Garrett ATX - Thoughts from a UK Detectorist

Right, hello, welcome back. This video has been well overdue, absolutely months overdue, but quite a while ago I bought this fella. I don't know whether you can see it amongst all the greenery that I've got around me here, but that is a Garrett ATX Pulse Induction Extreme Pulse Induction Metal Detector. I don't know how extreme it is in relation to other pulse induction metal detectors, but it does a damn good job in the right places. Now this is not going to be a full review, it's not going to go through all the different features this thing's got, because there's already videos out there doing a much better job than I could ever do. It's literally just going to be me telling you where I've used the machine, how it performed, and how I rate it in those various areas. Now I got this fella with the ordinary Land Garrett headphones. Which are okay, give a reasonable feedback. Although I do find that when it's windy, you get a little bit of wind whistling through, which takes away from the very, very faint signals that you get when you're detecting on land. They work pretty well. Obviously, they're not waterproof, so they're not suitable for use underwater. Stock coil on, and I actually upgraded this cover to the one that fits it perfectly. This machine comes with a flat cover. Which, when you're using it, it either gets full of sand or it gets full of grass seeds and bits of muck. I would imagine that now the ATX would come with a proper cover like this. So I can't give it negative marks for that. It's got to come with one of these. It just has to. These are great. Fits very, very tight. I was almost in danger of smashing it putting it on, but it went on and it stayed on very, very tight. So the first place I used this was in the field just out the back of my house. There's a Roman road runs up literally just on the edge of my property and I found the occasional Roman coins, I found medieval stuff, all sorts of Victorian Georgian coins and artifacts and so on. I tested it for two or three hours there and I found a little tiny musket ball way down approximately about a foot deep. Which I knew that the Equinox or the Deus wouldn't touch. It was a pistol musket ball, which is about the size of the nail on your little finger. A really, really tiny piece of lead. It was quite a faint signal, but it was diggable. So I dug it up and I thought, get in there. This is the machine I've been looking for to punch way down in pasture. Unfortunately, on subsequent trips to different sites where I knew there was deep coins, because I found them with the Equinox and the Deus, This fella was just finding iron. Although it has got the iron check function, if you're hunting anywhere where there's a lot of history and there's a lot of little fragments of iron or big rusty stuff way down, and I'm talking anywhere a foot or over a foot deep, this is not the detector for that. Pasture, unbelievably frustrating. And I found in most of the sites, the pretty clean ground apart from the amount of iron and good finds there, this fella just didn't get down, didn't even get down as far as the Equinox. Which most people will be appalled at me saying that, but I just found it, it just didn't get down as deep as the Equinox. It certainly didn't knock out a lot of the iron, saying that anything down to about six inches should give a slight crackle or a buzz when you check it with the iron check function. So I wasn't digging as much iron as I could have done if I was digging every signal, but I did dig a lot of deep holes for a lot of rubbish, which the e-track would have just ignored and the Deus would have ignored as well. So for pasture, I wasn't too keen. I've since taken it to a couple of beaches and that's about a two hour round trip for me because I live quite a long way inland. But I've given it a good outing on a couple of beaches both in the dry sand and in the wet sand. In dry sand it goes miles down. I was digging up little ring pulls from a foot, possibly more, but the area I found it most impressive was in the wet sand. Where I would struggle, I certainly struggle with the Deus, but I would also struggle with the E-Track. The E-Track will punch down deeper in wet sand than the Deus, but this fella goes miles beyond either of them. And when I say miles, I don't mean literally miles, I mean a good few inches, which makes all the difference. If you're hunting a beach that's getting pounded by people with ordinary metal detectors, This fella can get down below where they can get, and that will make a difference with the finds, I'm sure of it. If I was closer to the beach, I would use this fella on the beach all the time. I wouldn't bother with the E-Track or the Deus. This would be the machine. Again, you will dig the odd bit of iron, but I found on the beach it just wasn't as much of a problem as it was inland. Inland, there's just so much iron on a lot of my sites because they're quite old. This fella just... It's not for inland, basically, I just want to reiterate that fact. In the UK, this is not for inland. There will be sites that are highly mineralised, where normal detectors can't get down. It may have a slight niche there. Generally, no. Now, for