notice that you had not been there in "two years". So it's possible, when you give a place a "rest", for that long, that you naturally come back without biases, subconscious trends, etc... And so, maybe it wasn't the Manticore that was necessarily getting more, that your Etrac couldn't have also gotten.

The only true-blue test is to : Flag suspected deepie high conductors (assuming you're talking about deep-turf cherry picking strategies) and then take turns testing each machine over the flagged targets. AND THEN ask yourself if you would have honestly heard the signal or not. Otherwise your comparisons could be chalked up to confirmation selective bias, etc....

Tom, you with your Explorer in one of your blighted parks, and a proficient Manticore user would make an interesting video.
I have a couple theories. Keep in mind if you look at my signature, 95 % of those finds were from two heavily hunted trashy parks. Which had been gone over countless time by me and others with Etracs, CTXs, Equinox's and so on.

First, here in Pa. we had several deep freezes and thaws this past winter. Ground heave ? Possible. Coupled with a wet spring might have just moved targets where they needed to be.

Second, divine intervention. One of my sisters passed away in Feb. Whenever I would tell her I went dirtfishing, the first thing she would ask, did you get shiny ? So maybe a nod and a smile for the beyond has helped.

Or maybe the Manticore w/ 9in. coil is the best set up to come along recently, maybe ever. I have to say I'm at a loss. These woods I've hit countless times, with the 800/ 5x10 & 6 in. coil. The 900 w/ 6in.coil. the Legend 6x9 coil. I know every stump, fallen tree. drop off and depression, I was convinced the spots were played out but when I go back with the Manticore I consistently find more. So for now I'll go with option 3, the Manticore is that good. Hope you get a chance to give one a try and your first find is a LARGE CENT !! Good luck.

 

[Bonesquat]

I’m just blown away at the recovery speed v the etrac. I am already more confident with targets in digging in just one hunt with it. So far so good. Also loving the lighter weight. My arm is thanking me.

 

[HungryGhost]

The Manticore is a beast.

 

[Eastender]

As Minelab states, the Manticore puts more power to the head. Since I almost always run mine at sens 28, I'm using it. I'm from a White's Spectra V3i\Nox 800\Nox 900 lineage. I'm very happy with the Manticore and looking to experiment with additional coils.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

......... you with your Explorer in one of your blighted parks, and a proficient Manticore user would make an interesting video........

Actually, I did do that earlier this year, with a local buddy who got the Manticore. He wanted to pace it in a known-turf-site. So he & I took it to a certain park in San Francisco "Holly Park". Where a certain side is known to still have some deep silver and wheatie whispers (eg.: *STARTING* at 8" ). You know the drill : The kind of place where you are trying to pass up clad (ignoring anything less than ~ 7"), and cherry picking for high conductors (kiss nickels good bye).

And : It was about a draw. I posted the play-by-play results of that hunt awhile back on this forum. I can find the link and link you, if you can't find it.

But to be fair : The friend had only used it a time or two prior to that . He was only still getting used to it. HOWEVER, he did play-with the- settings, over each flagged target, "trying his durndest" to bring it in. Or to announce that he would have "passed it". And me, conversely, with my Explorer, would try to be honest and evaluate if I would have "heard that on my own" versus if I'd have passed it.

And as said : It was a draw. Not sure if any added experience (to qualify as what you call "proficient") would have made a difference. Because as said : He and I triple scrutinized, played with settings, and then un-plugged the headphone jack so we could each evaluate if there was "room to spare", off of it, versus : "barely got out of iffy".

 

[chillforlife]

Tom, please post the video of that hunt/test, I'd like to see it.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Tom, please post the video of that hunt/test, I'd like to see it.

I wasn't a video. It was a recounting (text play-by-play). From earlier this year. That I'd relayed on a post here. I'd have to fish back through my own posts to find that thread.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Tom, please post the video of that hunt/test, I'd like to see it.

Ok, it turns out , now that I look back and recall, that I had made two posts . On the "duel/compare" subject. So this post was about a first trial . Not the San Francisco Holly Park, alluded to on this current thread, where the same friend and I went for further testing a few weeks later. I'd have to sleuth further to see what I'd posted about the latter hunt's results. But suffice it to say : It was still a "draw"

Thread 'Yesterday @ Manticore vs Explorer duel results'

Jan 1, 2025

A buddy of mine recently got the Manticore. Because he'd seen the glowing reviews it's been fetching lately. And I have grown content with my 20 + year old technology: Minelab Explorer II. Despite trying several new mousetraps over the years (800, Deus II, etc...), I can't seem to pull myself away from this flagship workhorse machine

And while I don't do much turf hunting these days (I'm mostly relicky sites and beach in recent years) he wanted to see how it does for turf-hunting objective. Ie.: Where the user A) plans to cherry pick (kiss nickels, gold rings, and...

