Playing With A Knock-off Garrett Pro Pointer

[spacefury65]

Hello All,

I bought a Garrett Pro Pointer off of eBay. It was a fake. I reached out to the seller who promptly refunded the money and told me to keep the probe.

What I want to do is try to increase its depth, but not with the oscillator or frequency. The fake comes apart just like the real one, so removing the components is easy.
If I add MORE copper windings to the internals, will that increase its detecting field?

Thanks in advance,
SF

[PimentoUK]

It's best to leave the electronics alone if you've no idea what you're doing.
If it still works, but has poor 'depth' , it's still useful as an emergency backup.

[spacefury65]

Oh I HAVE a total idea to what I'm doing, hence the lone question:

If I add more enameled copper windings, will it increase the depth field?
I don't care what happens to this unit during / after testing or modding, I have my real equipment with a backup of the same..

Thanks for the reply, but not what I implied or asked...

[PimentoUK]

Changing the number of turns on the ferrite rod will have little discernable effect. It will change the operating frequency, because it will change the inductance of the coil. Inductance varies pretty-much in proportion to the square of the number of turns. So if you added say, 30% more windings, your inductance increases 70%, and the operating frequency will drop 30%. This might make it a little more sensitive to larger/better conductivity targets, eg a US 25c coin, but may reduce its performance on tiny gold nuggets, ear-rings, thin chains.
This is speculation, as we have absolutely no idea what the innards of this fake pinpointer are like. Some are close copies of the Garrett, some are nothing at all like it. Nearly all have a simple microprocessor at the heart of them, and that puts a restriction on what's possible with modifications.

If you had a genuine Garrett Propointer, you would have a much easier job of modifying it, as it's been reverse-engineered, and people ( including myself ) have some idea of what changes can be made. But these clones/fakes/etc are a complete unknown.

[spacefury65]

Thanks for the excellent reply.. The operating frequency of this fake is about 10KHz... If I did add more windings of say 30 gauge wire, I could probably get it down to 6-7KHz which would add sensitivity because of longer wave lengths AND reduce the interference it from my Simplex. The Simplex is at 12KHz. My Vanquish 440 does not affect the probe at all.

Performance on tiny gold, earrings and chains are spotty any way.. Its the coin detection I want to play with.

Naturally a genuine Garrett AT or Pro-pointer are unaffected by the machines being nearby.

Since I have this knock-off and it doesn't work that well any way, I figured it'll go to the operating room and see what's what...

Thanks again,
SF

[TC-AZ]

Spacefury65, I would say Go For It! I used to like to take things apart and tinker with things, experiment and test. Inquisitive minds think alike... Oh Yea!!!

Thanks for sharing 👍 

[rvpopeye]

Hard tellin' what you'd get from extra coil windings on that thing. 

So, the best way to find out is just go for it.

If you don't like the results , do it again but differently.

Nothin' to lose , everything to gain. Even if you blow it up (not likely) it was a freebie.AND you didn't NEED it. 

Interested in seeing your report of how it worked..