Muddyshoes
New member
So I wheeled and dealed for two months, scraping my coins together to get a new detector, while at the same time, drooling over everyone elses finds. It had been 25 years since my last NEW detector.. the others had been used, but still productive. I pondered back and forth, reading the forums, and had decided on an AT Pro, admittedly in part because of the numerous photos of some amazing rings. How could one NOT be exciting about the prospect of finding that kind of treasure?
I scoured the AT Pro forums, reading about the glaring design problems and worse, the leaking problems, while at the same time reading about Garrett's tireless customer service. I had always known them to take care of me in the past, and figured at the worst, they would make anything 'right' that might crop up with this new box. I watched videos and read reviews of Garrett's current makes and models, and even as part of my wheeling and dealing I luckily ended up with a well-priced used GTI 2000 to at least get a feel for the graphical targeting. I liked it, and so it was a tough choice, although I realized that I'll soon be upgrading the GTI 2000 to a 2500 so I'll still end up with one of those as well.
When UPS dropped off the box with my AT Pro, I opened it like a child at Christmas, throwing cardboard bits around the floor. My cats were not thrilled about this sleek new black detector, but they did enjoy sitting inside the empty box once I removed the contents. I put it together and fumbled with the awkward positioning of the coil and headphone connectors, not really sure if I tightened them all the way, and tried to find an open spot in the air in front of me in my living room and I pressed the power button and heard it come to life. It was exciting... my wife, on the other hand rolled her eyes and as she walked out reminded me to pick up the box pieces before the cats peed on them.
I walked outside in my front yard and decided to just scan a bit to see how she sounded. Starting by default in pro audio mode meant that this things beeped, blipped and buzzed in all kinds of tones like I had just intercepted an alien communication transmission in outer space. I sighed as I realized this was going to take some time... I returned to the house and turned off the detector and set it out of the way of our psycho peeing cats. Tomorrow afternoon would be the day I'd give this puppy a try.
By the next afternoon when I returned from work, I had about two and a half hours of daylight left. I put on my metal detecting outfit.. my hiking shoes, socks, crappy shorts, short-sleeve Under Armor shirt, belt, Garrett Pinpointer, my new Lesche digger and my circa 1985 Home Depot nail apron. (I hadn't yet updated the final part of my wardrobe...) I plopped the detector into my Jeep and headed out for a familiar park behind my house that dates back to the 1920s. This particular park has been well-searched, and is one of those that has a treatment of new sod every decade or so. I had previously searched this one tree-covered area of the park and had removed countless pieces of metal crap and only a few coins. It was very clean and I figured a clean area would be a good place to take this detector for its first hunt, even though I thought I wouldn't find much.
When I got my detector out of the Jeep, I slammed the deck lid shut, put on the 1960s Soviet Era heavy-duty AT Pro headphones and stretched out the lower shaft and adjusted the coil angle. I stood there for a few minutes in the shade just trying to get the feel of the thing.
The first thing I noticed, was that the designer who created the ergonomic styling of this thing was a Hobbit...yes, as in Lord of the Rings. The arm rest is decidedly too short and the velcro strap that you put your arm through, seems more to serve to offset the horrible balance of this detector than it does to help in any other way, other than perhaps while water searching. Within 5 minutes, I pulled the strap off the machine and put it in my pocket. The next thing I noticed was that the balance between the detector and the DD coil just seemed off. It seemed coil-heavy, even for a detector that is so lightweight, and really, it is very light. The round, foam grip similarly seemed to be a little off to where it should be for the detector to really feel balanced. In fairness, over the next couple hours, I adjusted to the ergonomics of the detector for the most part, so it might have actually been ME that was off.
I pressed the power button and decided to operate in the mode called "Standard-Coins." This mode on the AT Pro is pretty much what most of the Garrett detectors operate in, sounding a steady tone when it finds something...a tone of the same volume and intensity, regardless of depth as long as it was able to detect the target under the coil. I had seen videos of people using the Pro modes which have all kinds of variations and tones to indicate targets and I figured I'd probably just work my way up to that.
