AT Pro Review

[Clayton]

I received the beautiful brown box via UPS tonight.

I plan to do a full impressions/review tomorrow if I can squeeze in a hunt before the weather goes bad and the family gets together for turkey.

Here are my initial impressions of my experiences after assembly and one (very) quick trip:

1. It is really hard to MD in the dark with 6 small children hanging on you and standing in your hole as you are digging...especially when a few of them are your own children and you promised your wife you'd 'take the kids to the park.'

2. The AT Pro is crazy light. I could (and will) swing this thing all day and night without getting tired.

3. The assembly is a breeze. But pay attention to put the rubber gaskets that mount the shaft-to-coil in the correct location, outside the shaft but inside the coil mount. There are three holes that have to be aligned for each gasket and you have to mash them in to get the thing to seat correctly. There is also not a lot of extra coil wire to deal with like in some other detectors. Just enough (and I'm tall).

4. The wire connectors for coil-to-box assembly are cheesy. They are unnecessarily difficult to align without bending the wires and simply turning the locking mechanism is really tough as it is crammed into a small space that fingers weren't meant to go. I suspect this was a necessary evil for the ubber small size/weight but I predict there will be some issues with bent pins on coil connections. Same for the headphone connectors. If you NEVER change coils or headphones this wouldn't be an issue.

5. The display is smaller than I thought it would be. I can read it and all...it just seemed bigger in the manual and on the videos...again, the whole thing is small and light. If you have an ACE 250 or so you'll be right at home with the form factor.

6. It is very easy to toggle between standard and pro mode. Really there aren't two modes as much as 6 different preset modes you can opt...three standard and three pro and simply pressing the mode button you rapidly toggle from one to the next.

7. The DD coil is pretty slick and accuracy seems like a boost forward. I want to hold reservation on performance until tomorrow....suffice it to say I was very happy with my (brief) initial results and if I hadn't been up 1/2 the night last night I'd probably go back out for some nerdy nighttime hunting someplace right now. Gonna be some good dreams tonight thought! I plan to get up early and hit my favorite current spot and give it a real pounding.

8. The swag stuff from KellyCo seems mostly like junk. A couple of decent things there but definitely not worth influencing any future buying decisions for me...but this isn't a review on KellyCo's marketing decisions....

More tomorrow...Clayton

[thuderle]

Clayton, you caught the same points I was going to make with regards to installation. I spent a good deal of time lining those connector pins for the coil and headphones plugs b/c I was concerned I would bend the pins.

I did manage to get about 1.5 hours in at the local soccer complex before dark. I hit the same site last Sunday and found about $2.50 in clad. To see if I missed anything, I followed the same path I used on Sunday. I found over $1.60 in clad yesterday. The difference was that the clad I found yesterday was all deeper; yesterday, it was between 6-8 inches.

Ground balancing the machine was easy - push and hold the GB button and pump the coil and down a couple of times. My machine balanced right at 80.

I kept it in standard mode initially and nearly blew my ears out the first signal! I've always used ear buds from my I-pod when I've detected in the past so this was my first time with headphones so not sure if the change in equipment was the difference or not.

The first target I found was a nickel right in front of a concession stand. As I mentioned, the bell tone was loud and clear. It showed a solid 50 on the screen. I switched to the pro coin mode and got another solid tone without the roll associated with junk so I dug it up.

Later on, I got another solid 50 with the associated roll tone. I dug it anyway just to see how accurate the machine was. This time, I pulled out a tab from a soda can. One more 50 with the tone roll, and again it was a tab from a soda can, though this one was bent nearly 90 degrees.

The pin point feature was a little more difficult for me to do than what I am used to with my BH Landstar, but after a few tries I was pretty close with the first hole I would dig. I use a gardening trowel and try to keep the holes about 3" in diameter. With the PP on this machine, I was digging holes about 6" in diameter. I'm sure I'll be able to make them smaller as I become more familiar with the machine.

I'm going up to a co-worker's farm on Sunday to relic hunt so I'll be able to provide some feedback on that aspect later. For coins, I'm very happy with my purchase.

