First impressions of GT

[jamesinwesttexas]

I've only tried the GT in my test garden so far. It's not as heavy as I thought it might be, but I haven't swung it for hours yet. Except for the coil, not any heavier than my MXT. The 10 inch coil is a little heavy, maybe I'll sell it and get the S12 later. I'll be hip mounting mainly to protect the control box, but don't know where to put the meter. I bought the bar graph meter but was sent the 550 by mistake. It's stable at 550 on a quarter, but jumpy otherwise, much better with auto sensitivity. I'll send the meter back and get the bargraph one. Need some advice on that. I'm definitely going to get a smaller coil, probably the S8, need advice on that too. Pinpointing seems easy enough by using the toe of the coil even in disc. In disc I don't get a peep out of a horseshoe or a bottle cap. I'll definitely be hunting in auto sensitivity for awhile. Got to get headphones especially for hipmounting and eventually a pinpointer. The tones are going to be a challenge but I can already make some distinction, especially for quarters, that's easy. Thinking about trying notch on pulltabs and disc for foil and trying that for awhile, but maybe it's too early for that. Anyway, its fun and I need lots of practice, so I really need to finish some work and then go on a real hunt, probably down at the swimming hole. I feel this one is a keeper. Any comments appreciated.
James

 

[goodmore]

The GT is surely one of the best detectors on the market. I would stick with the 10 inch for a while. Most people find it to be their favorite large coil. I never had the bar graph meter, but I did have a 180 meter. They do perform better with lower sensitivity. Hip mounting is the way to go if you are going out for hours. You now have a detector with an amazing bunch of third party add-ons and options. Swing slow and take your time. The GT won't win any races for coverage. It will reward you with deep finds and good targets next to iron if you take your time.

 

[Ron from Michigan]

James the 10 inch Tornado coil is a great coil.My favorite coil to save weight is the Tornado 800 which is a 7 inch coil.The smaller coil allows the sensitivity to be maxed out and runs a lot smoother.The T800 has great depth faster sharper target response and excellent separation.Weight is reduced with the smaller 7 inch coil.My opinion the T800 and T1000 is all the coils needed for most land hunting.The 550 meter is much better than the bar graph meter.I prefer the 180 meter.An after market shaft will help with the balance and weight.Get out of the coin garden and go to an old worked out park.Good Luck

 

[Rob in (Ca)]

Avoid auto sensitivity if possible .......I kept my sensitivity Ridiculous low, like 1 o clock...........I was still digging targets at 10 inch's at the beach....... note the sensitivity adjustment is back wards......Higher is towards the left.......... the GT will go nuts on you with sand / dirt stuck between the coil cover, make sure it's cleaned out regularly.

 

[crazyman]

The 10 inch Tornado is a great coil. I use the S-8 for most of my hunting mainly because I hunt pretty trashy sites with a lot of iron and also because of the high mineralization around here. As far as the meter it comes down to personal preference, I don't use a meter that much unless I'm cherry picking coins out of old parks or lawns. I've owned the Sunray DTI and the Winburn Avenger in the past. They all do the job but I've personally never cared for wide resolution numerical VDI on any detector. They have never been as accurate in my bad ground. Like I said it's just personal preference. What I do like about the old bar graph meter is that it doesn't have to be calibrated before each hunt and doesn't drift out of calibration while hunting and there is no knob to bump. It has been dead on with every coil I've used it with so far. It has a narrow resolution mode and a expanded resolution mode. On deeper coins it will tend to smear down the scale but bounce back up to the correct ID momentarily as you sweep over the target and that's OK with me as between the smearing and the tone I get a good idea on the depth of the target. It won't take long for you to find what works best for you as far as accessories and settings for your type of hunting.