The first thing I noticed was just how sensitive this thing was. My first target was a dime-sized piece of a gum wrapper several inches down, so thin I could barely see it. The Double-D coil saw it though. I sighed and put it into my coin apron. My next couple targets were a pulltab and a piece of a pulltab, respectively...also, at around 3-4 inches. The numerical display that indicates conductivity was hopping all over the place. I decreased the sensitivity down to about 6 and it seemed to help. I ground balanced at about 74. It's not too bad in Florida. Since the area here was so clean, I decided to pop into the PRO COINS mode and see if I could deal with all the other chirps, beeps, boops and buzzes that this mode makes. From watching videos on You Tube I knew this "language" was something I'd come to appreciate in time, but here on my first hunt, it sure was confusing. I walked around for a bit not trying to dig anything...just trying to get to hear her language..confused of course, as the last times I'd heard these kinds of noises, it meant my detector was in serious need of repair. So this was normal?
After about a half hour and 3 pieces of junk, I got one of those signals that sounded like junk with a tiny belltone in the middle...a belltone I was able to get with consistency as I moved my DD coil all over trying to pinpoint...another hellish "feature" of this coil, but I'll get to that in a moment. I set my detector down, and just as had happened with my previous targets, I hadn't moved the coil far enough away from my digging tool and the detector kept picking up the Lesche digger. And, as has also happened before, I moved the detector further away and it promptly fell over on its side. Seems the Hobbit who designed the stand under the elbow cuff had never actually used a metal detector before and made it very narrow. The numerical indicator read a steady 56 and a depth of about 3 inches. Sure enough, I dug down and found my target. To my surprise, it was a sterling silver ring with a little heart with some glass stones around the middle. I was psyched!
I turned off the detector and immediately walked over to my Jeep and called my wife sending her a picture of the ring at the same time. While she didn't immediately share my enthusiasm, she did manage to ask, A) How big is it? and B) Do you think it will fit me? Apparently, your wife gets first dibs on any rings... it had been so long since I found a ring I had forgotten that part of it. It had a nick and was bent, so apparently it was hit by a mower. Since daylight was fading, I hung up with my wife and returned to the hunt. Over the next 90 minutes I decided to walk over to a nearby baseball field after being inspired by John Edmonton's recent "Baseball Diamond" thread to see if I could reproduce some of that luck. The area was extremely trashy and since I had so much noise from Pro Mode that I decided to return back to "training wheel" Standard Mode until I became more familiar with the detector.
The next thing I noticed about this detector is that it loves dimes. I don't mean it likes dimes...it LOVES dimes and small objects, and almost every coin I was digging was at least about 4-6 inches, some being 8 inches. I had a blister starting on my hand from these deep holes and compacted soil. And even the pulltabs and junk were deep. It finally got the point where I stopped digging anything below about 70 on the numerical conductivity display. It was about 7pm and still in the mid 90s.. I was dehydrated and starving, and every time I got a signal it would register at about 8 or more inches...and I was just too tired, to be honest. I vowed at this point, to get my waddlesome self into some kind of healthy shape before I blow out a knee or a heart valve. I think mostly though, it was just the heat, and the fact that these AT Pro headphones are just so heavy, it's like wearing a foam cushion over your head. .
By about 8:30, I was ready to quit. I had a decent handle, I thought, on the basics of the machine in standard mode. I still don't know what to do with all the iron settings yet. That's for another day. I had also started to get comfortable with pinpointing using the Double-D coil. If you've not used this kind of coil before, it's a little tricky. You don't have a center "X-Marks-The-Spot" place like you do on concentric coils so it requires you to use one of several methods to pinpoint. Or you can just say the hell with it, and plunk down another $90 for one of the oval coils that can pinpoint like a coil oughta! The other complaint though, is the plastic nut and bolt that holds the coil onto the lower shaft. It does NOT hold the coil steady and I had to readjust the coil angle after almost every dig because it kept moving.