BTW, I have to agree with the stuff from Kellyco. I opted for the kit with the pin pointer simply because I don't have one. Other than that item, I'm not impressed. I would have preferred the option to replace the other stuff with the waterproof headphones I ordered. However, I was very impressed with the service (this was my first order from them).

HH - Todd

[RickO]

Good reports guys.... quite thorough. Good luck with your new equipment. RickO

[Clayton]

It is 5 am, quite in the house, and most importantly I've got some strong coffee and my notes from an absolutely exhausting but very informative hunt yesterday. I'm serious about that coffee. I have a lot of turkey-induced lethargy to overcome now.

Background - I dug almost everything, no matter how deep, and worked in both STD and Pro modes to get a good comparison. I did not set up/use the custom mode for this hunt. I'm right-handed, 6'3" and had the shaft adjusted appropriately for my height. It could have extended a bit more. The AT Pro ships with batteries so I can't comment on loading them at this point.

Location: I spent about 6 hours hunting in a high-trash but old location that has provided some nice relics and coins in the past. The soil conditions here varied frequently and I made a point to move around to really push the AT Pro. I was hunting in the Houston area so I was getting lots of our southern 'gumbo' soil (rich organic almost clay consistency) as well as varying amounts of sand. Importantly, I was in a heavily forested area so I could dig some large and deep holes to test both that the AT Pro said was there as well as what actually was (and what might be very nearby). And of course I wanted to see just how deep it could go. Of course I filled in my holes appropriately.

Review:

1. Interface - The user interface is easy to use and logical. Everything is organized easy to find. If you are using an Ace now, you will have almost no learning curve on this part of the detector.
   
2. Ground Balancing - Ground balancing was an absolute necessity where I was. I suspect auto GB will work fine in most places most of the time, but I had to GB manually maybe 15 times. GB was fast and easy to do. But most of the time the auto GB was usually not that far off (within 3-4).
   
   
   Ohhhh man, I need more coffee. brb.
   
   
3. Accuracy - I was highly impressed with the AT Pro's accuracy. For example, I dug 200+ targets yesterday. In in this trashy are there are a lot of the older pull tabs and nine times out of ten it registered solidly as a pull tab. I think of about 20 two didn't and one of those was semi-crushed. It took me a few seconds to be sure it even was a pull tab once I dug it. The other bounced a bit from tab to slightly lower in the foil range and was a newer pop top. Iron discrimination was superb. I ran with and without discrimination at varying amounts and am now a huge fan of the AT Pro's ability to work with, among and between iron objects. Of course the million dollar question here is can we find the good stuff that has been hiding in the iron? My answer is yes...sort of. It took me some time to get used to the concept because I was expecting the tone-roll to be simpler. I think it comes down to this: if I had one good target with one piece of iron (nail, whatever) I did really well and the tones sounded like in the video (nail/coin on top of one another). If I had a single good target among several pieces of iron, or worse mixed types of iron (corroding, mixed alloys) I found it much more difficult to distinguish the good mid-tone signals. It was like trying to make out one voice from across the room in a crowded restaurant. But since I dug most every thing I did find a few instances where there were good mid-tone targets among the trash as indicated by the AT Pro. However, I found myself increasingly frustrated because I was now putting myself in a difficult position. I was focusing my efforts in a very low yield situation. Usually if I suspected there was a good target (nickle range) among a few pieces of iron it was usually just rusty iron alloys. Very rarely did it indicate a coin in the silver range and it turn out to be an alloy though. In short, when digging in areas with multiple iron or iron alloy (trash) I'm mostly going to rely on the AT Pro's iron discrimination...if I'm digging at the beach or in an area with suspected old nickles/gold....then I'm going to dig those signals.
   
4. Volume - The volume without the headphones is low. I mostly use headphones, but not always. For example, it was 80+ degrees yesterday and I was sweating and wanted to take a break from the phones. I was also hunting by myself in a forest and even though I'm a big dude it doesn't take much to sneak up on a guy whose intently staring at the ground and wearing headphones. I have good hearing and I could hear most of the solid signals without the phones but some of the subtle info just isn't audible. As a comparison I'd say it is about a 1/3 less than on my ACE 250 and 1/2 of my Fisher CZ-3D (my Excalibur 2 is phones only). I found myself repeatedly looking for a volume control even though I knew there wasn't one when taking a break from the phones.
   
