Regular readers of The Searcher will remember me saying that my first ‘real’ metal detector was a Garrett Coinhunter and this was bought way back in the 1970s. By today’s standards it was heavy on the wrist and had no real depth, but it certainly paid for itself many times over!

The new Garrett GTI 1500 shows you what improvements have been made over the past 20 years. Over the next few paragraphs you will see that Garrett have now produced an extremely powerful machine that is simple to use, very light to handle, and has good depth on reasonably sized targets whilst still retaining good sensitivity on very small targets. This is without mentioning the excellent meter – but on with the Field Test.

First impressions are always important when you take a machine out of the box and one glance at the Garrett will have you rushing to try it out. In the past I have already handled the GTA 500 and GTA 1000, so my main aim in this Field Test was to (a) see if there was an improvement in performance and (b) to try out the new Treasure Imaging to see if this idea was going to be of any benefit to me. When setting up the machine you are able to alter, or view, any of the following:
Discrimination, Sensitivity (depth) Threshold, Operating Frequencies, Volume, Tone, Salt Elimination (beaches), Backlight, Battery Test and Treasure Imaging. In short, if you don’t like something about this machine – you just spend a few seconds altering it until you do! This is one machine you are not about to get fed up with as you can change it to suit your site.

My test bed confirmed that the depth was in line with the other top end motion detectors but what impressed me was the way in which the meter ‘locked’ on to the targets. Many meters will struggle to identify a target at more than 4 inches (some at less than that!), whereas the Garrett gave a clear readout on the old penny buried at 8 inches. What really impressed me though was the target imaging. In brief, it only operates in pinpoint and gives you an approximate size of target. In theory a hammered coin will give a small image whilst a ploughshare will give a large one. Within 5 minutes of using the machine I can honestly say that I loved it. After over twenty years in the hobby I can normally guess the size, shape and depth of most targets that are buried in the top six or seven inches, but here is a machine that will do it for you. From using this screen I could easily see which targets were ‘coin-sized’ and those that were the size of tin cans. In theory you should dig everything that is non-ferrous, but if you are digging a lot of large ‘junk’, then this will enable you to be more selective over your choice of targets.

In the Field The first chance to test the machine was to be an interesting one. A lady had been feeding the ducks by the stream outside her house and felt the ring slide off her finger. Luckily she had not heard a splash so presumed that it was in the flowerbed that runs alongside the stream. Before we got there, she had got her husband to rake the area over thoroughly in search of it, so it was possible that we might have to search an even wider area that was initially thought. The two of us had a total of three machines but I really wanted to use the Garrett 1500 so I could check the read-outs. Amazingly, I put the Garrett down literally on top of it. The meter ‘locked on’ about halfway which is where I expected and 18 carat ring to register and the ‘Treasure Imager’ showed me a small signal the size of a new 1p. Furthermore the meter said that it was in the top 1 inch and a few seconds later we had returned the ring to a very happy lady. To be fair, even a £50 machine would have found the ring but the Garrett told me the target was probably the ring and on another day could have saved us a lot of time and energy.

As with most meter machines, I like to try them out in a local park simply because of the number of targets there, good and bad. Although I would not expect to find small hammered, it would show me just how good the machine was on depth, discrimination and pinpointing. The machine dealt with the park as expected with several of the older coins coming up from 8-9 inches. The meter couldn’t always ‘lock on’ to these deeper targets, but by ironing the ground I had enough information coming through to tell that it was a deep non-ferrous target and therefore had to be dug. I set the controls up exactly the same way as I used the Garrett 1000, namely I removed the first three blocks of the meter to lose the small iron and the last block which seems to remove the large lumps of rubbish just below the surface. Sensitivity was up as high as I could go and through personal choice I had a faint threshold. I then check any signal that I get and if the meter is signalling non-ferrous, then I dig it! After about an hour I decided to concentrate only on coin size objects buried at least 5 inches deep and from here on I only dug a handful of rubbish targets. In fact, I had a brilliant day and my detecting partner was quite taken aback at the number of old Georgian coins that I found and this is on a site that we have searched carefully with a lot of very powerful metal detectors for the past 20 years. Many of you who buy this machine would not consider searching a park because of the amount of modern rubbish, but combining the depth reading and size of object will have you recovering only the older more interesting finds – try it before someone else beats you to it!

