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Got Caught Ogling

ironman200081

Active member
I have spent the past week-plus investigating the Manticore. I have read everything I could and watched all the videos (the Lawrie field tests and the speculation/talking heads). Like when the Equinox came out, I am trying to see if this new machine will be worth the jump from the CTX. As I ogle the specs and drool over the design, I notice my CTX staring at me like an old housewife catching her husband peeping at the sunbathers on the beach (which I would NEVER do because I am always looking down at my coil!!) I could hear the CTX yelling at me, saying how she has stayed by me for over ten years and two failed marriages. Well, friends, I felt pretty low that I would betray the old CTX like that so I packed her up and headed to a spot that has been thoroughly picked over by every detectorist in a 100-mile radius and their idiot brother. I cut my teeth at this spot years ago with the E-Trac and dug up so much silver and Civil War relics. When I got the CTX in 2012, I spent the next few years digging out what I thought was the last of the good stuff. By 2016, I had gone several hunts here without a silver or relic, so I patted my back and declared it "hunted out."

I arrived and put on all of my gear that makes me irresistible to passing joggers (knee pads, sweat band, Pro-Swing harness). I fire up the old girl and swing away. My first several targets are recent clad, what I had expected. Then I got a jumpy 12-45 signal that turned to a 12-39 when i turned 90 degrees. I would usually mentally filter this out as screw cap/junk, but the depth was good at 6-7 inches, the sweet spot for this site. Bear in mind that there are rusty iron and nails everywhere at every depth, and pull tabs at the shallow depths. This is a tough, trashy site. Anyway, I pop the plug and at 7 inches dead center, I find a Civil War pinfire casing. Neat but why the high tone? I sweep again and get a good 12-45. Just to the side of where the pinfire was, I pulled out a silver Roosie. My first silver here in 6 years! I was pretty dumbfounded.

I swept some more and got more deep signals. One more silver Roosie, another pinfire, and five wheats, one of which was holed through Lincoln's head (no doubt a Booth fan did that one). All found in the main area of the site where I have hunted before with the E-Trac and CTX. So what was different this time? Well, for one, when I last hit the place I was using an older version of my park pattern. I had tweaked and tuned it since then based on hundreds of hours of testing and real-world digging, and have been running the attached in high trash places since 2018. Second, other detectorists may have cleared out more modern trash for me since I was last there, and helped unmask these gems. It may be a bit of both, I don't know. But I do know that the CTX is the best machine I have ever used and it has so many features that the casual user will never realize. Just by testing and tweaking a search pattern and settings, I could find more keepers that I had missed before.

The Manticore does not have that type of customization. It does not use FBS. It is not the CTX. Until Minelab makes the machine that will replace what the CTX can do with the features it has (and much, much more, of course) I am going to stay with swinging my old gal.
 

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Very close to the pattern I ran before my CTX had the great fall. I now get my FBS fix by swinging the etrac on occasion but still wish it was a 3030. I picked up the pieces and got a Legend and find it to be a poor substitute. I think the best thing about the Manticore is that someone will decide to sell their CTX to fund the purchase and I can help them out with making that mistake.:)
 
What was your pattern before Ironman? I see your FE line is at 24, yet you’re in High Trash. Do you feel that your soil is mild enough so you don’t have to worry about an ultra deep coin being rejected due to a high FE number caused by the soil at that depth?
I do wish that somehow metal detectors would make that next “huge leap”….something completely different than a VLF, yet able to ID coin sized objects at 12”+ regularly. It’s just not upon us yet, don’t know if physics will even allow it. And that’s where we sit…
The CTX is a special machine, no doubt. You’ll always have your naysayers and “the price and the weight and the old tech”…but it’s still the same machine with the same incredible abilities, if one wants to THOROUGHLY learn how to use it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a head to head test on a natural target in the ground that was found to be a coin and the CTX couldn’t see it, while another machine could. Anyone got a video of that for us?
 
What was your pattern before Ironman? I see your FE line is at 24, yet you’re in High Trash. Do you feel that your soil is mild enough so you don’t have to worry about an ultra deep coin being rejected due to a high FE number caused by the soil at that depth?
I don't have an image, but it was tighter. I had more area rejected, and I ran deep on. I do not use deep on in high trash. Yes, my soil is very mild. Good ole sandy loam and glacial till where I dig. When I travel to Southern Missouri with the mineralized dirt, I use a different pattern.
 
