i posted the same question on find's treasure forum and got this reply is there any truth to it?
if you are doing any detecting at all go with a whites or a fisher they are both much much better units and lighter than the GTIs!!! Both of my brand new GTI 2500s failed after just a few hours, Garret picked up both units, now they are sending me a third GTI 2500, hopefully the third one will perform properly, when you use a GTI 2500 they are heavy and klunky feeling, old fashioned performance at a modern day price , Garrets quality control is very bad these days, I have never had any problems with any of my other detectors pioneer 505 and a minelab eureka gold, my 505 is a five year old bounty hunter with lots of use and abuse and no malfunctions, my GTIs were junk right out of the box, purchased the gti in june it failed within a few hours sent it in for repair so garret sent me a new unit and it failed within a few minutes and I sent that one back 7/23/2008, Garret is really cutting into my prospecting time by having me wait several week to get a new detector to use, but my next detector won't be a Garret, I won't be purchasing any more Garret equipment in my life time, Garret products are complete JUNK!!!!!!
Garret metal detectors make better shovels than detectors.