AT Pro learning curve?

BentRod

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Today I took my new AT Pro to an area where I'd found silver in the past. There are a lot of trash targets, mainly old ring style pull tabs, but have found plenty of clad and a fair amount of silver as well using my BH Tracker IV over the last couple years. Granted I'm new to the AT Pro, I have read countless "how to" articles and threads and watched equally countless videos as well. I practiced in my yard a bit and thought I had a pretty good idea of what to listen and watch for. Additionally, having already learned to hunt based on the Tracker IV tones I thought the audio response was very similar between the two units.
I thought that with this being a much better unit, I'd surely find a number of coins (clad or silver) that I'd previously missed with the Tracker IV.
I researched the Iron Audio feature last night, so was excited to put that into play today. So, my settings were:
Pro Zero, Iron Disc. 35, Iron Audio On, Nothing notched. Sensitivity full, GB auto (93), using the 5x8 coil. For the sake of my sanity I ignored all signals below ~72 due to the fact that every signal below that pretty much resulted in a pull tab of one form or another. I would dig jumpy signals if the high tone was present enough on the off chance it might be masked coins.
Frankly, the results were a bit disappointing for the four hours I spent hunting. I did waste some time chasing some bits of foil, some ghost signals, and dug up a few bottle caps...at least I suspected them of being bottle caps before I dug them up, so wasn't surprised, but overall I really didn't find much in the way of clad. In fact besides a few pennies (like 4 or 5) and a corroded nickel, I didn't find any clad, let alone silver coins. I did manage a Sterling silver military Marksman's badge that was a great find and obviously something I'd previously missed, but that was all. This place is really littered with trash targets and I was impressed with the recovery speed of the AT Pro, but was surprised at the results. There is still plenty of terrain to go over and also have the bigger stock coil that might be worth giving a run for depth, but was hoping the sniper type ability as well as the reported "better" depth capability of the AT Pro over the BH TRKIV would lead to better returns today. Maybe my excitement was misplaced. I have read that the highly mineralized ground here does hamper the depth capability of the AT, but still thought it'd be better than the TRK IV. I do like the features of the AT Pro and the near constant chatter when using the Iron Audio feature doesn't seem to bother me (wasn't much different than listening to the Tracker IV really), so look forward to future hunts, just wondering how much of an upgrade I really got. :?: I will reserve judgement until I get quite a few more hours of experience with this machine though.
Thanks for reading. Any tips or advice is welcome. :yes:
 
I guess it just comes in time. Gold will ring in with lower #'s 35 and above. I'm waiting for the machine that can tell me what I've passed up. :roll:

Sounds like your on the right track, good luck.
 
be careful ignoring those signals below 72

I've found plenty of rings 35 - 50 range... best to dig them up especially if the VDI is not bouncing around like it does on trash items. You will dig a ton of bottle caps but its worth it finding that gold :D
 
Try running without the iron audio and zero discrimination. This will open up the iron to sound off in full with clean tones, and cut down on all the random seemingly unrepeatable noise that is the discrimination chatter. Then it is just a matter of picking slowly around the trash listening for clean signals. In my experience I've found to not rely on the numbers, especially in regards to deep coin signals. Look for signals that are deep, but not necessarily solid high tones. Especially with the little coil a 7-8" deep dime is going to be dropping down into the zinc range, perhaps bouncing as low as the 60's, and the tone will be mostly high but a sometimes zinc-penny sounding broken mid/high tone. Look for the depth, and look for the small pinpoint characteristic of coins, and start digging. Silver isn't easy to find here in Western WA but its around.

Happy Hunting :)
 
be careful ignoring those signals below 72

I've found plenty of rings 35 - 50 range... best to dig them up especially if the VDI is not bouncing around like it does on trash items. You will dig a ton of bottle caps but its worth it finding that gold :D

I'm aware I was intentionally looking over gold. My target yesterday was mainly coins and there were just too many pull tabs to waste time digging those signals. Those will have to wait for another day.

Try running without the iron audio and zero discrimination. This will open up the iron to sound off in full with clean tones, and cut down on all the random seemingly unrepeatable noise that is the discrimination chatter. Then it is just a matter of picking slowly around the trash listening for clean signals. In my experience I've found to not rely on the numbers, especially in regards to deep coin signals. Look for signals that are deep, but not necessarily solid high tones. Especially with the little coil a 7-8" deep dime is going to be dropping down into the zinc range, perhaps bouncing as low as the 60's, and the tone will be mostly high but a sometimes zinc-penny sounding broken mid/high tone. Look for the depth, and look for the small pinpoint characteristic of coins, and start digging. Silver isn't easy to find here in Western WA but its around.