IDX makes a good point about the fe line I run mine at 35 meaning only the 35 line is disc out rust flakes ground mineral and nails will kill the signal from the coin if ran at 24 your not going to hear a 25.45 all the way to 34.45 I do keep the 48 to 50 disc out on the right side I used to disc 47 (but) that ended when i got a 47 that just lock and would not move the fe numbers fluctuated up and down but the 47 stayed .
I was running ferrous coin but the nail with this half dollar pushed the ID higher so I only disc 48 to 50 now IDX said to leave 47 open thanks IDX the only number i check carefully is the 12.40 to 12.41 falsing nail hot spot on the CTX any conductive number 42 to 47 that stays solid is a digger regardless of the fe number . You can always run your second pattern with a higher fe line to check targets .I am not the only one that runs at 35 Cw3 also does for good reason.sube
 
I have spent the past week-plus investigating the Manticore. I have read everything I could and watched all the videos (the Lawrie field tests and the speculation/talking heads). Like when the Equinox came out, I am trying to see if this new machine will be worth the jump from the CTX. As I ogle the specs and drool over the design, I notice my CTX staring at me like an old housewife catching her husband peeping at the sunbathers on the beach (which I would NEVER do because I am always looking down at my coil!!) I could hear the CTX yelling at me, saying how she has stayed by me for over ten years and two failed marriages. Well, friends, I felt pretty low that I would betray the old CTX like that so I packed her up and headed to a spot that has been thoroughly picked over by every detectorist in a 100-mile radius and their idiot brother. I cut my teeth at this spot years ago with the E-Trac and dug up so much silver and Civil War relics. When I got the CTX in 2012, I spent the next few years digging out what I thought was the last of the good stuff. By 2016, I had gone several hunts here without a silver or relic, so I patted my back and declared it "hunted out."

I arrived and put on all of my gear that makes me irresistible to passing joggers (knee pads, sweat band, Pro-Swing harness). I fire up the old girl and swing away. My first several targets are recent clad, what I had expected. Then I got a jumpy 12-45 signal that turned to a 12-39 when i turned 90 degrees. I would usually mentally filter this out as screw cap/junk, but the depth was good at 6-7 inches, the sweet spot for this site. Bear in mind that there are rusty iron and nails everywhere at every depth, and pull tabs at the shallow depths. This is a tough, trashy site. Anyway, I pop the plug and at 7 inches dead center, I find a Civil War pinfire casing. Neat but why the high tone? I sweep again and get a good 12-45. Just to the side of where the pinfire was, I pulled out a silver Roosie. My first silver here in 6 years! I was pretty dumbfounded.

I swept some more and got more deep signals. One more silver Roosie, another pinfire, and five wheats, one of which was holed through Lincoln's head (no doubt a Booth fan did that one). All found in the main area of the site where I have hunted before with the E-Trac and CTX. So what was different this time? Well, for one, when I last hit the place I was using an older version of my park pattern. I had tweaked and tuned it since then based on hundreds of hours of testing and real-world digging, and have been running the attached in high trash places since 2018. Second, other detectorists may have cleared out more modern trash for me since I was last there, and helped unmask these gems. It may be a bit of both, I don't know. But I do know that the CTX is the best machine I have ever used and it has so many features that the casual user will never realize. Just by testing and tweaking a search pattern and settings, I could find more keepers that I had missed before.

The Manticore does not have that type of customization. It does not use FBS. It is not the CTX. Until Minelab makes the machine that will replace what the CTX can do with the features it has (and much, much more, of course) I am going to stay with swinging my old gal.
Love the story. Great recovery. Congratulations
 
run mine at 35 meaning only the 35 line is disc out rust flakes ground mineral and nails will kill the signal from the coin if ran at 24 your not going to hear a 25.45 all the way to 34.45
I use a different pattern for the deep coins, not the one shown. The good stuff at this place is in the 6-7 inch deep range. Also, this setup is 50 tone. My deep setting is combined, and mostly an open screen. In my dirt and my hunting style, my park pattern posted above is the best setup in trashy spots with stuff that isn't super deep, 8+ inches. That is what makes the CTX so good - we can program our own search modes for our own dirt.
 
Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I went out on a short early morning hunt again at the same spot. No wheats or Civil War stuff, but I did find two more silver dimes! Both had nails next to them that distorted the signals. The Merc was a 12-45 one way but a 12-40 when turning 90 degrees. The Roosie was a 12-45 but nulled out from the nail at 90 degrees. I debated digging it, but the target trace showed that it was likely a coin and not falsing. I switched to a combine/Fe-coin pattern and got the target trace to show a good coin signal both directions. Still null audio though. Very seldom do I dig a target when the CTX only gives me audio from 1 direction. The target trace has to be solid.

The CTX has rekindled my passion for her. I have stopped obsession over the Manticore now.
 

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No need to lust over something not even close to being on the "market" LOL I do like the fact they are resurrecting some form of target trace, big mistake dropping the ball on that amazing bit of technology, Nice when you get to that level of confidence with your significant other, it took me a while to get there with my Equinox. Good to hear from you Ironman.
HH Jeff
 
I have spent the past week-plus investigating the Manticore. I have read everything I could and watched all the videos (the Lawrie field tests and the speculation/talking heads). Like when the Equinox came out, I am trying to see if this new machine will be worth the jump from the CTX. As I ogle the specs and drool over the design, I notice my CTX staring at me like an old housewife catching her husband peeping at the sunbathers on the beach (which I would NEVER do because I am always looking down at my coil!!) I could hear the CTX yelling at me, saying how she has stayed by me for over ten years and two failed marriages. Well, friends, I felt pretty low that I would betray the old CTX like that so I packed her up and headed to a spot that has been thoroughly picked over by every detectorist in a 100-mile radius and their idiot brother. I cut my teeth at this spot years ago with the E-Trac and dug up so much silver and Civil War relics. When I got the CTX in 2012, I spent the next few years digging out what I thought was the last of the good stuff. By 2016, I had gone several hunts here without a silver or relic, so I patted my back and declared it "hunted out."

I arrived and put on all of my gear that makes me irresistible to passing joggers (knee pads, sweat band, Pro-Swing harness). I fire up the old girl and swing away. My first several targets are recent clad, what I had expected. Then I got a jumpy 12-45 signal that turned to a 12-39 when i turned 90 degrees. I would usually mentally filter this out as screw cap/junk, but the depth was good at 6-7 inches, the sweet spot for this site. Bear in mind that there are rusty iron and nails everywhere at every depth, and pull tabs at the shallow depths. This is a tough, trashy site. Anyway, I pop the plug and at 7 inches dead center, I find a Civil War pinfire casing. Neat but why the high tone? I sweep again and get a good 12-45. Just to the side of where the pinfire was, I pulled out a silver Roosie. My first silver here in 6 years! I was pretty dumbfounded.

I swept some more and got more deep signals. One more silver Roosie, another pinfire, and five wheats, one of which was holed through Lincoln's head (no doubt a Booth fan did that one). All found in the main area of the site where I have hunted before with the E-Trac and CTX. So what was different this time? Well, for one, when I last hit the place I was using an older version of my park pattern. I had tweaked and tuned it since then based on hundreds of hours of testing and real-world digging, and have been running the attached in high trash places since 2018. Second, other detectorists may have cleared out more modern trash for me since I was last there, and helped unmask these gems. It may be a bit of both, I don't know. But I do know that the CTX is the best machine I have ever used and it has so many features that the casual user will never realize. Just by testing and tweaking a search pattern and settings, I could find more keepers that I had missed before.

The Manticore does not have that type of customization. It does not use FBS. It is not the CTX. Until Minelab makes the machine that will replace what the CTX can do with the features it has (and much, much more, of course) I am going to stay with swinging my old gal.
I often wondered why some dedicated White's detector users still used older machines when they could have an Equinox, XP or Simplex+. Now after using a CTX3030 for 8 months I get it.
 
Ironman has been a great mentor to me. He set my new CTX up just like his in 2018. I know I wore on him saying" check this out" every time I got a iffy signal. He would say dig it if you want to learn what the machine is telling you. Last week I finally beat him at a local park. I dug 3 wheaties to his 2. We were in some heavy trash. I told him there were no high tones. He doubled checked my area and agreed. Normally he sneaks one out.
We have about 45 minutes left and we go to a new spot. 10 minutes till its time to leave he has to make his pimp walk over to me and do his famous closed hand drop into my out stretched hand. BOOM 1877 Seated Liberty.
That's what I have to deal with every time.
 
10 minutes till its time to leave he has to make his pimp walk over to me and do his famous closed hand drop into my out stretched hand. BOOM 1877 Seated Liberty.
Pimp walk??! Well, you're not wrong there.
 
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