Any advantages when hunting mid to deeper silver, no heavy iron sites just normal conditions.

Maybe, maybe not - performing wise, But definitely other advantages. Those advantages are more important depending on the users needs and wants. For me it was well worth the extra money.
I had the E but not at the same time to compare targets. I believe the M is at least as good. I’ve heard a few people say they can id silver better with the E but they definitely spent a lot more time with the E.

They both work well I've owned both but the one big advantage is recovery speed in the manticore
Mark

Thanks for the feedback, looks like i'll stick to the E-trac for now.

I don't have a manticore but I have a 900 ( and I believe they have the same technology) that I have been swinging for over a year and I can say the etrac is better at iding silver by a long shot but it's heavy with a slower response.

Manticore shines in heavy iron

MuddyMo said:

Maybe, maybe not - performing wise, But definitely other advantages. Those advantages are more important depending on the users needs and wants. For me it was well worth the extra money.
I had the E but not at the same time to compare targets. I believe the M is at least as good. I’ve heard a few people say they can id silver better with the E but they definitely spent a lot more time with the E.

Click to expand...

If found the audio on the E was "tuned" to scream silver, it was a no brainer when silver showed up. The Manticore may be able to do the same, I am just not yet familiar enough with it to have played with the audio tuning yet. I have full faith that the Manticore will on average outperform the E although I found lots of silver with it...

cintitomcat said:

Any advantages when hunting mid to deeper silver, no heavy iron sites just normal conditions.

Click to expand...

If normal conditions means not too much surface trash and mild ground mineralization, probably not if you are just looking for silver/high conductors.

If there is lots of non-ferrous, mixed alloy trash and any thing worse than mild mineralization, the Manticore will have a big advantage.

I owned an Etrac and still own the Manticore. I often hunt in moderate to heavy modern trash with moderate to high iron mineralized ground. The Etrac running it the recommended way which is with tracking ground balance, would end up on sensitivity 10 to 12 which means 6" depth at the most where I detected with it. The equivalent on the Manticore would be running it at 14 sensitivity. If I turned off the automatic tracking and tried to run my Etrac at a higher sensitivity, the ground noise was impossible. I can run the Manticore at 26 to 28 sensitivity on the same ground with no ground noise. So huge advantage to the Manticore for ground mineralization handling.

Weight and target separation/recovery speed have already been mentioned. Targets on edge, partially masked targets, other targets besides high conductors, other sized targets besides coin sized, not waterproof, no wireless audio, no internal rechargeable battery, no lightweight collapsible shaft system, no big audio options and most important for me, no restrictions on where I can hunt with it and what I can hunt for....... Manticore beats Etrac silly except on deep silver and that is only true for almost perfect ground conditions.

Minelab are not dumb. They knew that the Etrac was just for a very specific situation. If you were a person like me that did not hunt in that specific situation, you were screwed until the Equinox and Multi IQ was released.

I found 2 silver coins here in Colorado using the Etrac for a year in public parks. Same public parks, I found 89 silver coins and 48 silver rings last year using the Manticore along with some deep gold rings. All were 8" deep or deeper.

I sold my e-trac for esssentially the same reason, heavy mineralization or lots of iron trash and it not only didn't run with the big dogs, it didn't even get off the porch......

jmaclen said:

If normal conditions means not too much surface trash and mild ground mineralization, probably not if you are just looking for silver/high conductors.

If there is lots of non-ferrous, mixed alloy trash and any thing worse than mild mineralization, the Manticore will have a big advantage.

I owned an Etrac and still own the Manticore. I often hunt in moderate to heavy modern trash with moderate to high iron mineralized ground. The Etrac running it the recommended way which is with tracking ground balance, would end up on sensitivity 10 to 12 which means 6" depth at the most where I detected with it. The equivalent on the Manticore would be running it at 14 sensitivity. If I turned off the automatic tracking and tried to run my Etrac at a higher sensitivity, the ground noise was impossible. I can run the Manticore at 26 to 28 sensitivity on the same ground with no ground noise. So huge advantage to the Manticore for ground mineralization handling.