I dragged my sorry behind back to my jeep. My legs were tired from all the up and down, up and down, even though I had not dug many targets. Again, this is what dehydration can do to you. I pulled out my wet-wipes and tried to clean up a little for the drive home. When I pulled my detector out of the Jeep back home, I went into the house and set it down and got out the ring I found to show my wife. I was excited! I then put my finds out on a couple paper towels...the good and the bad, and took a picture before dumping the trash in the bin.
My overall perception of the AT Pro is that on land, it's a pretty darned slick machine and not really as complicated as I thought it would be to at least get started with. There's no reason you can't start out in one of the standard modes and then customize your searching settings as you become more familiar with the machine and be productive right off the bat. I really liked how lightweight it was and it seemed to be a lot sturdier than I thought it would be. As for the ergonomics.. well, I blame the Hobbits for that one.
Finally, you can tell the quality of a detector design by how many after-market addons there are (or aren't) for it. The AT Pro has several.
First is an addon called "The Gizmo" which is effectively a machine turned armrest extension that makes the arm rest comfortable for someone from the Middle Earth race of Men. There is at least one other similar addon, but this one seems really well-made, although I've not actually seen one in person.
Secondly, there are numerous "kick stands" or other types of stands to help keep the AT Pro upright when it's on the ground or leaning against, say a tree or your car. The AT Pro falls over very easily, in part because of its light weight.
Third, is a clear plastic gadget that attaches to the base of your lower coil shaft with a zip tie that helps keep the coil at the angle you want to to stay at. This is because the plastic coil bolt and nut frankly, isn't strong enough to hold the coil at a steady angle without tightening the heck out of it.
Next is a headphone adapter cable that lets you use a regular standard set of headphones with the 1/4 inch jack instead of the super heavy AT Pro stock headphones that use the waterproof connector on the detector control housing. Garrett has just started shipping these.
To buy all of these will set you back around $100. Wow.
And there may be more. To be honest, these are indications, to me at least, that the design was hurried. It's not the most comfortable detector at first, and certainly doesn't fit nicely in the hands like the GTA, GTP, GTI and other similar models with their comfortable rubber grips, do. But again, this was my first time out and it will probably be fine after I get used to it.
To summarize, I'm happy after my first hunt. I netted a silver ring and about $1.30 and a key. Not bad for my first time out with this thing!
- Muddyshoes
I scoured the AT Pro forums, reading about the glaring design problems and worse, the leaking problems, while at the same time reading about Garrett's tireless customer service. I had always known them to take care of me in the past, and figured at the worst, they would make anything 'right' that might crop up with this new box. I watched videos and read reviews of Garrett's current makes and models, and even as part of my wheeling and dealing I luckily ended up with a well-priced used GTI 2000 to at least get a feel for the graphical targeting. I liked it, and so it was a tough choice, although I realized that I'll soon be upgrading the GTI 2000 to a 2500 so I'll still end up with one of those as well.
When UPS dropped off the box with my AT Pro, I opened it like a child at Christmas, throwing cardboard bits around the floor. My cats were not thrilled about this sleek new black detector, but they did enjoy sitting inside the empty box once I removed the contents. I put it together and fumbled with the awkward positioning of the coil and headphone connectors, not really sure if I tightened them all the way, and tried to find an open spot in the air in front of me in my living room and I pressed the power button and heard it come to life. It was exciting... my wife, on the other hand rolled her eyes and as she walked out reminded me to pick up the box pieces before the cats peed on them.
I walked outside in my front yard and decided to just scan a bit to see how she sounded. Starting by default in pro audio mode meant that this things beeped, blipped and buzzed in all kinds of tones like I had just intercepted an alien communication transmission in outer space. I sighed as I realized this was going to take some time... I returned to the house and turned off the detector and set it out of the way of our psycho peeing cats. Tomorrow afternoon would be the day I'd give this puppy a try.
