Ace 300 depth and ID question.

What makes you think there are targets deeper than those you've found, but you're just not reaching them?

Heck, I'd rather hunt a site where things were 4-6" deep, as opposed to having 4" of fill added over them.

If you're just not finding older coins, maybe its been hunted before?

Sounds like you're doing fine and the detector is acting pretty normal. Maybe try some air tests with a quarter and see how it hits to get an idea of range at different sensitivities.

I actually prefer my sensitivity high so I get a little falsing when I hunt. In between the little ramblings, you will definitely know when you hit a solid target so a little chatter lets me know it's working and I'm on the threshold of the detectors deepest setting for that ground. Good ground balance is key, although I'm not sure if the 300 has ground balance? I think that starts with the Ace 400...

Gauntlet said:

What makes you think there are targets deeper than those you've found, but you're just not reaching them?

Heck, I'd rather hunt a site where things were 4-6" deep, as opposed to having 4" of fill added over them.

If you're just not finding older coins, maybe its been hunted before?

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I just assumed (first mistake) there would be. Out of the five or so places I've been focusing on I know that at least three have never been hunted. At least not from the 70's on. I just figured there'd be something deeper somewhere. I don't care what it is, I just want verification that I'm actually hitting dept.

MrNovice said:

Sounds like you're doing fine and the detector is acting pretty normal. Maybe try some air tests with a quarter and see how it hits to get an idea of range at different sensitivities.

I actually prefer my sensitivity high so I get a little falsing when I hunt. In between the little ramblings, you will definitely know when you hit a solid target so a little chatter lets me know it's working and I'm on the threshold of the detectors deepest setting for that ground. Good ground balance is key, although I'm not sure if the 300 has ground balance? I think that starts with the Ace 400...

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No sir, no ground balance. I'll go out tonight and crank up the sensitivity. See what happens. That's how I started running this machine but I was digging a lot of homes with nothing there. However, that's like I said, when I first started. My ear is a little more developed now so it may just work.

This machine will be my wife's after this winter as I plan to upgrade to a machine with ground balance (thinking either a max or used pro) since I plan on taking it on every trip. I may need that ground balance for certain situations like a salt beach or something.

I hope I didn't come across as discouraged or knocking the machine. That's not the case. I love this hobby and I love my 300!

NuffaloBickel said:

I just assumed (first mistake) there would be. Out of the five or so places I've been focusing on I know that at least three have never been hunted. At least not from the 70's on. I just figured there'd be something deeper somewhere. I don't care what it is, I just want verification that I'm actually hitting dept.

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Personally, I think many times depth of finds are exaggerated, so I wouldn't base what you think off that. Go bury a couple coins, not so much for depth, but for experimenting with settings relating to what your detector is telling you at those different settings.

I'd owned a 250 and 350, and most of the time if the depth meter showed something at 8", it was usually a can.

NuffaloBickel said:

I hope I didn't come across as discouraged or knocking the machine. That's not the case. I love this hobby and I love my 300!

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No problem, it takes awhile to actually learn what any detector is telling you. Then, even just by tweaking a couple tiny settings, you may have to relearn all over again. It surely takes time and practice. We all can get a little falsing, depending on settings used and whether they are tweaked to the best settings for that detector/that dirt.

Without ground balance, it can be hard to tune the settings best. If the sensitivity is too high, there's too much chatter to understand. If too low, you're not getting the depth the detector could, but it's much quieter. You have to find the balance that is right for you, and then once comfortable...gradually try to increase the sensitivity to as much as you can handle.

The Ace series is a beep and dig detector (bell tones), you'll get some information by tone and VDI but not quite a complete picture as higher end model detectors could give.

I say could because even the higher end detectors with more information can still be fooled. The detector can only give you the information it can, it's up to the user what to do with that info.

We've done quite a few comparisons with the detectors in my sig. Your experiences with your 300 sound like it's operating properly. 0 - 6" is where our 300 hits coins and coin-like targets well.

It sounds like it only has the same depth as the Ace 250 it replaced. I had a few of the Ace 250 & they couldn't properly ID a dime beyond 4". Then I got an AT Pro. Once I bothered to adjust the ground balance, it wasn't long until I got a clad dime down 7". It IDed as dime on every pass. This with stock coil, coins program, using STD mode, so it was loud.

NuffaloBickel said:

This machine will be my wife's after this winter as I plan to upgrade to a machine with ground balance (thinking either a max or used pro) since I plan on taking it on every trip. I may need that ground balance for certain situations like a salt beach or something.

I hope I didn't come across as discouraged or knocking the machine. That's not the case. I love this hobby and I love my 300!

