My Blog 2023

 

5/1/23

Happy New Year to all
Re threshold on the Legend thanks to Tony and Geoff for pointing out the update on the Nokta website which sorted the problem out, surely this should have been spotted when it was created??, seems every new detector to be released nowadays has problems that get sorted after you have bought it !
Just give 10 detectors out to people who know what they are doing for a week and I'm sure most problems will be sorted, or is that too simple, might be of more use than handing them out to Youtubers that mostly have no idea what they are doing.
I sold my Legend headphones with another Legend i had in that came without them, my thoughts were i would use my August Headphones with my Legend, wrong, they would not pair up with it, only once, tried other Bluetooth headphones , they paired up but had a delay, looked in the manual and it told me how to clear previous headphones from the blue tooth memory so different ones could be connected, no that did not work, after  googling the problem i read that only the Legend BT headphones are compatible ,who knows?  so i had to use wired headphones last Sunday when i went out for my first trip of the year, only went for a couple of hours on a well worked out site, i concentrated on a 20 square yard area , going up and down up and down right to left, i got 7 Musket balls, 3 coins (fairly modern) and a button, got a few of these with the Legend then swapped to the Deus 2.
I went into an area where i had no right to get a signal at all, Using the Deus in very black soil i put the Ground Balance in 'tracking' and it was very noisy, but i managed to get a brass threepenny bit and 3 Muskets balls out of a small area , no one in their right mind would have dug the signals , but it paid off. No idea why but i seem able to tune into the Deus 2 faster than i have with any other Detector i have ever used, probably took 3 years with the Equinox, i'm not talking about the basics, but the ability to have a good idea what you are digging using your ears and not a digital readout.
7/1/23
Having become resigned to the fact the Manticore would not be available until March i got a phone call today telling me it had arrived and requesting my card details , might get it today or Monday! From what i have gathered there are not a lot about, the dealer i got it from other had 3, just happened i was on top of the list.
and having spoke to another dealer they will be released next week so depending where you are in the pecking order, but there are very few available
9/1/23
Well it arrived today (My Manticore)did not get to unpack it until tonight, looks well made , nice and lightweight, menu easy to navigate , 1st impression is it is an Equinox, Discrimination looks interesting!
Raining and dark so give it 5 mins on the test bed, there are one or two signals on there that 99% of detectors do not get, my test bed is about 50 yards from the house but over the twenty odd years it’s been there have been bit’s of wire, nails all sorts of things dropped on the lawn causing a lot of the targets to disappear or get a lot more difficult to find, it all needs doing again really but just need the time to do it.
Amazing how dropping a half inch piece of thin wire can take a target out!
Anyway first target was a Cartwheel Penny at 16’’, the Equinox gives a vague signal I would not dig, same with the Deus 2, and with the Manticore too!, thought it might get it, the Nokta Legend get’s it without a problem. Next a 14’’ George 111 Halfpenny, no detector as ever got his one except the Minelab GPX 5000 , the Manticore did not either, same with the 13’’ 5 pence.
All this said I only spent 10 mins setting it up , only things I could see that was going to affect the depth was the sweep speed and Sensitivity, but early days.
10/1/23
Had another look at it this morning , cannot really see anything else that will increase the depth , this is what i am most concerned about as it could open up all my past pasture hotspots again, but there is plenty of stuff in the menu to play with and something may make a difference, this is not a beginners detector in any way shape or form, if you found the Equinox a bit lively they don’t bother with this, its super hyper and it will find every mineral and fragment of iron in the ground, and you need a lot of experience to translate the information that is being thrown at you correctly, the audio signals you are getting do not seem to be enough so you have to mix and match with the id on the screen which is excellent, I have a lot of targets on my test bed that have iron down the same hole and I can see on the screen how it is translating what it sees under the ground.
There is a lot you can do with this detector, a lot of the manual is devoted to discrimination and notching, tones etc. , this will not affect me as I will be running it in all metal.
The headphones paired up straight away which was a bonus after using the Equinox wireless headphones, the Manticore headphones are very comfortable , the detector itself seems to be a lot better build quality than the Equinox.
