Tmanly sent me his AT-Gold to test out in my harsher N.Ga dirt...

I would like to thank Tom for sending me his unit to use...

The first thing I noticed is the At-gold is on the new Garrett platform and by this I dont mean just the control box which is obvious... but the electronic's....It is very close to the AT-Pro when both are in disc mode....

One thing I wondered about with the At-Gold at first release was the way Garret's first video was done showing it park hunting ...I think they are trying to show that the At-Gold can do double duty...Sure they have videos now of it prospecting but they still drive home the double duty approach...

The sensitivity Of the AT-Gold to smaller low conductor object's even gold is not earth shattering but is acceptable....and maybe a little better on the micro small stuff than the At-pro..

The freq change from 15 on the Pro to 18 on the Gold exhibit's the closeness in performance..the gap only being 3KHz.......

When comparing the At-gold to the likes of the Gold Bug Pro .. the Gold bug is more sensitive to low conductor's even with the small coil on the Gold Bug it still can see object's like a size 6 thin gold lady's 14Kt band a good 4 inches further...So dont expect performance like the Gold Bug has for low conductor's....But the AT-Gols does do better on high conductor's when compared to the Gold Bug...Noticeably different....

The At-PRo is close to the At-Gold on low conductor's but is hotter on the high conductor's in any coil combo....Also in ground the AT_pro when in disc mode vs God Disc mode the At-Pro is deeper...

I actually like the At-Gold coil on the At-Pro...It' is a must have accessory coil...It bring's the At-Pro recovery speed closer to the T-2/F-75 recovery speed...( Thats how fast a T-2 Bi-Axial coil is...It takes a tightly wound small coil to get close to it in separation)
Very little depth is lost on the At-Pro with the small coil added....it's a serious coil for Trash.

Now on the all metal side of the Gold the threshold is fairly stable with lot's of adjustment to get it to a barely audible hum....it is very sensitive at the cost of I.D. as are all of the all metal mode machine's....the Iron audio I.d. does work in all metal but it only works closer to the coil the further away from the coil and no I.D. but in close the I.D works very well at I.D. iron...But for deep relic recovery it requires digging of iron target's like nails and such at depth till they get close enough for the I.d. to work.....I also noticed that the all metal mode is stronger on small object's at medium shallow to medium depth than it is to larger items at deeper layer's like 10-12 inch's...So the all metal mode side of the AT-Gold from what I can tell is aimed at the gold prospector looking for small gold which is what most gold left is....So they pretty much have it setup to dig it all till it can get an I.d. on it which is pretty close in some cases like nails..

If you want to coin/relic hunt the disc mode I.D.s iron deeper than the All metal mode does....

Again the all metal mode on the Gold Bug sees object's in all metal deeper than the At-Gold in all metal and I.D. meter on gold bug I.D.'s iron deeper than the iron id on the At-Gold...

The AT-Gold has a neat feature that allows the ground balance to cover a wide range...this will smooth out some of the problem's encountered with rapidly changing ground condition's.I am not sure what actually happens when the Ground Balance window as Garrett call's it is turned on?

It does smooth out some minerals you encounter when running the all metal threshold based mode....it has a setting from 0 which is normal to 6 I believe it is and at 6 it will eliminate most all hot rock's I hunted one area that it calmed down the machine a lot but some still broke through ....but it is very bad ground I was in...there are target's there being masked by dirt but the At-gold did not find any. that day...It takes a pulse machine to find thing's there so VLf's dont do very well in this spot....I would be careful with the higher ground balance window though because it does de-sensitize the machine at high level's...

I put the At-PRO large dd on the At-Gold and it ran perfectly fine but was not as deep in the dirt as the At-Pro but did like lower conductor's a tad better..and lacked on higher conductor's noticeably less than the AT-Pro....

I would prefer the the At-PRO for coin/relic hunting for depth and opt for the Small DD coil...

If I where after Gold and wanted to stay with the Garrett brand with the unique audio the AT-GOLD would be the choice ...Although I find other machine's are more sensitive when at or near the same freq....the one's I tried against it are the X-Terra 705 with 18.75 coil.....the Tejon,,,and the Gold Bug Pro....but they do not have the unique audio of the AT-Gold that helps a lot on helping I.D. iron that high freq machine's love....but it lack's over all horse power of my limited availablity to high freq machine's...

