AT Pro learning curve?

My first detector was a Tracker, I then bought an ACE 250, then a BH Pioneer 505 and finally bought the AT Pro. I really really liked the BHs. They are so light and the tones are very easy on the ears and soothing and compared to the others they were just as accurate on coin I Ds within depth range. My complaint was not a single silver coin with the BHs. After many air test telling me that both BHs just didn't come close to the Garretts I built a test garden in my yard to make it official. I planted silver dimes and quarters at six and eight and ten inches deep in moist soil. Neither BHs would see any of the coins not even the six inchers. The ACE 250 with stock coil gave a perfect sig on the six inch dime and quarter and silent on the 8 inch dime and jumpy on the 8 inch quarter. The AT Pro with stock coil gave a clean signal on the ten inch quarter and eight inch dime but was silent on the 10 dime. I recently redid the dime at ten inches and started backing off the ground balance till i could see the dime at ten iches. This works in my soil. Auto GB was 73. When I backed it down to 60 I could see the dime a 10 inches. Like many have said here. Knowing your go to detector like the back of your hand is a must. But you need a unit that will get you at least down to the six to 8 inch range to find older coins (at least where I live and hunt). The AT Pro will do it for you when you get it learned good. Give it time and you will learn to love it.

Sonny b said:

My first detector was a Tracker, I then bought an ACE 250, then a BH Pioneer 505 and finally bought the AT Pro. I really really liked the BHs. They are so light and the tones are very easy on the ears and soothing and compared to the others they were just as accurate on coin I Ds within depth range. My complaint was not a single silver coin with the BHs. After many air test telling me that both BHs just didn't come close to the Garretts I built a test garden in my yard to make it official. I planted silver dimes and quarters at six and eight and ten inches deep in moist soil. Neither BHs would see any of the coins not even the six inchers. The ACE 250 with stock coil gave a perfect sig on the six inch dime and quarter and silent on the 8 inch dime and jumpy on the 8 inch quarter. The AT Pro with stock coil gave a clean signal on the ten inch quarter and eight inch dime but was silent on the 10 dime. I recently redid the dime at ten inches and started backing off the ground balance till i could see the dime at ten iches. This works in my soil. Auto GB was 73. When I backed it down to 60 I could see the dime a 10 inches. Like many have said here. Knowing your go to detector like the back of your hand is a must. But you need a unit that will get you at least down to the six to 8 inch range to find older coins (at least where I live and hunt). The AT Pro will do it for you when you get it learned good. Give it time and you will learn to love it.

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It sounds like you've had great luck since switching to the AT. On the contrary, I found quite a bit of silver (at least quite a bit for our area) with my BH over the last couple years. In fact, I hunted side by side with a guy who was using an ACE 250 last year and although we both found coins, I was the only one who pulled silver. Although I'm sure there are coins below the detection depth of the BH, the majority of the silver were under 5" in depth and the BH did a bang up job. I've found over 25 silver coins with the old Tracker IV. Just found my first shallow silver coin today with the AT Pro. It was a 1965 Canadian dime. Not much, but it's something. Still waiting to find a coin sized object deeper than 5"-6" with the ATP. However, I've only got about 14 hours on the thing now, so have a lot more hours to go before I can form an educated opinion on it's performance. I do like it's recovery speed using the 5x8 coil in the high trash areas though. Really great at target separation.

I totally agree with the "wiggle the coil and back off the signal" way of pinpointing. That's the only real way to go in pinpointing a target.


On a side note, I need to try the zero disc. way of hunting. I've always used Mode 1, disc. at 35, and using iron audio either On/Off. I mainly relic hunt, sometimes in trashy spots.

Thanks all for a new way to go about it!

I spent an hour this morning before work going back over some of the Tracker IV ground I've previously been working. Dug every signal that had even a remote chance of being good. Results were one zinc penny, one rusted bottle cap, and about ten folded aluminum tabs off the beaver tails. No deep silver.
On the way home from work I stopped by a location where an old house used to sit and is now a park (house demolished long ago). Tried using iron audio to work around the extremely trashy site. Found one brass pipe fitting, a couple pieces of rusty iron, some can slaw, and a very small flat copper oval disc.
I've really got some work ahead of me to figure out the nuances of this machine.
Time to rebuild the test garden and see if I can narrow down my depth capabilities.