I had a Equinox 700 in today and tried it against the Manticore on the test bed, the Manticore got all the same targets only much better so as far as I am concerned it’s about 10% better and I will be starting my long learning process on Sunday, (rain permitting)
15/1/23
Other plans today but I managed to get out for 2 hours, I went to a very well battered 100 sq yd area that had had a few Medieval houses on it, it has a public footpath running through it, about 100 yds from a Church, it’s one of those ‘one signal an hour’ if you are lucky type of sites, you always get a signal or two, you can never work a site out completely.
If you have used an Equinox before then the Manticore will be an easy move forward, if you did not like the Equinox then save your money as you will hate the Manticore even more!
It’s a definite cross between a CTX and an Equinox, you can hear it in the tones, the 2D info on the screen is only reproducing what you are hearing though your headphones, but it’s a useful cross reference, every time I ignored my audio and dug on 2D info alone it was a piece of iron!
1st target was a small copper button at about 10’’, nearly all the iron I dug was iron rings/buckles/chain links these sorts of targets normal confuse most detectors, but after you have dug a few then you get to know the sound.
Most impressive signals were an air rifle pellet and half a horseshoe down the same hole
Most unimpressive signals were two really convincing signals in a very productive area that produced two nails and took half an hour each to extract due to rocks.
The Equinox in all metal mode gave you a lot of information of what was going on under the ground, it has its own language it was up to us to learn the language and use it to our advantage, the Manticore raises it to the next level, I could not believe how much iron there was on my chosen detecting area on Sunday, but is it pumping too much power into the ground and seeing too much? is this a case of ‘too much information’ 
Most of the top of the range detectors are excellent and are more than capable of finding you loads of stuff so no need to re-mortgage your house to buy one, but is this the best out there at the moment? yes, as long as you can get the sensitivity to a respectable level, I could not get it beyond 24 out a possible 35 , this is giving you respectable performance, a lot of people are saying they cannot get the sensitivity over 20 if that is as good as you can get it you might as well have saved your money because whatever you were using before will be better, i'm sure it's not £1000 better than an Equinox 800 but if you have £1800 of disposable income knocking about then buy one,
To be continued
My learning journey begins.
21/1/23
After my 2 hours detecting last week still unsure about the Manticore I had to make a decision this weekend, mainly because it’s either a keeper or it a £2500 detector on Ebay, due to lack of supply 
I needed hard evidence 
I had a morning of detector cleaning planned on Saturday so I decided to watch YouTube Manticore videos while doing so I , I watched several before I decided it was a waste of time, mainly because I do not know how the testers have set their detectors up, they may not know the best settings, when you see comparison tests between two detectors, how do we know they know what they are doing, I know a lot of these ‘experts’ and they have no idea, but they make the right noises so they get a free detector, then I normally end up with it and they get their pay day.

Anyway I spent an hour on my test bed, I could only get my Manticore sensitivity up to 22 , this equites to exactly the same as the Equinox’s performance, sensitivity at 20 , you might as well have kept your previous detector as I mentioned before
I managed to get the sensitivity up to 26 and it became a different detector, best depth I have ever seen on my test bed, so unless you can get your sensitivity over 23 then you might as well use an Equinox, I’m not saying it was happy at 26 but you could see the potential and now I have piece of mind and I can see what it is capable of, my test bed has been down for 20 years, I have been over it thousands of times with seems like 100’s of detectors, I know what to expect from all of them, so when something does something a bit different I adopt it, so it stays, just got to find a way to get the sensitivity up even if it means putting the headphones around my neck to avoid an ear bashing, the signals will still come though as will all the background noise.
Should my Legend now go? not likely to use it . but I like it and would love to use it with the bigger coil to see what it does, but i’m not paying £200 for one! So it will probably stay a while longer.
