falsing in the wet sand (salt water)

[diggitdawg]

hello all, well i bought my at pro so i can hit the beaches and not worry about getting my machine wet. i live in long beach ca. and honestly have not been very happy with the pro in the water or in the wet sand. i have tried everything to stop it from falsing it works great in the dry sand, competly quiet same thing in parks so now i feel like i wasted my $ because what i wanted it for is just not cutting it. not sure if its just my beach going to try others soon but i live walking distance from the water here so its a little irritating there is also a salt water lagoon that is fed from the ocean subject to the low an high tides where i have found lots of goodies silver coins to 1902 to a dozen or so rings and lots of other old interesting items but the pro has the same problem there as well. there is so much falsing there is no way to distinguish a good target from a false. maybe with silver and if its a solid hit yes but gold or iffy signals forget it. has anyone else had this problem? my buddy and his son are out there all the time with lets just say very cheap machines and have no problem. i also go out with my other machine and have no problems exept that i paid way too much money for it to have an accident. any comments or suggestions? thank you all in advance. good luck out there. PS i dont have a cover on the plate.

 

[Sailorman]

What are you ground balancing at and how are you achieving that number? What's your sensitivity set at? I use mine on saltwater beaches and up to chest deep wading no problem.

 

[Sailorman]

Also one more question. Stock coil or 5x8? That would be helpful to know.

 

[Smudge]

I was afraid of this. I know Garrett calls this detector "All Terrain," but it does have its limitations.

You will notice Garrett doesn't strongly promote its use in wet salt sand. It can certainly function there, but not the best.

This is because, like any single frequency detector, salt water plays havoc with the machine's scanning abilities.

Garrett and other companies have done their level best to make their single frequency machines function in wet salt sand, and they have acheieved some success, but physics usually win out.

Some people have used the AT Pro on wet salt sand with good success, however, those beaches tend to be low mineralization where the salt is the only real factor the detector has to fight with.

Beaches where the sand is highly mineralized (and the west coast is loaded with them) will often give the single frequency detector more than it can handle when you get to the wet salt sand also.

Either by itself is managable, but together, they can become a real problem.

Here in Florida, some of our Atlantic Coast beaches have the same issue and they're very hard on single frequency detectors.

I wish I had a solution for you, but unfortunately, I don't.

From all accounts the AT Pro is a fantastic detector that works well everywhere, including fresh water, but it may very well hit the wall on wet salt beaches.

It is not a weakness of the ATP per se, its a problem all single frequency detectors have.

I have read posts by some west coast hunters that the only type of detector they can use in wet stuff is a PI detector.

You may want to talk to some local hunters and get their input.

The locals usually know best.

 

[jimmy jam]

Go to You tube, punch in AT Pro, look at Salt Water use tips, maybe this will help.

 

[diggitdawg]

hello sailorman yes it is the stock coil, and getting into the numbers would take too long because honestly i have tried every combo and sensetivity that i think is possible. i have the feeling smudge is probably right in this case. and there is a part in their ads that suggest fresh water use i guess i dont have to wonder why anymore. i have watched every video made for use in salt water. im not sure what coast u are in but the west coast beaches are more mineralized than the east. but i thought i could ground balance it to be usable but i would miss more than i would find im sure. i just should have listened to a few other people i talked to and bought another pi but a waterproof one. i just didnt want another pi because i wanted the vlf for multiple uses. just looks like a third detector is in the future for me.wrong beach wrong detector, really now i believe its something that cant be fixed. oh well i will wind up in fresh water rivers, lakes etc. a few more times in my life so i will be able to use it, just not for what i had in mind and not as much as i thought i would be using it. thanks guys just another expensive live and learn situation. good luck to you all.