Me personally would much rather have the At-Pro for my hunting requirement's.....The AT-PRO just seems stronger to me overall...In dense iron the At-Gold has an affinity to false on iron a little more than the At-Pro also...but not much and to be truthful in dense iron they are about dead even where depth is not an issue but separation is...


just my take and also you may see thing's different in your soil. or hunting style and requirement's.

On a side note when the iron audio is activated in all metal mode you have to reset the iron disc to your liking...not sure if it's supposed to hold it in memory or not...but I would have to reset it after a power down?

over all it's a nice unit. well built...but more of a specialty detector...

Gold machine's on high freq's need boat loads of power to perform....

Thank's again Tmanly..

You should get your Machine back today...

Keith

Keith ,
Thanks so much for this review ...... You confirmed a lot of my thoughts on this machine .....I was not really planning on buying one as the AT Pro is fine for the intent's that I have for it ..... Still nice to hear your thoughts for a clarification ....Thanks again ....Sincerely, Jim

That was cool of tmanly to send you his AT gold. I'm guessing you guys only know each other from the forum.......nice, the trust, very nice. Thanks for reporting the results Kieth.

Never met Tmanly ozzie ...he offered and I accepted....

I agree great to see a person trust another person without even knowing them ...

Thats a hard thing to do in this day and age...

I sent Dankowski a AT-PRO when they were released ...But I believe we can all trust Tom with our machine's,....That was my first endeavor with a mail loaner and it went just fine...

Now I have person on another forum who I sent a $75.00 u.s. money order for a coil sight unseen just took his word on it ..He was a regular poster and He has Given me every reason in the book for not sending me the coil...From being in jail to not having a Job???

But the guy still has the nerve to send me request to join his outdoor's web forum???Really!!!!I am good mind to one day join the forum then tell his peer's how this "School teacher stand up guy" really is....

but thanks again Tmanly...Your a good Guy!!

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2011 11:25PM by Keith Southern.

Keith, the unit arrived safe and sound. Thanks for the fantastic review. I knew you would give an honest one.
Maybe this will help someone else who is looking for a unit and considering the AT Gold.
thanks again

As a note: I have found that the Metal Detecting community is for the most part very honest. You can always tell the "real deal" from the quality of post that they submit.


Tom in SC



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2011 12:34AM by tmanly.

Thanks for the review. I too have been think of the AT Pro Gold, but now I'm leaning toward the AT Pro.
Thanks for taking the time to review.

Great review, thanks for taking the time to post up.

Great review. I have the AT Pro and am still learning to master it. Heard good things about the Gold and wondered if I should have gone with that instead. You helped me feel better about the machine I chose for what suits me. Bart @ Bigboyshobbies.net knows these machines and will answer any questions.

Thank goodness for First Texas Products. Garrett wouldn't have the Pro or the Gold, if it wasn't for FTP's machines. If you catch my drift.

Thanks for the review, Keith.
You answered a lot of my questions.
Tmanly, thanks for providing the machine for the review.

HH
Mike

Great post!

Thanks to all!!!! Great review!!!

Nice!

No offence, but this review is suspect. Why is there no mention that the Garrett AT Gold is waterproof to 10 feet? This would seem to be a major point to miss. There's lot's of gold to be found in swimming holes, rivers, or lakes as any serious gold hunter knows. There may be better gold detectors for land but the AT Gold can find those rings and coins in water that the others can't touch without killing them.

Rob: A California Yankee in Queen Beatrix's Court

GoldenHU Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No offence, but this review is suspect. Why is
> there no mention that the Garrett AT Gold is
> waterproof to 10 feet? This would seem to be a
> major point to miss.

No.... Keith does a terrific job of conveying his impressions and we're lucky he is willing to share his findings. I think most of us realize this unit is waterproof and designed to hit on gold. Keith knows that and doesn't waste his or our time with the obvious.

That doesn't mean we necessarily have to agree with everything posted on the forum... it is inevitable we won't at times... but lets give credit where it is due. Keith is a valuable contributor here and no mistake...

