Garrett ATX Information and Questions

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I see there is one for sale on Gumtree already...bit too early for me as I am waiting to see a few more Australian reviews...
 
Hey BrisJoe
HaHa! You think!?
I wont be giving my ATX up in a hurry and cant wait to try it on some gold.
 
kleinman98 said:
Hey BrisJoe
HaHa! You think!?
I wont be giving my ATX up in a hurry and cant wait to try it on some gold.

I watched some tests on utube and I think it looks the goods, waiting for your results kleinman98. :D
Minelabs SDC2300 tests against it will be interesting to say the least, but they are a ways off yet...
 
I've been looking in fleabay and gumtree for good deals on detectors since maybe three months ago, and in that time I don't believe there's ever not been a few for sale.
 
jimnyjerry said:
BrisJoe said:
Why would one claimed to have been bought in Oz come with power point adapter for Oz 8)

The ATX that is shown in the NQExplorers ATX setup you tube clip, curiously shows a non-australian plug on the charger power supply. How many owners have received a power supply with no australian plug on it so far? Is that legal?
 
Goldpick said:
jimnyjerry said:
BrisJoe said:
Why would one claimed to have been bought in Oz come with power point adapter for Oz 8)

The ATX that is shown in the NQExplorers ATX setup you tube clip, curiously shows a non-australian plug on the charger power supply. How many owners have received a power supply with no australian plug on it so far? Is that legal?
I have but lucky I have travel adaptors to suit.
 
mfdes said:
I've been looking in fleabay and gumtree for good deals on detectors since maybe three months ago, and in that time I don't believe there's ever not been a few for sale.

Gumtree has one on there now...GPX5000 for $2200.00...I would assume it's a fake...
 
Regarding the garrett ATX, yes they all get shipped with the Aussie plugs now.
in a fashion(similar to the interchangeable multi plug fits I've seen on many different items lately)

They also come with the coil cover. :) :D
 
Hi guys.
For what it's worth I hired a standard Garret ATX (Double D coil) when I was back home in Queensland for Christmas. I was pretty keen to try before buying.

Here's a rundown of my experience.

In a nutshell, I found it extremely easy to use and far more stable than my Xterra 705, especially on heavily mineralised ground and beaches. I intended to use the ATX in a number of different conditions to get a feel for it and see if I could justify buying one.

DAY ONE
Performance was great. My first outing was to a beach at Redcliffe, where my first target turned out to be about one third of the ring from a ring pull. Not much really, but still a decent signal considering it was about 55 to 60cm deep.

The site turned out to be covered in junk. The usual bits of foil, bottle tops, ring pulls, sinkers etc. There was a funny hard layer averaging 15cm deep for much of the area that I searched. This consisted of quite hard clay and decomposed rock. Much of the stuff I found was right on top of that layer.
Other targets were,

Stainless 3/8 nut and bolt encased in hard black residue which I broke off at home.
Corroded soda bomb half coated in the same hard black, sediment?
Sinker

There was plenty of other rubbish as well, but the nature of the beach there meant most targets were on the hard layer.

I attracted a bit of attention from several old guys walking along the path that skirts the beach there. One funny old timer even started to scratch around in the sand where I got the signals, without being asked I might add. I got the impression I might have had my hands full if I had detected a valuable ring or something. At about 55cm, it turned out to be a 1/2 oz. sinker, which I gave him as a memento. He seemed happy with that and promptly buggered off. Easily pleased I guess.

DAY TWO
A trip to Bongaree, over on Bribie Island was next up. I spent about an hour sniffing around the jetty and came away convinced that had I had the time and patience to really cover the area properly, I would have found everything worth finding down to at least 60 cm or deeper.
I even got booming signals off hair pins and a 10 cent coin at that depth.

Eventually, I got sick of digging hair pins etc. and decided to go to Woorim, on the East side of Bribie.

Well, I didn't fare much better over there, but like I said, I was just getting a feel for the ATX, so it was more a case of seeing how stable it was and how deep it would find targets.
In an hour or so, all I found was junk, including them bloody hair pins again. Depth again to 60cm plus.

DAY THREE
Took my family up to an area near Kilcoy for BBQ and a pan in a creek.
I had my missus up there about 2 weeks ago and found some alluvial stuff in bedrock cracks. This being the main reason I hired the ATX in the first place. By the time we got up there and I showed them all how to pan, it was lunch time. A few burgers, snags, salad and beers later, I was off with the detector, figuring it was now safe to leave the women to amuse themselves in the creek panning etc. They were also fascinated with some of the rocks they found, including one which may yet turn out to be a well worn yellow sapphire. No more gold but.

In the first 15 minutes with the ATX, I found more pieces of rusty barbed wire in the creek than you can poke a stick at. They had been there so long that, for the most part, all that remained were the knots of wire where the barbs were formed. I did however find one rusty little sliver of wire about 1 cm long, with half the mass of a small tack, in stoney gravel about 55 to 60ch deep. I was amazed. It might have come off the side of the hole as I dug, but I was pretty careful so I don't think it did.

Anyway, a dirty great thunder storm rolled in and caught us all out. Saturated, and by now, quite cool, we decided to head home.

DAY THREE
One last trip on Saturday, saw us up in the area again.
The missus and I did a bit of scouting around first, and decided to ask for permission to fossick at one particular farm.
After gaining approval, we made our way down to the predominately dry creek bed and started swinging.

The good thing about places like this is, there's usually no foil, ring pulls, bottle tops, and them bloody hair pins etc. I did however find a swag more barbed wire etc.

Unfortunately, the heat of the day became quite unbearable. I'm not so badly affected, but the missus is very fair skinned and prone to sunburn, so we decided to call it quits.

Given more time however, I'm quite sure this area would turn up some useful colour.

SUMMARY
Even allowing for my limited experience with the Garrett ATX, I have no doubt it is more than capable of finding even relatively small targets to better than 60cm. and that's with the standard DD coil, never mind the 20" Deepseeker coil.

Once a person got used to the tones, pinpointing, and generally got used to extracting the most from the unit, it will find targets so deep, we'll be sick of digging for them.

I've been researching what to buy as my next detector, and whilst I've been lured by the performance of the Minelabs GPX 5000, the price has had me considering a second hand machine, even considering the obvious pitfalls. But as we all know, even they seem to be very expensive as well.

Not having used a GPX 5000 before, I don't really want to get into a debate about which is better. I also would prefer to buy "Australian", but hell, for the price difference, ease of use, stability, and at least similar performance, why would I shell out 40% more money. That would go a hell of a long way to funding a trip to the goldfields up north. Oh, I forgot to mention, I'd rather trip over in a creek or the surf, and dunk an ATX (water proof to 3 m) than drown a GPX. What a disaster that would be.
Another big advantage I see is it's ease of use. A novice operating an ATX would get way better performance than a poorly operated GPX.
Oh, I forgot the fact that it's so compact when folded up too. At 20" long, it's gunna find a place in my luggage when I fly home from now on.

I've ordered my Deepseeker package and now that I'm back in Melbourne, I can't wait to hit the Creswick and Daylesford gold fields where I spend most of my time off, while working here.

If you see an white 2001 ex Telstra Landcruiser in your travels, give me a wave. Always up for a chat, as you can probably tell by the essay I just wrote.

Cheers, Ron.
PS. I'm not getting any kickbacks or commissions from Garret, but if they were to offer,, well,,,,,,,
 
cheers for that ronnie!
Still wanna get one, but waiting on more forum members to review it first.
 
Thanks for the review,I just posted a question in a thread above asking about this machine....What batteries where you using and how long did they last????

Cheers...Sparra
 

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