 

[Rick(ND)]

It will take a while to get used to the GT and you don't need to do all the adjustment some do until you get to know this detector. Volume max, sensitivity maybe better at auto until you get to know it better as it will run smoother to help learn it. The threshold should be just audible so you know what is nulling and when to slow down even more. Iron mask I would run on, but it may false a little more but you may hear a good coin next to iron better, but off it will null more on the iffy signals that can be coins next to iron. Disc run none or no higher than 10 o'clock position for the best results so you can hear the different tones and once learned you will know the good ones from the bad one. Notch is always off for me, but there has been some cases where I have used it. normally when I am bothered by the same type of pull tabs that is loaded with them as the signal will be broken up or nulling on them, but anything not in that small range will read loud and clear.
On meter the bar one was the first one Minelab made and most threw them in the junk and got a Sun Ray 180 meter, I know I threw 2 new ones away as you couldn't sell them for $10. Minelab came out with the 550 meter which was a OK meter, but to me the number fluctuate too much for me to get a good ID, but was much better then the bar one. Now Minelab makes a 180 meter as the found it seems to work the best, at least for me it is the best ID I have seen on any detectors I have used in my 38 years of detecting. These digital meters to me help me to ID those tones that are so close to one another you can not hear the difference in, but the digital number will tell you what you cant hear.
The coils like Ron said the 8 & 10 inch Tornado coils will do great for you and once you know the GT well and feel you need a bigger coil than the S-12 of Sun Rays I find works excellent.

The biggest tip is do not give up, may be confusing at times and it takes getting out and using it and learning everything you can about it and i find even go to new parks and dig new coins as it is all experience you will need. I had problem too and wondered why I got it, but spent the time and learned more all the time as it was getting better each time out. What really got me was a very old park that been hammered to death so there even wasn't a lot of trash so I didn't have to listen to so much noise and it all clicked to me and found it very easy to use once you know what to listen to. I know of many after 2 weeks of using the Sovereigns they were ready to give up or did, the ones that didn't are the ones you see post the nice finds others have left behind.
One thing I use and recommend before any coils is to get a S-1 Probe of Sun Rays as you will need it to find many of the deep targets plus your recovery will be much faster so you will able to find more when you go out.

Good luck and don't give up so we can see some great finds found by you.

Rick

 

[jamesinwesttexas]

You guys are great, thanks for those comments. I'm real lucky to be able to get the benefit of your experience. I'm slow, so the GT is a good match for me. Rick, I think you've convinced me to get the pinpointer first. I think I'm fairly sold on the Garret Propointer. I'm going to look for some headphones at a resale shop tomorrow. I think I'm going to like the 10 inch Tornado, but it's huge compared to the 5 inch Excelerator I've been using on the MXT. I'm still wondering about the difference between the T800 and S8 coil. I'll send the 550 meter back since the bargraph is the one I paid for, probably too much, and I'm curious to try it.. I will try to get the 180 meter also at some point. I hope to get a little time to detect an old park tomorrow. Thanks again and good luck to all.
James

 

[Critterhunter]

Just stick with the Sovereign for a while and give it a chance. Even though I've owned and used many machines over the years it still gave me problems getting used to it. You have to learn to use the machine to it's strengths and not try to make it work the way other machines have for you. My main frustrations were pinpointing and also avoiding screwcaps while digging coins. Third would be learning to ID round pull tab tails versus nickles. They tend to read at the very bottom of nickle numbers or lower but they still gave me fits for a while until I learned the audio and how they bounced a little in ID. Some think the Sovereign is very slow and that can hurt you, but I'd say I've dug more masked coins with it than any other machine I've owned. Also, I found my Explorers to be even harder to use in trash because the audio and visual IDs are out of phase with each other. That's why Explorer users always say listen to the tones and don't watch the ID. On a Sovereign it's VDI is tied directly to it's audio. What you hear is what you see, so in that very real respect it's "faster" than machines with very fast recovery speeds. It's ID is the best I've used in both function and detail.

When I first bought a GT less than a year ago I was asking a bunch of questions on here. I remember one guy laugh at me and say I'd sell it in a few weeks. Guess I proved him wrong. That's not to say that I might not buy an Etrac down the road, though. No where else to go from here in terms of performance, and I'm not convinced the Etrac is going to offer it all in terms of performance in certain respects. Read too many guys say the GT is more stable and deeper at least at certain specific sites.

