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Hi, new here , I would like to know if anybody has any idea of when the new!! Coils are coming out for the atx , l need one and don't want to buy one and then have new one available. I have had a good run with this detector using it for nugget hunting. regards, Squizz

I always like when people post their recent finds, it motivates me to go out and find my own. Had some time to do a short hunt this am near Johnnie NV. Walking a small drainage with the 8 inch coil on my ATX I find this 1.7 g specimen about 4 inches down, not even on bedrock. It was underneath a shoe sized rock. Clear strong signal. Detected the majority of the wash for nothing else. I am notorious for finding single nugget washes lol. Was still happy to find this, lots of character. Chris Closup

A new member just made his first post yesterday on Prospecting Australia, You gotta gotta see it,, Bugga Me. Make sure you are sitting down with no sharp objects within your reach. john https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6453&p=107

What is the opinion out there on using the ground tracking function on the ATX in highly mineralized ground. What is the trade-off by using this function in regards to depth?

I was detecting over the weekend with my Garrett ATX near Redding. The ground was moist and was mostly a reddish-orange clay like soil from the decomposed shale bedrock I am assuming. When I moved away from the creek bottom (gravels and bedrock) and went up on the hillside or in tributary gulches I would encounter soil areas that made the detector constantly give a target signal or what I would say is a mineralized ground wine or squeal. I tried ground balancing several times, but it did not alleviate the problem. Ended up shutting down the machine and relocating, basically starting over in a new area where I could maintain a normal threshold sound. I have used the machine for about a year and this has happened a couple times, but it happens infrequently. The first time it happened I had a low battery and figured it may have been a symptom of a low battery. Any ideas, similar experiences, and/or tips using the ATX would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I'm new to the forum which is excellent, I'm thinking of upgrading to either the ATX or the TDI pro, the machine will be used mostly on the beach, but an ability to coin shoot would be excellent. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Hello, Need some help/advice. I receive a Garrett ATX from my kids for Christmas. I am new to metal detecting, but the kids wanted to buy me a real good detector for beach hunting. I live in Rhode Island and plan on doing a lot of beach hunting. I also live in a very historic (colonial) area of the U.S and would like to do some relic/coin hunting. I know this is an advanced PI machine and I am a beginner, but I now own this machine and have to learn how to use it. I know there are other machines that would be better for relic/coin hunting, that will discriminate out most of the iron, I have done a lot of internet research on this topic. The kids bought me this machine, not going to return it, so I need to learn how to use it. The last two days I ventured out into some local fields to try out my new machine. These fields are surrounded by 200+ year old stone walls (very common in New England). This area was settled by the early colonist, so there is a lot of stuff (junk and potential good targets) in the ground. This area, I'm sure, has been hunted for decades by metal deterorists, so if there is anything else to find, I will assume it is deep. From the research I have done, the Garrett ATX would be a machine to go down deep. Well, the last two day were interesting/frustrating. I am a very patient person, and yes, I know it will take a long time to really understand how to use this machine and learn all the tones and sounds. I dug up a lot of iron the last two days, sometimes the iron check works, and other times it doesn't. I am hearing mostly high/low signals and only a few low/high signals. The pin pointing works real well. So any advice to help me learn how to use this machine the correct way, or is it really just lots of time in the field? Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated.

Thinking of purchasing one of these as harsh enviorment tool. Looking to spend under 550.00. Its getting to b the time of year where any detector i take out is gonna get wet and i dont want to take the chance with non-wp detector. Anyone use the recon before personally? Advise? Thanks guys.

