I need help with my garrett 2500

[lafatlife]

Ok everyone, I have had a garrett 2500 for a few months now and I must confess that I am having problems with it.

It seems to me that it is not really detecting correctly. I used a garrett 150 today and did better with that.

I have read the forums here and tried all the different settings and used headphones and everything else but it just doesn't seem accurate to me at all.

Pennies come in below the penny mark and do not make the coin sound. It is the same with nickels. Dimes come in below the penny mark.

Sometimes I dig and dig and even though I have pinpointed, I just do not find anything. After spending 20 minutes or more on a hole and finding nothing, it is very frustrating.

Could something be wrong with my machine or am I just too stupid to read it right?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I am beginning to think that buying it was a mistake.

 

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[Curious The George]

lafatlife, I don't own a Garrett but I have the following observations. Pennys that are old enough to be made of copper likely will register on your penny indicator. Penneys that are more recently made are mostly zinc and tend to rot away in the ground the longer they remain there. They, for me, register as junk unless they are recently dropped. I dug 10 clad dimes today at a school yard and all of them, on my machine, showed up as pennys or pop tops. Knowing the area I was detecting I dug anyway. I dug more pop tops then I did dimes. But I got the dimes.

Pennys, and it can depend on the soil you are digging in, can look like a lump of dirt when you find them. We have mostly red clay around here and it usually takes awhile to sort a penny out of the dug dirt. A pinpointer will help you a lot if you don't have one. It is a good investment and if you are going to be doing much digging it will save you a lot of time in locating coins in the dirt you dig out or in the dirt in the bottom or walls of the hole you dig. I bought a pinpointer from Kellyco and I usually do not use it. I went to Harbor Freight, the local store here, and bought a little hand held detector for $15 including tax. I have found it is very handy and works as well as the more expensive devices. If you have a Harbor Freight store in you area it is worth checking out. You said you pinpointed but didn't say if you did that with the detector or with a pinpointing device.

A penny or even a pop top can get lost in the dirt and if you are going through it by hand it is quite easy to miss a small coin even if you know it is there. On top of that a small rusted nail will ring like a dime or a quarter and you should try and find a 1" long rusty nail in red clay. I can teach you a whole new vocabulary. And a piece of chewing gum foil will react just like a dime or a quarter sometimes if the moon is in the proper phase.

Getting in to metal detecting is not a mistake for you, I hope, it is fun to see what comes up next. You just have a learning curve to go through and you have to be patent while you educate yourself.

Garrett makes good machines, just be patient and work your way through the learning process.

Good hunting, Mac

 

[lafatlife]

oh I have a pinpointer and it is one from Harbour Freight. I love that little thing.

Today I went to a park that I have scanned with the 2500 and know I went over the area I went over tonight with the 250 and did not get the signals that I got from the 250. The ping on the 250 was loud and clear. Of course it only rings on coin and does not tell what kind of coin it is.

It only makes me want to go back to an older school I was scanning with the 2500 and came up with a whole lot of nothing when there should be something there.

I will let you know when I run both at the same time and see what comes up.

Thanks for the info though.

 

[MUD(S.W.A.T)]

As for ghost signals, sometimes I can't find a signal at the depth my machine tells me. If I dig just another inch or two I find the target. If it is a big target real deep then hold your coil a few feet from the ground if you still get a signal even at a foot or two above. You will know it is a larger deeper Iron trash object or... A cache worth several million in gold.

Keep @ it and HH!!

 

[lafatlife]

... or... A cache worth several million in gold.

One can hope!!!!

 

[warsawdaddy]

Sounds like you need to adjust disc and sens.The 2500 is a super unit but has a somewhat difficult learning curve.Keep rereading the book and keep watching the video.Try to find an experienced detector that has a 2500 and follow his advice.If you could go out a couple of times together would even be better.For your own satisfaction,call Garrett and explain what you have observed and they can tell you if your unit needs to be sent to them or not.Communicate with John Edmonston,he is a member here and a strong Garrett user in fact,he tests a lot of their units beforehand.Super nice guy.Make a post under the Garrett thread and he'll probably see it.