This topic is a current interest to me as I'm about to head north prospecting for the entire autumn. Many thanks Keith for your insights...

Jim.

GoldenHU, first of all, welcome. Your first post. Not sure if you've been lingering for a while, but my guess is that you have not because of your suspicion of Kieth's writing.
Your uncertainty and mistrust would be better used where it pertains, not aimed at Keith. Go back and review his posts, I'm positive you will learn something.

Excellent testing as usual. Love your straight forward approach. I have 2 questions .
You mention the small atg coil that you placed on the atp. Is that the 5 x 8 dd?

Could you clarify a bit the comparison of the 705, tejon, and gold bug pro vs. AT gold?
Not sure if I follow that part correctly. Are you saying the gold lacks a bit of depth in comparison to those 3 models?
Not trying to be critical, just trying to grasp what you are saying there.( Im looking to add a relic machine to my
arsenal) I appreciate your taking the time to share your observations and conclusions!
Thanks for your reply.

Hey Possum....

That was done last year I believe, so I will have to think back LOL!!

I found that the AT-GOLD while sensitive was not quite as sensitive to small items as the other's mentioned like the tejon..The 705 with 5x10 DD 18.75 kHz and the GB Pro...those were the ones I had on hand...and yes I was talking of taking the 5x8 dd stck coil and using it on the AT-PRO...

But the AT-Gold has that unique tone roll feature that the other's do not offer and is a little more acurate in I.D. not as accurate as the AT-PRO but more accurate than the other High freq's...

The advantage the AT-GOLD has over the AT-PRO is a true all metal mode which is nice and which is deep and also like's smaller items and lower conductor's..

For relic hunting how small of items are you after...all of them are good down to P-Caps...Chasing a gold coin in iron on edge I would opt for the GMP personally or the DEUS...but the GMP is cheaper...

The XP's love round items in iron...I believe they were designed for such a task...Like those small roman coins in nail's...

There seems to be a new breed also sweeping in right now ... The Deeptech Vista's....I like what I am seeing and reading about...they have one that runs at I believe 22.5 kHz and seems quite deep and really hot in iron debris...I hope to get one soon...I think it's a no non sense detector designed to get item's out of iron ...Like a budget minded xp...is it as good? some say so already..


I like high freq rig's with DD's for working iron and here lately ther's no shortage of such offering's...


Troy had a heck of a detector in the X-5...I just wished he would of gave us a wider low end disc range....with a 2 tone user selectable break point...the way that machine was hot across the board is still not matched....I dug deeper silver coins with that machine that any other in spots that are not even known to produce coin's...

There's lot's of good detector's now days' Possum...and you dont have to pay a grand to get performance...


Everyone hunt's different and has different expectation's from detector's...

I personally like a machine I dig iron with ..instead of ignore iron if that makes sense...

If you are on a 150 year old plus site that is void of modern debris I want to get as much as I can so the iron bigger than nails need to be dug...

One's that excel at that are MXT----AT-PRO/GOLD--- X5-DEUS-GMP- Tejon--G2....Some machine's although they are awesome in iron...they also I.D. iron too well....or dont offer the tone break adjustment ot allow retrieval...

I personally hardly ever dig iron relics with the likes of a T2 or F-75 when comparing them to the above...the I.D. iron very well.in tone mode...I wish the T2 had a user defined tone split...if it did ...it would be real close to perfect ....Anmd maybe a small Bi-Axial..


Lot to think about when adding a relic machine to the arsenal...

A good allrounder is a MXT although the AT-PRO is a little deeper and allows Iron removal as well...I would almost say the AT-PRO is an updated version of an MXT in regards to relic recovery rates...I wish the AT-PRO would incorporte an ALL metal mode and stay on 15kHz...it punches alittle deeper than the AT-GOLD when both are in disc mode...the ATG airtest a tad better but in dirt that switches..

I like the G2 alot for the money.....I like the GMP alot for the money...The GMP is very powerful even in the dirt for such a high freq.. and also has audio very reminescent to the AT-PRO ...it blends tone's quite well while still being very fast....


each machine has stronger point's than the other's...

