Garrett Pro Pointer is giving me issues

I own 2 that are several years old. after sending in for repairs started unscrewing the cap 4 or 5 turns when not in use. Have not had any trouble since. hh blev

Martin_V3i said:

Try putting a quarter or a larger token inside the cap. Your battery terminals have likely lost their spring-ness.

Other than that, try another new battery, a good brand alkaline. Hope this helps.

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demyansk1942 said:

I have used the quarter

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I just started having issues with my Garrett Pro-pointer this past week. My issue is a little different than described by Tundra (the OP) - basically, sometimes it works perfectly, then suddenly it starts to behave erratically. For example, while probing for a target, it might start emitting an alternating tone which is supposed to indicate a low battery - even with fresh ones intstalled. Other times it might give intermittent chirps exactly like the OP mentioned. Or it might turn itself off - in fact, several times I found that just the "impact" of putting it down next to the hole or bumping it against the detector was enough to cause it to shut down. Once it turns itself off like that, I often have trouble turning it back on using the black power button - the button was useless, as though no batteries were in the pointer at all.

Since I originally assumed I just had a bad battery, I rapidly learned that unscrewing the battery cap on the unit about 1/8 of a turn served as my new power switch (it made my Pro-pointer come back to life, at least temporarily), and I also learned that brand new batteries didn't solve the problem. Needless to say, I'm pretty disappointed - although I had received the Pro-pointer as a gift a couple years ago, I've only been using it since this past April when I finally made a detector purchase. Five months' worth of fairly gentle use in the field isn't what I was hoping for out of a piece of equipment that's going to cost over $100 to replace.

Anyway, after cutting a hunt short for the second day in a row today thanks to the spotty pinpointer, I found this thread while researching the problem and debating on sending the pointer back to Garrett for repair. For me, adding a coin in between the battery and the cap seems to have gotten the pin-pointer to start behaving again! Being the cheapskate that I am, I used a penny rather than a quarter (and a Canadian penny, to boot!), which seems to be working just as well.

In case anyone else has similar issues, I'll report again after I use it once or twice in the field with my Canuck version of the battery box If nothing else, I'm hoping it will get me though the Fall hunting season so I can send it to Garrett for repair during the Winter down time, and hopefully avoid the cash outlay for a new pinpointer altogether.

Well, it looks like my pinpointer issues are solved - the 1 cent battery box fix seems to have done the trick. A total of 4 hours of use since the "fix" and no repeat issues