5. Headphones - The headphone connector is on the right side of the detector (looking down like normal) and as I am right-handed I found the wires annoyingly bumped into my grip hand as I swung. I wrapped it over the top/front of the shaft, just under the box but it didn't stay there for long and it increased the tension on my headphones. I'm thinking of attaching some velcro to hold it in place and stretching out the headphones a bit.
   
6. Weight - The AT Pro is so freakin' light. I know I mentioned this earlier...my arms are crazy sore from digging monster holes to analyze the Pro's results, not from swinging it for 6 hours.
   
7. Sensitivity - I often turned sensitivity down one notch. I was working some seriously trashy areas and found the DD coil with it's narrow EM field more accurate in the ground but where I was would frequently get chatty with sensitivity maxed out. I'm positive there are times for it to be maxed, it just wasn't yesterday's location. I was pulling regularly at 8+ inches and sometimes found myself thinking whether it would be worth it to dig when it was off the chart depth. I think that will all depend on the percentages of trash I'm digging in and the types.
   
8. Wobbling - The wobbling technique didn't seem to help for me. In fact if I just wobble the Pro in the air I mostly got the same results. I think I may have been doing it too fast and in only-trash areas...I'm going to do some test garden digs to work this more.
   
9. Tones - Like my Ace 250 and the 550 before it if I bumped a branch or something the Pro chirps in the highly conductive area. On that note, the high pitch is really high. I haven't really hunted a tot lot yet, but when I do I suspect the zincons are going to cause me to reach for the volume control on the headphones to turn it down. Like my CZ-3D, the Pro sort of flips out of there is a highly conductive or large metal object just below the surface. For example, I found a LOT of cans and they were all just under the surface. After just a few I could easily distinguish a can from a good target by its size and the fact that the Pro's signals got massively erratic and the sound nearly cut out. By raising the detector above the ground I quickly got a signal again and dug to confirm a can. Interestingly, I learned to tell the difference between a new aluminum can an an old steel one pretty fast as well. Also, I suspect the older pop tops are also most likely to read as pop-top/foil and the newer ones as pop top/nickle...but I need to dig more to be sure...Iron on this thing is many ranges of lower tones, some of which at first I associated with mid tones.
   
10. Pinpointing and DD coils- I found pinpointing more difficult at first. I'm pretty good at pinpointing with my other detectors and the Pro had me confused at first as I was regularly like two-3 inches off from where I thought my target was. I tried both centering and using the nose and finally got the hang of it. I think it is simply the difference between the DD coil vs the standard ones. I'm actually really excited now about the DD coils because as I use it I think it will be giving me a lot more precise information about exactly what is underground (like size and shape as well as conductivity). By this I mean it is more like multiple slices of information from different perspectives (by changing angles and directions). Those slices can really help to add up to better conclusions before digging.
    
11. Water Proof - It started to rain while I was out and it was really nice not to worry at all about the detector, though it occurs to me the headphones aren't. I may take to carrying my waterproof ones in a ziplock bag in my backpack and swapping out to them any time it starts raining. I plan to do an underwater, fresh and saltwater beach test next to really push this feature. Actually, it is raining like crazy now and it occurs to me I can now go detecting! Um, except I need more coffee...
    
12. Coil Cover - A coil cover isn't included. I think for the $ it should be and I am definitely planning to get one.

In conclusion, I pushed the AT Pro as hard as I could yesterday in a mineralized and trashy area that yielded some nice artifacts among all the rushy iron and alloys. I dug deep and wide and determined that the vast majority of the time I wasn't missing out when the AT Pro said there was only iron. I have a lot less concern about missing targets with this machine than with some others I've used. Alternately, as I learned the Pro's noises I was able to pull out several niece pieces among the trash...the tone roll works, unless the target is in a cluster of rusty iron and the sought after target is mid tone like gold or nickles.

There are some design flaws that are inexcusable like the coil and phone mounts being hard to mount and using exposed prongs that can be bent. The phone mounts on the 'wrong' side of the detector will be seen as a feature for lefties...maybe Charles Garrett is left handed? The lower volume when not using headphones is just odd. Coupled with the inconvenient headphone mount I'm guessing most people will opt to just leave the headphones on full-time (of course switching back and forth from underwater to standard headphones you are stuck...just be really deliberate about those connectors).

