Thoughts on the Rutus Alter 71

Donsell

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I received my Rutus Alter 71 last week and took a long weekend to put it through its paces and I thought I’d write down and share my thoughts. I purchased the Alter, it was not provided to me for review or testing and I intend to use it as my main machine.

I ordered the Alter from Detecnicks in the UK as there is no US distributor. It arrived 8 days after I placed my order which I thought was very good. Cost was right at $800 delivered.

I wanted a detector that was both easy to run for short excursions but allows the user to adjust settings for specific situations. The Alter offers this. It has 7 programs: Ultra Deep, Deep, Big Silver, Basic, Coins, Fast and Ultra Fast. However, the user has the ability to individually adjust the following settings:

Frequency from 4.4 kHz to 18.4 kHz in .2 kHz steps
Hot Rock mitigation from -30 to 30
Reaction Time from 1 to 8
Masking Level from 0 to 6
Threshold Level from 0 to 100
Threshold Tone from 60 to 500
Threshold Sens from 0 to 30
Threshold SAT from 0 to 20
Audio Gain from 0 to 60
VCO on or off
Volume from 1 to 30
There are 9 Tone profiles including 3 user customizable. Tones range is 60 to 999 Hz and individual tones can be set to any of the 120 identification points.

Unfortunately, there are no user definable programs. Changes are made to one of the existing programs and are saved from session to session but can easily be reset back to defaults.

Sensitivity from 0 to 90, Discrimination 0 to 120 and Notch Discrimination of any of the 120 identification points can be set across all of the programs.

So you can see that the Alter 71 is highly customizable.

Ground balance is obtained through pumping the detector and the Alter does not offer ground balance tracking.

Along with the VDI of up to 120 and the tones, the Alter provides a hodograph plotting what the coil read during its sweep. The more horizontal or parabolic the graph, the more likely the target is mixed metal. The more vertical the more likely the target is of a single metal. I dug almost every target to learn how well this works and the hodograph doesn’t lie. Old, rusty bottle caps that gave a high tone always had a bad looking plot. Unfortunately, aluminum is a single metal and I fell victim to aluminum cans that gave a high tone, especially when they were crushed vertically. But combining the hodograph with the VDI and the tone an object gives will arm the user with a lot of information to help to sort good targets from the bad. It will take some experience to be good at it, though.

The Alter works in two channels, a motion channel with object identification and discrimination and an all metal channel with adjustable operation speed. Channels can be used individually, or active at the same time when settings put the detector in dual mode. The Ultra Deep is an all metal program, Deep and Big Silver are dual channel programs, Basic, Coin, Fast and Ultra Fast are motion with discrimination programs by default.

Coming from an AT-Pro, I had never used a detector with an all metal channel and it will take some getting used to.

This past weekend, I had the Alter in 3 different locations. The first was a permission at a home built in the late 1800s. I’ve searched this permission many times. It has yielded some silver coins, but not for a while. I played with different programs and did find a 1964 Rosie at about 4 inches deep. I was using the Deep Silver program at the time. I can’t say that my AT-Pro missed this coin. It’s more likely that it was never under the AT-Pro’s coil.

I searched a newer park using the Coins program. This program is set up like the AT-Pro. Frequency of 15 kHz, although I felt the reaction time was better using the Alter. It is only using the motion channel. It hit quarters like the AT-Pro, giving a consistent VDI of 109 with a great tone and vertical hodograph, just below where a silver coin would be. I couldn’t tell if it was deeper than the AT-Pro.

I also searched an older park using the Deep program. It uses a frequency of 7 kHz and is dual mode. I liked it a lot. It did hit a 1917 Wheatie at about 8 inches with the correct VDI and a good hodograh which I thought was impressive. However, it also hit a rusty horse tack ring at 10 inches with a high tone and VDI. The hodograph was skewed horizontal, so I knew it wasn’t a coin. But I wasn’t expecting iron either.