Ive only had the opportunity to dig a couple targets using my AT since I just got it and its winter and Im in Ohio but Im finding pinpointing with it to be very easy , just like with my ace 250 , do your x pattern with the button pushed to find the true center , when the bar at the top is full from either direction , then pull it straight back until the bar at the top starts to drop off , the target is right at the tip of the coil in the middle.

ohiochris said:

Ive only had the opportunity to dig a couple targets using my AT since I just got it and its winter and Im in Ohio but Im finding pinpointing with it to be very easy , just like with my ace 250 , do your x pattern with the button pushed to find the true center , when the bar at the top is full from either direction , then pull it straight back until the bar at the top starts to drop off , the target is right at the tip of the coil in the middle.

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Ohio problems.......

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

I've picked up the hang of pinpointing with the DD coil pretty quick. I prefer the wiggle method, but will use the pinpoint button on occasion.
My problem is figuring out the subtle cues. Shallow coins with strong signals, no problem. I think it's going to take some hours of practice to figure out the subtle differences on deeper/smaller good targets.
Additionally, the house demo site I worked tonight is an iron rich environment, so tried using iron discrimination with iron audio. That's going to take some practice too.

gunsil said:

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.

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I have to disagree about the coins sinking. I hit certain spots yearly and pick up lots of dropped coins over the last year that have sunk anywhere from 1 to 3 or 4 inches within 12 months. These coins are fresh , not coins I missed all the many times i went over them before , and there are a lot of them each time. The ground gets very wet a few months out of the year but I find them stuck in the grass roots and well beyond the grass roots too. Not a lot of soil buildup in these locations and certainly not in 12 months time.

It depends on moisture and soil composition as to how far they sink but they will continue to sink up until the point that the soil density stops them from sinking any farther. But it varies a lot depending on location , this is why in some places silver is really deep and at others its near the surface. The soil density can also vary a lot sometimes within a few feet , and thats one of the reason people will find modern clad deeper than older silver on the same site. Sometimes coins will sink when larger or heavier items wont , but thats about displacement , larger or more bulky items dont sink or sink at a much slower rate because they would have to displace a lot more soil to do it....in a sense its like boats in water just on a different scale. Its hard to think of soil being fluid , but it is. Constantly changing and moving ever so subtly , even below the surface. The way scientists put it , everything vibrates , and different items vibrate at different frequencies , just at a microscopic level. When you apply this to something like soil , you get fluid movement in the soil at a level invisible to human eyes but enough for certain things to sink over time. And thats not even accounting things like small earth tremors , far away explosions , heavy equipment or dumptrucks driving down a nearby road , etc , adding even more vibration that a human standing in the area may not even feel.

Spartan84 said:

Ohio problems.......

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

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Yep , thats a problem for detectorists


On the brighter side that means the sledding hills should be really good by spring

ohiochris said:

Yep , thats a problem for detectorists


On the brighter side that means the sledding hills should be really good by spring

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Woohoo! Sledding hills abound around here!

abbynormal said:

Woohoo! Sledding hills abound around here!

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They arent all good , but they CAN be awesome if enough people go sledding there.

I think I've chosen some very challenging environments to learn the ATP. All have been extremely cluttered with ferrous or non-ferrous trash. The 5x8 coil has done a remarkable job of locating higher VDI targets against the background of various trash targets and I've already noticed a difference over the Tracker IV's performance in the same environments, but I think the combination of my inexperience with this machine and the massive amount of feedback I get is limiting my ability to discern what is good and what's not. I've been digging most every "good" signal I get and have dug a lot of junk, but not a whole log of very good stuff yet. I'd probably be better off to go try some locations where this is less metal clutter. The last hunt I went on had the ATP sounding like a Geiger counter. Couldn't even find a blank location to GB.

