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In regards to your side note Tom I have on an occasion but too much controversy with that forum and its administrator for me. However recently thanks to Steve opening this thread " Garrett ATX Backpack Modification" on another Australian forum Finders I was able to follow a link to his new forum here. Throughout the years I have followed Steve's postings over there and I have much respect for his views, knowledge and experience.

Hey Kenny glad you enjoy the AT-GOLD.. Fine machine for sure... I must say I have tested out alot fo detectors for unmasking over the years and thye have progressed slowly but surely... in the last few years manufacturers have started to realized theres more in the iron sites to be found and started to offer us the detectorist instrument's to combat the situation head on... What is it we need to go head on in a iron hole type site... 1-Higher freq's(18-25 Khz is the norm now)... 2-Ability to break tone on the most troublemsome iron ...In most cases Nail's the number one site masker in the world... 3-fast shutdown on target's.Greater seperation 4-minimal filtering of target signal's...in other words we need bleedy rejection not clean rejection... 5-Tight superior designed DD coil's 6 Iron Volume audio...this is useful when you are in abundance of iron like nails and you have broken your tone right at nail..So now it break low to high tone at this spot.but with iron volume we can control the low tone output for a less fatiguing hunt... The AT series from Garrett are leading edge...though they lack SOME of the top shelf feautures mentioned above for a true site machine, I can promise you they do VERY VERY well in the iron...especially with the 5x8 DD BT coil installed.... The At series also takes well to a more negative ground balance in disc mode than some machines are able to achieve.Why negative? Well if the dirt is bad enough smaller and or deeper targets can be called iron and at tiems if the dirt issevere enough they dont have to be deep to be signaled as iron... But a bit of a negative ground bal can help you SEE THROUGH the mineral a bit better....And luckily the AT series is able to run a good but begaitve wiht the excellent DD design they have and still have an Intelligent hunt... Next time out wiht your AT try some differnet ground settings than normal and notice how it changes the sensitivity to different conductor's..... I may aslo add once you really get into trying to work a site to its fullest potential that is full of iron you may want make sure you allow the Iron audio to remain on...Why? Well when you allow the iron audio to report instead of null like a regular disc circuit does you are keeping the audio gate open constantly and you are not having to start up and shut down in an iron saturated site....You just get your sweep speed right and allow the full audio report to flow through the headphone's...Also by doing this you can get a clearer picture of the rejected target...in this case iron... Some will say put disc on zero and and let the machine set the tone break but thast really a no-no for any serious unmasking and site unlocking...you need to fine tune the disc/Tone break for the individual site and evn ground setting to achieve the best result's... One thing unique to the AT is that there not the fastest like the XP GMP or DTVG or DEUS or T2/F75 and such but they are able to Blend up target's with a audio that in my opinion is second to none and also uncanny for a digital machine to posses.. I have a video I did of the AT on a dollar gold piece...it shows the need for the iron audio to be ON for the ultimate unlock. Please take a look Keith

This video is just great. These guys are relic and coin detecting an old gold camp in California and get the surprise of their lives! Good stuff. Caution for those who do not like coarse language but emotions run high in this video! The detector used is a Minelab CTX 3030.