Weight and target separation/recovery speed have already been mentioned. Targets on edge, partially masked targets, other targets besides high conductors, other sized targets besides coin sized, not waterproof, no wireless audio, no internal rechargeable battery, no lightweight collapsible shaft system, no big audio options and most important for me, no restrictions on where I can hunt with it and what I can hunt for....... Manticore beats Etrac silly except on deep silver and that is only true for almost perfect ground conditions.

Minelab are not dumb. They knew that the Etrac was just for a very specific situation. If you were a person like me that did not hunt in that specific situation, you were screwed until the Equinox and Multi IQ was released.

I found 2 silver coins here in Colorado using the Etrac for a year in public parks. Same public parks, I found 89 silver coins and 48 silver rings last year using the Manticore along with some deep gold rings. All were 8" deep or deeper.

Click to expand...

That is a crazy difference in finds. So many people want to know what is the best but it relay is just a different tool for the job and both detectors have there place.

Some very good info from previous posts.
My perspective is that the Manticores’ main enhancements over the Etrac are in response speed, separation and ergonomics.
In my environment I am not yet convinced it would offer substantial benefits. My ground is lightly mineralized. I primarily hunt old homesites that are almost devoid of modern trash. Primarily iron infested. These homesites are late 1800’s/early 1900’s so artifacts are not deeply buried. EMF is very minimal. I like to hunt low and slow often gridding from several directions. The tones of the etrac are just music to my ears. They are pleasing as well as informational. I dearly love the ferrous/conductive scale and the plethora of information it offers.

The Manticore seems like more of an enhanced version of the 900 than a etrac/CTX 3030. I guess the latter is what I have on my wishlist from Minelab. Not sure that is even in the works or proposed to be. If not convinced soon will look for other alternatives. The DEUS and wireless just is not appealing to me for several reasons not pertinent to this conversation.

north1 said:

Some very good info from previous posts.
My perspective is that the Manticores’ main enhancements over the Etrac are in response speed, separation and ergonomics.
In my environment I am not yet convinced it would offer substantial benefits. My ground is lightly mineralized. I primarily hunt old homesites that are almost devoid of modern trash. Primarily iron infested. These homesites are late 1800’s/early 1900’s so artifacts are not deeply buried. EMF is very minimal. I like to hunt low and slow often gridding from several directions. The tones of the etrac are just music to my ears. They are pleasing as well as informational. I dearly love the ferrous/conductive scale and the plethora of information it offers.

The Manticore seems like more of an enhanced version of the 900 than a etrac/CTX 3030. I guess the latter is what I have on my wishlist from Minelab. Not sure that is even in the works or proposed to be. If not convinced soon will look for other alternatives. The DEUS and wireless just is not appealing to me for several reasons not pertinent to this conversation.

Click to expand...

The main enhancements of Multi IQ for me are the ones you mentioned plus the two biggest of them all: advanced ground handling so that Multi IQ can unlock moderate to difficult mineralized ground and it also makes it easy to hit targets of a wide variety of sizes down to 0.05 grams and of any conductivity.

Have you tried adjusting the tone settings to mimic your Etrac? That is possible to do. So is using the different All Terrain modes for the targets you are after.

Minelab are still selling the Excalibur ll and CTX3030. Whether that is from old stock or from recent production......I don't know. So there is always a possibility that another BBS/FBS detector could be in the works. There better be some ergonomic improvements over those two older models however or not many will choose to buy them.

A roughly 3 lbs CTX variant using FBS2 would be amazing.

north1 said:

Some very good info from previous posts.
My perspective is that the Manticores’ main enhancements over the Etrac are in response speed, separation and ergonomics.
In my environment I am not yet convinced it would offer substantial benefits. My ground is lightly mineralized. I primarily hunt old homesites that are almost devoid of modern trash. Primarily iron infested. These homesites are late 1800’s/early 1900’s so artifacts are not deeply buried. EMF is very minimal. I like to hunt low and slow often gridding from several directions. The tones of the etrac are just music to my ears. They are pleasing as well as informational. I dearly love the ferrous/conductive scale and the plethora of information it offers.

