- #1
Thread Owner
I'm new here, and a neophyte with searching for...treasures and such. I have a NOS GTI-2500 complete set I bought new about 12yrs ago. It may have <5hrs use.
My wife got a hold of it and found a quarter within 5 minutes of use, and now she's hooked, so I went on a scouting mission to find a detector for myself.
I scored [for $47.50] a used but in great condition GTAx-1250. It was 'dead' and missing its coil, rods, battery holders and doors. Meh
I'm a retired engineering tech, and cheap busted electronics appeals to me if it isn't in roached out condition and some parts still available, so I rolled the dice.
These are quite well made. The PCB's are top-quality and the engineering seems superb.
Shame on Garrett for using membrane switches on a several hundred dollar detector, -membrane switches really are bottom of the barrel for an app that will likely see rain. IMHO
Reminds me of the Sinclair ZX-80.
Be that as it may.
A bit more 'depth'...
The problem with this gtax was its membrane buttons were non-functional due to age, cycle count and what appears to be moisture intrusion. After some dissection, I traced the circuits enough to momentarily jumper the power switch and the detector immediately came to life. The other function switches were flaky, but the membrane and display window is in good condition, -so good that I want to retain this NLA part and adapt it to use tactile switches in place of the original membrane junk.
I'm waiting on an order of 30 micro-tactile switches. For this noob's thread at this point no photos to share. As things progress further I will post.
Meanwhile, I'm looking for a search coil for it. Trouble is I cannot find much information on what/who/model coils work with this 5 pin GTAx-1250.
I would like to try a DD type. Unfortunately, my GTI-2500 is a SEVEN PIN so neither of the two new search coils that came with it will work with the GTAx-1250.
Anyone got suggestions?
Along the way, I'm wondering about search coil physics. I saw maybe more than one post that various coils are not inter-compatible. This would be for a number of reasons. I would like to get into the technical considerations here but perhaps that is for another forum? The analysis would require several different make/models of coils to characterize the study.
Thanks
k
My wife got a hold of it and found a quarter within 5 minutes of use, and now she's hooked, so I went on a scouting mission to find a detector for myself.
I scored [for $47.50] a used but in great condition GTAx-1250. It was 'dead' and missing its coil, rods, battery holders and doors. Meh
I'm a retired engineering tech, and cheap busted electronics appeals to me if it isn't in roached out condition and some parts still available, so I rolled the dice.
These are quite well made. The PCB's are top-quality and the engineering seems superb.
Shame on Garrett for using membrane switches on a several hundred dollar detector, -membrane switches really are bottom of the barrel for an app that will likely see rain. IMHO
Reminds me of the Sinclair ZX-80.
Be that as it may.
A bit more 'depth'...
The problem with this gtax was its membrane buttons were non-functional due to age, cycle count and what appears to be moisture intrusion. After some dissection, I traced the circuits enough to momentarily jumper the power switch and the detector immediately came to life. The other function switches were flaky, but the membrane and display window is in good condition, -so good that I want to retain this NLA part and adapt it to use tactile switches in place of the original membrane junk.
I'm waiting on an order of 30 micro-tactile switches. For this noob's thread at this point no photos to share. As things progress further I will post.
Meanwhile, I'm looking for a search coil for it. Trouble is I cannot find much information on what/who/model coils work with this 5 pin GTAx-1250.
I would like to try a DD type. Unfortunately, my GTI-2500 is a SEVEN PIN so neither of the two new search coils that came with it will work with the GTAx-1250.
Anyone got suggestions?
Along the way, I'm wondering about search coil physics. I saw maybe more than one post that various coils are not inter-compatible. This would be for a number of reasons. I would like to get into the technical considerations here but perhaps that is for another forum? The analysis would require several different make/models of coils to characterize the study.
Thanks
k
