New Low Price Teknetics Models - Ameritek

[Steve Herschbach]

First Texas owns Bounty Hunter, Fisher, and Teknetics. You see a lot of models drift from one line to the other.

Teknetics is releasing three "new" models at low prices. Capitalizing on the current "made in America" trend, they are calling these the AmeriTEKs. Three models, the Minuteman at $249, Liberator at $349, and Patriot at $449. Internet prices will probably be 15% lower.

New Teknetics Ameritek metal detector models

I am guessing the Minuteman is a repackaged EuroTEK Pro and the Liberator a repackaged Land Ranger Pro but do keep in mind I am just making educated guesses. The one that more got my interest is the Teknetics Patriot model at $449.

Teknetics Patriot

• 13 kHz
• Frequency Shift
• All Metals Auto-Tune Mode
• 0-99 Target-ID
• Target-ID Confidence Bar
• Ground Balance to Salt
• Push-button Static Pinpoint
• Speed Selection
• Non-Volatile Memory (Saved Settings)

This appears to me to be a repackaged and much lower price Fisher F70 Check out the F70 specs at the link and here are both screens side-by-side:

Fisher F70 and Teknetics Patriot screens compared

Same screen, right down to the Fisher "wings"! The thing is the F70 currently goes for $649 and the Patriot will be heading out the door at under $400 - $381 if I got my discount right but they may set a MAP of $399 playing the price point game. $250 less than the F70 at the moment. And the Patriot looks to be sporting the more expensive 11" x 7" DD coil instead of the 10" elliptical concentric that comes stock on the F70.

The F70 is a very powerful and underrated detector, overlooked by many because of the top-of-the-line F75. Dave Johnson is the metal detector engineer guru behind many of the great metal detectors we use. He frequents some forums under the name of woof! and here is what he has to say in a post on TreasureNet:

"The F70 was the product of a mission-- to come up with a less expensive adaptation of the F75, while incorporating things we had learned meanwhile. Without "dumbing it down". Because the F70 was advertised for a lot less money than the F75, marketing dept. didn't quite dare to say how good the damn thing really was. Some of the secret sauce we put into the F70 eventually made its way into later revisions of the F75 group of machines, as well as into the Teknetics "Fratbros" series and most other new beeps introduced after the F70. 

As the top of the Fisher lineup, the F75 including its revisions got all the attention. That's how the F70 became a "sleeper". Guys like Mudpuppy will never have to wonder if they should have gotten an F75 instead.

This is the same sort of explanation I just posted in "another forum" about the approx. $200 category. If you get a Eurotek Pro, you never have to wonder if you should have gotten something else. Get anything else, and you'll wonder if you should have gotten a Eurotek Pro instead. F70 owners never have to wonder if they should "upgrade" to an F75. 

--Dave J."

Now, it is possible they removed a feature or two from the Patriot in order to justify the price differential, but with recent First Texas price decreases I would not be shocked if the F70 also comes down in price due to the just announced price decrease in the F75. Makes no sense to have the F75 at $599 and F70 at $649, reversing the order of the pricing just a short time ago. Regardless, keep an eye on the Patriot and the F70 to see what develops, but at $399 a Patriot is a machine that could even tempt me for a grab and go park machine.

Teknetics was purchased for the premium name and its Fisher equivalent products have usually been more expensive for what are basically the same detectors. Gold Bug Pro versus G2 for instance or F19 versus G2+. These three models however are priced aggressively below their other FT counterpart models and appear to mark a shift in the Teknetics line to a lower price level.

All this shifting of higher priced First Texas products into lower price points does smell an awful lot to me like new high end product coming soon. People do tend to equate price with value and First Texas is currently abandoning the higher price point area occupied by what are typically referred to as flagship detectors. I can't believe they will just cede that market segment to the competition so I hope we see some new high end product very soon. Perhaps the rumored CZX will finally appear!

[GB_Amateur]

4 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Now, it is possible they removed a feature or two from the Patriot in order to justify the price differential...

Better yet, from their point-of-view, why simply lower the price of an (6+ year-) old product when instead you can market a 'brand new' detector?  The side-by-side view you show nails it, and apparently not all that subtly on their part.  But even that could be a piece of their plan.  Minimal investment in new packaging/display, and if a customer happens to notice "hey, isn't this the (more expensive) F70 at a bargain price?  Gotta have it!" then all the better.

But your other point is, IMO, more than just speculation.  First Texas and its ancestors have been at or near the forefront for a long time, but they haven't had a truly new exciting product for quite a while.  Show me two bigger names and deserved reputations (or maybe even one) in any MD engineering department than Dave Johnson and Carl Moreland.  FT has too much invested in infrastructure, salaries, advertising, and reputation to sit around living off their name while companies like Mak/Nok are exciting the consumers with yearly fresh products (plural).  There are going to be a lot of disappointed, loyal First Texas customers if they don't come out with something exciting very soon -- meaning by northern hemisphere summer.  And they know that way better than any of us -- I'm confident of that.