After 3 days of heavy use, the batteries were half depleted. These were Duracells provided by Rutus.

At this point, I can’t tell you if the Alter is faster or deeper than other brands. I’ve never used an Impact, Deus, E-Trac or V3i which are the other machines I considered but would love to put it head to head with them. Considering how customizable the Alter is, I think it will compete very well if used by an experienced user, which I’m not. Yet.

But I look forward to learning what it’s capable of which is part of the fun for me. It looks to be a great machine, especially considering the price.

I’ll do my best to answer any questions you all have.
 
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Awesome write up, very informative!

How comfortable is the handle, though? In the photos I've seen, it looks like just a piece of straight, molded plastic, lacking any contouring.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Good report.
If you want to go deep you need to run a low reactivity of 2 or 3. I find 8khz or 9khz good for high conductor coins.
To high a reactivity shortens the audio report, i only use a high reactivity on plough or harrowed iron ridden soil, your not looking for depth in that situation anyways.
Another trick for the deep coins is to run your hot rock option in a positive setting, it moves the point where 0 and 120 on the scale meets, it gives you a little more wriggle room before a deep coin starts to be seen as iron by the detector.
https://youtu.be/D2pLauoNzNs
It can be a very fast machine!
 
Ghound,
Talk to us about the mask setting.

And give you give some info on,,freq wise,,on smaller silver,,what freq seems to work best,,like US dime sized coin,,,and on bigger silver like our quarter sized silver coins,,,from a depth perspective please.
 
I keep my masking low, but then i run my detectors disc low also, never above small nails.
From testing, the masking makes no difference i could find to depth, it just masks the disc or notched out items more defined so as the audio is cleaner/better disced, though it could also mask wanted targets that fall close to the disced or notched numbers.
If i'm in a lot of nails and getting false high tone spikes, i'll turn it up.

High conductor coins, big and small seem to hit best at 8 or 9khz in my soil, the thing is, if you have regular areas you hunt you can fine tune the target to khz to ground minerals for each site.
The low conductors im maxed out at 18.4khz .there's just so many ways to tweek the machine to suit.
 
Donsell, What was the latest software update about ? I remember reading your threads about them saying to wait for the new updated versions before you buy....
 
I keep my masking low, but then i run my detectors disc low also, never above small nails.
From testing, the masking makes no difference i could find to depth, it just masks the disc or notched out items more defined so as the audio is cleaner/better disced, though it could also mask wanted targets that fall close to the disced or notched numbers.
If i'm in a lot of nails and getting false high tone spikes, i'll turn it up.

High conductor coins, big and small seem to hit best at 8 or 9khz in my soil, the thing is, if you have regular areas you hunt you can fine tune the target to khz to ground minerals for each site.
The low conductors im maxed out at 18.4khz .there's just so many ways to tweek the machine to suit.

Hey,
Thanks.
 
Awesome write up, very informative!

How comfortable is the handle, though? In the photos I've seen, it looks like just a piece of straight, molded plastic, lacking any contouring.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

The handle is hard, molded plastic, but has finger grips and fits your hand well. I wear gloves and had no problems with it. It does have grooves that do get dirt in them.

It is a little heavier than the AT Pro, but I had no problems swinging it all day. Saturday we put in a 8 hour day and I was fine.
 
Donsell, What was the latest software update about ? I remember reading your threads about them saying to wait for the new updated versions before you buy....

Thank you for reminding me about the update. I did wait until it was available. They added a setting I forgot about. VCO on or off. My understand is that with VCO on, it makes the all metal sound at a higher pitch the closer you get to an object. It's similar to the pinpointer.

They also added a depth gauge to the pinpoint function. I didn't find it to be very accurate though.

Another setting I forgot about was VDI normalization. If I understand correctly, the VDI on the Deus is set to the 18 kHz frequency. You can choose to normalize it to 6 kHz, 12kHz or leave it natural to the frequency you're running.
 