Happy Hunting :)

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a go, but was using the Iron Audio feature to better ID bottle caps, of which there are also plenty. Maybe by ignoring the 60-70 range I was missing some of the deeper coins. I did have a few that were in those ranges, but wrote them off as ring style pull tabs and safety tabs. The little triangle aluminum pice of the ring style pull tabs will give me a deep dime-like hit when it's folded in half. Those things irritate me as much as small wads of foil. :dash2:
 
If you are going over areas already done by yourself with the BH and not finding much more it is because there are no targets there that are deeper than your BH could go. If most of the targets were 6" or less there is a high likelyhood that there aren't many there below that depth. Coins do NOT sink further into the soil with time, the soil slowly builds up over them. If the site has not been re-graded, re-sodded or landscaped usually there will not be much coins or jewelry below 5-6". The need for extreme depth is way overrated for most hunting in undisturbed soil conditions. I have found many large cents at 4-5" on sites where the grounds were original. Gotta be a target there or even a $5,000 machine won't find it.
 
If you are going over areas already done by yourself with the BH and not finding much more it is because there are no targets there that are deeper than your BH could go. If most of the targets were 6" or less there is a high likelyhood that there aren't many there below that depth. Coins do NOT sink further into the soil with time, the soil slowly builds up over them. If the site has not been re-graded, re-sodded or landscaped usually there will not be much coins or jewelry below 5-6". The need for extreme depth is way overrated for most hunting in undisturbed soil conditions. I have found many large cents at 4-5" on sites where the grounds were original. Gotta be a target there or even a $5,000 machine won't find it.

I agree with you on the general coin depths, but in regards to the trashy area and reportedly better capabilities of the AT Pro, I figured that I'd have undoubtedly missed something with the Bounty Hunter and it's 8" concentric coil. So far I've not been able to see a whole lot to support that. Which leads me to the question, why buy a $600 MD when a $100 one does just as well? Granted, I'm very new to the AT Pro and may have been looking over potentially good targets because I didn't yet know what to listen/look for. After two years on the BH Tracker IV, that little unit almost talks to me and the subtle changes in signal tell me what I need to know. I imagine it'll be the same with the Pro....at least I hope. Have watched a couple youtube vids on deeper silver/coin targets and the AT Pro's response, so have a little better handle on what to listen for. From my experience yesterday there were a few potential targets that might have been good that I wrote off as trash. Time and practice will tell.
 
On your next outing you should settle down in the area you found your previous silvers at, pick a nice 10x10 square, and dig everything that doesn't have an iron grunt directly associated with it. (while running with the discrimination open and no iron audio). One thing to remember, you have already found all of the obvious coin signals (the ones the tracker sniffed). Whats left is likely masked, disguised, or otherwise elusive. Digging everything will help tune your ear into the new machine, and quite likely unmask some deeper signals. A 6" dime sitting 2 inches away from a screwtop is not going to give you a clean dime sound no matter how much you want it to, especially on an unfamiliar machine.

Make sure you keep the coil glued to the ground too, many of my good deep coins made no audible response with the coil an inch off the ground. Also drop your ground balance down a little, lowering it a few points from auto will effectively sharpen the response to higher conductivity targets, giving you a little more depth. 88 should be fine if you auto to 93. Ive seen people saying go down as far 15, but i've found that to be more detriment than help.

I've had the pro for 3 years now and used it heavily every year, and its still teaching me things. It is everything people say it is, don't let that excitement burn out on you :)
 
On your next outing you should settle down in the area you found your previous silvers at, pick a nice 10x10 square, and dig everything that doesn't have an iron grunt directly associated with it. (while running with the discrimination open and no iron audio). One thing to remember, you have already found all of the obvious coin signals (the ones the tracker sniffed). Whats left is likely masked, disguised, or otherwise elusive. Digging everything will help tune your ear into the new machine, and quite likely unmask some deeper signals. A 6" dime sitting 2 inches away from a screwtop is not going to give you a clean dime sound no matter how much you want it to, especially on an unfamiliar machine.