Well I'm wanting to add to my collection and want to put a P.I. in the little army of metal detectors that I'm forming... Got my eye on a Garrett Atx at a decent price.... Question is I'm still new to all this and wondering I'd this is a good machine for a beginner just knowing the basics like myself????? I don't really know how to use the forum that good to find any info on one regarding difficult of use.. Thnx

Hi guys I'm new to this site and was wondering if the 8 inch mono coil from the recon will work on the ATX ? Or should I just try the direction that everyone is talking about with the infinium coil? I like this machine but after about 1 hr it starts getting heavy.any options would be appreciated. I should have started with I've been detecting since 1994 and just recently decided to go for the gold with all the restrictions at all the parks local and state I'm done with the harassment anyway that's another forum. Thanks Dan

Hi All, I'm new to this great forum but not new to detecting. I live in Prescott Valley, Az in the heart of gold country and when not working I'm hunting or prospecting. Steve's Frankin-ATX project got me to thinking about the ATX and it's issue with falsing. I really like the ATX except for the usual complaints of excess weight and the falsing. The weight I can tolerate but the falsing drives me crazy. I believe the falsing is due to the cable being unsecured/loose inside the shaft. My question is for anybody who has modified the ATX and wrapped and tied the cable to a different shaft...does this stop the falsing? And, it may be too early in the modification of this detector to ask this, but does anybody do a Steve-like mod to this detector for a fee? I dont mind the control box as is but a shaft/coil mod where the stock coil is center mounted and the cable is tied down would be awesome. I'm not comfortable doing these mods myself. Thanks! Dean

I have done well in Hawaii with my Garrett ATX as told in my previous story at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/102-garrett-atx-review-beach-detecting-in-hawaii/ Most of the details of where and what I am doing, detector settings, etc. are all covered there so I will not repeat it all here. My wife only had a week off for spring break so I had half the time to work with this go round. Still, I think I did all right. Now that I have my system down less time was wasted figuring things out. I used the Garrett ATX exclusively with the 8" mono coil. Discrimination was 3 and Sensitivity 7-8 with unit ground balanced underwater over basalt rocks. I only worked in the water with mask and snorkel. I work right in the trough at the base of the beach slope a lot in 2'-4' waves and so I use 40 lbs of lead weight to help stay in place. Working overweighted in surf like this can be very dangerous if you do not have a very high comfort level. I have multiple SCUBA certifications up to and including my instructors certificate. Official disclaimer - I do not recommend working like this unless you are trained and know what you are doing. Just swimming trunks with tshirt. I use cheap knee brace pullovers you get in the pharmacy area in a general store as knee pads. Cheap rubber coated work gloves to protect my hands while digging. Surf shoes to protect my feet, and a good mask and snorkel. I hook the velcro strap on the ATX armrest around the handle of a clasp closure mesh goodie bag to hold stuff as I recover it. I bend bobby pins before dropping them in the bag or they slip through the mesh. I hunt with mask and snorkel until I get a target. I look around for surfers and boogie boarders, evaluate the wave situation, and do a breath hold and duck to the bottom. I generally fan the bottom with my hand or excavate by hand to find the target, then stuff it in a goodie back hanging off my ATX armrest. Scoops are just one thing too many for me to handle in the surf and no good on hard surfaces anyway. I focus on the area where the sand is tapering into a hard coral or rock bottom that will catch and hold targets from sinking too deep. My main change of strategy this trip was to not dig everything. The ATX makes a hi-lo tone or a lo-hi tone on targets. Lo-hi is high conductive stuff like copper pennies, dimes, quarters, and large iron junk. Or silver rings or very large mens gold rings. Hi-lo is almost all gold or platinum jewelry, zinc pennies, nickels, aluminum stuff, and small steel stuff like bobby pins and rusted bottle caps. I was getting lots of copper pennies, dimes and quarters plus some large junk the first couple days. Dimes and quarters may sound nice but when recovering them in surf at risk to life and limb they are a definite trash target as far as I am concerned, though I did get a large silver ring also. I decided that gold rings were the main goal and with the short week I had no time to waste, so switched to digging hi-lo tones only. I was happy with the results and would recommend this to anyone using an ATX who for similar reasons what to improve the dig to ring ratio. Be aware though certain high value targets like very large mens rings will be missed. I recovered a couple earrings and that impressed me very much in an underwater scenario. The ATX hits gold about as small as is possible in salt water. There was one well made fake diamond ring in particular that would have been my best ever had it turned out real. I recover them underwater, can't really tell but they sure look good underwater, and do not know until I get back to my room and empty the goodie pouch if I have made a big find. I hope the whole rest of the hunt, only to be let down back at the room. Gold rings on the other hand I know immediately are good finds. I also found a couple more old Sheraton hotel big brass keys to add to my collection. These are rare now at the beach as they are large easy finds, but if the sand scours out one will still turn up now and then. All the quarters, dimes, and copper pennies were recovered in the first two days. After that it was nickels and zinc pennies only and I toss the zincs in the garbage. Unless only a day or two old the salt water rots them away to junk. I had a nice pile of lead fishing weights I donated to the dive shop where I rented my weight belts. There was the usual junk as seen on the other page linked at the start of this post but this year I discarded it daily as I have done enough "here it all is" pictures. All in all given that I had half the time to hunt my finds were on par with the last trip though the beach is depleting out. I considered going to other locations but by the time I drive somewhere else and back that is another hour or more that I could have been in the water. I do not hunt just Poipu beach but the next several beaches in a row so there is a large area I can walk to. There are always newer rings lost but it is the combination of many years of old rings and new rings that make it good, and as the old stuff depletes out then all there is to find is recent drops and the pickings get slimmer. Still, the location is far from worked out. I only saw one other person with a detector, a local I saw last trip, who walks the beach at waters edge at low tide. He seems as concerned with being out for a walk as detecting as he covers ground real fast. I like the ATX ability to easily adjust the rod length on the fly from very long to extra short. I did experience a little sand binding in the rods but took care to work the rods and flush them out before leaving the water each time and everything worked fine. I only charged batteries twice on the trip. The 8" mono with rod assembly is now my dedicated water coil, with the 12" x 10" used above water. The water use is rough on the rod and internal cable assembly and so I figure having a coil and rod just for that keeps the stock coil in better shape for normal use. I came away very happy once again with the Garrett ATX. It suits me very well for my style of water hunting. The four 14K rings weighed in at 21.9 grams total. The silver colored 10K white gold ring with five small diamonds weighed 4.1 grams. The excellent gold smelt calculator at http://coinapps.com/gold/scrap/calculator/ reveals that to add up to 14.47 grams or nearly 1/2 oz of pure gold or about $500 bucks if sent to a smelter. I plan on refinishing and selling the rings in the future instead of having them smelted as I have in the past though so they should bring a bit better value that way. This post was promoted to an article