land use, this is a pretty heavy detector. When it's fully extended, you get a massive search arc. But it comes at a cost, because... It is heavy, and the further this shaft's extended, the more weight you've got pulling on you. That said, the little harness that comes with this thing is excellent. It takes off most of the weight, so it is comfortable to use, even though it is a very heavy, long, potentially long detector. So yes, this really is a beach detector for the UK. I have seen folks in the US using it for civil war sites and so on where there just isn't as much contamination as we have inland here and you seem to do pretty well with it so I'm just speaking from someone who's using one in the UK. Wet sand, it is an absolute monster. Excellent. But underwater, it's even better. And if you're just snorkelling in the shallows, you can just use it like this. Very, very short, shallow water. If you're wading, Make it a lot longer, very, very versatile, and because it folds up to such a small size, it's easy to fit into a suitcase as well. This was in my suitcase, went through the scanners and so on, no problem at all. I had a metal sand scoop as well, I had the probe, which you probably just thought was something else that vibrates, you know what I mean. This went through no problem at all, no questions asked. On the way back, my case was too heavy, so I had to actually take the ATX case as hand luggage, and that went through no problem at all, went through the scanner, and I was worried for a minute because I had to take this as hand luggage. I did check as I checked it in if it would be okay. They said yes, but when it was going through the scanner on the little conveyor belt, it stopped, and I could see the fella looking at it thinking, what the hell is this? So I leaned over and I said, oh, it's a metal detector. And he said, oh, it is beautiful. I don't think you'd ever seen something with as many wires and different colours. It was actually beautiful. I asked him if I could take a picture of it, but he wouldn't let us. Thank And he seemed intrigued by it. So it went through there, no problem. So just as a matter of interest, you can put one in your suitcase and you can take one as hand luggage. And that was to Spain, but I would imagine if you were travelling somewhere where detecting was illegal. You don't want to take one at all because you will get it taken off you. I just detected in the water. I didn't detect the beaches you. because when I'm on holiday I don't like, I don't like to look like a scrounger, which when you're hunting beaches and there's a lot of people there you do. I do. Whereas if you're in the water you feel like a bit of an explorer, or I feel like a bit of an explorer anyway, and people are intrigued. They're thinking wow waterproof metal detector. Unfortunately I didn't have the waterproof earphones. So for the deeper signals, I had to keep my head above the water and try and dig them out with the sand scoop, so that was awkward. First thing I'm going to buy when I save up a little bit of money is the Grey Ghost waterproof headphones, because that will make such a difference. All the signals I got when I was there were really clear, diggable signals. I did dig a small amount of trash, maybe three or four trash targets, but all the rest was coins and something else, which I'll show you in a minute. I had it set on a very high sensitivity, I think it was either 12 or 13, and when I switched it on, I switched it on under the water, in mid-water, did a quick frequency scan, and then I was away. Knocked up the sensitivity as high as it would go, and I was getting a little bit of what people call signal drift, which is basically noise when you're moving backwards and forwards, and I was finding I was getting a little bit of noise as the waves came in, and the column of water was getting higher and lower over the machine. But good signals were very, very easy to recognise, even using the Garrett headphones above the water. I'm sure if I had the Grey Ghost headphones for it, it would be even better. I would be totally under the water, it would be a lot quieter under there, and I probably would have dug more stuff. I certainly would have been able to get out a lot deeper, and I just can't wait to go back on holiday. I really love this. And I'm going to show you what I've found on my recent holiday now. Well, I got all the normal stuff you'd expect to find on a beach. Lots and lots of coins. There's probably, I don't know, 20-odd coins, and all of those came from in the water. Two euros, one euro, 50 cents, 20 cents. I also got a few Russian coins as well, which was quite nice. Never seen those before. There's one, and there's little one-cent pieces, and there's also some little tiny Russian coins as well. There you go. I think that's 10 kopeck. And they gave absolutely banging signals down to about 12 inches under the sand, under the water. There's a little bit of bling, if you can call it bling, probably a Majorcan pearl on there. Fairly tatty, I should have just thrown that away, but you know that's a decent return for a first-time user under the water in a foreign land. So 26 coins in total and I spent maybe three, four hours out in the