By the next afternoon when I returned from work, I had about two and a half hours of daylight left. I put on my metal detecting outfit.. my hiking shoes, socks, crappy shorts, short-sleeve Under Armor shirt, belt, Garrett Pinpointer, my new Lesche digger and my circa 1985 Home Depot nail apron. (I hadn't yet updated the final part of my wardrobe...) I plopped the detector into my Jeep and headed out for a familiar park behind my house that dates back to the 1920s. This particular park has been well-searched, and is one of those that has a treatment of new sod every decade or so. I had previously searched this one tree-covered area of the park and had removed countless pieces of metal crap and only a few coins. It was very clean and I figured a clean area would be a good place to take this detector for its first hunt, even though I thought I wouldn't find much.
When I got my detector out of the Jeep, I slammed the deck lid shut, put on the 1960s Soviet Era heavy-duty AT Pro headphones and stretched out the lower shaft and adjusted the coil angle. I stood there for a few minutes in the shade just trying to get the feel of the thing.
The first thing I noticed, was that the designer who created the ergonomic styling of this thing was a Hobbit...yes, as in Lord of the Rings. The arm rest is decidedly too short and the velcro strap that you put your arm through, seems more to serve to offset the horrible balance of this detector than it does to help in any other way, other than perhaps while water searching. Within 5 minutes, I pulled the strap off the machine and put it in my pocket. The next thing I noticed was that the balance between the detector and the DD coil just seemed off. It seemed coil-heavy, even for a detector that is so lightweight, and really, it is very light. The round, foam grip similarly seemed to be a little off to where it should be for the detector to really feel balanced. In fairness, over the next couple hours, I adjusted to the ergonomics of the detector for the most part, so it might have actually been ME that was off.
I pressed the power button and decided to operate in the mode called "Standard-Coins." This mode on the AT Pro is pretty much what most of the Garrett detectors operate in, sounding a steady tone when it finds something...a tone of the same volume and intensity, regardless of depth as long as it was able to detect the target under the coil. I had seen videos of people using the Pro modes which have all kinds of variations and tones to indicate targets and I figured I'd probably just work my way up to that.
The first thing I noticed was just how sensitive this thing was. My first target was a dime-sized piece of a gum wrapper several inches down, so thin I could barely see it. The Double-D coil saw it though. I sighed and put it into my coin apron. My next couple targets were a pulltab and a piece of a pulltab, respectively...also, at around 3-4 inches. The numerical display that indicates conductivity was hopping all over the place. I decreased the sensitivity down to about 6 and it seemed to help. I ground balanced at about 74. It's not too bad in Florida. Since the area here was so clean, I decided to pop into the PRO COINS mode and see if I could deal with all the other chirps, beeps, boops and buzzes that this mode makes. From watching videos on You Tube I knew this "language" was something I'd come to appreciate in time, but here on my first hunt, it sure was confusing. I walked around for a bit not trying to dig anything...just trying to get to hear her language..confused of course, as the last times I'd heard these kinds of noises, it meant my detector was in serious need of repair. So this was normal?
After about a half hour and 3 pieces of junk, I got one of those signals that sounded like junk with a tiny belltone in the middle...a belltone I was able to get with consistency as I moved my DD coil all over trying to pinpoint...another hellish "feature" of this coil, but I'll get to that in a moment. I set my detector down, and just as had happened with my previous targets, I hadn't moved the coil far enough away from my digging tool and the detector kept picking up the Lesche digger. And, as has also happened before, I moved the detector further away and it promptly fell over on its side. Seems the Hobbit who designed the stand under the elbow cuff had never actually used a metal detector before and made it very narrow. The numerical indicator read a steady 56 and a depth of about 3 inches. Sure enough, I dug down and found my target. To my surprise, it was a sterling silver ring with a little heart with some glass stones around the middle. I was psyched!
I turned off the detector and immediately walked over to my Jeep and called my wife sending her a picture of the ring at the same time. While she didn't immediately share my enthusiasm, she did manage to ask, A) How big is it? and B) Do you think it will fit me? Apparently, your wife gets first dibs on any rings... it had been so long since I found a ring I had forgotten that part of it. It had a nick and was bent, so apparently it was hit by a mower. Since daylight was fading, I hung up with my wife and returned to the hunt. Over the next 90 minutes I decided to walk over to a nearby baseball field after being inspired by John Edmonton's recent "Baseball Diamond" thread to see if I could reproduce some of that luck. The area was extremely trashy and since I had so much noise from Pro Mode that I decided to return back to "training wheel" Standard Mode until I became more familiar with the detector.