Make sure you keep the coil glued to the ground too, many of my good deep coins made no audible response with the coil an inch off the ground. Also drop your ground balance down a little, lowering it a few points from auto will effectively sharpen the response to higher conductivity targets, giving you a little more depth. 88 should be fine if you auto to 93. Ive seen people saying go down as far 15, but i've found that to be more detriment than help.

I've had the pro for 3 years now and used it heavily every year, and its still teaching me things. It is everything people say it is, don't let that excitement burn out on you :)

Great tips. I'll focus on digging all signals next time to better educate myself on the signal nuances. I do keep my coil as close to the ground as physically possible, which is usually steady contact with the grass or just the occasional scrape and bump over gravel. I try to eek out every spare inch of depth I can. :D On my first short outing I had tried dropping the GB about 5 points from the Auto setting as I'd seen recommended, but on the next trip trip out thought I might have been trying to run before learning to walk, so just stuck with the Auto setting. Will give it another go on my next trip.
Thanks for the feedback!
 
Spent about 6 hours learning the ATP today. I started with the stock 8.5x11 coil....holy cow that thing is heavy. Swung it for a couple hours and realized a few things. First, there is certainly more arm fatigue compared to the smaller 5x8, no surprise there. Second, impossible to pinpoint with that coil in high trash areas, which applied to most of the area I was hunting today. Way too many targets per square foot. I switched back to the 5x8 and finished out the day. It most certainly does better in the trashy conditions. The third thing I realized was that I must have done a pretty darn good job with my old Tracker IV as I spent a considerable amount of time going back over areas that I'd previously pounded with the Tracker IV and only came away with two Wheat pennies, two zincolns, one clad dime, and one clad quarter in the four hours I spent covering that area again with the ATP.
Other than that I picked up about a buck in clad in different areas and dug enough balls of foil to keep Reynolds Wrap in business for a year. Not much in the way of returns, but nothing wrong with getting a little more experience.
 
Spent about 6 hours learning the ATP today. I started with the stock 8.5x11 coil....holy cow that thing is heavy. Swung it for a couple hours and realized a few things. First, there is certainly more arm fatigue compared to the smaller 5x8, no surprise there. Second, impossible to pinpoint with that coil in high trash areas, which applied to most of the area I was hunting today. Way too many targets per square foot. I switched back to the 5x8 and finished out the day. It most certainly does better in the trashy conditions. The third thing I realized was that I must have done a pretty darn good job with my old Tracker IV as I spent a considerable amount of time going back over areas that I'd previously pounded with the Tracker IV and only came away with two Wheat pennies, two zincolns, one clad dime, and one clad quarter in the four hours I spent covering that area again with the ATP.
Other than that I picked up about a buck in clad in different areas and dug enough balls of foil to keep Reynolds Wrap in business for a year. Not much in the way of returns, but nothing wrong with getting a little more experience.

It will come . I like you have a or had a tough time swinging the stock coil because it does seem heavy . Not sure if thats the case or if its a Balance problem with the Rod Assembly either way I bought one of the Gizmos and attached it to my Upper rod and it balances out the detector 95% better with the stock coil on it now do Google search on the Garrett Gizmo and you can see what it is . Not sure if they are being made anymore But I would think they are
 
Try running without the iron audio and zero discrimination. This will open up the iron to sound off in full with clean tones, and cut down on all the random seemingly unrepeatable noise that is the discrimination chatter.
.....^....
That right there. I wasted over a month trying to use discrim and iron audio when what it was doing for me was making things worse.

I can't stand the abrupt and cut off tones that come with discrimination and the iron audio I just don't get.

Put in pro zero and just listen to everything and I found the good tones will come through the mess. I think they call that tone roll audio? :?:

You can still hear the squelchy bottle cap sound. Also why pinpoint? That's another button I never use. With the DD coils you can wiggle off the target and it will be right in front of the little Garrett emblem dead center of the tip of your coil.

In the dirt get a target, wiggle off it then turn 90 degrees and wiggle off it again. Pow it's right there.

