Myers Depot Metal Detectors

Intro

Rock Jock

Rock Jock

Elite Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2020
Messages
613
Location
Homeless in USA - Frequently in Charleston, SC
Hello everybody. I'm a newbie here and have been trying to become proficient with the equipment I bought. :laughing: I've had it for about two years and it has been just in the last year that I've used it more intensely (since acquiring a pinpointer). At any rate, my gear consists of a Garrett AT Max (love the wireless!) metal detector and a Garrett Pro Pointer AT pinpointer. It has been a regular voyage of discovery. I've been playing with it in all kinds of settings to try to understand how to set the device up for varying conditions, both locally and regionally. I use it for archaeological relic and artifact hunting, coin & whatever hunting, marine beach scanning for money, jewelry and whatever and gold nugget prospecting. I'm also probably going to add some earphones for snorkel detecting in marine settings.
The device isn't the easiest gizmo to master. It is a regular child's garden of squeaks, buzzes and even the raspberries! Some things I've been struggling with include seawater saturated beach sand in, just above and just below the swash zone. Other hassles are "hot rocks" layers while looking for nuggets along fresh water courses. The layers are about 8" thick ferruginous bog iron between cobbles, boulders, pebbles and grit in water saturated old braided stream and oxbow lake environments back off the stream.
I don't have a mentor in this learning curve. I just read the manual and search the internet and do YouTubes. They help!
Is it normal to take years to become good at this stuff?
 
Welcome from Winnsboro, South Carolina !!!!

Not being personally familiar with that model I'll leave specific tips related to that model to other members, but here is part one of an instructional video series in case you didn't see this yet -

AT MAX Instructional Video Part 1 of 3 (US Version)



:mder: ______ :mder: ______ :mder: ______ :mder:
 
:fmdfwelcome:... from the thawing-out state of Minnesota! :cool3: Happy hunting! :mder:

Rock Jock said:
...Is it normal to take years to become good at this stuff?
Click to expand...

Between learning all the functions of the detector, learning how it reacts to certain items, and learning how to properly use all the rest of equipment, I would definitely say yes. :D
 
Thanks for the greetings folks! Good encouragement. Some of the interesting things I've found lately include interesting bottles incidental to metal detecting (old poison bottles, medicine bottles and wine bottles), half of a heavily gold plated brass bracelet, a bronze British One Penny coin dated 1922, 3 shotshell low brass heads (UMC, UMC-Remington and a British Eley-Kynoch) and the proverbial needle in a haystack (a brass pin!!!). I've also been getting some blobs of solder, a few small brass things with curly cues and decorative stampings on them, a base metal watch movement (without the case???. I spotted the jewels.), several buttons, three flat irons, iron strap hinges, rust fragments and chips all over the place, rivets, shoe lace eyelets and part of a cauldron, among other stuff, mostly junk. Fun though peeling back some pages of history.
 
Welcome from SW WI

To answer your question, it can take years to learn, but it doesn't have to.

The ATMax is a higher gain machine, and can become very chatty. In my opinion a quick way to learn a machine, is to get to a park and hunt some clad. I get it it may not be sexy like pulling big gold, digging George Washington buttons or saving Morgan Dollars, but clad is very abundant, generally shallower (which provides more identifiable) signal.

Tip 2, stay out of the nail infested sites, iron Falses, you will learn that unfortunately too well.

Tip 3 turn down the sensitivity to reduce the chatter. You can crank that up after you learn what the sounds are. As i said earlier your machine is a higher gain machine capable of digging deeper signals but those signnals are generally iffy signal, and im a firm believer you have to know the good signals before you take on the iffy signals.

Tip 4 to go the extra mile take a quick note (on paper or phone) on the sound and VDI number before you dig. Also listen to how the sound breaks on the front and the back of the tone. I wish i knew this before I started. Our hobby is really broken into two adventures, one is finding the target with the detector and the second adventure starts as you start to dig for the target. I know that may sound stupid, but really when we go on the second adventure of retrieving it, we many times forget the first. And if you retrieve the target, but forget what made you decide to dig it in the first place you've learned nothing.
 
Thanx for the tips Big Treble! As regards tip #2, not only do I encounter lots of nails, but also many rust flakes, chips and fragments. They kind of go with the turf. I'm already carrying my sensitivity at five bars. I'll experiment with some lower sensitivities to see if that tames the rust. Garrett suggests cranking up the Fe Discrimination until barely rejecting trash Fe w/ Iron Audio off. I'll play with that as well. I'll start noting sound and VDI#. I haven't really been paying attention to the sound breaks on either end of the tone. That's interesting.
I've probably been digging a fair number of iffy(but stronger) signals. If they are iffy and seem or register by MD pinpointer as deeper I usually opt to pass on these since I'm even getting a lot of iron junk in the mix even with good, crisp, repeatable non-iron signals. The ground is naturally "hot" anyway. It is also rocky just to make the digging tedious. Seems like I specialize in rocky locations. I don't generally use a shovel under those conditions, but prefer a garden ripper with a treble claw on one end of the head and a flat mattock blade on the other. It works pretty well in the generally dry, thin and rocky soil. I have a folding shovel available in my pack if it is a thicker soil cover.
 
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