water. So that's not too bad. I was pleased with that, and they were all really, really good signals as well. But the best signal I got wasn't a coin. Approximately 20 metres or 20 yards out into the sea, and at a depth of maybe 2 feet of water, which is roughly half a metre deep of water, and approximately 12 to 14 inches, under the sand, into the hard-packed stuff where all the shells were, I got an absolutely sweet beautiful signal and as I mentioned before I didn't have waterproof headphones I had to kind of lean on my side hold the headphones up here and dig and dig and dig couldn't find the target deeper and deeper and deeper and when I got down to 12-14 inches making a huge hole under the sea. This fella came out and this was revealed when the wave kind of took water this way, swept it back, removed some of the sand that I chucked out from the bottom of the hole and that fella was there. And as I said that was the sweetest signal of the day. 25.4 grams of 14 karat gold. Really, really heavy gold ring over the moon. That found it no problem at all. I would have no doubt that it would have found it another five or six inches because the signal was so good. Maybes wouldn't be so good if it was a little nine carat ring but this lad gave a beautiful sweet signal. It was one of those ones you just can't walk past, had to be dug. So what I'm trying to say is if I had my priorities all wrong and my first priority was metal detecting when I was on holiday, I would have found A nation of stuff with this ETX, but because my priorities are family, work, then hobbies, I didn't get much time for detecting that. One thing I did find with this is that it's pretty difficult to get all the sand out from these extendable pieces. Now I give it a really, really good wash both times that I went out. Give it a quick rinse in the sea, where there was no sand suspended in the water. And then as soon as I got back, I stepped into an outdoor shower, and I was extending these, really, really cleaning all the sand off, and I've still got little bits of sand in here. It's not too bad, but it's definitely not as easy to slide that out. It maybe needs a little bit of silicone spray or something in here. But that's just a minor, minor gripe. The rest of it cleaned off pretty well. Really should have had a jet hose jetted off, but it's clean enough. You know, they all slot in okay. They are a little bit tighter than they were, though. Apart from that tiny little point, which I'm sure a little bit of spray will alleviate, this is excellent. If you're hunting beaches and you want to go underwater, yes, definitely excellent. I would wholeheartedly recommend it. And I know what some people are going to be saying. They're going to be saying, well, you hunt with an ATrac, you've got a DS, how many detectors do you need? Well, I'm happy with the three that I've got. They are reasonably expensive detectors, but... I can kind of justify it, because they each have their own strengths. The Deus is lightning fast on ploughed fields, will pick up tiny little targets, especially anything down to six inches, you just cannot miss it. Pretty good on pasture as well, but I prefer the E-Track with the big coil for pasture. I tend to find that I don't dig as much deep iron with that. And Deep Silver comes up really well. I've dug all my deep stuff on pasture with the E-Track. So E-Track and Deus, very good for inland use. Probably about equal in parks, although I have had my best finds with the Deus in parks. I think it's because of the separation of the targets. Really, really sharp, lightning fast. And it's a hell of a lot lighter than the E-Track as well. For beach use, the E-Track's pretty good. Deus, again, is good. They're both excellent in dry sand. Wet sand, the Deus isn't too good. e-track is good, but this fella is miles better. I'm really, really glad that I did take that leap of faith and buy that third detector for wet beach use and underwater use. Could have got the CTX 3030, but with it being so similar to the e-track, I would have probably ended up selling the e-track, and I really, really love that machine because it was my first good detector. It's been with me a lot of years and I've found most of my good finds with that. Although, if I hunted beaches and underwater, I'm sure this fella would provide me with some damn good finds if that big ring's anything to go by. So, from somebody in the UK, is it worth getting one of these? Ew. Only if you hunt beaches, I would say. For inland use, from my personal experience, I wouldn't use one. Yes, certain sites you may get an extra inch or two, but it isn't worth it for the amount of iron that you're going to dig, and you will dig a lot of iron inland in the UK. Wet beaches, a beautiful machine, absolutely beautiful. So if you're going to hunt beaches in the UK or anywhere in the world or go underwater, under salt water, yes, it's a good machine. It gives lovely sweet signals. I love the idea how you can make it small for when you're snorkelling and it's just got a lot of very very good features, very rugged, simple to understand and it's literally just a turn on and go machine. Very very good indeed. Thanks very much for watching, catch you in the next video.