338Edgeshooter

This could be amazing for many of us with old workings littered with nails, cans and rust flakes. A stable target ID is my only upgrade wish for the Axiom, as I have found the iron check to be unreliable on its own in my areas especially when the soil is wet. Having a tid to go along with it, or in this case, Instead of iron check, could be a huge help in deciding what not to dig while working through very trashy areas. I can’t wait to see how this detector performs.

A stable target ID in a PI detector and pinpointing will be amazing for tailings and other iron infested spots if it works as stated! I cant wait for some of our experts on DP to get thier hands on the AF E1500!

As Steve said The 11x7 DD is a gamechanger for magnetite/hot iron ground, dirt that will cause the mono coils to “overload”the machine. I live near the Rogue River in S.Oregon and there are places I can pan up a 1/2 cup of what looks like random sized jet black shotgun pellets in one pan of classified material and its all heavy magnetite pebbles. I remove them from the pan with a magnet. There is a red iron hill nearby that will not ground balance with my mono coil in large or salt mode on sensitivity 2 and Some areas of sand/gravel bars full of black sand/magnatite that will stop my Axiom cold with the mono coil except on large/salt mode, sensitivity 1 and my old goldmonster sounded like it was on an iron plate and was going to explode! I was amazed because the 11x7 DD will ground balance in normal mode at all of those places on sensitivity 3-4 and I pull .22 bullets, small lead (like tiny #8 bird shot), brass lure parts, small hooks and brass and steel swivels out of the ground I thought was impossible to detect. I have a couple spots where the mineralized ground & emi combo will also defeat me with the 11” mono due to powerlines, house and auto traffic and the dd is a noticable improvement there also. A side note- For the EMI problem, out of despiration I stumbled into Steves minumum threshold setting, the “Bogenes setting”. I find it to be a great tactic for high emi and terrible ground and I am actually loving silent hunting without an audible threshold and you can increase sensitivity! Im using Normal mode, -7 threshold, sensitivity 4&5. I have only used this with the dd but am finding tiny lead shards and tiny rusty iron flakes 3-4” deep so I dont feel like im missing much without a threshold especially in an area I couldn’t detect before discovering this tactic. Also for what its worth the DD coil iron check feature, in most parts of MY AREA will call almost everything including some lead chunks “iron” even when its shallow, <1” or just laying on the surface of the wet soil, im talking .22 bullet sized lead which was an eye opener for me so I cannot trust it here at all. When its dry it works a bit better but is still a crapshoot so experiment alot before trusting it. I was excited about it for one old placer I found thats full of rusty flakes, nails and tacks but after testing it out I found it completely innaccurate in MY area.

Where I live in S. Oregon we are over 100* alot in the summer and over ear headphones end up full of sweat, plus we have rattlesnakes and lots of bears and lions, so complete noise cancelling is not my preference. While I dont worry much about the cats/bears I have almost stepped on the snakes a few times in my life. I dont use the external speaker much due to wind and water noise and wanting to keeping a low profile in a couple spots. Also I hate being connected to a metal detector by wire. At the suggestion of Steve H. I now use the Garrett WR-1 reciever with some nice silicone tipped earbuds and for me it works every bit as good as the wireless over ear headphones minus the sweat, you do need a 1/4”-3.5mm adapter since the wr-1 has only a 1/4” plug but that is a minor thing in my book. I will say the wr-1 has the same intermittent cut in and out issue as the wireless headphones but I put the transmitter in my right back pocket(my detector arm) and it is very minimal usually only happening when I set the detector on the ground to dig.