Good luck and I wish I could be out there with you. Winter is driving me nuts. :cold:
 
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Irons,
Zse also suggested leaving the iron audio off, so did just that yesterday and found I could still ID bottle caps via the audio change. Pro Zero, wide open, GB about 5 points below auto. In the area where I was intent on silver (that which I'd hunted heavily before) I dug everything that had a high tone associated with it. I only got a few clean high tones which resulted in the few coins I found and one of those was sort of bouncy. The majority of the bouncy signals were just small wads of foil gum wrappers or the little triangle aluminum tab off the ring style pull tabs. Those little tabs would get me on the Tracker IV too.
In the other areas where I was just looking for clad, I found a few good clean high signals that resulted in clad, so for relatively shallow coins or where the trash isn't quite so thick the signals are definitely clear.
Additionally, I tried pinpointing targets by both methods, the wiggle and the pinpoint feature. Both seem to work ok, but found the pinpoint feature would sometime cut out on me or would grow in intensity to the point it would mask the target and I'd have to start over. Seemed to be more of a problem in areas of high trash, so wonder if surrounding interference when pressing the pinpoint button causes it to false?
Anyhow, getting used to pinpointing via the "wiggle" method with the DD coil is a bit different than the 8" concentric, but not horribly so. Found that I'd be off target a number of times with the target actually being about an inch back towards me from where I dug the plug, but was getting better towards the end of the day and found that it was more prevalent on the iffy signals like the wads of foil. I'm sure I'll get better at it.
I think I expected the learning curve to be a bit more shallow than it's proving to be. I do enjoy having the amount of options and feedback available compared to the BH though.
Thanks for the help!
 
All in all the machine never ceases to amaze me. The old park in my small town has been pounded by MD's for years and I still get the occasional oldie out of it.

Here is an odd one I look for now. I was trying to decide if I wanted to dig this bad but weird signal and I swept the coil quickly away from the target and got a weak high tone a foot or so away. :?:

I slowly swept the coil over the new sound and nothing. Swept it really fast and it was there again. So I figured what the heck and dug a wide half circle plug, flipped it over and stuck the pro pointer in and instant signal.

1876 Indian head penny! Unfortunately with a hole in it but still way cool.

Same park another time there was this blaring mixed iron and mid tone sound right out in the open probably been detected over 100 times over the years.

I said the heck with it and dug it. It was a buffalo nickel, a 1951 silver dime and 2 zinc pennies near the surface. The whole spill together sounded like iron. Weird but there it is!
 
I still don't get the whole weight issue lol the whole machine itself only weighs 3.somethin pounds. Time to hit the gym folks.

Just kidding.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk
 
I still don't get the whole weight issue lol the whole machine itself only weighs 3.somethin pounds. Time to hit the gym folks.

Just kidding.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

Well compared to the BH Tracker IV, the AT Pro with stock coil is a TANK! Going to take some getting used to. :D
 
All in all the machine never ceases to amaze me. The old park in my small town has been pounded by MD's for years and I still get the occasional oldie out of it.

Here is an odd one I look for now. I was trying to decide if I wanted to dig this bad but weird signal and I swept the coil quickly away from the target and got a weak high tone a foot or so away. :?:

I slowly swept the coil over the new sound and nothing. Swept it really fast and it was there again. So I figured what the heck and dug a wide half circle plug, flipped it over and stuck the pro pointer in and instant signal.

1876 Indian head penny! Unfortunately with a hole in it but still way cool.

Same park another time there was this blaring mixed iron and mid tone sound right out in the open probably been detected over 100 times over the years.

I said the heck with it and dug it. It was a buffalo nickel, a 1951 silver dime and 2 zinc pennies near the surface. The whole spill together sounded like iron. Weird but there it is!

Undoubtedly, if you only dig strong repeatable signals then you're surely missing out on some good stuff. I'll dig the really strange signals thinking it might be a coin spill. Nine times out of ten it's a rusty hunk of iron, but sometimes it results in something interesting.

About how deep did that IH turn out to be? All the weak high tones I dug yesterday were just shallow foil wads. Found that if I flipped the plug and swept the coil over it, I could avoid searching if the signal was in the plug. If the target were that shallow and silver, it shouldn't be weak.
 
Undoubtedly, if you only dig strong repeatable signals then you're surely missing out on some good stuff. I'll dig the really strange signals thinking it might be a coin spill. Nine times out of ten it's a rusty hunk of iron, but sometimes it results in something interesting.

About how deep did that IH turn out to be? All the weak high tones I dug yesterday were just shallow foil wads. Found that if I flipped the plug and swept the coil over it, I could avoid searching if the signal was in the plug. If the target were that shallow and silver, it shouldn't be weak.

It was only 4 or 5 inches deep but was vertical in the hole. The shallow foil is a bear but it sounds like you found the key to that puzzle already. :grin:

I was training my dog to go MD'ing with me so I was mainly just wandering and digging up whatever I heard.

sept 5- 13 005RS.jpg
 
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