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So I finally got around to air testing a few coins. The machine identified silver dimes, halves, quarters well. ID on clad was accurate as well. However, the "deepest" signal I could get on anything, even with the sensitivity maxed out, was 6 inches. After the six inch mark no matter what it was the signal just stops. So this seems about typical for this machine and the stock coil? This basically mimics exactly what I've been getting in real world scenarios. It's got me going crazy though, wondering what lies beneath that 6" depth in my yard. Especially because I've been finding newer clad at those depths. If the modern stuff is that deep, how much further is the old stuff that was dropped here in the 1800's!?

Another thing that I noted is that if a coin is "standing up" on edge, it double rings as though it were two coins next to one another.

The "problem" of 6" in depth is why I got the MAX. We have a very hunted out permission where we have searched extensively with our ACE's and we're taking the MAX there soon. Should be interesting!

TriadHunter said:

The "problem" of 6" in depth is why I got the MAX. We have a very hunted out permission where we have searched extensively with our ACE's and we're taking the MAX there soon. Should be interesting!

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Please keep me updated as to how it goes. What have you noticed so far regarding differences in depth? I just keep wondering what kind of damage I could do with a Max or Pro and a big coil. All is not lost though. I look at it this way; the 300 is going to pull a lot of the trash and clad out of the ground down to the 4-6" range. Next spring when I hit the yard I should have a fair amount of less desirable targets out of the way.

They ditched the bell tone on the Max, right? Do you know if they did on the Pro as well?

NuffaloBickel said:

Please keep me updated as to how it goes. What have you noticed so far regarding differences in depth? I just keep wondering what kind of damage I could do with a Max or Pro and a big coil. All is not lost though. I look at it this way; the 300 is going to pull a lot of the trash and clad out of the ground down to the 4-6" range. Next spring when I hit the yard I should have a fair amount of less desirable targets out of the way.

They ditched the bell tone on the Max, right? Do you know if they did on the Pro as well?

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The AT Pro is 2 detectors combined, your standard bell tone detector (but deeper than the Ace) and then also a pro mode (raw audio) setting detector. You can run either mode separately. It's the gap that bridges the two, basically. AT Max does not have a bell tones setting. It's all raw audio.

Going deeper and the ability to gather more info/audio from perspective targets is why we upgrade. But even those two parameters are limited by how much one is willing to spend.

I seem to be getting 2-4" more depth over the 300 with the MAX and 1-3" over the 400. Of course that's a very rough estimate and depends on a number of factors. I will say this: the MAX is an absolute pleasure to use over the ACE's, especially the 300. I don't have to worry about seeing the VDI, corded headphones, dropping it into a stream, etc. I was ready for an upgrade so the MAX was a no-brainer for my particular situation.

Thanks folks! That's the info I'm looking for. The things I like about the 300 I like a lot. There's not really anything I don't like, just a couple instances where I can see an upgraded machine benefiting me. I know I don't have a wealth of knowledge in the hobby but it really seems like Garrett makes a nice, sturdy machine. There's just a few features I don't mind paying more for.

NuffaloBickel said:

Thanks folks! That's the info I'm looking for. The things I like about the 300 I like a lot. There's not really anything I don't like, just a couple instances where I can see an upgraded machine benefiting me. I know I don't have a wealth of knowledge in the hobby but it really seems like Garrett makes a nice, sturdy machine. There's just a few features I don't mind paying more for.

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Something you may want to consider....

Do you hunt, or have access to older sites, where quality finds are a distinct possibility? Or do you hit the Parks,Schools, etc for clad and occasional piece of jewelry?

If the prior, you could justify spending more on a detector. If the latter, I'd keep using what I have. A detector upgrade won't make better finds suddenly appear, if they were never there to begin with. Again, location is overwhelmingly the most important factor in making better finds.

Gauntlet said:

Something you may want to consider....

Do you hunt, or have access to older sites, where quality finds are a distinct possibility? Or do you hit the Parks,Schools, etc for clad and occasional piece of jewelry?

If the prior, you could justify spending more on a detector. If the latter, I'd keep using what I have. A detector upgrade won't make better finds suddenly appear, if they were never there to begin with. Again, location is overwhelmingly the most important factor in making better finds.

Click to expand...

Gauntlet said:

Something you may want to consider....

Do you hunt, or have access to older sites, where quality finds are a distinct possibility? Or do you hit the Parks,Schools, etc for clad and occasional piece of jewelry?

If the prior, you could justify spending more on a detector. If the latter, I'd keep using what I have. A detector upgrade won't make better finds suddenly appear, if they were never there to begin with. Again, location is overwhelmingly the most important factor in making better finds.

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Yeah. That's the thing. Most of the sites I'm after/have access to are older places (turn of the century 1800s) in the little town I grew up in. Old houses, fields, old rural parks that were the center of gathering back in the day but not recently. Between those and family properties I should be set easily for the next year or more. Can a man learn/play a song on a Squire bullet? Sure. But if he can afford a Fender Strat (MIM Strat, that's where I see the AT Max falling in the spectrum of detectors ), why wouldn't he use that? I know that isn't the greatest metaphor but I'm a musician and that's the first thing that came to mind.