 

[scubamike]

I have a 2500 and it is true it has a long learning curve. I am still at the beginning. I went out to a park today and found 5 dimes and 2 pennys. It rang accurate on all of them. Nickels sound like trash and I did not dig anything like that. Maybe I should have. As I learn more with it I like it better but it is not as easy to use as Garrett makes it seem. I get beat by 250s a lot. I am thinking about buying the small non imaging coil to see if that will work better. BTW I just bought the new Garrett pinpointer and it is super! It will always find what is in the hole when the 2500 rings. The only time today the GTI rang like a coin and was trash was on a part of a beer can below some rocks. It rang on a dime and i dug a pop top then the pin pointer said there was more in the whole. I dug another top out and it still rang again. Then I found the dime. Without the pinpointer I may have given up after the first top.
Any way like you I am still a little frustrated with the 2500. I hope it gets easier or I'm getting an Ace next year.

 

[Monty]

For a couple of months I carried my manual around with me, 2500 in one hand manual in the other. Now it's like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how you never forget it. (But I do consult my manual once in a while). If you hunt in any one of the preset modes it should be very easy to operate, and for pinpointing it is deadly accurate. It probably has one of the shortest learning curves of any of the higher quality machines. Check out the DFX and Minelab manuals on the net if you don't believe it. If you want to take advantage of the greater depth afforded by the 2500 over the ACE 250, you have to hunt in all metal mode, not the preset no discriminatin mode as many users believe. In the all metal mode it will hit 9 to 10 inches easily and more on many occasions, especially on large objects. It doesn't require movement to pick up a signal, therefore it should be hunted much slower. Hope this helps you a bit. Monty

 

[lafatlife]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I have read the manual several times and watched the dvd. I have used it with the presets and changing settings as suggested on the forums.

A lot of the time it is spot on but as it stands right now I am leaning towards the 150 or 250 as it seems more accurate for me.

I know I need more training on it and I wish I could spend more time detecting but I can't. When I go detecting I take it with me and use it but like I said I did a test last week and did better with the 150.

I am kind of at a loss. Did I say it was an older model 2500 with the white coil?

 

[radarwill]

I hope the 2500 works out ok, but if you change detectors I'll bet you won't miss the weight.
Hats off to anyone who swings all day a 2500!

 

[Monty]

Lafatlife, they still use the white coil. Or at least they did when I got mine new two years ago. If you have an older machine it may need to be recalibrated. See the Garrett homepage for instructions. Monty

 

[Chaparral]

I have one of the older 2500s, and I had it upgraded by Garrett about a year ago for much less than the cost of a new one. It came back with the new coil and the same capability as the new model.

 

[lafatlife]

Monty, I am leaning towards having it recalibrated. It seems to be getting worse as time goes by. I think this winter I will send it in and spend my time doing research. Can't dig in frozen ground anyway.

 

[Monty]

Sounds like a plan, Monty

 

[scubamike]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I have read the manual several times and watched the dvd. I have used it with the presets and changing settings as suggested on the forums.

A lot of the time it is spot on but as it stands right now I am leaning towards the 150 or 250 as it seems more accurate for me.

I know I need more training on it and I wish I could spend more time detecting but I can't. When I go detecting I take it with me and use it but like I said I did a test last week and did better with the 150.

I am kind of at a loss. Did I say it was an older model 2500 with the white coil?

I got a new one a few months ago and both coils are black.

 

[BLB878]

Ive used the 2500 for a year now. It will sometimes give an inaccurate id if the target is not centered. Pinpoint the target then scan over it again, see if it tells you it is the same thing or not. Ive had to send my coil in twice for repair. It started beeping at what seemed like everything. The mounts on the coil failed. A simple pinch and release of the lower stem mounts on the coil made the detector ring. I own the ace 250 as well. Lighter and better at separating targets in teh ground, comparable in depth in the disc. mode. The all metal mode (depth) and the accuracy of the target id is the big advantage that the 2500 has over the 250.

 

[G.I.B.]

I have only had my new 2500 out a few times now. I have found that it is very accurate on quarters, pretty good on dimes, and penny's... not so good on nickles.

The coin mode is nice, but I'm finding more and more that I like the all metal mode. I'll pick and weed out what I don't feel like digging based on the location and what kind of trash is in the area. Its taking a bit of learning to figure out what sounds and signals mean what, but its working very nicely. It is just taking some time to figure it all out.

I hope you get yours working to your satisfaction. I really love the imaging feature, which has proven to be pretty accurate so far.

 

[Bum Luck]

The coin mode is nice, but I'm finding more and more that I like the all metal mode. I'll pick and weed out what I don't feel like digging based on the location and what kind of trash is in the area. Its taking a bit of learning to figure out what sounds and signals mean what, but its working very nicely. It is just taking some time to figure it all out.

Wow, that's impressive. Keep us posted!