 

[Critterhunter]

If you look at my coin garden thread the GT at the 2 O'Clock position appears to always be deeper than Auto I think, at least in a spot where this is a lot of RF noise causing auto to adjust down further. It might be that in remote locations Auto will set it's self higher than 2 O'Clock. Auto is going to be your best way to learn the machine and the way it's supposed to sound like when running stable. Once you've got some time on that then it seems that most people find about 2 O'Clock to be the best setting for max depth in moderate to high minerals, and probably around 11 O'Clock is the second most common setting in say lower minerals. Also, if the spot is loaded with iron Auto might do better at finding targets then even 2PM does, because it's constantly adjusting sensitivity to bring the threshold back quicker than a static manual setting. The only way to tell at a site is to hunt it a while with Auto and then with manual and see which one seems to be recovering more good targets. Or, do what I do and stick a coin in the ground and then play with auto and various sensitivity levels. You'll find too high a setting can null out or degrade a target just like too low will. If you've got the target buried at the fringes of depth the machine will narrow down the sensitivity range for you where the deepest performance will be achieved, and often that's 2 O'Clock for me in high minerals. 1 O'Clock in moderate probably, and 11 O'Clock in low mineralization. Just remeber that that "best" setting is often WAY below what seems like a stable threshold. For instance, I can often run at max sensitivity and still have a seemingly stable machine to me. I was shocked to find that it was blinded to deep coins and that less than have sensitivity (gain) would produce a good coin signal.

Auto has it's place. I also look at it like automatic ground tracking. It will adjust it's self in fast changing ground conditions which may in it's self give you more depth than a static setting.

 

[jamesinwesttexas]

Thanks Critter, very informative. I've got to print this page and carry it in my back pocket for awhile. I sent the 550 meter back and should have the bargraph in a couple of days. Bought good Sony headphones at a resale shop, what a difference. Did a tiny bit of detecting but work has me tied up. I need to just practice hearing the different tones and then get down to the swimming hole. I was amazed at how small a gold nugget the GT easily detected in my test garden. It should have no problem with small gold jewelry. I will be mostly using auto sensitivity until I get a better understanding. Good luck.
James

 

[jbow]

If the weight bothers you go to Cabelas and get a binocular harness. Use it to chestmount the control box... it works wonders without being a drag on your belt.

J

 

[jamesinwesttexas]

Thanks, jbow, I'll keep that in mind. I've got a good hipmount bag and belt so I'll be using that for awhile. To me the control box is not heavy, I just don't like the idea of setting my new baby down in the dirt.
James

 

[jamesinwesttexas]

Found my first coin with the GT. It's a 1948D wheat penny. Found it about 200 yards from my house where an old ranch gate used to be and it was only 3 or 4 inches deep. I had hunted the area hard with my MXT and Gold Scanner Pro and had found a 1948 quarter a year or so ago. Still haven't had much time to hunt. I like the bargraph meter and getting used to some of the tones. Biggest problem is juggling all the equipment, especially the meter, headphones, digging tool and cup.
James

 

[Critterhunter]

Play around with headphones until you find what audio you like best from a pair. So far for me the Sony Studio Phones ($20 at Walmart) have given me the best audio. Since they have no volume control I have to keep the volume on the GT all the way down and also stuffed some foam in the ear muffs to quiet it down just a hair more to what is comfortable for me. Many say you should always run volume at max and then adjust it on the headphones. Still, even a deep coin at the fringes give me plenty loud enough audio to clearly hear. But, I still have concerns that max volume may do better at the fringe stuff, at least in giving me a much louder response to pick apart better. I've been playing with maxing out audio on real deep stuff and man it's loud. I'd run that way but then surface trash really gets loud so I can't do that.