Intended to get out for an hour on Sunday but too cold, ground frozen an covering of snow so it didn't happen
When the weather gets a bit better I will add a few more targets to my test bed, some of the targets I have now are no longer relevant like the 6’’, 7’’ 8’’ George the 111 Halfpennies, in the 90’s a lot of detectors were not capable of finding such a target over 8’’ and nearly all detectors bottomed out at this, then 9’’ 10’’ and 11’’ options were added and one or two detectors managed to just about get the 10’’ , nowadays most detectors get it very well at 13’’ a modern 5 pence at 12’’, cut quarter at 7’’.
31/1/23
Managed to get out for three hours last Sunday, i took the Manticore on a 2 Acre field which has produced a Saxon gold brooch and several early medieval hammered , but has been battered with every detector known to man! after an hour i had one signal which was a button at about 6'', dodgy signal but iron down the same hole.
On to the next field, it's one i have mentioned several times before, i was surprised a few weeks ago to get Victorian silver threepenny bit in a very battered area where i park,  with the Legend.
So i took the Manticore to the same 5 sq yard area and got a Musket ball and a Victorian Sixpence next to it !
I went on to find a Silver Shilling (1945) and three pre decimal halfpennies, then my final signal was a Charles 2nd Farthing at 12'' , nearly blew my head off !
I had managed to get the sensitivity up to 27 without too much background noise so a successful 2nd outing with it.
15/2/23
Out last Sunday to a very worked out field with the Manticore, got a couple of buttons and a Medieval buckle plate, it's the best detector on the market without a doubt but as soon as i switched it on when i took it out of the box i knew it was on borrowed time, i have given it a few weeks weeks but i had fallen out of love with Minelab a few weeks ago and had sold my two Equinox's, just been using them for 20 years , need a change so going forward it's going to be the Legend and Deus 2 for me, most top end detectors do near enough the same nowadays so i will not be losing out too much. 
So tomorrow i will be putting my Manticore up for sale , if you want it message me , £1800, 10 hours use 
22/2/23
Well my Manticore went straight away as you would imagine , i then bought a new Legend and i am back where i was pre Manticore.
I now have 3 detectors' Deus 2/Legend and Minelab GPX 5000 so that should do the job.
10/3/23
It's crazy at the moment and has been for quite a few weeks now, detectors selling as soon as i put them up for sale, seems everyman and his dog wants to detect nowadays.
I cannot get any amount of detectors up for sale , i like to keep a stock of about 30 to 40 detectors in but no chance at the moment, i buy every detector i am offered (if of course a price can be agreed) being as i sell all second-hand detectors i have to rely on Joe Public to offer me surplus detectors or part ex's , so it's very hit and miss , if i sold new ones i could just ring up my supplier and ask them to send 40 detectors or whatever.
Because of the amount of new detectorists starting out they are buying outright and i do not get a part ex.
All this sudden surge of sales is being bought on because of the amount of Face book groups and clubs setting up weekly digs and charging £10/£15/£20 per person or whatever for a days detecting, the Farmers gets a pay out , i presume the organiser gets a wedge and the rest goes to charity ?
So the would be detectorists who have always wanted to detect but probably have never been able to get permission on any land now only needs to find the £15.00 on a Sunday or Wednesday.
I am getting loads of local enquiry's and people turning up without an appointment , a lot of which have no idea about detectors or detecting but just want to jump on the get rich quick bandwagon. (good luck with that) there are of course people who want a good day out and are interested in the history, there are a few local groups that have appeared and we are surrounded by paid digs at the moment of a weekly basis, it's all changing this detecting lark.

3/4/23
April already not sure how we got there? Grass is getting longer, crops are getting higher, suddenly you have only about 10% of the land you have permission on available.
Normally we get a lot of beginners at this time of year because the weather is getting better and temperatures getting higher, then they find they have nowhere to go only the beaches, which are devoid of coinage because of the new trend to make us pay for everything with a card.
I was out yesterday with the Deus 2 on the local fields i have permission on I got a Knackered Roman Dupondius and half a Medieval Pilgrims Ampulla as well as the normal buttons etc.
I will start my new test bed soon with a view to testing all the latest detectors against each other, i have done it with all the older detectors but have lost my way with it in the last few years, a lot of the targets i have buried have disappeared, reason being if I have been doing a job in the garden and dropped a nail/Screw/Small piece of wire, all these will take a target out for most detectors, 
I have George 111 halfpennies at various depths from 6’’ to 13’’, 6’’ used to be a good starting point years ago, most detectors would do 8’’, and occasionally the top end detectors 9’’ or even 10’’.
