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Garrett Axiom 2nd Outing + A Few General Thoughts And Observations


Calmark

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Thanks for postings your review and thoughts on the Axiom.  It good to know that I'll have to watch the settings with headphones once I get my hands on one.  Any gold day is a great day!

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Great to hear unbiased reports from regular purchasers, with hopefully more to come. Thanks for the early reporting in particular. And do try the hot rock window balance method sometime even if you really don’t need it, just to see how good it works. I also tend to not use it if the rocks are few and far between, but it can work some real magic on most hot rocks. Others might still respond, but it will be in a vastly reduced manner. One of the better features on the Axiom in my opinion, one that really made a difference for me in a few locations.

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/20373-the-axiom-ground-balance-window-with-notes-for-relic-and-coin-hunters/

 

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10 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Great to hear unbiased reports from regular purchasers, with hopefully more to come. Thanks for the early reporting in particular. And do try the hot rock window balance method sometime even if you really don’t need it, just to see how good it works. I also tend to not use it if the rocks are few and far between, but it can work some real magic on most hot rocks. Others might still respond, but it will be in a vastly reduced manner. One of the better features on the Axiom in my opinion, one that really made a difference for me in a few locations.

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/20373-the-axiom-ground-balance-window-with-notes-for-relic-and-coin-hunters/

 

I have an ideal spot to try out the hot rock window balance method, but it likely has some snow at the moment, so it will have to wait until spring.  This area has seams of magnetite and cobbles of it are found in the dirt path leading to the spot.  There are a few small pits where the old time miners actually mined this iron-rich ore on a small-scale.   The nearby creek was haphazardly worked for gold and has iron junk all over.  Should be a very challenging test spot for the Axiom with just the hot rocks present in quantity.  I hope to put the DD coil and iron reject feature to good use there too.  

I can't wait to get an 11x7DD for just this scenario and perhaps as a small coil for a spot or two with iron I'd like to check for coins.

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I’m a bit doubtful the system will balance out large chunks of relatively pure magnetite, but you never know. I have a few I’ve collected - I’ll have to test it out.

The Axiom is not going to replace a Deus 2 or anything like than pulling coins out of ferrous, but in just the right spot and right targets, with a creative operator…. well, I’m going to have lots of fun with this detector. :smile:

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Some other things about the Axiom I've remembered:

It handles EMI very very well.  I had no issues with EMI even when I noticed planes passed overhead.  I've often gotten loud "zings" of audio from planes on my other detectors and my GPX 5000 would go nuts when they passed.  Scanning the side walls of the creek, I also got no EMI noise.  Very nice!

Tone pitch selection ability is nice to have.  Day 1 I quickly moved the Tone pitch control up and down and settled on 70 out of 100.  50 is the default.  That made the tone higher and I just went with it.  Day 2 I did a factory reset to try to repair my headphones and tone was back at 50.  It sounded a bit better than I remembered, so I spent more time selecting tones.  I settled on 45 for the day.  A target I swung over sounded better to my ear at a lower setting. 

This is probably an underappreciated feature by some, but I'm glad its there as it gave me the ability to fine tune the audio to MY ear.  My dad will also use this machine and he has hearing loss in the higher frequency range and likely will want a different setting.  Nice feature to have, even if relatively minor!

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56 minutes ago, Calmark said:

Some other things about the Axiom I've remembered:

It handles EMI very very well.  I had no issues with EMI even when I noticed planes passed overhead.  I've often gotten loud "zings" of audio from planes on my other detectors and my GPX 5000 would go nuts when they passed.  Scanning the side walls of the creek, I also got no EMI noise.  Very nice!

Tone pitch selection ability is nice to have.  Day 1 I quickly moved the Tone pitch control up and down and settled on 70 out of 100.  50 is the default.  That made the tone higher and I just went with it.  Day 2 I did a factory reset to try to repair my headphones and tone was back at 50.  It sounded a bit better than I remembered, so I spent more time selecting tones.  I settled on 45 for the day.  A target I swung over sounded better to my ear at a lower setting. 

This is probably an underappreciated feature by some, but I'm glad its there as it gave me the ability to fine tune the audio to MY ear.  My dad will also use this machine and he has hearing loss in the higher frequency range and likely will want a different setting.  Nice feature to have, even if relatively minor!

I have high frequency hearing loss, and so am running at 30 and liking it. Very nice feature.

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On 11/29/2022 at 5:35 AM, Calmark said:

It handles EMI very very well.  I had no issues with EMI even when I noticed planes passed overhead.  I've often gotten loud "zings" of audio from planes on my other detectors and my GPX 5000 would go nuts when they passed.  Scanning the side walls of the creek, I also got no EMI noise.  Very nice!

Garrett put a little animated GIF on Facebook of a bit of an axiom teardown and it looks to me like the main PCB is housed inside a thin alloy housing, rather than just the EMI paint that Minelab used for the GPX 6000, I guess it would add a tiny amount of weight but you would assume it works better than the paint at protecting the electronics from outside EMI.

1749032081_GarrettAxiomguts.jpg.9247f96fa6445f639eb63a3af48fa066.jpg

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I just tested the Axiom on a chunk of pure magnetite 4” in diameter weighing about a pound, and was not shocked, but yes, a little surprised when it could tune it out. Completely, unless about an inch from the coil, when there was some chirping effect. It did take opening up the ground balance window to get it absolutely quiet, but even the standard ground balance was remarkably good. And yes, it could still detect gold afterwards.

Rather remarkable actually, I’d have bet a dollar it could not do it.

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Thanks for performing that test on that chunk of magnetite.  Good information for current or future Axiom owners to know.  I can see this ability to cancel out very large hot rocks as perhaps a sign the Axiom will have a niche finding gold in areas where large hot rocks like these sound off and hide weaker gold signals. 

I have just a spot to test this next spring once the snow in the mountains has melted off and things warm up.  :biggrin:

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