Got hold of a At Pro and tested it...

Well got hold of a new... from the company At pro..the dealers are taking the money and the company is sending out the detectors. Have had the machine for about a week maybe thirty hours at an area that is both relcis from the 1890s and a park from the 1930s. I know the area like the back of my hand. The At pro is too heavy for me..maybe the chemo treatments have worn me down but my arm hurt from day one and then my back. Before I got the At I watched every video I could get my eyes and ears on. And there are a lot...and a lot of good ones. I had a really good understanding of the machine before I went out, and read every forum on the machine I could find.

The machine seems slow compaired to the G2 the LTD and the T2 and Omega. I was in the pro mode zero and an iron of about 30. Ground bal in my dirt at 80 and ran the machine with full sens then cut back a bar.

The machine seems to give so much info that you wonder if you are digging a good target or a ghost target. You have to slow down (really slow down) and really take a couple of minutes to check the target out, hit the iron audio to see if you hear a low high low sound (that seemed to work but took more time). Now I know relic hunters will say the more tools you have to find masked targets the better but that is like getting a V3 and spending a good part of the day programing it for each hunt.

I hunted and hunted and did dig targets and the sound is very cool like a Moog synth from the 70s. I have in one of the areas a lot of pipes that will go on for about ten feet and on the G2 you simply know when you are in the area. The AT is different and slower, I was not sure what I had hit even no I really did but I pretended to feel what it would be like if I didn't know.

So the relic hunting is on its third day and I am not a happy camper. I have wasted a lot of time on wanting or not wanting to dig iron. On the G2 I pulled out two horse shoes one claw axe and an old pocket knife in this area that were masked by nails and the G2 was telling me to dig, the tone was loud and hard. On the G2 the big iron hits in the 70s and I find more axes and old tools then I know what to do with. On the At I was not sure what I had and then when I dug it I would say "I would not have dug that if it were not for a new machine".

But the G2 wham, bam. It is not that I know the G2 better but the G2 is designed more for relic hunting. The At pro should have relic icons not coin icons. The G2 has no icons but if you hunt with a machine that runs on the higher freq all targets are moved up on the VDI scale.

On masked targets the G2 is a no brainer you get more of a zippy tone and on super deep targets you may get a VDI but the tone may be a grunt so I go for the VDI. The G2 is soooo fast. Now I know Tom has a way different way of testing then I do and he likes a lot of info. But for me sometimes simple but effective is what makes and keeps me interested.

I moved to the park with the At and managed to find a 1964 dime it was not the sound but the VDI that made me dig it. The targets were far and few and this park has been cleaned by me and a few friends over the past years. Did get a wheat also and they were at about 8 inches. You have to use the head phones on the At to hear the sounds, the speaker is not that good! The next day went to the park again and took the G2 it had rained that morning a little and the ground has been perfect all week. I had not used the G2 for a week and wondered if I could hit any targets.

Bam first target on the G2 a zippy high 80 VDI at about 8.5 inches and out comes a silver 1963 dime. Then another hit and hard in the mid 80 and a wheat and at about 8 inches and then another wheat just as deep. The deeper the target the more zip you get. But I knew the sound and I didn't have to slow down or try and think about the sound..one tone on the G2 split it and you can dig the grunt if you like the lower VDI. The next target was a zip tone that bounced it grunted also on the lower VDI but the info the sounds were jet fast. I dig about nine inches and see a thin looking coin. It turns out to be play money from 1954. A thin small coin maybe a tad smaller then a dime but thinner. Then I see a little red dirt and see a small rusted nail.

Next target is reading in the mid 50..thinking it must be a nickle I dig it to find a broken long mens chain...Now the G2 is on fire and I went over the same area with the AT. The G2 seemed to be more alive and like a hound dog ready to hunt and hunt all day. My arm started to feel better and my back felt way better. Now for what you get for the price on the At, a water and land, relic and parks detector....that is a lot of bang for the buck...The G2 was selling as a gold machine and then it turned out to be the sleeper of relic hunters.

So not my cup of tea and I feel I gave it a fair shoot. I had the F75 and the LTD from the very start and learned them found a lot of great history then got the G2 and sold the LTD and kept the 8000. So there you have it I will have to sell the At I don't want to put down the G2 again till TEK or FISHER come out with the next new machine...By the way the At sounds just like the videos there is nothing wrong with the machine you can twist it scrub it swing and it won't make a sound.

I wanted to mention that I got great service from Big Boy Hobbies on the At Pro and some other gear I bought..thanks Bart!

