#9 Lead Shot

[phrunt]

I can vouch for his scales being good accurate ones ? I have the same.  Yes, I'm quite surprised by the ATX too, if this is the case I have renewed attention towards the ATX.  If it had some decent coils it'd probably be a weapon. 

It's a shame Garrett didn't take all of Steve's hints and remake the ATX as their lightweight modern PI in a new land housing while fixing all of the known flaws with it at the same time, it sounds like it has potential to be a very popular detector after a redesign or the housing and coils designed around light weight and a land scenario.

[jasong]

My recall was it lacked outright depth on the bigger stuff, but I don't remember exactly.

If so, some of that could be coil related too. Garrett might still want to consider making it as light as the 6000 and then looking into proper concentrics - or having them be made for them. 

A lightweight PI for less than half the cost of a 6000, but with equal performance on small stuff and better performance on the bigger, deeper stuff would put a US manufacturer right back into the game again. I'm actually pretty surprised they never did, especially as you mention Simon, how much Steve posted about something similar very early on.

Almost makes me want to see if Garrett wants to sell the ATX patents/design cheap if they have no plans for it. Minelab is kinda setting themselves up for stray competition to enter the game lately IMO and someone with a decent sense of business saavy, customer interaction, and a hunger for competition could probably find a way to take some decent market share away now if there is seriously just a machine out there floating around that could be fairly easily modified to equal or outperform the 6000 for half the price.

Edit: or maybe it already has a concentric? Looking at a photo of the machine stock. Admittedly, I don't know much about this one.

[jasong]

Or maybe it doesn't have a concentric? It's confusing...looks like one. But they are calling it a DD. That's one oddly designed DD if so.

[phrunt]

With no chips in the coils they'd have an instant advantage if they did release a new lightweight land model.   They have a good opportunity, it'd be a shame if they wasted it, just being able to sell it at a decent price would put a dent in Minelab's sales, especially in the US. 

What's making the 6000 popular in many places is its finding small gold the other detectors missed being less sensitive to small gold in their retail form.  People who were finding very little are starting to come home with a rattle in their jar so naturally they're happy with their purchase because of this.  If the ATX is capable of hitting this same small gold, especially with better coils then they really have potential for a decent selling detector.  I'd buy their land model in a second if it came out and was capable of hitting 0.027 of a gram targets, and this is with their clunky stock coils, putting newer better designed coils on it would likely improve that small gold depth.

The coil in that picture looks more like a concentric than a DD to me.

[EL NINO77]

Jasong  ... and Simon ... thank you for your positive response ..?

I also bought a Garrett ATX from a colleague based on a review by Steve Herschbach... and other ATX users where, among other things, I was interested in the sensitivity of this PI detector in detecting gold nuggets weighing 0.1 grams ... on a relatively large standard 12x10 "DD coil.

..I saw ATX as a fairly versatile and waterproof PI detector with Ground balance on all types of terrain ..

 In my own testing I really achieved a good ATX range at a higher set sensitivity of 10 .. without GB on my test target 0.1 gram 24k gold ..., / range around11cm / ... but during the test I was really surprised that my next test 0.027 gram gold is seen at 2-2.5 cm- assuming you set the threshold to 11.5 -12 ..

...In the ATX test on the Ground Balance on heavily mineralized terrain ,, the range drops, but 0.027 grams of gold is still visible on the 12x10 "DD coil. 

Reach to 0.1 gram 24k gold.. will drop a bit .... but ATX on Ground balance and disk on 3rd .. can still detect 0.1 gram of gold ... under 2 inches thick and heavily demanding mineralized Iron Stone .... that's what no VLF detector can do ..

...I think the special design of this DD coil with an extended center .. allows you to maintain good sensitivity to very small targets ..
..but it had a 3x7 " power DD infinium  coil has even better sensitivity / range for very small targets ..

...This is how I test ATX with Ground balance on difficult mineralized terrain and on 0.027 gram gold on a small 3x7 "DD infinium coil ....

What intrigued me about this little 3X7 "Power DD Infinium coil  and the use on the  PI detector ATX ?..
...It's this article...? ...https://mymetaldetector.blogspot.com/2011/07/this-is-3x7-in.html

[jasong]

Interesting. Thanks for the tests and posts El Nino, I learned something new today...