I have had the Garrett ATX now since the fall of 2013 and so have had a solid year with the detector. It really does take about a year for me to settle down my thoughts about a detector. I tend to be all giddy with the new toy at first, having fun, and discovering new things. The strong points and weak points are revealed with use over time, and now I think I can offer up a fair summary of the detector. The ATX is a bit difficult in that Garrett started with the premise of using an existing housing designed to military specifications, and then decided to put a detector in it for consumer retail sales. On one hand this is really great as we get this very unique detector design that would never have been developed just for consumer sales. On the other hand it means for some uses the ATX is just not a very good fit. For other uses it works pretty well. It just so happens I am an avid prospector and an avid beach hunter. I do not beach hunt as much as I like but when I do it I really go after it. Because of this the ATX hits a particular sweet spot for me personally. I really do need a good pulse induction metal detector that can be submerged in saltwater. I would keep the ATX for that purpose alone. I am very happy with its performance as a beach detector especially on beaches where there is black sand mineralization or volcanic rock to deal with. The fact it also does very well as a prospecting PI is almost a bonus for me. From a straight up prospecting perspective Garrett also scores though nobody needs a seven pound detector waterproof to 10 feet while desert prospecting. However, if all I had was a couple thousand dollars to invest in a brand new, full warranty PI for gold prospecting it would be a Garrett ATX. I believe the ATX is superior to the White's alternatives in overall performance and it is far less money than a new Minelab PI detector. I will not speak for the Australians but in the U.S. the ATX holds its own for PI performance and I feel quite comfortable using it gold prospecting. I could wish for a lighter package but the fact is it works and a person who puts in the effort should do just fine with the ATX. I know I can. The ATX does well for relic hunting applications and I have even found I can cherry pick coins halfway well with it. I have always been partial to pulse induction detectors and Garrett has won me over with the ATX. I enjoy using the detector and I can make good finds with it, and that is all I can ask of any detector. In retrospect I have actually done remarkably well with the ATX since I got it, considering it is only one of several detectors I have been using and not the one with the most hours on it. I have found about 3 ounces of gold and platinum jewelry with the Garrett ATX plus about two ounces of gold nuggets with it. I have found gold nuggets in Alaska, Arizona, California, and Nevada with the ATX under sunny skies and in pouring rain. My ATX has spent a couple weeks of days underwater in rough surf and is none the worse for wear. I like the ATX so much I just treated myself to a brand new Garrett ATX Deepseeker package so I now have the full complement of ATX coils and accessories. I am weeding my detector collection down to the bare minimum I can get by with and the Garrett ATX is a survivor in more ways than one. Many thanks and a hat's off to Garrett for producing my all time favorite Garrett detector.