• Tom_in_CA
• Replies: 46
• Forum: Coinshooters and Relic Hunters

• 

 

[randy]

Different machines will find different stuff based on variances in their technology. "Different" doesn't necessarily mean "better", but it doesn't exclude the possibility either. Tom is right that some sort of scientific approach is needed, and that is hard, but as an economist I would look at this situation like this --

Imagine that there are "E-Trac friendly" and "Manticore Friendly" targets, due to differences in the hardware/software implementation, as well as a whole host of targets that both machines would find. And, for sake of argument, imagine you are the only one who has hunted the site, or since the E-Trac has been around longer, more E-Tracs have had at it it over the years than Manticores.

The _site itself_ has been subject to selection bias. More E-Trac friendly targets have been found, potentially skewing the results. Maybe the Manticore isn't "better", but it might be better "right now at this site".

The only way to do it is to find a large virgin site (w.r.t to these machines), hit half the site with each machine, and compare. And even then we make the assumption that the targets are evenly distributed. I was fortunate enough to be able to do something like this, and fortunate enough to own a Whites V3 and E-Trac at the same time. (The experiment ended after a day when it was bloody obvious to me without a scientific approach that the E-Trac was better, and I didn't want to waste time in case the competition came along while I was dithering. The site produced 125 silvers).
Tom's approach of flagging targets might be the best we can do in real life, but that has its obvious biases as well. Certainly worth doing over the long run, maybe, but holes can be poked in that science. I try thinking of a scientific way to do this that is both truly controlled, and practical, and have yet to come up with something I feel good about (don't even mention test gardens). Sometimes you just have to go with which machine feels better over time.

Oh, and as another wrinkle in the science, Bruce Candy (Minelab founder) wrote a paper a while back describing how metal detectors work. One thing I found interesting is that lighting hundreds of miles away can affect the EMI. I know a guy who claimed relative humidity affected the way machines worked (is this true, I do not know). So, even the weather may affect your science.

So, I'm guessing the Manticore is probably the better machine _for that site as it sits_. Good luck, and hope to see some silver.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

........... Imagine that there are "E-Trac friendly" and "Manticore Friendly" targets, due to differences in the hardware/software implementation, as well as a whole host of targets that both machines would find. And, for sake of argument, imagine you are the only one who has hunted the site, or since the E-Trac has been around longer, more E-Tracs have had at it it over the years than Manticores......

Good post Randy . So what it boils down to is : That if the tables had been reversed, and it had been THE MANTICORE that had hit a park for 20 yrs., then the opposite results could occur : The Etrac / Explorer could come along, and light-up a few more oldies/deepies, that the Manticore had missed.

Yes : there's so many trade-offs, that some machines have an edge in certain departments, that another doesn't. Eg.: A) raw depth, B) TID retention at depth (versus does TID wain after 6"), C) target separation, D) Target averaging/see-through ability E) ability to handle minerals, salt, etc... F) propensity to get "shut down" by EMI

A lot of people think raw depth is all that matters. But for deep turf cherry picking, that's only a small component of what's needed. Because there's been machines that even 30 yrs. ago, could effortlessly get a quarter to 1.5 ft. deep (the 1266x). But heaven-help-you if you needed TID beyond 6". Heaven help you in nasty minerals, etc....

Or for example the CZ6 could effortlessly pull silver dimes from 10" or 12" in park turf. Yet they were prone to get fooled by bent nails. And the user had very little tell-tale audio to differentiate a corroded zinc at 6" vs an IH at 8", and so forth. Which MAYBE ISN'T A PROBLEM if you have time to "dig all". But if two persons are dueling, then theoretically, the person with better TID, will have spent more-time digging goodies, and passing clad and bent nails. Even if that latter person lacked an inch of depth.

 

[Diga]

I pretty much only give merit to the scientific approach as Tom and Randy elaborated on.

The whole idea of "I hunted this hunted out park with the newest machine and found (whatever)" means just about nothing, because it doesn't rule out all the other factors that can be attributed to finding more stuff with a new machine at a different time.

Tom,

That great depth on the 1266X you mentioned? Well, the 1266X was my main machine 35 years ago then I took a 35 year hiatus lol, from detecting. Tried the new Multi-IQ machines and was appalled to find that in my ground which isn't highly mineralized, the new detectors didn't seem to hit any deeper than the old 1266X. Although in highly mineralized ground, and for unmasking / separation performance, Multi-IQ detectors like the Manticore, Vortex, Legend, and Deus II, are significantly better.

I'm patiently waiting for new technology that tops Multi-IQ. XP should probably have a new machine out soon, so maybe that will be it. Otherwise, Nokta for sure has a Legend 2 on the way. I'm hoping it's not just a revamp of the menu, but rather new technology that tops Multi-IQ.