Nickels are easy on the AT series! When you get a hit in the "pull tab range" -- pay CLOSE attention to the Target ID and scan at a 90-degree angle, and then back. If it jumps say 33, 53, 66 or the like, it's a pull-tab. If it stays consistent, 50-53 (usually 52), 95% of the time it's a nickel. If you listen closely (with headphones), nickels sound more "solid" than a pull-tab, which has a slight aluminum whine. Try it on some test targets and you'll see what I mean. I've found more nickels with my Garrett AT Gold than all other detectors I've ever owned in decades of detecting. Now my AT Max seems to be running a close 2'nd to my AT Gold on them. It is winning the quarter race, but that may be due to some help from another search coil, which I will get into in just a bit.
If you run into hot soil, manually ground balance, and do it often. Changing the ground balance numbers, by manually dropping them a few points can give added depth in some soils. If things are too chattery, back off the sensitivity if you have to, as sometimes less is more... I deal with it all the time in the gold fields. Another trick is to hold your coil slightly higher up off of the ground. Also realize that not all interference is ground-related; often it's RFI/EMI and that is usually easily solved with the frequency shift. (I've seen many YouTube videos where it was obvious that was all that the user needed, but they forgot about that feature, so don't make the same mistake.)
The backlight is a great aid in searching when the sun goes down. It's probably my favorite feature of the AT Max.
The headphones are also extremely nice. They have crisp audio and are very comfortable. They are a huge improvement over the prior ones. Garrett really nailed it with their new MS3 and MS2 (wired version of the MS3) headphones. I have been a die-hard Grey Ghost Ultimate fan, but honestly feel the new Garrett MS phones are just as good, at a fraction of the cost. That one surprised even me!
While I'm not a huge fan of discrimination, the ability to knock out .22 shell casings etc with notch discrimination can save much time, although, again, I rarely ever use more than iron discrimination.
I have searched trashy areas with a 5x8 DD coil on my AT Max and found things were missed with the 8.5x11 on my AT Pro, like a wheat penny between a bottle cap and a pull tab, a ring next to concrete, even a nickel right next to a pull tab. Clearly two different signals with the 5x8 and they were basically touching one another.
The next coil I tried, that most AT users probably haven't; it's the 6.5" x 9" concentric coil, but in some situations it really shines... It is heaver than the 5x8 DD, but is still easy to swing all day and it has very good ground coverage. The target ID is a little more stable than the DD. Pinpointing is a breeze, but I never had any problem pinpointing with DD coils, but for those who do, they would be well served by this coil. The first thing I noticed last year was that the response over a target is slower than the 5x8 DD coil, which I assume would be due to the wider detection field. Target separation isn't as good compared to the 5x8 DD, which is to be expected for the same reason. Interestingly, my quarter count has nearly doubled in the last year of testing this coil. So I can say wholeheartedly that 6.5" x 9" concentric coil LOVES quarters, hence why I call it the "quarter killer." And it sniffs out nickels even better than the DD I believe. Bottom line: This coil is most certainly a winner when it comes to areas infested with bottle caps, and it's probably the sleeper coil for the Garrett AT series.
I purchased my AT Gold before my AT Pro, so the audio on the AT Max is the language I was already used to. If you're going the other way (Pro to Max) there will be more of a learning curve. But I remember after about the first 80-100 hours with my AT Gold (and the same with the AT Max) I can hear when a zinc penny is corroded, as the audio gives me that information, and a LOT more... There is still a learning curve to the AT Max from the AT Gold however, but it's that way with any machine.
Once you master the language of the machine you will be amazed at not only how much you will find, but at how much the machine is telling you.
