Garrett ACE 250 Report

[Monty]

I just received a Garrett ACE 250 that I bought as a backup to whatever high end detector I wind up with and as a loaner for visitors. I had read so many good things about the ACE 250 I was convinced it was the right choice for the reason I bought it. I found it easy to assemble and the instructions for operation were easy to understand. Any novice getting one will be able to start detecting within an hour or so with a llittle practice on a coin garden. I tried it out on mine this morning and each coin was identified correctly loud and clear. I stress loud as this machine really bangs over a coin! You will definately need ear phones with adjustable volume or it will blow your shorts or panties off! (whichever you prefer). The pinpoint feature which is actually an all metal mode seems to be right on with no fumbling around to find where to dig. There is also adjustable discrimination and sensitivity control dials although ground balance is automatic and not adjustable. The ACE 250 is extemely light weight and I should be able to swing it several hours without wearing myself out. I am entering a club seeded treasure hunt at the end of this month and I am not so sure I won't use the ACE instead of my BH Land Ranger just for the speed and ease of use in recovering coins which is what many of the seeded targets will be. If you wear glasses with bifocals or have a vision problem you might have trouble reading the LCD screen as it is small compared to my B H L R. Be sure you have your glasses if you wear them. So far othing negative to report. For a couple of bills it's a lot of machine for the money.

Speaking of high end machines, I still haven't made up my mind which one I want to buy but with the quality and efficiency of this little machine I think I will give the Garrett lineup a good look too.

 

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[Willy]

Hey Jimmileo, does the 250 have a threshold based AM pinpoint mode? If so, a person could, concievably, access the GB pot & replace it with an external one for adjusting to extreme soils & enhancing sensitivity. true, it would void the warranty, but might be worth doing. I did this with my Cobre II (as well as adding VSAT & threshold controls) and it made a huge difference. Aside from that, how do you like the GTI 2500 AM mode? I have a GTI 1500 and, in PP mode, it can pick up a 1 grain nugget (w. 9.5" coil) with ease. I was thinking about the GTI 2500 for prospecting, but wasn't too sure about how the AM mode would handle bad ground. Don't know how fast the autotune speed is & how the 2 autotracking speeds? affect performance in AM. Have you tried to see just how small of a target can be detected in the AM mode. I wonder if it's comparable in sensitivity to the PP mode. ..Willy.

 

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[Monty]

Re: Garrett ACE 250 Report - further evaluation and testing

The Chinese dragon I bought was a $350.00 machine., mid-range USA, supposed to be upper mid-range Chinese.

Went to an outside basketball court today just to see if I could find any more targets with the ace that I had missed with my other detector. I have worked this court pretty hard and it is where I found the gold necklace. I dug 8 coins indicated to be at the 4" depth and most were about 2" or in the very top of my plug. Still no significant rain and the ground was extremely hard and packed, hard to dig. I wonder if this may have had something to do with the depthi? Also, like my old detector, if the coin is right on the surface it will show the coin depth fluctuating from 2 to 6" in rapid succession. This is a tip off that the coin is at or near the surface.
When the icon was indicating nickel, there was about an even chance the target was a pull tab but I did find two nickels.
I had the machine set on "coin" and set the discrimination to omit everything but nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars and half dollars. I kept getting a dime iicon that turned out to be pennies. On my other detector the dime and clad penny are on one icon. So, just as an experiment I put the machine on the "custom" setting and set it up the same way just to see about the penny/dime situation. I found that the target when indicating dime was more likely to be a dime than a penny when set up this way.
I had only one false reading, probably operator error in pinpointing than the machine. Pinpointing feature worked very well. I exed the location first and then used the machine pinpointer and found them to be almost identical. A couple of times the machine was right and I was wrong. This was on two very strong returning targets.
A couple of you were concerned about depth so I dug a couple of targets that indicated 8" which is the maximum depth the machine will display. I found one target at about six inches....as stated the machine was reading a little deeper than the target was located. The other target was all of eight inches if not more and was as far as I could reach with my Gator digger. This was a very weak signal with the machine set on "coin" which has the sensitivity set about half way up the scale. I maxed the sensitivity and the signal got louder and I was able to pinpoint it in this way. The target was a clad penny, fairly well corroded. That's pretty darn good for a less expensive machine. You depth guys owe me one big time as the hard ground really had me in a sweat trying to dig first through the hard ground and then through about 2" of clay.
Score for the afternoon was two quarters, two nickels,two dimes and 14 pennies all clad.

 

[rvbvetter]

The only time my Garrett went deeper than my ML and Whites, was when i buried it in my test garden. No, not really.
One thing i can say about the 2 garretts i've had is,they were nickel machines.
Meant in a good way. I found more nickels with them than any i've owned since.
The last one had an I D meter, and the dot above where nickel was, would be split by the needle
everytime.