They would at a push get a modern 5 pence at 8’’.
Now everything gets a George 111 Halfpenny at 13’’ and a 5 pence at 12’’
I have a George 111 Cartwheel Penny buried at 16’’ there is iron of some kind down the hole but I have never been able to find it , this stops 99% of detectors from getting it.
The only detectors that pick it up are the Minelab GPX’s , the Manicore, The Nokta Legend and more recently the new X-Terra Pro !, but I need to do more tests on this one yet, watch this space
17/4/23
Took me some time to get around to it but managed to give the X-Terra another go , i could not believe the results i got the first time around, but it was a bit of a rush test in-between showers.
Got the same the results second time around, it's an awesome detector at a crazy price and over all gives better results than an Equinox.
With all the stems sliding in and out due to being telescopic i can see there being some very rough ones out there in a few months time, the paintwork soon scratches and wares off , probably whose than the Deus.
Went out yesterday for several hours, longest i have been out in one day all year, we (myself and K2)  tried a couple of fields that we had not been on before, very quiet , odd button and Georgian halfpenny, i eventually manage to find a 1817 Shilling in nice condition , dinner time!
We then attacked a field that had been used for Caravaners in the 1970's , had a few hours on here before and found about 50 coins, including 5 Silver in one day with the C-Scope EVO, whilst testing it, so in a couple of hours of frantic digging i ended up with 31 coins  (5 Silver) using the Deus 2 and K2 got 33 coins (one Silver) using the Equinox 600.
I also managed to find a Medieval key !
So a good day all in all.
4/5/23
Last week i took the Legend and Deus 2 out on a field within walking distance of home, (due to lack of time.)
it was a field where i have found quite a few bits in the past, mainly Georgian, think there was a house there years ago,
I have felt for some time that using the Legend that i am walking over targets, i just get that feeling,
I chose a 50 sq yd area and spent an hour with the Legend on it , i found 4 non ferrous items, same area using the Deus 2 for an hour 17 non ferrous targets, not an exact science but not even close, so the Legend paid the price and it was on my website and gone the next day.
If the result was 12/16 or similar then i would put that down to good or bad luck but 4/17 is a decider , tried this test before with similar results, the Legend is great on parks where there are loads of coins and foil, but on farmland not good enough, it's a Multi Freq Simplex.
I now have an Manticore (well 3 actually, don't ask) took it out for a spin , not convinced, still felt i was walking over targets, although it's the best i have tested on my test bed, i need more time with it, or i might do a similar test that i did with my Legend and aim to do so this weekend.
1/6/23
Just got back from Hols in Cornwall, did a few hours on the beach , didn't go too well in the 1st few days. no signals at all, then i came across a gully and bang! Using the Manticore i started to get a few bits , two Spoons C1950's a fishing weight, the signals in the gully were coming from about a foot down, there was about 3 to 4 foot of extra sand outside the Gully, no wonder i could not get a signal !
Beaches must be full of stuff out of reach.
Next day i tried the Deus 2 with the Version 1.0 loaded the same day , didn't know much about it, i do like the square tones new option so tried that with a few tweaks in Beach mode it was running like a dream and was very pleasant to use, the Gulley was full of iron but it was easily pulling non ferrous signals out , i had 4 balls of iron with it and all of them had a iron corded one pence or two pence inside it when i smashed them open and there was not a lot of the copper coating left, very impressive, in fact i did not use the Manticore for the remaining couple of days but continued with the Deus!
28/6/23
Difficult detecting is at the moment, grass too long, ground too hard, i cannot remember the ground being this hard, ever.
I keep on trying every Sunday but give up after a couple of hours of being cooked in the Sun and bitten to death by Horse flies.
I was going to have a ride around to see which land i have permission on is available last Sunday but could not be bothered , so i ended up on our own land , started detecting on one of our 2 acre paddocks during Covid and found loads of stuff , just on the last 50 sq yards, so thought I'd try to finish it off.