 

[John-Edmonton]

It's pretty hard trying to problem solve your issues without actually holding the machine in your hands and trying it. A lot of people do fine with it in salt water and wet sand. It won't do as well as a multi-frequency machine, but it was designed to be able to be ground balanced down to salt, unlike a lot of other single frequency detectors, and do a satisfactory job. You may want to watch this video again, and if possible, locate an AT Pro user near you and get some tips. The fact that it works well in dry sand sounds like it is working well. If you happen to go from dry sand to wet sand, it will have to be re-ground balanced and vice versa.

http://www.garrett.com/hobbysite/hbby_at_pro_saltwater_video.aspx

 

[diggitdawg]

hi john, thanks for the reply. and yes it sounds like a lot of people do well in salt water and after reading a lot of posts to that effect is exactly what made my mind up about purchasing it but all said and done its a great machine i just dont think it can handle this particular beach and its understandable. it doesnt make it a bad detector. i have one of those rare earth magnets on the bottom of my scoop and after two scoops of long beach sand all you can see is a big furry black ball at the bottom of the scoop. totally loaded with black sands.i am going to try different beaches next week and untill then i have run out of ways to ground balance. i have set the sensetivity down to where it barely picks up a penny laying in the sand. i have tried all the settings i can think of. it is possible that its more minerals than it can handle isnt it? i mean its not a super machine. i can just see and hear the effects as i go from dry to wet to water here. the bell sounds of like the beach is covered in dimes and quarters. some spots worst than others, some spots very repetable just like coins and inbetween the bell sounds are the gold sounds like every couple of inches i stop go over the spot in all directions sometimes it sounds off in every direction sometimes in one sometimes in two directions and its getting fooled every time. i will stay in one spot and start trying to gb manually i try over doing it i try minus balance i try sensetivity and its so bad that i can hardly notice any change no matter how radical my changes are from small changes to big difference the machine is still totally fooled. if any of my attempts made even a little difference that would help as to wich direction to go as far as adjustments. so either its broken (i doubt that. works too well everywhere else) or this beach is more than it can handle, im betting on the latter. but i will post again after trying a couple of more beaches. i am 6 blocks from pacific coast highway so i can hit a lot of beaches from malibu to san diego in not much more than an hour in either direction so i will post again on any changes from beach to beach. again thanks for the replies and good luck out there.

 

[JamieR]

I had a similar problem with my pro. The first couple of times i used it was on an in land salt water beach. Nothing i did would quiet it down. Every swing gave me multiple high tones. Thought it was a problem with the machine and sent it back to garrett. When i got it back still the same. It worked great on dry sand but nowhere near the wet salt sand or in the water. I went to another beach a couple of weeks later and was amazed that it worked perfect. I could run the sens high and it was quiet. I think it is the beach you are trying and no way to get the machine to run right.

 

[Smudge]

Exactly. The mineralization of the sand itself is a key factor in the ability of the AT Pro in wet salt sand.

 

[firstring]

diggitdawg, I can relate to what you are saying. I live here in California also. Anybody try to use their AT Pro in black sand? How did it work out for you? What adjustments did you use? What coil gave you best performance? Any west coast beach hunters out there? That's what we are up against here in California.

 

[Neil]

if your sure its ground balanced correctly, you might try different freq settings and also try different sens settings. I know it works great here in NJ on the salt water beaches.

 

[Caretaker me]

I got the worst salty beaches and I can hunt on them, I couldn't at first, but I got my coil fixed and it works great, so good, when I go to my beaches that have a lot of iron, the machine works like a PI machine, it growls like a tiger, haha, check your coil

 

[Hobo lobo]

My AT Gold was falsing in fresh water, baad , put on a different coil, Helped a lot.

 

[viking rich]

hi am a new member and love the garretts my last detector was the euro ace and reason for me updating was so i had a all round detector for detecting the wet sand after the fields av all been seeded after doing a test on my local beach i got gr8 results on the wet sand it ground balanced manual perfect enough to stable it so i dug a hole 9inch down size of my pro pointer put the coin in a shell and filled the sand over i still picked the coin up with a gr8 signal and was amazed at its depth on the wet salty sand this is a video i did of me setting it up the other day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2BETcdCKRk


but then i decided to av another trip up as got some gr8 results but ran out time to detect with the tide coming in so off i went back to my local beach but right at the other end away from every one and this time well it was horrible sounding off all the time was undetectable i had to give up after trying to solve the problem changing settings and ground balancing with no luck so now i av mixed reactions on the machine for wet sand or is it just a case of some area will be to bad for the detector to operate stable and this is why we get such mixed reports from ppl who detect on the wet sand with it