The Manticore seems like more of an enhanced version of the 900 than a etrac/CTX 3030. I guess the latter is what I have on my wishlist from Minelab. Not sure that is even in the works or proposed to be. If not convinced soon will look for other alternatives. The DEUS and wireless just is not appealing to me for several reasons not pertinent to this conversation.

Click to expand...

I think the Manticore will help in the heavy iron but its not like you will only dig good targets. The manticore is very sensitive and able to detect non ferrous under nails but skill will play a big part in preventing you from digging a lot of iron only. 1 region all tones will hear a good target but it wont always be a good dig ID so audio is a big part of it. Now I still use the CTX and in iron and really don't find more with the manticore because the iron is not so crazy where I hunt. With the CTX I can get Gold rings up to 3" below iron nails and silver a little better but it wont ID it and is by audio and target trace that will give a dig signal. The upper limits on the manticore core are very much the same to the lower Disc on the CTX so if you can ID the iron where you hunt and know any good target bellow it will slightly move the iron ID a few point over or up, then there is something in there with it. The manticore I think is an improvement but by how much is the question if you want to find more with your machine dig more questionable signals and a little more iron because with the manticore you will dig a little more iron anyway wile digging hard signals. This is just what I have experienced and will definitely be different for everyone.

north1 said:

Some very good info from previous posts.
My perspective is that the Manticores’ main enhancements over the Etrac are in response speed, separation and ergonomics.
In my environment I am not yet convinced it would offer substantial benefits. My ground is lightly mineralized. I primarily hunt old homesites that are almost devoid of modern trash. Primarily iron infested. These homesites are late 1800’s/early 1900’s so artifacts are not deeply buried. EMF is very minimal. I like to hunt low and slow often gridding from several directions. The tones of the etrac are just music to my ears. They are pleasing as well as informational. I dearly love the ferrous/conductive scale and the plethora of information it offers.

The Manticore seems like more of an enhanced version of the 900 than a etrac/CTX 3030. I guess the latter is what I have on my wishlist from Minelab. Not sure that is even in the works or proposed to be. If not convinced soon will look for other alternatives. The DEUS and wireless just is not appealing to me for several reasons not pertinent to this conversation.

Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly .
Most people will probably argue about the etrac and ttf but in my opinion ttf is under rated because I have had a lot of success with it, yes it's slower and overwhelming and you can't take but a few minutes of it in the beginning but if you are able to stick with it you can have excellent results in the iron.

ttf?

mntnflyr4fun said:

ttf?

Click to expand...

Two tone ferrous. I would switch to it to help Id a good target in trash. I only used the Etrac for about a year and a half and the one thing I can say my coin count to trash digs were never better Had they not come out with the Equinox I might still have it. Although its weight was startingt o take its toll. And it was slow, so when Minelab touted the speed of the then new Equinox 800 I jumped on board. And did pretty well with it. The last 2 years were pretty dismal using the 900 and Legend but this year with the Manticore, it has brought old parks back to life and doing pretty well IMO with 35 silver, a couple pieces of sterling, Ihps, wheats, Buffs and tokens. So IMO the Etrac, although still a great detector, the Manticore with all its modern tech is definitely the better machine. As far as iron, the Manticore loves iron. It comes down to tone and tolerance and how much the user is willing to dig. I run mine wide open and dig less and less iron with each hunt. Most of my good finds have been masked to some degree by iron or modern trash and the Manticore does a great job of picking out a good target. Still new to the Manticore with only 130/40 ish hours on it so looking forward to learning more. Good luck to all.

1hotwire said:

My thoughts exactly .
Most people will probably argue about the etrac and ttf but in my opinion ttf is under rated because I have had a lot of success with it, yes it's slower and overwhelming and you can't take but a few minutes of it in the beginning but if you are able to stick with it you can have excellent results in the iron.