I used the Manticore and the Deus 2 and in 3 hours of detecting found 10 non ferrous signals, found two buttons and a Fragment of a Petronel and with the Manticore my 1st hammered of the year a Charles 1 half groat ! but it was hard digging.
Business wise things were slow due to time of year but it's picking up a bit now, it's a funny time of year.
08/7/23
We are currently away on the Isle of Man
Anyone sending me detectors not a problem as someone will be there to receive them.
While waiting for the ferry on Saturday , and taking a Coffee on board i watched with interest as 3 detectorists on the beach at Heysham were digging away and none of them were actually taking anything out of their holes? they all seemed to be missing the target?
Then i found out why , they were all using Dr Otek detectors, from my experience with these they tend to beep 2 seconds after they go over the target, meaning you have no idea where to dig.
We landed on The Isle of Man at about half 6 and by the time we had found our cottage it was late.
9/7/23 
On the Sunday i managed a couple of hours on Laxey beach, anyone who detects there will be happy to know i removed about 30 pieces of aluminium off there!
No matter where i detected all i was finding was aluminium, i am no Beach detecting expert but i always managed to find something a bit older on near every beach i go on, that's my challenge to myself, so i had to think outside my box and i went to detect in the rock pools, i started to find older bits of copper and lead trapped in the cracks between the rocks, i then worked out that where the seaweed was growing on the rocks it was growing out of the cracks, not rocket science but as i said before i am not a beach detectorist! so started to detect on top of the seaweed, 1st signal was a coin, well i could see about 2mm of one sticking out of the crevice, amazing how the sea managed to wedge it in the thin crack , 20 mins later i was the owner of a George 111 Halfpenny , bit battered mainly due to my extraction method , i made a mental note take a thin bladed penknife with me nice time!
15/7/23
And so the week went on in a similar vain detecting wise, ended up with 92 pieces of non ferrous metal recovered , 3 of which were finds, two Half penny , 1862 and G111 , and a fragment of a navel button, not a great finds rate percentage wise, cannot believe the beaches i went on had so many signals on them but hardly anything was a find.

16/7/23
So back home again to the normal surge of phone calls and orders you get when you have been away for a week.
Loads of detectors arriving in, just need the time to clean them up and put them up for sale,
Loads also going out ,so it's a very quick turnover in a lot of cases.
7/8/23
Have to close for a week again due to big backlog of detectors and accessories that need cleaning/Tested and putting up for sale, not enough hours in the day to sell detectors/Pack detectors/clean detectors /Take pics/Edit pics /list on website and Ebay/Talk to people for hours on the phone etc.
Last week a silly amount of detectors were sold.
So what things annoy me on a daily basis /
People who say they are calling around to do a deal, meaning i have to rejig my day to entertain them, they do not turn up nor do they get a second chance if they cannot be bothered to let me know.
People who want to part ex a detector that they bought from me 8 years ago, when asked what condition  it is in they say ' the same condition as when you sold it to me' agggh , I've sold a few hundred detectors since then , sorry i cannot remember!!, this happens at least twice a week. They cannot remember how much they paid for it, so i have no idea what condition it was in when i sold it to them, it may have been a mint condition one or a well worn one i sold them cheaply.
Then you get the 'Used once' customers that have only used it in their Garden for 10 mins, when it arrives the coil cover is worn out and it take me two hours to clean it.
People who have never cleaned their detector since they bought it 10 years ago, and it takes 2 hours to remove the ingrained soil
Customers who say their detector has never been used only once on the Carpet, never been outside, then when you get it you can pour the soil out of the coil cover,
I have had people stand in front of me and say they their detector as never been out of the box as i pour sand out of the cover cover without them even noticing , crazy.
People who invent faults on detectors so they can send them back (because they do not like them) why not just tell me you want to swap it, This causes all sorts of problems because when i get it back i know it will work just fine and 99 times out 100 it will, but there is always that nagging doubt that it might be an intermittent fault, so I have to waste loads of time testing it to make sure there is not a problem
People who ask if i want to buy their detector, and tell me it has only been used once, so i give them a price, then i get the detector and find out it was used once by the seller but his mate used it 300 times before!