The MXT is a good machine but it and the M6 (same machine) will not get the depth of the GT even in low minerals from what I've seen and read. And, when the minerals get higher the difference is even greater. That's not knocking the Whites because few machines can even say they come close to the Sovereign in depth. Some think it's the deepest of any detectors out there (excluding some PI units) period, against even the FBS Minelabs at least in certain sites where ground conditions for some reason favor one over the other. The M6/MXT are nice friendly light machines that can be swung faster and so make great scouting machines. They also have a reputation for being great gold ring machines due to the VDI scale, but have nothing over the Sovereign since it's scale is slightly higher to split hairs a little better on targets when need be. I had planned to buy an M6 to use as my scouting unit in the woods and such to cover larger ground with less weight and faster. Since my GT is now way lighter than stock I don't need the M6, and I'm not impressed with it's depth (or even the DFX/V3's). I think I've decided on a T2LTD or F75LTD as my backup unit now. It's a different beast being fast and a static high frequency, but it'll make a great scouting machine and also has near Sovereign depth in low minerals anyway. I think it should make the perfect backup unit to my Sovereign for those reasons, and nothing else on the market comes as close to the performance of the GT from what I've read. Only other machine I might buy is an Etrac to add to my lineup. Miss the computer display on a machine some times if anything to just give me something to stare at while hunting and tweak here and there when the odd situation comes up.

There's an old rule of thumb for the Sovereign. From memory I think people say expect depth to be 3 or 4" deeper than the coil size. In other words, on say the 8" Coinsearch coil if conditions are right you can hit a coin at 12" on land, and so on. Deeper in sand usually.

One other thing that gave me issues on the GT was false coin hits from iron. I dug a few deep holes only to find out it was iron off to the side of the plug. You'll learn to ID those with a little practice. Mainly PP will show the target to not be where the "coin" hit is, though I'm good enough with the ID and audio now to not have to go that far to check.

Enjoy that machine. Give it time. At first it felt like a dog to me and slugish. After about the tenth hunt or so I started to like and understand it much better, with much more still to learn on this old girl.

 

[Critterhunter]

One thing I can tell you is that after not using a meter while water hunting I am soaking in the tones and the quality of it on various items much better now. I still love a meter but I'd recommend anybody to go hunting for a while without one to fine tune their skills on deciphering what the audio is telling you. Even though I always try to take my time and sweep for several minutes on a deep or wierd target to try to soak it all in and learn what say various coins are doing when they are on end, masked, at the fringes of depth, and so on, not using the meter for a while will really make you notice even finer details in the audio then it would if your attention is split between that and the meter. Still using a meter on land and always will because it can clue you off to various target qualities that the sound can't, such as targets so close in VDI that I can't hear the difference, but in the water of course it's dig everything above iron for me so why risk using a meter and getting that wet.

 

[jamesinwesttexas]

Thanks Critter, that's all good info. I've found a few more coins with the GT but still don't have much time on it. The tones I think I'm slowly learning. The bargraph meter seems to put all the good coins on the right side in the expanded mode and that's how I've been hunting and experimenting with the sensitivity. I think I'm going to like that meter. I can't figure out how to carry the meter when I'm hunting, on the shaft or draped over the hip bag where I can see it better. From what you said about not using it, I think I'm going to put it on the shaft [I can barely read it there] and as I learn the tones I'll be looking at it less and less. I can tell dimes, quarters, copper pennies and other silver will be easy to get. Nickles, I've gotten a couple, but a pesky pulltab type is close to it. Gold jewelry, I haven't a clue yet so I'll just dig nickles and hope they are close to that. I know you made a chart on rings, I'll have to reread that, but I don't have the 180 meter. I bought Sony V600 studio headphones [45 ohm] at a resale shop for $4 and the audio quality is amazing, but they have no volume control either and like you I can't take it too loud, but it's not too bad with volume down on the GT. They are bulky and adds to the list of things to carry, so I haven't used them much. Anyway I am slowly getting organized with the GT and I think it will be my main detector, but I probably will keep the MXT. Let me warn you not to sleep too close to your detector. I had a dream that a bird the size of a T-Rex was chasing me and I ducked under a table and suddenly woke up in a closet realizing that one of the table legs was the shaft on my Gold Scanner which I had broken in my wild scramble.
James