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2011 07:35PM by Lawrenzo.

Lawrenzo, nice detailed report. Didn't beat out your G2 in any way, eh?

Steve

Thanks for the test. We needed one done in mineralized soil.......don't forget to post the videos of those knarly rings you found

The rings and silver video on the G2 will be done next month..

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!

Lawrenzo,
Thanks for sharing your comparison ....I like the idea tha the G2 is very fast .....The numbers you were telling were very much like what I get with my AT Pro where I hunt ......53 is a nickel .....82 is a dime .......87/88 is a quarter ......Sound familiar ? ...... Are you sure that perhaps you are just more use to the way your G2 performs ? ...... THere were too many tones for me in the AT Pro in a trashy park for me to decide what to dig .....Everything sounded like a coin and I had to take too much time ( as you mentioned ) to check the target to decide if I was going to dig it or not .....With my E Trac , I just go right over the trash ...... What was it about the G2 that was more telling about what targets you were hearing ? .....Was it the number, or the tone , or both or ???????........or again , was it an area that you knew and a machine that you also knew on certain targets ? ....... A lot of what I was reading. the G2 sounded too much like the AT Pro for me to go out and buy one to try it out .....Your review makes it sound like it's a night and day difference in machines ........????...... Please explain more about what it is that makes the G2 a better machine for you ......BTW , the arm cuff is WAY too close to the handle for a grown adult .....MANY have complained about it wearing them out when swinging all day ...... A further distance from the handle makes the AT Pro a LOT easier to handle and a LOT more balanced .....This was one of my compliaints to Garrett .....I was not happy with the headphone cable , nor the short coil cable either ......Others have complained about the weight .....I came off of an E Trac , so to me it's LIGHT !!.....Thanks again for your review .....Jim

Now in all fairness, take them both out in 4 feet of water , and see which one survives! Just kidding

Hey Lawrenzo thanks for the writeup.
I have no questions for you but woulld like to make comment.
I can identify with you about the weight issue, I did notice a few others
mention that the AT wasn't as well ballanced as some other detectors.
Also you have become confident with the G2 and that means a lot.
All of us seem to click in with confidence with that certain model
and everything else doesn't quite get it done.
Right now for you is it no doubt the G2!
HH

Lorenzo... good to see you back hunting.

Or does the AT Pro seem to be in so many ways, a copy of the Fisher/Teknetics designs. Not trying to start anything negative.....just seems like a abnormal amount of similarities.

I have very mineralized ground I live in the gold country lots of red dirt high iron in some areas ground bal is in the 80s. Some of the gournd is better but not that great.This is what I love about this forum good insight and good honest responces.

The G2 found me three gold diamond rings. One a week all hit hard in the mid 40- mid upper 50. Now I had to dig a lot of pull tabs there is no way around that..no tricks. With the At you have to really slow down and listen to the sounds. The G2 one tone...like the way Tom likes to hunt a super fast mono tone with a lot of modulation if the target and the ground and the junk near it or is in the same hole. But in a split second you have that info in your head. No it is not like a T2 or LTD in boost mode more like a minelab then the Fishers and TEK...The G2 hits on everything for relic hunting for me it hits coins hard and deep buttons good iron like axes and tools. Loves buttons, bullets. It is just a great machine. At parks yeah it has the same problems that the other one freq machines have. But if you are hunting for gold rings then you know what you are getting yourself into. Crown caps are going to be the same problem. It is not a good park hunter but if the park was cleaner then some and you had the 5DD you could pick out some good stuff.

Here is what Dave J posted....Thank you, LowBoy, for doing that bit of scientific investigation. I'm too busy designing beepers to spend hours on end racing 'em against competitors' units in the field. For that I have to rely on the reports of people like yourself who have lots of field experience and know not only our machines but our competitors' machines as well.

I ain't knockin' the AT, we had one in the lab and it was a pretty good machine. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", and it was obviously inspired by the T2 & F75, and not (for instance) by the MXT or Explorer or anything that Garrett has done in the past other than a slight nod to the Ace 250. But does it surprise me that going head to head in real life it would lose out to our GB/G2 platform? Not really, there's a lot of secret sauce lurking behind our front panel in the software, where if an engineer in a competitor's lab doesn't know in advance what to look for, he won't see it. And therefore won't know he needs to figure out a way to replicate it.

--Dave J.

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2011 05:18PM by Lawrenzo.

And a big thanks to Dave J.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"
Glad that's been settled.