People who when visiting me ask me what I do for a living!!!!!!
People who phone me up and ask me what I would give for a detector, I give them a price and they go away to think about it, two weeks later it arrives out of the blue, I have forgotten by then what I offered them, so I ring them up and ask them, the conversation normally goes like this
Me-Hello sorry I have forgot what I offered you for your detector
Customer-Sorry I forgot 
So I pick a very low price and say, ‘I think it was £50’ amazing how their memory suddenly comes back! 
Customer-You said £200 when I phoned you.
The customer of course hopes that because you have forgotten you will offer more! Wrong!
People who phone you up for a price that you both agree on, then it arrives 8 weeks later with no address no phone number no nothing, these I normally pile up in a corner, eventually the customer will ring because you have not paid them.
People who send you a detector but do not bother to put any packing in the box so it just rattles around and are normally surprised it got smashed up.
Not detecting related but people who say ‘oh bless’ agghhhhhhhhhhh
17/8/23
Be testing my Deus 2 against my Manticore every week lately , i do a mile or whatever with one they the same with the other, oddly i seem to get better results with the Deus on Pasture and the Manticore seems better on Stubble.
I have been using my Deus 2 on version 1.0, but last week it did my head in, firing off, low and high tone every time i went near a piece of iron, i don't have many iron invested places on my sites so i can get away with these settings normally.
So i 'upgraded' to 1.1
My settings 1st time out were as follows
Discrim 6
Full Tones
Silencer 2
Iron Volume 7
Reactivity  2
Audio Response 7 
Off set FT  5
Using these settings you would think (if you use a Deus) that it would be ideal (on paper)
It was a nightmare, no idea what was going on, loads of filters fighting each other .
So i knocked the 'Off set off' 0
Silencer -0
This made hell of a difference and i was able to tell what was going on.then i changed the below.
Reactivity to 0.5
Iron Volume 0
Discrim on -6.4
After i had made the changes it was great.
With the Deus 2 , less is more!!
10/9/23
Just got back from a week in Fairbourne near Barmouth in Wales, detected several times but gave up in the end, aluminium everywhere, seems everywhere you detect near the coast your finds rate goes belly up, inland about 32% of items dug up is a find on the coast it something like 5%, it's a very frustrating place to detect as i'm sure you know if that's where you live and detect, i'm talking about the land within a few fields from the sea, where years and years of Camp Sites, Caravan sites have been in the past and still are, and rubbish has been buried and soil/sand has been moved around all over the place for all sorts of reasons.
15/10/23
Not been out much in the last few weeks, mainly due to the fact it seems to be raining all the time, i managed 2 hours detecting last week and an hour of talking to the Farmer!
Went on the most worked out site i have , and chose the most worked out area on that site, i got 10 signals in 2 hours, all just small pieces of lead or similar, but they were targets that had been missed before and the biggest difference that a detector had made on this site ever, i was using the Manticore.
Out again today on another worked out site , everybody and his dog as been on this field in the last 30 years and signals are rare, i even had dog walkers passing by telling me i would not find anything as there was always someone detecting on the field.
But i cannot resist these sorts of sites, despite having 1000's of acres of untouched land to go at, just see it as a challenge , there was a Medieval Village on this field but never found anything older than Georgian.
I got 3 halfpennies a Thimble a couple of buckles and a few non-descript bits of non ferrous metal , the reason i was getting the finds was because i had found an area where there seemed to have been a building , the soil was black,  holes were full of pottery and brick, i used my Manticore with some success , but the Manticore see's too much in the ground and signals can be confusing, you very rarely get a clear signal with the Manticore, there must be so much stuff being left in the ground unless you know what you are doing.