 

[Critterhunter]

Hate dreams like that. Usually too much sugar before bed does it for me. Nickles are easy on the 180 meter. For me they read from 140 to 147, but usually I think around 145 or 146. They also won't bounce around hardly or at all, while junk in that range will. All the tabs are higher, at about 152 to 165 or so. This machine is a nickel KILLER, but if you look at my ring chart there are MANY rings that are say between 100 to 140, so dig anything that sounds good and locks on in that range. I'm finding most foil (regardless of size) will read around 90 or less, which is great since most rings are above that. Never seen a machine put most blobs of foil at the very bottom of the VDI regardless of size. Many machines seem to stick them higher here and there more, which makes it harder to avoid the foil while digging rings. Never heard anybody mention this but it seems true to me and a big asset.

If that meter has the V-clip on it like all the others then what I did was drill out the two rivets on the shaft, put two long bolts through the shaft, and secure the V-clip high on the shaft using some nuts. Now the meter is above the hand grip for easy viewing. Now, however, I've got the V-clip mounted on top of my custom hand grip. Easiest to see and use that way and is great.

The Studio Headphones at Walmart (Sony) I think Crazyman turned me onto. These are smaller than normal detector headphones, or are I guess you could say about the size of "studio" headphones. Most comfortable I've ever used and much less hot in the summer. Still allows just enough noise in so I can hear friends talk and anybody trying to sneak up on me, so they are perfect. I use them on the great lakes with mild waves and don't have any problem hearing the threshold, but I'm sure on a very noisy ocean you'd want something to drowned out the noise a bit more. You can buy an inline volume control at Radio Shack. I tried one of those and am not sure if it offers any benefits by allowing me to crank up the volume on the GT all the way and then adjust it on that. In fact, it seemed to me that the audio quality changed. I feel I get MUCH more quality sound by keeping the volume all the way down on the GT and just stuffing a little foam into these to get them perfect. It almost seems to me with the few headphones I've tried on the GT that when I crank the audio all the way up on it and then adjust it on the headphones it seems to lose something in quality. Like I said anyway, I can still hear the very fringe of detection easily even with the volume all the way down so I don't see a need to change unless somebody can tell me otherwise. I've seen a number of people say the volume on the GT should be all the way up, but no solid explaination as to why. It doesn't seem to get me any deeper in audio that I wouldn't notice otherwise, and like I said it sounds to me like the audio changes for the worse when it's cranked up. Anybody?

 

[Rick(ND)]

This control is not the threshold volume, but the signal volume. Many say they see no difference and that is just the threshold they don't see a difference in. To me if mine is not at full volume I can tell on the first target it sees as it don't sound right to me.
Try waving a coin across the coil and move it away at low volume and see where you don't notice it then crank it all the way up and try it again and you should see a big difference, as I sure do.I am very hard of hearing so I need the volume and get it with my Timberwolf headphones and running full volume I have dug many deep coins others walked right over, but if you are just clad hunting the volume will probably be too high for you, but deep ones I find full volume will get them.

 

[kered]

I agree with Rick, the volume definately affects the depth, it lets you hear the deeper targets, if you are running the volume low your cutting yourself short. I use the Sunray gold pro phones with the limiter on, it saves your ears from the shallow blasts but doesn't affect the faint deeper hits. I smile when i read " a deep 6" hit" makes me think they use low volume and koss phones without volume control

 

[jamesinwesttexas]

Thanks for those tips and I can see I have a lot of research to do on headphones. I like the idea of being able to hear what's going on around me [if I want to or not]. My Sony's have a flip up earcup for that. Critter, what's the number on those Wallmart Sony's? The Sunray's must be great and the Timberwolves. I would hope that they would be cool enough to use in the heat. Yea, I need to mount the meter on the handle.
James