About 10 years ago, I purchased an ACE 250, a new machine by Garrett Metal Detectors. It was a real winner! A machine at that price, with all the bells and whistles (notching, depth readout, target ID, various-programmed hunting modes) along with great depth turned a lot of heads. Even the accessory coils were moderately priced. Charles Garrett had often stated that he always wanted to build good metal detectors, affordable to all. The ACE Series was good example of this.



Fast forward to 2016. The ACE 300i (International version) has some new features not previously available on the first ACE Series generation. It still comes with a 3 piece attachable rod, a 18 x 25 cm (7" x 10") PROformance™ (concentric) submersible search-coil at a mere 2.8 pounds. However, that little yellow box is packed with new technologies:

New- higher frequency (8 kHz) provides better sensitivity on low and medium-conductivity targets (i.e. gold, lead)
New- Increased Iron Resolution: 3 x the iron resolution of an ACE 250, to help overcome target masking in iron-laden hunt sites
New- Adjustable Frequency to help eliminate interference
New- Cam-locks for increased stem stability
New- Includes Pulse-Width Modulation audio: sharper, more responsive Audio/Digital Target
New- ID: 0 to 99 scale offers target information[/size]


Before doing this writeup,I managed about 10 hunts, including relic hunting in the woods and many hours hunting parks and sports fields. This machine is so EASY to set up and hunt with. Just pick a hunting mode (jewelry, relics or coins) or hunt in zero discrimination. You can also create your own mode which the ACE stores as memory.



One of my favorite hunting modes is shown above. It was designed, by throwing various coins and silver rings on the ground, running my coil over them and copying down the ID number. Then, I made my own "CUSTOM" mode by removing all the notches from the ID range except for the ones which should sound off an audio signal on many of my preferred targets. So, hunting for coins and rings was sooooo easy! I just hunted trashy areas with those settings, and the ACE 300i easily picked out the coins/jewelry with those settings. In less trashy areas, I preferred to hunt in jewelry or relic mode.



This new detector is a coin vacuum! It sounds off on all my coinage. You have to practice going over planted coins to get comfortable with the designated ID numbers . For best results, keep the coil 2-3 inches above the ground and overlap each swing by about half. I found that the ACE 300i has too much power packed into it. Therefore, I could not run it with full sensitivity, even at great distances from power lines. I ran it at 6/8 snsitivity, which gave me excellent depth with good quality ID-ing. One thing to take note on, is that deeper copper coins past the 2-3 inch mark will read s few numbers high. For example, a shallow penny with read about 84. If it's down 3 inches, the number will increase to about 86. A good little piece to remember, as it is not in the manual.



The ACE 300i bangs real hard on rings. It sounds of with equal audio in all directions. I was really surprised to dig 6 of them. Pull-tabs read at about 78, often times with a double beep, making them quite easy to identify. And again...as previously mentioned, beyond 3 inches of depth with pull-tabs, expect a higher number value.



I was quite pleased, getting a signal in the low 60's, strong, yet soft. After trying to carefully pull up the unknown target, I saw a small glimmer of a gold chain. I carefully dug up the chain, and along with it came a gold heart! Made my day.....Some of the other unusual signals, strong, but not suggestive of coins or pull-tabs, came out of the ground as bling! I was rewarded with plenty of earrings and other odds and ends.



Having recently been overshadowed with a mosquito infestation in and around Edmonton, allowed for only one hunt in the woods searching for relics. Even 3 coats of mosquito repellent wouldn't keep those hungry blood sucking bugs off me. Recent stories about the Zika Virus didn't help either! However, I have no doubt in my mind, that the ACE 300i would have pulled out some great finds from the dirt in Edmonton.



I did perform an air test on the ACE 300i. Doing an air test on a single frequency metal detector with will show it's most maximal potential detection depth. Now, you will most likely not get these depths of similar targets in your soil or water. However, if a metal detector air tests 8 inches on a gold ring, it will NOT read any deeper then 8" in the ground. Mineralization, salinity, moisture all interfere with a metal detector's ability to detect a target deep.



Here is what each target's numerical target was during the air test. The exact same targets will read differently if covered with oxidation, are extremely deep or are found with different mineralizations in the soil.

If you are new to metal detecting, and are looking for your first metal detector, don't overlook the new Garrett ACE Series metal detectors. They pack a lot of performance, technology and can be purchased at a reasonable price. If you are looking for a coin shooter to hunt well manicured lawns, the ACE Series would also fill that need.

Excellent write up. The 300 really is a great machine. I have to say, so far, my numbers for air testing differ from yours by about two inches. I actually plan to do a more thorough test this weekend though. That review of yours should be on Garrett's website.