Be it shooting a bow and arrow or throwing a frisbee, a certain amount of skill and physical abilities are required for repeatable successful results. Swinging a metal detector for a few hours is no different and the stressors are exactly the same as shooting a bullet 300 yards into a 3" bulls eye. Factors such as the weather, terrain, stress levels and millions of other considerations related to how long a swinging coil remains over a potential target will determine whether or not the MDer will hear the split second tone as their coil passes over the target. In pilot talk, if my Bounty Hunter Outback ($139.00) is a Cessna (I love them too), my AT Pro ($595.00) is a AH-60 helicopter (I really love them). What makes the AT Pro...and I'm comparing it to no other machine....great is its recovery rate between targets and the number of discrimination notches available to use while "scrubbing" a area of trash. If you're digging clad the AT Pro is predictable in DTI's for each clad and zinc coin normally detected. My numbers are; 42 is tin foil, 52 is a nickle, 55 is a pull tab, 75 is a penny, 81 is a dime and 84-86 is a clad quarter. These numbers must be repeatable and toggling the iron audio on and off will help identify bottle caps. I have dug some .925 which also rang into the 80's and I've heard that 14K rings in at 63-64. My primary problem with the AT Pro is that it does chatter a lot in trashy areas and does (initially) present a lot of questions as to what and what not to dig. To solve this I have to remember that the target I'm searching for is a pin point in the universe and the faster I swing the coil the less response time I give my detector to identify it as a good target. Getting tired, anxious or perplexed adds to the urge to "cover this area and go home". Might as well just go home and come back on a day when you feel like MDing, are able to slow down your swing and listen for the difference in the tone and amplitude of sounds being generated as your coil passes over the many targets beneath it. Picking out that one right tone at just the right amplitude will put you over a target the DTI will allow you to assess and attempt repeating the sound for good target ID. I don't often use the pin pointing feature of my AT Pro since I am usually able to narrow the location of a clear and repeatable target into a few square inch area, and my ProPointer is called in to finish it off.

AT Pro/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT hand held

Sarge,
Good information from experience. Thanks.
I've watched so many videos on the AT Pro where deeper good targets have shown up iffy that I'm scared to pass on even the questionable ones. I'll take your advice and try to stick to repeatable signals for a while. Like I mentioned earlier, there is so much trash in the sites I've been hitting that I'll get repeatable signals quite often, but some are larger targets and some are in a VDI that I want to pass on. I've since learned to pinpoint quite accurately using the DD coil without using the pinpoint feature. Works well. I'll get there, but time time spent hunting is going to be the key.
Thanks again!

Bentrod, today rates as a 0 on a 1 to 10 metal detecting weather day. I will go out to do chores which require driving, but the milk and bread aren't the only thing I'll bring home from my travels. Regardless of where I go, I usually take a different return route home. These are the times I scope out new and potentially interesting areas to visit for metal detecting on nicer days. If targets are the goal, I hit the margin strip of the street bordering the school or the side of the church where the kids tumble down the grassy hill. Bus stops are interesting along with paths....any path..where footsteps have ocurred presents the probability of a good target. For fun, I use the GPS in my car to find new and unexplored (at least by me) parks with appealing tot lots and large trees. If they look good I simply add them to my destinations and can easily recall their locations for future visits. I am comfortably retired so the monetary value of the target is of a small consequence when compared to the instant gratification I feel just by finding it. Accordingly, I deeply respect my digging buddy for returning a 14K class ring, with a melt value of over $300.00, to its rightful owner, and then refusing a cash reward. But knowing people like him, and share his values, adds a realm to metal detecting which means bling in the pocket will always take a back seat to the warmth in the heart from what the find means rather than how loud it rings. A zinc in the pouch is always better than a quarter in the ground.

AT Pro/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT hand held

Yes, the next few days at least look to be days to stare out the window. I don't mind a little wet weather, but not being retired myself yet I tend to hunt before or after work for short bursts, so try to avoid getting soaked.
I'm mainly in it for the thrill of the hunt (silver and relics), but do like to see the clad add up as well as the potential of finding something that might go towards future MDing expenses. Kudos to your friend who returned the ring. Would like to think I'd do the same. Even if I was tempted not to, the angel on my shoulder (otherwise known as my wife) would certainly remind me of my conscious!

I've had my AT Pro for almost a full year now and I learn something new almost every outing. Sometimes I catch myself doing subtle things that I don't really realize like hitting targets from multiple directions, pinpointing from different angles, catching little chirps in between the trash and deciding to go with my gut or not to dig, and automatically knowing when to slow down or pick up the pace. I could go on and on, but it definitely takes a while and despite hundreds of hours I know I have a long way to go...but damn it's fun