The next thing I noticed about this detector is that it loves dimes. I don't mean it likes dimes...it LOVES dimes and small objects, and almost every coin I was digging was at least about 4-6 inches, some being 8 inches. I had a blister starting on my hand from these deep holes and compacted soil. And even the pulltabs and junk were deep. It finally got the point where I stopped digging anything below about 70 on the numerical conductivity display. It was about 7pm and still in the mid 90s.. I was dehydrated and starving, and every time I got a signal it would register at about 8 or more inches...and I was just too tired, to be honest. I vowed at this point, to get my waddlesome self into some kind of healthy shape before I blow out a knee or a heart valve. I think mostly though, it was just the heat, and the fact that these AT Pro headphones are just so heavy, it's like wearing a foam cushion over your head. .
By about 8:30, I was ready to quit. I had a decent handle, I thought, on the basics of the machine in standard mode. I still don't know what to do with all the iron settings yet. That's for another day. I had also started to get comfortable with pinpointing using the Double-D coil. If you've not used this kind of coil before, it's a little tricky. You don't have a center "X-Marks-The-Spot" place like you do on concentric coils so it requires you to use one of several methods to pinpoint. Or you can just say the hell with it, and plunk down another $90 for one of the oval coils that can pinpoint like a coil oughta! The other complaint though, is the plastic nut and bolt that holds the coil onto the lower shaft. It does NOT hold the coil steady and I had to readjust the coil angle after almost every dig because it kept moving.
I dragged my sorry behind back to my jeep. My legs were tired from all the up and down, up and down, even though I had not dug many targets. Again, this is what dehydration can do to you. I pulled out my wet-wipes and tried to clean up a little for the drive home. When I pulled my detector out of the Jeep back home, I went into the house and set it down and got out the ring I found to show my wife. I was excited! I then put my finds out on a couple paper towels...the good and the bad, and took a picture before dumping the trash in the bin.
My overall perception of the AT Pro is that on land, it's a pretty darned slick machine and not really as complicated as I thought it would be to at least get started with. There's no reason you can't start out in one of the standard modes and then customize your searching settings as you become more familiar with the machine and be productive right off the bat. I really liked how lightweight it was and it seemed to be a lot sturdier than I thought it would be. As for the ergonomics.. well, I blame the Hobbits for that one.
Finally, you can tell the quality of a detector design by how many after-market addons there are (or aren't) for it. The AT Pro has several.
First is an addon called "The Gizmo" which is effectively a machine turned armrest extension that makes the arm rest comfortable for someone from the Middle Earth race of Men. There is at least one other similar addon, but this one seems really well-made, although I've not actually seen one in person.
Secondly, there are numerous "kick stands" or other types of stands to help keep the AT Pro upright when it's on the ground or leaning against, say a tree or your car. The AT Pro falls over very easily, in part because of its light weight.
Third, is a clear plastic gadget that attaches to the base of your lower coil shaft with a zip tie that helps keep the coil at the angle you want to to stay at. This is because the plastic coil bolt and nut frankly, isn't strong enough to hold the coil at a steady angle without tightening the heck out of it.
Next is a headphone adapter cable that lets you use a regular standard set of headphones with the 1/4 inch jack instead of the super heavy AT Pro stock headphones that use the waterproof connector on the detector control housing. Garrett has just started shipping these.
To buy all of these will set you back around $100. Wow.
And there may be more. To be honest, these are indications, to me at least, that the design was hurried. It's not the most comfortable detector at first, and certainly doesn't fit nicely in the hands like the GTA, GTP, GTI and other similar models with their comfortable rubber grips, do. But again, this was my first time out and it will probably be fine after I get used to it.
To summarize, I'm happy after my first hunt. I netted a silver ring and about $1.30 and a key. Not bad for my first time out with this thing!
- Muddyshoes
