I bought my Garrett AT Pro about 3 weeks ago and I like it fine so far.
This is the new model with the longer arm cuff and the cam locks. The cam locks make the shaft nice and solid so it doesn’t wiggle. This model doesn’t false under 6 bars of sensitivity and it falses very little when ran at full sensitivity which I do often.
I put a coil cover because I also like to hunt with the coil on the soil. I know that Garrett says to hunt with the coil 1/2 t0 1 inch off the soil but I want that extra depth to find the cool stuff.
The AT Pro is water proof up to 10 feet of water. I haven’t had a chance to test it in the water and in fact I am a little afraid because some units leak. I suppose it’s better to learn if the AT Pro will leak now rather than later when the warranty runs out. By the way, the AT Pro comes with a two year warranty.
My experience with the AT Pro is limited to the Pro mode. I hunt on Custom with the Iron discrimination up to 35 and open from there to 100. I run my sensitivity at full or one bar below full. I usually swing slower than the 3 ft/sec recommended by Garrett.
TARGET ID
The AT Pro comes with a Target ID that gives you a number to go with the sound to id what’s under the ground. In my experience, this ID works only on relatively shallow targets in the 5-6 inch range. Deeper targets don’t id very well as the Target ID jumps through many different numbers or if the target is very deep, then the Target ID just completely goes away.
DEPTH
And this brings me to the issue of depth. It is very hard to determine the depth of the AT Pro. I have now detected a penny at 7 inches without any difficulty. The Target ID was even right on with an ID of 77. I have not however, dug any dimes, or any other coins besides the penny at those depths. Is it because the AT Pro can’t go that deep on those coins or is it because I haven’t ran into any deep coins? I don’t know. Only time and experience will tell.
One thing is for sure DON”T GO BY AIR TESTS. Very Low Frequency (VLF) machines don’t behave the same on the air as in the soil. This is because of ground mineralization, which will play a role on the depth capabilities of the metal detector.
To be fair, I saw a video on YouTube where a MUCH more expensive Minelab E-trac failed to detect a half-dollar coin at 8.5 inches whereas the AT Pro did, even if the AT Pro identified the coin as a nickel.
So depth is affected by a number of variables thus making it very difficult to pinpoint the depth capabilities of the AT Pro.
I will continue reviewing the AT Pro as I use it. Meanwhile, Garrett has announced a new metal detector to come out on the Fall of 2011. I can’t wait!
Tags: AT Pro, Garrett, VLF
The Dirt Is Good To Me 