AT Max vs AT Gold?

George-Tex's search for an AT Gold (different post and I didn't want to highjack it) brought up this question in my mind. I had an AT Pro and traded in on a Max but have never even seen an AT Gold, much less run one.
I have heard others say, and sort of surmised, myself, that the Max marries features of both the Pro and the Gold.

So the question is how does the Max stack up to the Gold? Are there Gold users who have snubbed the Max in favor of the Gold, and if so, why?

FWIW, I liked the Pro and I like the Max even more.

If you have used both the GOLD and the MAX, please reply with your thoughts on how they compare or differ.

Thanks.

Wayne

Unlike the Pro they have a true all metal mode... Both do a great job hearing good targets next to iron. The gain has been increased on the Maxx. The stock Gold coil helps in target separation . The iron audio is more pronounced in my mind. With the larger stock Maxx coil I found it nose heavy. I like Garrett's headphones. You will hear allot of audio information. Some don't care for it but I kind of liked it. Also the Gold runs at 18khz. I'm in search of another gold now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2018 07:39PM by texkinzee.

Out of the 3 AT machines I like the Gold the best. Its audio and target ID locks on to targets like no other. That's why you seldom see a AT-Gold come up for sale. They're a awesome machine.

The audio on the AT Max is like nails on a chalk board to me

Turning the ground balance negative on the AT Gold in my mild ground greatly increased the depth . With disc set to break up nails, the 5x8 coil was hitting my 9" test dime nice .

Rick

Headphones or speaker? I've always thought that Garrett's AT series has (one of) the best audio/tones in the business. Clear. Distinct. Melodious. NOT scratchy and run-together like so many others. Always headphones for me.

Wayne

Have you compared it, target for target, with the Max? Because I feel the Max is no slouch in that department, either.

The Max/small coil is becoming one of my faves for hunting fields with lots of (aluminum) trash. It finds the good stuff and avoids a bunch of trash.

Wayne

ncwayne Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Have you compared it, target for target, with the
> Max? Because I feel the Max is no slouch in that d
> epartment, either.
>
> The Max/small coil is becoming one of my faves for
> hunting fields with lots of (aluminum) trash. It f
> inds the good stuff and avoids a bunch of trash.
>
> Wayne

Wayne the AT-Gold does just as good but less bouncy ID numbers. And the audio is a lot more clean and crisp than the Max.

A good way to upgrade from either of the AT units would be to sell them on letgo.com and then buy a Minelab Equinox 800. Oops...did I just say that ? Yep... I did.

Up to my ____ in Pulltabs, Grant

I have owned the nox 800 and now own a AT-Gold I prefer the AT-Gold. I got tired of digging rusty flat washers and Bottle caps with the Nox.

Of the AT series, I liked the Gold the best. There are several videos on YouTube where people have all 3 and are comparing them over various targets. To my ears and in their results, the Gold is a clear winner. The Maxx was a good air testing machine that lost everything once the coil hit the soil with any mineral at all. The Gold fares a bit better but none of them were ever favorites of mine. As Gary Drayton would say, I sure like to see "the local competition" using them.

I have an Equinox 800 and I like certain things about it, but its inability to tell the good stuff from trash is not one of them. Some days I just don't want to dig all the trash I come across. The AT Max lets me accomplish that.

Wayne

88junior Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have owned the nox 800 and now own a AT-Gold I p
> refer the AT-Gold. I got tired of digging rusty fl
> at washers and Bottle caps with the Nox.


I would say that knowing which program to use and how to configure, modify and setup for conditions is paramount towards success with the Nox and any other detector. Some people know, some are clueless.
I don't have any problems with my Nox with regards to bottle caps, washers, nails or other trash. Its actually the easiest to configure and use when trash is a problem.

I was hunting behind a friend who was passing on a few targets with his AT MAX, we had gone to one of his favorite sites which was a public park.
When he mentioned that one of the areas was a crown cap / screw / foil / nail infested hell, I said "put your big girl panties on, lets try it".