PM coils is coming out with ATX coils in the near future, Currently they're working on getting connectors and from my understanding this may be the holdup. Asked what the status is with DD coils and they said maybe in the future but for now PM coils will focus on mono coils since these are the most popular. Recently, Swapped out my Infinium DD coil from the Recon/ATX shaft and remounted the coil onto a different setup. This setup was to give me an idea what type of setup will work best with a future PM coil, Weight wise it's about the same as the stock ATX shaft maybe a little lighter but this setup is very encouraging knowing it will work well with the ATX when experimenting with other coils. Both lower and middle shaft are from a Minelab, As far as cable movement it has very little after going back with the straight cable because these shafts are not big enough to use an expandable coiled type cable. The shaft does have some movement if I want to extend or shorten the shaft, Not much thought but enough to adjust for about any person. Will post a pic in the future of a PM coil using this same type of setup, Each coil will have their own lower/middle shaft that locks into the ATX. Paul (Ca)

I am slowly cleaning up most of my used detector collection and putting it up for sale. Only a few survivors will remain for now: Fisher Gold Bug 2 Garrett ATX Minelab CTX 3030 Minelab SDC 2300 Nokta FORS Gold White's V3i With the departure of my GPX 5000 (in anticipation of the GPZ 7000) I am temporarily lacking a PI with good ground coverage. And no telling what the GPZ will have for large coil options. So after much debate I decided to pick up a new Garrett ATX Deepseeker package, to get the 15" x 20" coil and the carry case. I like the ATX and have confidence in its gold finding capability, and I have to have a waterproof PI so it covers me on two bases. I thought seriously about selling my current ATX to help fund the new one. But since I am selling so many detectors I decided to treat myself. The ATX has been frustrating me due to the packaging in a heavy duty military housing. So my old ATX is going to be sacrificed as part of a project to see just how light weight I can make it using the stock coil, but with the option of also easily mounting the Infinium 5" x 10" DD if I want to make it really featherweight. You are invited along on my step by step disassembly and reassembly project at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/462-garrett-atx-strip-down-rebuild/ All I am waiting on is to see what Garrett releases in the way of Christmas holiday packages. Any that appear may or may not include the ATX but it is worth waiting a bit to see. Once that happens the fun and games begins!

The other day I was out with my ATX digging quartz/gold specimens. I had just dug a small piece when I got a really nice signal a couple of feet away. I took 3 or 4 inches out and it was still there. I took another 3 or 4 inches out. Good signal still there and I know it's gold now. At about 12 or 13 inches down, I see gold in the bottom of the hole. Still a good signal. Now, the hole is too narrow to stick the coil in so signal has always at ground level. Time for a beer break until my boys can work their way down the hill to run their GB2's over the hole and see the specimen still in place. They're almost here so I get up and run my coil over the hole just to hear it again. Just a whisper!! It was a great signal a bit ago.... What happened?? BTW, it was a piece a few grains shy of a half an ounce with about three quarters of it gold.

