The reason that the ATP finds a lot of things is no different than the Ace 250 finding lots of them. Same goes for the F2, and the MXT when it first came out, and the old Red Baron and Compadre. The dector manufacturers pushed real hard sell onto potential customers, so a huge number of people went right down and bought them like they were 32 ouncer beers selling for a buck a bottle. Right now, the ATP has a lot of new owners, perhaps the most new owners since the F2, and before that the Ace 250. A flooded market creates more people using metal detectors, hence more finds. I can buy an ATP on eBay for $250 because there are beginning to be too many used ones up for sale, and that drops their market value substantially. It's more about hard sell, than quality that sells brand new items. In fact, an enormous numbers of people bought the ATP and the others long before anone even owned one, it's human nature for people to buy something that sounds good, when it fact it's not exactly what the company promised after all. For example, and probably the best one too. Barack Obama promised a lot of things to a lot of people, but so far, it hasn't turned out like he said it would at all. My neighbor even quit his job, because he thought he was going to get free money, free food, free housing, free transportation, and free everything. Now he is PO'd at the man for false claims, yet he voted for him twice. I know one woman who voted for Obama 10 times and two of her friends voted for him 12 times each, and they too are PO'd at him.
All these more recent detectors, (especially the cheaper ones) are by and large just a flash in the pan, because we are at the azimuth of metal detector technology, we have nowhere else to go. In truth, we are still using the same basic circuitry that was invented more than 35 years by George Payne. Whites is reportedly creating a new analytical detector, but that's because we are at the end of the line in technology (as Dave Johnson said in his engineering notes). So all that can be done now is to change the toys on them a bit here and there, and make them dance to a slightly different tune. The truth is, that there are now few differences between most newer vlf/multi-frequency detectors, including depth and discrimination capabilities. I watched a video the other day where an Ace 250 was staying right with even a Blisstool as far as depth in the soil in the Czech Republic, and it shocked me. Our next adventure will be some kind of radar or cold fusion or inducted magnetic image detector of some kind put into a smaller package. Right now, there are more F2's and ATP's being sold and traded than any other detector, including the F75. and it's because they are cheap, and Garrett like Whites did an enormous sales push and spent huge amounts of money on marketing, in order to sell them. The math goes like this: If a certain detector is selling 10 to 1 over others, it will likely produce up to 10x as many finds as a different one.. Personally, the only two things I would have a problem with in the ATP is its lack of depth and it's annoying "boing" when used in a certain mode. Other than that it seems that the initial problems concerning flimsy construction and its weak discrimination ID have for the most part been corrected.
