Garrett At Pro HELP!!

[disbud596]

Hi, I am new to this site and have a question regarding my new at pro. To give a quick background, I recently upgraded from a technetics and have atleast 1000 hrs of experience. I have hunted only a few times with my at pro and not to sure what to expect. Last night I deceided to do some beach hunting and noticed the AT was behaving like a slot machine on crack (standard mode). I researched this issue and made sure I covered all of the obvious. I attached a video which explains more than I can by typeing.



I forgot to add that I reset the detector to factory in the video...

I hope someone can give me a hand with this issue hopefully its something stupid and I qwont have to send a week old Detector back to Garrett.
Thanks in advance....kevin

 

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[JT_hunter]

HI Kevin,
I have the AT pro and it's a great machine. some tips I can give you are: make sure you are in zero mode when you ground balance, make sure you are not ground balancing over metal, set sensitivity 2-3 bars down from max, make sure your not near electrical power lines or any other electrical equipment., This machine is very sensitive to gold which makes it very sensitive to aluminum junk pull tabs cans and other pieces of non ferrous stuff. I had a problem detecting an old high school, the machine was going nuts, that place was loaded with trash. I had to really listen carefully and pick out the good from junk. I did ok no silver but got about $2.00 in clad. also a pin pointer is a huge help. I just got mine last summer and it really sped up my recovery time. The pin pointer will help you get those phantom targets. I have the garrett pro pointer, I really think you could be in a trashy area. Also make sure the shaft connections are tight do not over tighten just snug. Swing 1 inch off the ground, if you have a coil cover remove it clean the cover and the coil. sand can cause some false signals. Keep the coil clean, make sure you wrapped the coil wire over the shaft not under, first wrap from coil go over. By the way some of those hits in the video sounded like good targets. You could be missing some stuff if its small and you didn't pin point exactly on target. That's a double D coil so make sure you pin point correctly. scan the good sounding target one way, then turn yourself the opposite way x the target dig where they meet. The manual will cover this in detail. Hope this helps you out Kevin good luck and HH. Joe

 

[cahil_2]

I have an atp and it is also very noisy. Run in pro zero, I dial iron to 40 and notch out the first segment, and mine will calm down. Realize that this unit has no threshold and that is another reason it is noisy.

 

[lonewolfe]

If you're hunting a "Salt Water Beach" with an AT Pro - you can just about forget it - the salt in the wet sand (and/or minerals in black sand) will not allow it to function properly - you're much better off with a machine designed for ocean/salt beach hunting with a "salt mode" built in and even better - 2 or more frequencies that run simultaneously (like the CZ20/21 or an Excal) etc. That or a PI machine.

In fresh water/on a fresh water beach = no problem with the AT Pro but not an ocean front beach. Especially in the wet sand or water - dry sand areas it may operate close to normal.

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

I believe Garrett also states that it doesn't work on wet sand as good as dry. However I believe they say to reduce sensitivity. Try searching for AT Pro in salt water video. Maybe it'll help ya. I've heard from others before on this

 

[Ace350]

http://www.garrett.com/hobbysite/hbby_at_pro_saltwater_video.aspx

 

[Dwight S]

It will hunt fine in salt water. The key is ground balance. Balance in dry sand, again in wet sand and again in the water. Expect you GB number to be single digits in the water. You may need to reduce sensitivity to half or less in the water, but you'll still get deep targets.

 

[JT1080]

I use my AT Pro in salt water wet sand. I had problems at first as well.

The less discrim the better for those conditions. I use Pro Zero mode and the machine runs just as well as it does on land. If you're still running into issues, then adjust your sensitivity down until you have no falsing and the machine runs more quiet. Don't be discouraged by your first attempts, I was until I figured out it was user error. The At Pro works very well in the salt water of So Cal.

 

[Metal Detecting Stuff]

Garrett recommends you run in Pro mode on wet sand and in the water. Be sure and ground balance, salt is normally "0", but I have been to some beaches where it ground balanced to "20". So if you are running pro mode and ground balance on salt beach is 0-20, it should work well. If you still get some chatter, turn the sensitivity down a bit. I've used mine in FL, TX, SC and it works fine. It's quieter on some beaches than others, but a coin or jewelry signal breaks through the chatter just fine.

Wayne

www.MetalDetectingStuff.com

 

[gleaner1]

Hi, I am new to this site and have a question regarding my new at pro. To give a quick background, I recently upgraded from a technetics and have atleast 1000 hrs of experience. I have hunted only a few times with my at pro and not to sure what to expect. Last night I deceided to do some beach hunting and noticed the AT was behaving like a slot machine on crack (standard mode). I researched this issue and made sure I covered all of the obvious. I attached a video which explains more than I can by typeing.



I forgot to add that I reset the detector to factory in the video...

I hope someone can give me a hand with this issue hopefully its something stupid and I qwont have to send a week old Detector back to Garrett.
Thanks in advance....kevin

Do not use bobbing for gb in this difficult location. Force the machine to gb to ZERO. Run pro mod, it is quicker, better audio, and more stable. Scrim out the lower 80% of notch and go on a clad mission, the silver and copper will come up too. Run one, two or three bars max for a while. When you pull fifty or so clad, you will see the light. Stop frikken around with the frequency settings, this has nothing to do with your atpro learning curve whatsoever. And slow that sweep speed down a bit.

 

[signal_line]

I don't do much water hunting, but one day I noticed my coil wire was loose. It had come unscrewed (at the control box). I heard someone else said they had to dry out the connection and then it worked fine. i used a pair of pliers and VERY GENTLY tightened the connection. Anyway, it's a very good idea to check the tightness before entering the water.

 

[Diggin-N-Dumps]

It will hunt fine in salt water. The key is ground balance. Balance in dry sand, again in wet sand and again in the water. Expect you GB number to be single digits in the water. You may need to reduce sensitivity to half or less in the water, but you'll still get deep targets.

Ive used my AT Pro in the Gulf waters, and found was finding stuff, i just had the sensitivty turned down, and found Pulltabs..no problem

But if you have it on Standard Mode, it will go crazy, I use PRO mode and set it the way I want it depending where I am hunting, If im looking for Old coins I usally notch out some of the bars, and if Im looking for gold, I put them right back..it took me awhile to get used to it, but I feel pretty comfortable with it now. I seriously was on the verge of returning it for the same issue you are talking about

Its funny when reading different peoples opinion on this matter, its all from personal experiances...You just got to figure out what works for you!

 

[signal]

If you're hunting a "Salt Water Beach" with an AT Pro - you can just about forget it - the salt in the wet sand (and/or minerals in black sand) will not allow it to function properly - you're much better off with a machine designed for ocean/salt beach hunting with a "salt mode" built in and even better - 2 or more frequencies that run simultaneously (like the CZ20/21 or an Excal) etc. That or a PI machine.

lonewolfe,

I live in Florida, and mostly hunt the beaches, with my ATPro, both in and out of water, no problems.

to the original poster, its also possible your AT pro has a problem, mine did, and Garrett fixed it, they are very good with customer service.