I have been out gold prospecting with the Garrett ATX recently and wanted to share my latest thoughts on the unit. That, and show off a particularly nice nugget I just found with the detector! I got my ATX right at a year ago. The machine has easily paid for itself and remains one of my favorite detectors. With all the other new detectors I have been using lately I have not had it out enough however, and so I have made an effort to start using it again the last few weeks. I guess my constant prospecting these days is making me tougher as I have no problem using the ATX for long hours with no extra support. Still, for long days I like to use a bungee support off the shoulder of my Camelback style rucksack. Garret was kind enough to send me a set of scuff covers for my coils, and I find the solid scuff cover for the stock coil to be very helpful. It prevents the coil from hanging up in stubble and in northern Nevada allows me to let the coil just ride on the ground. There usually is just a little grass or weeds that act as a buffer for smooth riding. If I get directly on hard rock surface I still pick up some coil falsing but not so much as when the bare coil edges would catch on rocks. The only issue with the solid cover is that it collects debris and must be shaken clean on occasion. I think I will get another scuff cover or even just a flat piece of plastic to fix in place over the top to prevent this from happening. I have been using the headphone adapter so I can run the ATX with my Sun Ray Pro Gold headphones, which sound a bit better to my ear than the supplied headphones. The Garrett headphones are pretty good but I would rather keep them available for backup use. I have toyed with the idea of using my B&Z booster along with a shoulder mounted external speaker but have not quite got around to trying that yet. I think that would be preferable for long hours in very quiet locations. I like to hear what is going on around me. Related to that, I normally run the ATX with a very faint threshold. I have also experimented a bit with running it set just barely quiet, and for patch hunting wandering around I am thinking I may do this more often. The performance edge lost is minimal, and I do enjoy the solitude and silence. Many days detecting for me is nothing more or less than a wonderful long hike over the hills in the middle of nowhere. No headphones and no threshold buzz just might be something I do more of in the future. I know, I should be preaching the opposite but my primary goal these days is enjoying myself and those little things make a difference. Being able to hear a wild horse in the distance or a coyote howl is important to me. I usually dig it all but I do like the ferrous check function on the ATX. It can only be trusted on targets I really know to be junk anyway - nice loud surface signals. But maybe, just maybe that signal is a large shallow nugget! It is nice to push the button and get a solid ferrous indication from the ATX allowing me to work more efficiently in areas with lots of surface nails and other ferrous trash. I don't trust it on weak signals however, especially in very mineralized ground. The waterproof part is nice but really not needed. What I do appreciate is being able to collapse the unit down into a compact package and toss it in my truck. That the ATX uses rechargeable AA batteries is also a bonus because I am starting to standardize on them. All other things being equal I try to get detectors or accessory items that use AA batteries, and I have a lot of AA batteries and chargers due to this. This makes having plenty of extras available for use in the ATX very simple and cost effective. The bottom line is the Garrett ATX is a very capable nugget detector with good performance on a wide range of target sizes. I appreciate the solid, stable performance. I have got no problem going out and finding gold with the ATX. Better yet, I use the ATX for more than nugget detecting. It is my preferred water hunting detector and so in that regard a true bargain. I was just out and hunting an area where I picked up a few nuggets with other detectors recently. I got the ATX out of the truck and wandered down to the wash. I had barely really got the unit ground balanced up and the soil I was walking on just looked like sandy mud with grass growing on it, so I decided to walk upstream a bit for a better location. I got a whisper of ground noise as I walked and a couple steps later stopped and thought "hmmmm... was that really a ground noise?" It had that little something and I was just assuming I did not have the ground balance spot on yet. I backed up and checked, and sure enough there was a soft signal in the grass. I gave a little dig and came up with a 0.7 gram nugget. Well ok then, that was more like it. I started to work the immediate location and just six feet away got a largish signal, probably trash. I dug a bit and it was still in the hole. So I gave it a vigorous scoop and up pops a mud covered nugget. A large nugget! It later weighed in at 26.3 grams or 0.85 Troy ounces. I was ecstatic. I have to tell you that nugget really means a lot to me. Why? Because the location I was hunting was nothing anyone pointed out to me. I was running around looking at some old prospects and had a theory going on the geology and where the gold was coming from. I decided the location would be good on my own just based on what I was seeing, and I scored a really great nugget. The satisfaction of figuring things out and making a good call means more to me than the nugget. It is what real prospecting is all about. The fact that it is also one of the nicest nuggets I have found so far in Nevada certainly does not hurt though. It is a beauty, solid and chunky with a nice kind of flat matte finish. A bunch of hunting later and I scored another small 0.6 gram nugget, for a total of three nuggets and 27.6 grams with the Garrett ATX. I am sure there is more gold waiting out there to be found so can't wait to get back at it. Just a great time in great country, and I have to say I am not missing being in Alaska at all. This beats being in cold rain ate alive by bugs any time. I am getting ready to have a major weeding out of detectors and accessories. My collection of gear has ballooned too far in excess of what I need, and in 2015 I want to just focus on detecting instead of detectors, if you catch my drift. I need a few good machines to cover the bases for my varied detecting needs, but all the rest need to go. I am not much on clutter. One thing I do know for sure though, and that is that the Garrett ATX has earned a permanent spot in my collection. In particular I plan on being on California storm watch this winter, and at the first sign of major beach action I am grabbing the ATX and heading for the coast. The California beach boys will be seeing a new face this winter. And I am very sure there are many more nugget hunts in the future for me and the Garrett ATX. This Post Promoted To An Article