We did and when he passed on a spot claiming it was iron, I swept right behind him and there was no doubt some crown caps piled up but there was also a hunk of a mans silver chain bracelet tucked between a
a dump of about 5 or maybe 6 rusty crusty caps. The caps where about 3 inches deep but the 3 inch piece of heavy silver chain was at maybe 5 or 6 inches below the caps. We had another similar area where there were nails and screws all over the place. He passed on a spot and looked at me and yelled "you want to sweep this one ? " I did and found a clad quarter in a small pile of rusty nails. He couldn't separate it with his AT Max but the Nox did without any guessing. His numbers on his AT Max were jumping all over and the audio was an iron hit.

A few weeks later he txt me that his new Nox had arrived.
He still has his AT Max but it stays in the closet most of the time and he sometimes uses it for a back up...... not because it won't find the good stuff, it just will not work as well as a Nox when high trash is a problem.

Up to my ____ in Pulltabs, Grant

Not exactly an open and shut case for the Nox or against the Max. Could have simply been a difference between users, one knowing what to listen for and one not. Granted, some are better detectorists than others; same as guitar players and quarterbacks. But be mindful that everybody's situation is different. Different dirt and mineral content. EMI. Trash content - type and density. I'd love to see you and your Nox in a farm field loaded with bits of aluminum cans, old foil, and small iron, some rusty, some not; round washers and the like. I think you'd have enough problems if you were only searching for coins, but what if you were also looking for CW bullets and buttons, some big and some small, some shallow and some deep? There's a reason my fields are extremely short on good targets and still long on trash. <g>

Wayne

Nearly every Hoover Boys video is in farm fields loaded with junk. They are still diggin' bucket fulls of trash with their AT Maxx machines, and they had em long before they were available to the public. They get their fair share of the goodies but they sure aren't able to do it by cherry picking. If you're relic hunting and passing up signals assuming they are trash, you are leaving lots more goodies in the ground than what you are digging up. I'll bet the farm on it. Nasa Tom said it best in a thread not long ago...you don't know what you don't know. If I'm relic hunting, particularly in a field...I'm digging everything. My first eagle plate was found in a spot being cleared for a subdivision. I found it in the spot the workers were parking their vehicles for clearing off the property. They apparently ate their lunches there at their vehicles...there were crushed drink cans all over the top of the ground where they had threw them down and ran over them with vehicles and dozers...some were pushed into the dirt a little bit. I tend to be a litter picker upper...so I was picking them up. Got a signal I thought was a pull tab from a coke. Kicked at the dirt with my boot and out rolled a drop 3 ringer. Neato. Few feet later, I get a shallow can signal. I went to kick it up out of the ground like the half dozen or so other cans I had picked up and out flips this round thing. My first impression was it was a zinc mason jar lid instead of a can. Wrong. Eagle breast plate hunting with the F75. This place had been being hunted by other relic hunters for months prior to me finding that plate. It was missed cause people thought it was a can like the others around it. Hoover Boys have my same mentality...dig it all and take the trash with you...cause all holes matter. My fields were hunted as far back as the 70s and continually thru the 80s and 90s with all kinds of machines and people. The signals left in those fields were left either because they were simply missed...either by not swinging a coil over it or detector not picking it up...or because they got a signal and left it for junk. Everything I find is just left overs from their main feast years ago. I don't plan on leaving anything for the next guy.

Several of my relic fields had an EF4 tornado hit them in 2011. That joker did some damage...leveled homes and barns all thru the valley and stayed on the ground for several minutes. There was a mobile home/doublewide in a field about 500 yards from one of my best civil war camps that took a direct hit from the tornado. Killed the people inside and lifted their back deck into the air and deposited it in a tree on the farm I hunt...carried it some 500 yards. The whole wood deck. Its still wedged in the tree like some kind of tree house that was never finished. Anyway, there was tin from barn roofs, and barn sides and all kind of debris scattered all over these fields. In some cases it was like it went through a wood chipper and blew stuff all over the fields. For the longest time you could be walking the woods and see insulation, clothing, etc scattered in the trees and on the ground. Before the tornado, you'd find the occasional farm junk...cattle vaccine stuff, tractor stuff. Now...its tornado debris all over the place.