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Good report.
If you want to go deep you need to run a low reactivity of 2 or 3. I find 8khz or 9khz good for high conductor coins.
To high a reactivity shortens the audio report, i only use a high reactivity on plough or harrowed iron ridden soil, your not looking for depth in that situation anyways.
Another trick for the deep coins is to run your hot rock option in a positive setting, it moves the point where 0 and 120 on the scale meets, it gives you a little more wriggle room before a deep coin starts to be seen as iron by the detector.
https://youtu.be/D2pLauoNzNs
It can be a very fast machine!

Very cool. I ran it with the stock programs this weekend to get a feel for it. Sounds like you like the Deep program.

Do you run in dual mode?
 
Donsell and or Ghound,,,

Take a look at this video.
The gent don't say how he has the detector setup.

With the coin IDs provided in video,,can you draw any conclusions to how he has detector setup as far as ID goes??
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Q94eWNR48

Its difficult to tell because of the shadow, but I think he's running the stock coins program. The settings would be:

15 kHz
Hot Rock 0
Reaction 4
Masking 4
Threshold settings all 0
Gain 20
Tones Coin 3
ID Type 12kHz

I do wish they'd say how they have the machine set up.
 
Its difficult to tell because of the shadow, but I think he's running the stock coins program. The settings would be:

15 kHz
Hot Rock 0
Reaction 4
Masking 4
Threshold settings all 0
Gain 20
Tones Coin 3
ID Type 12kHz

I do wish they'd say how they have the machine set up.

Thanks
 
I don't run dual mode if i'm after coins Don. For my coin hunting which is mostly on old pasture, i keep it simple,
2 tone
tone break 20
disc 5
Gain 40
reactivity 2-3
max sensitivity
hot rock set positive according to conditions high conductors, neutral for low conductors.
18.4khz for thin hammered coins, 8khz for milled coins.



Very cool. I ran it with the stock programs this weekend to get a feel for it. Sounds like you like the Deep program.

Do you run in dual mode?
 
Thank you for reminding me about the update. I did wait until it was available. They added a setting I forgot about. VCO on or off. My understand is that with VCO on, it makes the all metal sound at a higher pitch the closer you get to an object. It's similar to the pinpointer.

They also added a depth gauge to the pinpoint function. I didn't find it to be very accurate though.

Another setting I forgot about was VDI normalization. If I understand correctly, the VDI on the Deus is set to the 18 kHz frequency. You can choose to normalize it to 6 kHz, 12kHz or leave it natural to the frequency you're running.

Thank you.71 frequencies, can you load personal programs to save or do you have to reset every time if you choose other than the 7 preset programs ?
 
Thank you.71 frequencies, can you load personal programs to save or do you have to reset every time if you choose other than the 7 preset programs ?

A few user programs is one of the functions I wish it had. You don't have to make the modifications every time, it remembers the changes you make to one of the 7 default programs. But if you reset a program back to a default your program is gone.

I don't feel like I'm explaining it well. Does that make sense to you?

Like in ghounds example, he doesn't use the dual mode programs so he could modify the deep program to be exactly what he wants. He doesn't have to modify it each time, it remembers his settings. As long as he doesn't reset it back to defaults it'll be exactly what he wants. But it'll always be called the Deep program.
 
A few user programs is one of the functions I wish it had. You don't have to make the modifications every time, it remembers the changes you make to one of the 7 default programs. But if you reset a program back to a default your program is gone.

I don't feel like I'm explaining it well. Does that make sense to you?

Like in ghounds example, he doesn't use the dual mode programs so he could modify the deep program to be exactly what he wants. He doesn't have to modify it each time, it remembers his settings. As long as he doesn't reset it back to defaults it'll be exactly what he wants. But it'll always be called the Deep program.

Yes, it makes sense. Thank you for taking the time to explain.
 
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