Steve Herschbach

Minelab was not happy when Garrett took the crown at 6.9 lbs for the ATX so they had to come out with the GPZ 7000 at 7.3 lbs! Fix is the same whether it be GPX or GPZ or ATX - a harness and bungee. The ATX underwater is slightly negative - just enough so you can sit it on the bottom and it will stay put.

You are welcome. You nailed why I kept my ATX instead of my GPX 5000. The Minelab GPZ 7000 is my primary unit. The ATX backs it up for areas where I run into salt ground or hot rocks that the GPZ struggles with, but the ATX handles with ease. The GPX would also, but I also use the ATX for beach detecting and have done very well with it. The SDC unfortunately floats like a cork and frankly I am uncomfortable putting one in salt water surf. The ATX I have had in rough surf for days - no worries there when it comes to waterproof integrity. For anyone wanting a machine to use both in salt water a lot and prospecting a lot, the ATX is the go to detector. Relics I do not do but I know it holds its own there also.

I have the Garrett ATX myself for various reasons. In my opinion it is second only to the Minelab PI detectors in performance. The ATX is only slightly behind the SDC for small gold sensitivity and a bit behind the Minelab SD/GP/GPX detectors on large gold. People saying it loses performance when ground balancing out bad ground or hot rocks clearly do not understand how ground balancing works. All detectors by eliminating ground or hot rock responses also lose performance on certain gold to varying degrees. The more aggressive the ground and hot rock rejection, the more impact on various gold types. The main reason I have an ATX actually is I have not found any ground or hot rocks yet it can't handle. Will the performance be affected? Of course. Anyone who thinks they have a detector unaffected by ground mineralization is kidding themselves. The main problem with the ATX is not its performance, it is the 6.9 lb weight and insanely overpriced accessory coils. The stock coil is slightly sensitive to hard knocks causing false signals but this has been overplayed on the Internet. The bottom line is I have a lot of confidence in my ATX and its ability to find gold. I plan on putting mine to much more use this summer. I don't talk about the ATX much anymore because people believe want they want to believe and I am not out to change people's minds on stuff. The bottom line is it is a sleeper unit capable of great things in the right hands. I just wish I could get Garrett to repackage the machine in a dry land housing more appropriate for prospecting and with a standard coil selection. I had actually included the ATX at $2120 in my original response to you but deleted it. Then we would have to also talk about the GPX 4500 at $2699 and then next thing you know it is back to a list of detectors and too many choices!

Weather Channel - California and Nevada Will See Heavy Rain and Snowmelt, Possible Flooding and Landslides "Another multi-day siege of flooding rain and Sierra snow is beginning to ramp up in California and adjacent parts of Nevada, which will result in significant flooding for some locations. Starting on Saturday and continuing through Monday, a very potent atmospheric river event will aim a fire hose of moisture at the West Coast. The rain combined with snowmelt from rising snow levels will lead to rapid rises on rivers and other waterways. The National Weather Service says that flooding with this event may be the greatest since December 2005 for some locations."

mindat Swift River, Maine Swift River Gold Panning Area A Collector's Guide to Maine Mineral Localities Worthwhile is up to the individual budget and how much desire you have to find gold with a metal detector. If you can swing it I personally recommend a Minelab SDC 2300 at $3750 as the best value option even though it is more expensive than other options. It is a simple to operate, robust metal detector with sensitivity to small gold unexcelled by any other commercial PI. It will ignore nearly all troublesome mineralization and hot rocks. It is waterproof and folds up into a very compact package that will fit in a common rucksack. Professional prospectors everywhere will attest to the ease with which it cuts through mineralization to find gold while being easy for a novice to operate. The SDC has a hard wired 8" coil so not coil options are available. The least expensive and lightest option is the White's TDI SL at only $1189 and 3.5 lbs (not waterproof). The performance is not much of a step up from a mid-frequency VLF but it will ignore hot rocks and ground that will give a VLF extreme difficulty. The low price and light weight make it an attractive option, as does the wide range of very affordable accessory coils. You can find a rundown of these and more models at my Guide To Gold Nugget Detectors

A pretty fascinating set of photos posted over at http://md-hunter.com/homemade-metal-detector-amazing-photos/

It really is a better find when you have a document like that picturing it back in the day. Very nice!

Yeah, I saw that - and just when I was going to do up my last blog for Minelab on using the GPS system!

The Ultimate Throwback Thursday Discover Magazine Some of you might remember a publication called "Discover" that White's Electronics used to publish. It featured customer finds, treasure stories, and all-around good info on metal detecting. Back in the 90's we stopped making it, much to the disappointment of some of our long-time customers. Well... we realized missed it too! So we're proud to announce the re-introduction of Discover magazine. As a part of our mailing list you have exclusive access to a free digital copy, which you can read online, print out, and share as you see fit. Get your January/February copy here. We'll try and send one out every 2 months. Thanks for supporting an American brand, and know that we will always have your back as a valued customer. This publication is just one small thing we can do to show our appreciation! Sincerely, White's Electronics P.S. - We plan to hide a clue in each issue. First 100 folks to find it and mail us an envelope with the answer will get a free prize. Think you can you find it? Good luck and happy hunting!

OK, thinking more about it I see you are talking about the actual notification system whereby you get notified when you receive a PM or a like. I checked mine and it looks like it holds history back 90 days and drops stuff older than that. Only the totals get retained. You would have to do a "find all content" on yourself and look at older posts to see how many likes they got. Or at least that is it as near as I can tell at the moment.

