Great above ground find today!

[Muddyshoes]

While I've been horse trading to raise enough money for a new detector, I've been stuck on deciding between an AT Pro and a 2500. "Yeah, but the AT Pro is good in 10 feet of water," I say to myself. But then I think of how many times I've been water hunting. "But imaging will really help speed up my coin finds" I say to myself. "But having numerical reading of conductivity will really help ID targets" I said to myself about the AT Pro, etc. As you can see, I have somewhat of a split personality and talk to myself at times.

And then last night on Craigslist, I found a GTI 2000 with manual and carrying case for only $100 ! Excitedly, I emailed the guy a couple times, just in case my first email didn't make it. The thing had been for sale for 48 hours and I was sure someone had snagged it. This morning I got the email saying that the seller would be around after lunch. I contacted him and told him I'll bring cash and meet him as soon as possible, trying not to sound too excited. He knew the value of this used box, but like me over the past couple years, there have been some times where I just had to have some cash for bills, mortgage, food, etc., and he wasn't using it anymore.

I just brought it home and am about to head out for a couple hours and see what I can do. It's a new box from the GTAx 550 I had been using so I don't expect to do that well. Ole Charles knows it takes about 10 hours with a new box before you get to know how it 'thinks.'

I contacted Brad at Garrett and he said that they will do a complete swap out of all printed circuit boards, case stickers and exchange the coil for a new imaging coil to turn a GTI 2000 into essentially a GTI 2500 for $350 including shipping. That would be a great discount off of a new unit, but I'm still deciding about the AT Pro.

Decisions, decisions...

Anyway, off to try out this bad boy cold without reading the manual first and try out the imaging. It talks!

- Muddyshoes

 

[metalfun]

congrats on your find!!! I purchased a minelab excal 800 off craigslist for 500 three years ago and have never had a problem.Good luck on your finds.HH

 

[fongu]

The money you save updating the GTI-2000 will more than pay for the AT-Pro and you're really getting two units for the price of one.
$100.00 to the guy with the 2000 and $350.00 to upgrade to the GTI-2500 for a total of $450.00.
A new GTI-2500 would be almost a $1,000.00. You're trying to decide between the 2500 or at-pro and if you go with the 2500 update, you save enough on the price of a new gti-2500 to justify buying the at-pro. You get two great metal detectors for the price of the 2500. It's a win-win situation to me. Free enterprise + economic thrift = two brand new detectors. You're supporting our fragile economy and keeping jobs in America and just tell the boss lady that you won't need another metal detector for at least a year or two. Maybe a few coils and get a deal on a pro pointer or two. When you find some nice rings with these new detectors, you'll be detecting for free. Good luck and happy hunting, muddyshoes.

 

[Jerry-Wi]

Go for it, get them both. Then you will have all bases covered. Deals like that do not come along every day.

Jerry

 

[TreasureHuntersSupply]

or if you contact us we can probably work out a trade

 

[Muddyshoes]

Well, got about two hours in at a heavily searched local park. Learned a few things about this detector:

- The 9.5 inch "scorcher" coil is called that for a reason. It picked up pieces of mylar candy wrapper that were half an inch diameter, along with every other type of tin or aluminum that fit within the "two notch" discrim segment that's by itself to the left of the discrim notch bar.
- The target size graphic when it shows as a size "B" target (which all U.S. coins supposedly fit into), it doesn't mean it's a size "B". It means it's probably a size "B" and the target can be anything from 1/2 inch diameter to about 2 inches.
- The depth graphic when it shows the target at a certain depth, it doesn't mean it's at that depth, it means it's more or less somewhere near that depth.
- As for pinpointing, I found it very difficult with this machine. Despite how hot the coil reacts to microscopic pieces of metal, it takes longer to pinpoint than any other Garrett detector I've ever had. I wonder if the newer black imaging coils react more quickly and sharply.
- I honestly wasn't that impressed with its ability to identify coins. My GTA 500 and GTAx 500 did a much better job at definitely identifying coins, even if pennies usually trigger the notch several to the left of the penny graphic. Dimes sometimes triggered the ID notch closer to a penny with this machine.

For two hours with a brand new detector (new to me, that is) , without reading the manual, I found a nice pile of junk, and 8 coins for a total of 54 cents. I was happy though, that the first coin I got was a nickel.. the bane of metal detectorists who enjoy discrimination. The clad quarter was at a good solid 5 inches, but again, it just didn't sound as sharp a signal as I would have gotten with my other detectors. I can see it's going to take a bit of time to get used to this.

Fongu, great suggestions about the upgrades and helping the economy and such... I wonder if my wife will buy it

I may opt for the $350 upgrade. It is a solidly built machine. I'm just hoping that my not-so-hot experience with the targeting display is just because I have no clue what the hell I'm doing yet. I guess I could read the manual tonight Anyone know if a copy of the accompanying video that came with the GTI 2000 is online anywhere? Not no YouTube that I could find.

Enough rambling... I got fingernails to clean!

- Muddyshoes