So out comes the Deus 2, i wandered around a bit with not many signals and headed into the iron infested area, i found it easier to isolate the signals with the Deus although i was getting an ear bashing with the settings i use, so much metal in the ground it was mind blowing, then the odd clear diggable signal would come though, so i started to experiment whilst among the iron area, so lets blow away few myths, we are programmed to believe (metal detecting wise) that when we detect in an iron infested area we turn the sensitivity down , wrong we turn it up, try it! we are also lead to believe that we should use a small coil, wrong small coils are useless unless you use it for detecting in areas where it is impossible  to use a bigger coil, or for use among stubble etc. , but among iron forget it.
We are also lead to believe that when detecting among iron we turn the reactivity up (or whatever the make of the the detector you are using calls it) sweep speed, whatever, reactivity it is with the Deus , so you are the owner of a Deus 2, you are in a junky/Iron infested area you turn it up to say 3 or 4 , you might as well go home, i put mine up to 2 on Sunday and it killed it, you could not even tell you were in an iron infested area, i used 0.5 or 1 at maximum.
Same with the Manticore put the recovery speed above 5 and it just chops the signal in half so it sounds like a broken signal that you would get while detecting iron. 
If you use either of these detectors then the most forgiving is the Manticore , you only really need to turn the sensitivity up really to get great results.
The Deus on preset programs is fairly useless so you really do need to know what you are doing (good luck with that!)
Sorry if you don't own either of these detectors, but you might do one day!
31/10/23
Managed to get out last week for a couple of hours or thereabouts, as normal defaulted to a 'worked out' area this is an area of about 100yds by 200yds on the edge of a village,  probably detected on there (two of us) for 20 full days, and me on my own for about 20 half days, just one of those areas we drop on now and again that has History though out the centuries for no particular reason as we know of? every detector we have has been on this area.
So i used the Manticore first , thought id give it half a mile then give the Deus half a mile, no point giving it an hour each because it depends how many signals you dig and how long it takes you to extract the find, so it's an unfair test really.
So i got 10 non ferrous targets with the Manticore including a 1932 penny and a 'Cartwheel penny' how as that been missed? Plus 2 Muskets balls
So the Deus comes into play
17 non ferrous targets including 2 Silver Sixpences 3 Pennies , 2 Musket balls. just goes to show you can never empty an area!
I have put my Deus on to version 2 now, this does seem to have improved it, we'll see, nice and quiet on my normal settings which use General as a base, if i use Sensitive as a base then it becomes very much like the Manticore.
Meanwhile sales are 100 mph, i have put quiet a a few detectors on Ebay auctions lately mainly because and they are fetching a lot more money  then they would on my website

29/11/23
It's that time of the year again, loads of phone calls from people wanting to sell their spare detectors to fund Christmas no doubt.
Normally then followed in January by loads of phone calls from people wanting to sell their detectors to pay off their credit cards!
Auctions on Ebay have slowed down, detectors are not fetching anything like what they were a few weeks back, my last 4 auctions luckily were won by foreign buyers , they were all non paying bidders so i have a second chance with them.
What normally happens is they win the auction then get the bill from Ebay with the postage and customs charges added, then they vanish without trace leaving me in limbo, i know they are not going to pay, but i have to give them time to pay so i cannot put them back for sale on the website for a while.
everything up export wise.

At the moment 50% of the calls i am getting are people selling Equinox 600's, no idea where they are coming from?.
Not been out much lately mainly due to waterlogged fields and a trapped nerve in my back, managed a couple of hours last Sunday loads of cartridge cases and 3 buttons

22/12/23
Well Christmas nearly here, Year nearly over , (again) not really done as much detecting as i would like, mainly due to the fact it never seems to stop raining (don't do rain anymore) off out tomorrow to deliver farmer goodies , a thank you for letting me dig holes all over the place!
Went out last Sunday for a few hours on a worked out site, dug 27 non ferrous targets, overall best being a Roman bronze on a bank side that i have not had a signal on in ten years, with loads of different detectors, i was using a Deus 2 with my settings using Sensitive as a base, software i was 
using was 2.0, i will be moving it back to 1.1 soon, just find it deeper.
24/12/23
Was due to go out today, but raining again today so spent the morning cleaning detectors, photographing them and putting them on my website, typical day off , 8 hours work,back to cleaning on Boxing day
Have a Great Christmas and a Lucky New Year!