Find's Treasure Forums
Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!
You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.
Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.
Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.
Click here to register!
Need Support Help?
Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you
AT-Pro Question???
- Thread starter mickfin
- Start date
It must have a SAT, as there is no way for the user to make any adjustments.
There isn't a SAT because there is no Threshold. That's one feature I wish Garrett would have incorporated with the AT Pro ... including a true, Threshold-based All Metal mode with variable Threshold control.mickfin said:
No, because there is no 'Threshold' as such. When you GB using the Ground Grab function it handles it quickly like other good Ground Grab/fast Grab circuitry does. In the Manual GB function, while bobbing the search coil, you can hear an audible increase or decrease, but you don't have any control over what we have come to call a Threshold-set audio.mickfin said:
Monte
Well, to keep some discussions as simple as possible and less than technical, let me put it this way.willy said:
A traditional TR or TR-Disc. models used to have a manually set Threshold audio. Due to a change in the ground mineralization, search coil height (maybe a change in grass height), or just drift caused by warming or cooling (moving to sun or shade) or just a natural shift in the electronics behavior, we had to periodically manually adjust or re-tune to re-set the Threshold.
Some manufacturers then added a push button or toggle switch so we could just quickly re-set our Threshold audio, and some also incorporated an auto-tune circuit that would adjust back the the proper or set Threshold. It is this last circuitry function, auto-tune, that was talked about. S.A.T. is just a term for Self-Adjusting Threshold which is simply Auto-Tune.
Now, motion-based Discrimination called that because the search coil needs to be in motion to pick up both the ground Mineral Signal as well as a Target Signal (VLF-Disc. or GEB-Disc.) before and after the metal target. It samples the ground signal and takes it out of the total received signal and passes on the metal target signal. motion is thus required.
Is some level of SAT used? Yes, I guess they might, but it in for the motion-based circuitry and is not really different than auto-tuning a Threshold in non-motion TR-Disc. models. Seldom do detectors offer a variable SAT adjustment (to adjust the SAT speed), and even those that do will often suffer from degraded overall performance. You'll find it on some top-end detectors, such as a White's XLT or Spectra V3i, but the attempts here were really to try and make one detector act or perform more like a variety of other detector types. My experience says that's often not going to work well.
As an example, some people would ask if White's DFX, with all the nifty adjustment functions, could be made to work like the quick-response/fast-recovery MXT. The answer was not, not really. It would be similar to asking if Garrett's top-dollar GTI-2500 could have a variable SAT control so that it would work similar to the new AT Pro, or even an Ace 350, with a quick-response/fast-recovery performance. The answer, again, would be No.
On most detectors made today you do not have any reference to the auto-tune speed to maintain the audio Threshold. Besides, as I mentioned, I wish the AT Pro would have featured a conventional Threshold-based All Metal mode, especially for the suggested retail price. My hope is that they will soon dump most of their other models and replace them with performance more like the AT Pro, but 'friendlier' to most hobbyists. That is, let the AT Pro be a waterproof unit but use the better design of the Scorpion or GTI/GTP/GTAx rod systems for more comfort, and also use a traditional search coil and headphone jack.
These, by the way, are not only wishes I have as I hear from others who would like some rod changes from the Ace and AT Pro group.
Even with a newer up-line entry fro Garrett I sort of doubt that they will incorporate a variable SAT control similar to that on White's MXT series, and only functional in the Prospecting All Metal mode. I now that I don't have a SAT control on any of the models in my current detector arsenal as it's usually not needed. It is useful, to some, in an All Metal mode when using that Threshold-based function for some tasks like gold nugget hunting.
Monte
Nugget hunting is one of the things I intend to use it for. Had/used an MXT for many years and found a lot of gold with it.. but it's not waterproof (I hunt in a lot of streams/rivers) and I found that the MXT has problems dealing with some hotrocks that I've encountered. Indeed, even a PI had problems. I don't expect the AT Pro to do any better in that respect, but there are a few tricks possible with such a unit that might make life somewhat easier. ..Willy.Monte said:
Caretaker me
Member
no thresh, that means as you sweep, you hear nothing til you pass the coil over a target, I have a machine like that, I detected for an hour with it before I realized it was off 