The next chance I had to get out was on our local club dig. The site had turned up a few nice finds in the past but was now well played out and this was why only perhaps a dozen of us decided to brave the difficult conditions. The field was still under stubble but it looked from a distance as though it was mostly under water and every footstep was difficult. What made it worse though was that the holes would fill up with water making recovery a very messy process. After a couple of hours using the normal settings, I only had six non-ferrous items and they were just bits of broken brooches and of course shotgun cartridges and this seem about the same finds ratio as my fellow club members. At this point I very nearly decided to move to another site, but I firstly wanted to try using the Garrett in all-metal as there was not a great deal of iron in the field and I wanted to see if the extra depth would improve my finds rate.

Almost immediately I started to make deep non-ferrous finds and within the hour I had a pocketful of interesting bits and pieces. I also had a total of five jettons and a well-worn Scottish 60 shilling piece. There was a lot more iron in the ground than I had originally thought but by showing down and checking each signal I was able to ignore most of it. On the Garrett 1500 I found that if you are going to use it in all-metal, when you get a faint signal, ‘iron’ the ground until you get some form of reading on the meter and you can then decide whether to dig it or leave it! However, you are going to get some deep signals where the meter can-not lock-on and with those you have to remove a spadeful of earth so as to get the coil closer to the target and therefore be able to signal ferrous or non-ferrous. Using this method is not going to appeal to everyone, especially if the site is ‘junky’ but you should really try it out whenever you get the chance because it can greatly increase your finds rate.

Although it was starting to get dark I had been given a message to say that someone nearby had lost a ring, so off we drove. It was dark when we arrived and the woman had lost the ring earlier in the day – but had no real idea where!! She had been mucking out the stables that afternoon, so we started the search there and luckily there was no reinforcement in the concrete floor. Over the next couple of hours we searched the stables, the lawn and the flowerbeds and the only way we could see in the dark was by one of us moving over to a security light and waving our hands every few minutes. There were so many targets that we decided to only use the Garrett and check those signals that were ‘ring-sized’. This made the search a great deal easier and we soon had plenty of coins, etc. – but unfortunately no ring. We have since been back and widened the search area, but still no luck and can only presume that she has lost it somewhere indoors.

The next day (Sunday), my detecting friend had to work, so I drove up to a huge 95 acre field that I search every year. My friend refused to search here as he has found nothing interesting in the past but it is where I found my first Celtic stater and I always return in the hope that there will be more. I had hoped to be able to search in all-metal, but the constant ‘ear-bashing’ made me turn back to my previous settings and interesting finds soon started to come up. By lunchtime I had found finds from the past 700-800 years, the oldest of which was common Edward I penny (London mint). I also had two thimbles, a jews harp, four buckles, seven musket/pistol balls, eleven buttons and five Georgian coins, plus an assortment of broken bits and pieces. Most of these targets were found in the top 8 inches and this, in itself, does not tell you a great deal about the machine until I tell you that one of the Georgian pennies came up at 10 inches (no meter readout, but a small repeat-able signal). The afternoon gave up similar finds, but I was very fortunate to find a porcupine sceat at around 3-4 inches (this doesn’t sound deep, but you try and find something this small at that depth!). Over the next ten days I used the Garrett 1500 a further three times and this confirmed my earlier thoughts regarding its performance.

Conclusion Although the Garrett 1500 is simple enough for a beginner to be able to use, it is deliberately aimed at the more experienced enthusiast who would see the benefits of using a powerful meter machine with plenty of useful options. In the short time that I used the machine, I found that the meter correctly identified the iron (rubbish) and thereby saved me having to dig it up and this alone will appeal to many detector users. It gave above average depth on large targets and yet was still sensitive enough to locate very small targets which is of course vitally important. The machine was easy to set up and features such as ‘Last Mode’ were extremely useful as I like to go from ‘All-Metal’ to ‘Iron Discrim’ and vice-versa several times throughout the day and this enabled me to do it in less than a second. The main point that I wanted to check out was the ‘Treasure Imaging’ to see if it was a gimmick or a useful feature and without doubt it came over as a useful feature. May of you (myself included) dig everything regardless of its size as long as it is not iron, but even I found it useful to ignore some of the larger targets thereby increasing my finds rate.

I think that the Garrett 1500 will particularly appeal to those of you who are currently using a motion detector without a meter, but are now able to see the benefits of it. You can now leave the iron in the ground for someone else to dig up! This new model is available from the importers, Regton Ltd, 82 Cliveland Street Birmingham B19 3SN or major dealers nationwide.