I have also been experimenting with the minimum threshold trick which I stumbled onto with my Axiom, I usually am in normal mode -7 threshold on sensitivity 4 with 11x7 DD at a place near me that has terrible emi. This place is the worst of all worlds for a metal detector, it is an old hand placer near power lines and houses and a busy 2 lane hwy that has lots of hot rocks, magnetite and iron rich soil. The 11” mono will not ground balance there which is why I got the smaller dd coil. It is 5 minutes from my house and I really wanted to detect it just because of how close to home it is. So I go there with the new dd hoping for a huge change and except for the dd actually ground balancing there was still plenty of noise and I was disappointed again. Out of despiration after like 10 frquency scans ground balances, factory resets and headscratching with no noticeable change I started adjusting different settings one at a time from min to max just trying to quiet my Axiom. Changing modes did not help much and I had to run sensitivity down to 1-2 with the 11x7 dd coil just to to tame the emi down to a slightly chatty level. then I adjusted the threshold all the way down and it got quiet! I upped the sensitivity to 4 & 5 and back to normal mode, it was still quiet! Then I bumped the threshold up untill it started breaking through at -6/-7 and settled on -7 which is almost silent at this spot. I am far from a PI detecting expert and wasnt sure this was a good idea so I started sweeping over a couple of lead test targets while going back and fourth from a setting of mode normal/ sensitivity 2/threshold 0 to the silent sensitivity 4/ threshold-7 and at maybey 2” and could hear them much better without the noisy emi/threshold. Then I poked them in the full depth of my index finger, filled with dirt re ground balance and they were still loud and clear! My testers are small #6 & #4 lead shot inside 1 layer of electrical tape for easy recovery. So then I log onto DP this morning to ask if this will work or if im missing something and I spotted this thread which makes me feel even better about this method! Now if I can get through all the rusty flakes and nails I might find some gold there someday! Lol. As said above the “Bogenes setting” makes for a “very pleasant way to hunt”

Seems they are legally required to not eliminate emi, that is from my Garrett Axiom owners manual

I think this may be a big obstacle to emi mitigation.

I have a place near me in Central Point, OR. called the Crater Rock Museum, if the people working cant id it they have geologists that will ID rock/mineral samples, you just fill out a short form and leave the sample with them. Then wait for a call, it can take a few weeks. If you have a rock & gem shop near by stop in and ask them, even if they can not id it they probably know who can.

By the way Garrett customer service has been very prompt and helpful so far, they have responded quickly to my questions. I will report back in a couple of weeks after I get my Axiom back.

OK, Thanks. Its probably completely normal. It makes sense that it would change some but when I started really paying attention to everything because of trying to figure out if my threshold issue was operator error or not, I was suprised at how much it varied.

When I change modes on my Axiom and re ground balance in exactly the same spot I noticed that the ground balance numbers change quite a bit, and that the top number was in numerical order but the bottom wasn’t. Here are the numbers with the following settings-sensitivity 3, tracking off, speed slow standing in the same spot on my proprty- Fine-50/27, normal 59/31, large 62/25. I repeated it 5-6 times in 3 different areas & I expected it to change some because of different timings but was suprised at how much it jumped. Also changing sensitivity didnt affect it much, it was always +/- 1 on the top and bottom numbers if it changed at all, that part seems normal to me. I am now more curious about this than when I first noticed it because I shipped my Axiom to Garrett today for inspection because no matter where I was or what settings I tried the threshold always had the same “chatter”, not a smooth up/down oscillation but almost a slow morse code sounding random chatter that sounds like noticable but faint targets, the only way it would go away is if sensitivity was lowered to 1 or 2 in ALL settings except salt which I didnt try. This first happened Around my property and I chalked it up to EMI because its there while the coil is stationary or moving and I was like 75 yards from the house but after trying a bunch of spots it was exactly the same everywhere including a 40 mile trip up into the mountains like 25 miles from the nearest power lines or civilization to test it, same exact “chatter”. Now im starting to wonder if the gb number change is related somehow? I dont have access to another axiom to compare to so.... My question is if this gb number change is similar on other Axioms? Has anyone else noticed this?

Thanks everyone!

If you are supersticious look at the weight 6.66 Lol!

Thank you. It’s great having so many options, and not being wired to the detector via a headphone cable is sooo nice!

Is it possible to pair wireless earbuds directly to the Axiom for hot weather use? Or is the wr-1 and corded earbuds the only/best option?