Keith

Your in-depth observations are appreciated as always, Keith.

GoldenHU, using your first post to denigrate a highly respected member of this forum is really starting off on the wrong foot.

No offense taken golden...

And yes if you water hunt for Gold the AT- Does fill that order better than the rest....

I have never water hunted or never jewelry hunted on ...So I just tried to stick with what I know about....

But if you want to use it as a freshwater machine with I.D. abiltiy which is rare, for small jewelry I think it would hit harder on small gold than the AT-PRO will...I would think the AT-Pro would be better but not the best choice for salt water when challenging the At-Gold for that purpose...

But in a relic environ when going after real low conductors in iron there is a few machine that will do a bit better...Not just night and day but a bit...

Thanks for bringing it up..thats what the forums are for...mutual exchange of information...

If you have a AT-GOLD I was in no way implying it's no good....Be sure you have a very nice piece of equipment...

But I try to be as honest as I can..and should be no reason for suspect I have no hidden agenda against any manufacturer...I like the Garret AT-PRO really well..As I do the Garrett infinium...its a great pulse unit again at a realistic price...


Thanks Ozzie Marcomo, Jim for your post regarding the matter...Thanks !! Yall as well bring great things to the forum!

Thanks

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2012 03:33AM by Keith Southern.

1. Keith knows detectors and shoots from the hip and his accessments are not proof read.

2. Garrett has built good detectors for years in price ranges where most of us can afford one and above all back their products with service after the sale.

3. All in all our hobby has honest God fearing people and thats why I use the detector classifieds.

4. Unfortunately a bad apple sneaks in now and then and don't know a detector from a broom but just pose as one of us to bilk hobby members so be careful out there lest we be bilked.

5. Never met Keith or even talked to him on the phone but have corresponded with him on occasion and yes bought a cream puff unit from him at a decent price so in my book he is certainly a credit to the hobby and may have missed his calling as he should be designng detectors or at least writing field tests.

Hi Keith,

My sincere apologies if I came across as rude. The word 'suspect' I used was inappropriate and judging by the fans you have here and your reply to me that was both kind and honest, I will be looking forward to future reviews and posts from you. If I notice something such as the waterproofing miss, I will still mention it, but in a cordial manner so that an exchange of information can happen in a friendly way.

Thanks for your reply to me!

Rob

PS. After my post I got to see how knowledgable you are from your posts over the many different brands. This will come in handy with my new XP Deus and future metal detectors.
At least one good thing that appeared to come from my post is that it seemed to get the ball rolling with new posts since the last one from December 16, 2011.

Kudos to you Rob.

That's manning up...unfortunately rare nowadays...and yes,Keith is a creditto our hobby.

Hey Rob...No appology needed...

It was not taken in any way but a question...

The DEUS is an great detector....I know you will like it ...it will produce in spot's thats have quit prodcuing thats for sure...


Dan,Ozzie,Ray thanks fella's for the kind word's...Yall are great asset to the hobby as well ...All of us work together to try and understand these detector's ...


Keith

Well Keith you're pretty generous.

I have a simple question that perhaps you could answer. Is there a good/great multi level frequency metal detector for both salt and fresh water that is totally waterproof? Garrett AT Pro is so-so in salt water and not MLF as is the new Minelab CTX 3030 (from what I've heard in the forums it's very noisy in the waves). There's always the Excalibur 2 or
Fisher CZ-21 which so far I can see are the best of the bunch but I also read mixed reviews over them. (which metal detector doesn't get mixed reviews?) Being a chiropractor I'm not up to digging holes al day with a PI. Ironically I need to save my back for my work. Your advice would be greatly appreciated if you are knowledgeable about this topic.

If this post needs to be moved to a new topic or forum list please do so.

Many thanks,

Rob

Well You listed them.. Without going pulse the CZ 20/21 and the excalibur are about it...

There is the Whites Beach hunter 300 thats dual freq also ....

The excalibur is world renowned for beach hunting for a reason...Wet beaches are tough to hunt and the excalibur runs real well in that environ without chasing iron...

But I do not have alot of beach experience to answer any further,,,,,,

Multi freq or dual freq's are limited to a few models..

Keith