Ok, so what about SDC 2300 for beach hunting? I can't find anything about that... this is weird. Any videos, reviews just nothing. How to compare ATX to SDC 2300 in salt conditions. Steve could you help with this?

I'm loving the performance on small gold below .3 gram of the new SDC 2300. So doing a bit of testing vs the ATX I got the ATX performing a bit closer to the SDC2300 performance on this small gold. Tested in the video is a .25 gram nugget. The dirt in the video will stick to my magnet on my digging pick. Check out the video to see what I did... Bonus video... How to use the Minelab SDC 2300 as a meat slicer:

Hi folks, I did an all day hunt with my mining partner, and unearthed a couple of small pocket gold nuggets in an area I've been detecting for years and have found a 1/4 oz nugget at. As usual we did some video just in case we hit some nuggets. This is in Northern California about a mile up a creek from the Klamath River. Video is from my partners Youtube channel, "The Handergard". I also did an all day Oregon hunt with the Minelab SDC 2300 to no avail for nuggets, but did enjoy hunting with it. Oregon gold nuggets seems a bit more hard to find than California nuggets... Beautiful scenery in this video also...

Thanks Steve for letting me know about the Garrett find of the month and sending them my story. I actually won for September and am now the proud owner of a AT GOLD detector. A good machine to go along with my ATX! Thanks again and good luck looking for GOLD! Hope to meet you again someday in the gold fields. David Frickelton (ezdave)

Ok. I was ordered used Recon detector, and after shippment from USA to Poland (Europe) unit doesn’t work… you can't power up... I’m owner of 4 months ATX too, (used twice), and I sold the unit from Poland to UK. After shipment doesn’t work too! Could you help me and resolve the problem? This is weird situation.

The big question is what you think is the better gold detector ' ATX or SDC ? Sorry to put you in this position but your qualified to answer

Just returned from Nome Alaska where I managed to find 16 nuggets in 6 days! All with the ATX with the 8 inch mono ( lighter weight for all day swinging) Met Steve in Happy Camp and took his advice as to use the 8 inch mono and dig all targets. Dug plenty of junk but also some nice GOLD. EZDAVE