Click to expand...

I completely agree. I use ttf a lot. I feel it is a very important tool in my etrac toolbox. It opened up sites to me that are carpeted with iron. I never felt it as overwhelming after experiencing results. Hunt with it all day at times in spots that are impregnated with iron.
Some have opined that you miss too much by masking but I have not found this to necessary be the case. Especially when shifting to other programs and going over same areas gridding and not finding anything more than what I originally found using ttf.
That high tone in ttf you get amongst the cacophony of low iron grunts is so encouraging and enticing. An immediate release of endorphins. Then the ferrous/conductive numbers and relationships either support your enthusiasm or allow you to predict what nonferrous object under the coil. So much so I know if it is a copper horse harness rivet, .22 shell casing, 30-06 casing, harmonica reed etc.

I have been hunting alot with my manticore set to all metal, threshold on, iron vol. 0.... eliminates the ferrous audio, theshold lets me know there is iron under the coil .... I like the way the audio is working, quiet most of the time until there is some thing conductive under the coil (I am mostly learning the manti hunting coins and jewelry so figure I can re-introduce the ferrous sounds after I get to where I am workng better with the manti overall) Still experimenting with pretty much everything as I am still under 20hours total time.... need to experiment more with recovery speed but some parts of the 1850's park I hunt is littered with square nails, other parts are open and clean..... all good fun

I have researched this question but cannot find anything definitive. Can you set up the manticore to run in two tone ferrous? A program which approximates what my etrac offers with the 6X8 SEF coil? If so coupling the Manticore with the M9 coil would offer its benefits with respect to recovery speed, unmasking, target separation and ergonomics. That just might make for an easier purchase decision on my part.

north1 said:

I have researched this question but cannot find anything definitive. Can you set up the manticore to run in two tone ferrous? A program which approximates what my etrac offers with the 6X8 SEF coil? If so coupling the Manticore with the M9 coil would offer its benefits with respect to recovery speed, unmasking, target separation and ergonomics. That just might make for an easier purchase decision on my part.

Click to expand...

Does the Manticore have a 2 tone ferrous/non ferrous default audio setting? Yes. Is it similar to the Etrac TTF in performance? Thankfully, NO.

2 tone ferrous was one of my least favorite audio settings on the Etrac. The ferrous tone/reactivity was ridiculously overpowering and slow to react. Could I find targets using TTF? Sure. Was I missing a ton of non ferrous targets? Absolutely, after going behind my Etrac with a Nokta Legend, Deus 2 and Manticore. Those missed targets were not deep, they were mid depth to shallow and were partially masked but they were masked enough for the Etrac in TTF to completely miss them by calling them ferrous. Throw in moderate to high iron mineralization and TTF was basically unusable. TT Conductive I could almost deal with.

Manticore's 2 Tone/2Region audio setting can be made to sound very much like the Etrac's TTF. On the Manticore's 2 tone, 2 region setting, you can adjust the volume levels for the ferrous and non ferrous tones, you can adjust the pitch of the ferrous and non ferrous tones and you can adjust the tone break. You can use the Normal or Enhanced audio setting to change the susceptibility to EMI and smaller target detection. You can use Simple, Medium or Rich tone Profiles to change the level of tone modulation. You can change the recovery speed a lot to change the tone lengths of ferrous and non ferrous tones and their reset time. You can change the upper and lower iron boundaries to get really granular iron bias settings. You can also stay in 2 tone, 2 regions and switch to Depth tones which is a VCO type ferrous/non ferrous audio that is extremely fast. You also have All Terrain General for basic hunting, All Terrain Fast for hunting in thick trash, All Terrain Low Conductors for concentrating more on targets below zinc pennies in conductivity and you have All Terrain High Conductors for concentrating on targets near and above zinc pennies in conductivity. You can also play around with the reference threshold if you want to not hear ferrous tones but instead just want to hear the threshold tone null over ferrous responses.