Even with these flaws the AT Pro performed beautifully. Is it truly an All Terrain, Professional machine that hits the sweet spot of replacing multiple machines? I believe so. Will it replace my Excal 2 or my Ace 250...no. The Excal because it is a highly specialized beach and underwater machine that goes to 200 feet and I can dive with it. It won't replace the Ace 250 because I can loan that one to a hunting buddy and at least for the foreseeable future nobody is getting their hands on my AT Pro. Still more tests to do, but so far...if I had to have just one detector (gasp), this would likely be the one.

Hope this helps someone. Feel free to add to this post your own reviews.

Update 11-28: I haven't been able to get in the water or to the beach yet (sigh) but was able to squeeze in a little hunting yesterday at a park and an old elementary school (actually MY elementary school...the site goes back to the 1800's though there are numerous newer buildings now).

1. The AT Pro loves nickles. Oddly, my nickle to penny ratio is about 2:1 right now. One nickle was at about 2 inches and the rest started at 5+ with the deepest at just over 9. I know it can't last, but I've only dug one pop top when the Pro said it was a clear nickle. Two of the nickles were silver, one a 1943 war nickle in very good shape and the other a '46.
   
2. I am now certain the thick clay in our area can cause false positive signals with the Pro. I mean clear false positive signals in the high silver area. I have dug several holes of epic proportions (several new ponds will be showing on Google Earth soon) to confirm and the clay is sometimes the signal. I think I'm narrowing down the type of signal (slight bounce between numbers/pitches) but need to dig a few more ponds (in approved areas) to be sure. Anybody need a pond in their field?
   
3. I haven't done it yet, but I think the headphone location annoyance might be somewhat resolved by running the wires for the phones over the shaft but under the wires heading to the coils. This would have the effect of pinning down the phone wires with the coil wires and keep them from hitting my hands while searching.
   
4. The headphone jack is a dirt magnet (I get pretty dirty digging ponds after all). I usually leave headphones phones plugged in, but yesterday went back and forth, trying to teach some signals to my brother, son and nephew as well as to converse with them while hunting. I caught myself just before plugging in a dirty jack and possibly either bending that prong or clogging the receiving hole. I think there was some kind of goo applied to the contacts when it shipped.

[CTKidd]

Great great review!! Thank you for taking the time to write this up! Keep the information coming, can't wait to see some results from a beach hunt.

[PI JOE]

Not surprised by your dirt results Clayton...well done! Looking forward for the beach testing.

[DIGGER27]

Great review!
Thanks for taking the time to write it, and looking forward to your future reports.

HH

[Dustyloins]

Thanks all of you for a ton of good information!!!

Dusty

[Kyluckyman]

I enjoyed your review. You write really well!

I am thinking about getting one of these next summer.

[SLO_Dave]

Thanks for the review.. I am thinking of trying to save up enough money to get one.

[zeemang]

Great review! The other review i read said it's alot more stable in pro mode than regular mode in the wet sand...
Would love to know how stable it is IN salt water...how many bars of sense you're able to run and remain stable.
Keep us posted please,please!

[BountyHunter]

Thank you for your time writing about your experience with the Garret AT PRO.

That review is a keeper ;-)

[Armsolo]

Thanks for the Great reviews

[peter_s]

great review can't wait for mine to arrive. Thanks for spending your detectinng time to put this together

[Heath j]

Great review!!! Thanks!!!

[Dustyloins]

Clayton, you missed your true career.......write articles for a magazine!!!!

Dusty

[hobbes_lives]

Great job writing the review Clayton, very well done.

[Delta2187]

Clayton,

I'm new to the forum and have read a number of 'reviews' but none have been as well organized and well written as yours! Wonderful job.

Thank you for the time and effort you put into your posts!

[ohiochris]

When talking about the pins in the connectors and being concerned about them getting bent , is it possible that this is part of the waterproof design ? Any chance of somebody showing some pics of the connectors ? Just interested in that detector and would like to see what is meant about the connector pins. thanks

[Dirty Money]

Fantastic review!!

Glad to hear that Garrett has another winner.

Dave