I don't track or do anything, it is all part of the software. Maybe the upgrade changed what you have been looking at as part of leaderboard thing? I have always just looked at a post itself to see how many people like it. As of right now the first post in this thread has two people liking it.

Part of my main complaint about the ATX as a prospecting detector. It was designed into a housing left over from a Garrett project to build and sell military land mine detectors. The housing is robust, waterproof, folds up nicely, but is also very heavy (6.9 lbs.) and needlessly expensive for dry land prospecting. The design incorporates an expensive telescoping rod assembly into each and every coil. In other words the rod is part of the coil, not part of the detector. You are paying as much for the rod you must buy with the coil as the coil itself.

Good question Harry. It could be like the stock coil internally or more like a standard DD coil. A little testing by somebody that had one would tell. I don't see much point in spending a lot of money to buy a coil l so similar to what I already have however so that won't be me.

I was not talking these three books specifically by Clive Clynick, but the 16 he has listed on his website at http://www.clivesgoldpage.com/ You can click on titles there to find content information. They are all great books, you can't go wrong with any of them. Anyway, just go there and check them out to see what I mean. Many of the books talk about shoreline detecting with different models. The model information will be specific to the book but many of the actual hunting methods and techniques are the same regardless of the detector you have, so that stuff tends to repeat.

It is how many people like posts you make. The whole idea is to encourage quality posts as judged by other forum members. A key is how many posts a person makes versus how many times those posts get liked. Some people have lots of posts but few people like them. Other people actually get more likes than the number of posts they make due to the fact that multiple people can like a single post.

I used to have cases of the Zip Zip books on the shelf. I wish now I had bought a few cases myself and stashed in my basement! All great books Mike, have read them or have them myself. Highly recommended. The only thing people need to look out for is that Clive has a lot of titles but many of them repeat most of the same information in different ways.

Supposedly more knock resistant also. Sliding center mount, knock resistant, closed design won't collect debris, and 11" x 13" mono should get better depth than stock 10" x 12" DD. Might give up a hair on sensitivity compared to that hot inner ring design on the stock coil. My intent was to use the ATX more this year in salt area and places where hot rocks get so prevalent as to make using my GPZ an exercise in patience. I do think I will get one of these but it may be quite some time before I could use it enough to report on it. I am looking out my window at 6" of fresh snow!

The problem with proprietary headphones is no choice. The V3i wireless headphone is a fail for me because you have exactly one choice of headphone. I vastly prefer a system like this that has a speaker built in and the option to use any headphone I want. Or something like the Garrett which lacks the speaker but again, any headphone I want, and more important, with any machine I want. The pricey V3i headphone only works with a V3i. Same reason I am not getting the Makro Racer 2 wireless headphone option. Money spent for headphones I probably won't like that will only work with a Racer 2 or Gold Racer.

OK, you caught me, and believe it or not I have a 2017 New Years list in front of me which consists of finishing unfinished projects including the ATX. One of my personality traits is I hate not finishing stuff so this one has been nagging at me. Another trait is bouncing around a lot from project to project getting back to some sooner or later but on this one later has got out of control. Anyway, I am on it, results this month - I promise!! Funny, I intended this project as a stick in the eye to Garrett goading them into making a lighter weight ATX. Looks like even with all the delay I will still beat them to it.

You lost me Harry - view all where what? If you look in your post here you see you have made 275 posts and have a "reputation" of 87. Same figures show on your profile at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/profile/207-lipca/ Reputation can be a combination of many factors but on this forum it is just the number of times people have liked your posts as far as I know. It is not impossible there is more to it than that so I might investigate further but I have to admit it is a low priority project.

That is actually inspiring Bryan, thanks for posting. It is good to see that persistence still pays off, even for detecting old coins in parks, which is getting to be as challenging as nugget detecting. I am curious on your take on the CTX 3030 given your collection of Tesoro detectors. Opposite ends of the spectrum on both weight and operational designs. The success speaks for itself but I am wondering just how much you think the CTX may have contributed to that, or is it just a wash. Tesoro units are very good in the right hands.

Garrett allows dealers to advertise items at no more than 15% off the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). US$529.95 x 0.85 = Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) of US$450.46 Sorry but I do not know any more than you when and where this coil will be available.

I do see reviewing the instructions again that putting the batteries in backwards can permanently damage the unit.

About time - thanks Beav! Might have to get that mono for myself. Though with an out-the-door price of $450 I will have to think about it. I wonder if scuff covers will be available immediately or if that is another one of those afterthought things that drives us all crazy.

Not negativity - observations are observations, and yours and others are greatly appreciated Jason. All ground balancing metal detectors employ various ground balancing methods. Whatever method you choose eliminates responses from certain types of ground and rocks. There will always be types of gold that overlap those rock and ground responses. Therefore any ground balancing metal detector will, repeat, will miss certain types of gold targets. Once you get your head around this fact and accept it then you stop thinking all the gold under the coil is being detected. Think of the timings on the GPX series. Each timing scheme is designed to eliminate certain ground and salt responses. Anyone that plays around with the GPX can see that changing the timing - in other words changing the ground balance scheme, changes the way the detector responds not just to the ground but to different types of gold. The GPZ attempts to fill in the "holes" in the GPX timings but does indeed have its own "holes" also. That is just a fact. The only way to eliminate this is to use a non-ground balancing detector. Unfortunately then the ground and all the rocks go beep! Both GPX and the GPZ also have holes that the SDC 2300 fills and so the SDC can find gold those detectors miss. And a Gold Bug 2 can find gold all those models miss. All you need is a GPX/GPZ/SDC/GB2 and you are all set.