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My New Favorite Pinpointer - The Fisher F-Pulse


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19 hours ago, Redneck said:

Question.

On the other forum,  it was mentioned that you have to ground balance the pinpointer  after its turned on?  I thought pulse  ignored the ground? Someone set me straight please! TIA

I hunt hot ground. My Garrett Carrot will signal on the ground. The fix is to put the tip on the ground, then power up. That sets it to the ground and then it works fine.

The F-Pulse appears to work better if you start it up, then put tip to ground and do the ground calibration as described on page 10 of the F-Pulse Owner’s Manual (see below). Which amounts to nothing more than putting the tip to the ground, then quickly pushing the button once.

These procedures are not required for moderate soils or if you are running the units at lower sensitivity levels. I run mine maxed out.

I am seeing people say it takes the F-Pulse 2-3 seconds to fire up. It is slower than the Carrot but a second is more like it.

53AC3859-45F5-4F8F-BD71-E3045B6B6EF3.jpeg

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19 hours ago, Redneck said:

I thought pulse  ignored the ground?

Basic PI ignores basic (ferrite) mineralization. Ground that includes magnetic viscosity effects requires a PI with subtractive ground balancing. The F-Tek doesn't have subtractive GB.

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Carl (Geotech) addressed the slow fire up on Dankowskie’s site yesterday with directions on how to re-calibrate your F-Pulse..  Holefully both Carl and Steve don’t mind me reposting it here..  I did see improvement on my F-Pulse after the re-calibration.. It’s a little tricky to do.. You need to be quick with the start of the 6 button presses.. It took me several attempts..

Bryan

“ncwayne Wrote: 
------------------------------------------------------- 
> Tom, being one who insists on incorporating every efficiency, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the 
> 2 to 3 second delay between pressing the button to turn on the F-Pulse - and it turning on? 
> My thinking is that this is due to the LED brightness adjustment program starting with the F-Pulse off. 

 

geotech quote>
If you quick-press the button to turn on, the LED code is bypassed, has no effect. What happens on power-up is some internal calibration stuff. It is critical during power-up that the PP is held away from metal, if you're waving it around and it sees metal (and it can see large metal from a fair distance) then this will extend the cal time. 

The cal is supposed to be accelerated by a factory calibration that saves a very close starting point in memory. If you are still seeing a long power-up delay, you can re-cal your F-Tek and it should speed up. Here are the steps: 

As you turn the PP on, you can continue holding the button to toggle the state of the LED. That is, if the LED is normally on and you want it off, continue holding the button on power-up and after about 1 second the LED will turn off. At the instant the LED turns off (or on), release the button and then immediately press the button 6 times in a row. The PP should beep on every button press. After the 6th press stop pressing the button and just hold the PP still, it is now doing a cal routine. This can take up to 10 seconds to complete so be patient. When it's done the PP will beep 2-3 times and the LED will start doing a weird dance. Turn it off, then turn it back on and see if it's faster to boot up. 

Two things to keep in mind... 

1. Keep the PP away from any metal during the cal procedure. 
2. The cal procedure also executes a factory reset on all settings.“

 

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Thanks for posting that Bryan - I added a link back to the original post and thread.

The F-Pulse takes a little getting used to after using the Garrett Carrot (Pro-Pointer AT) a lot. It does want to interfere with my Equinox more than the Carrot. Rather than change the frequency on the pinpointer so far I turn the F-Pulse on before doing the Equinox frequency scan, and that generally does the trick.

I have my F-Pulse set for vibrate only, high sensitivity. It does want to signal on the ground after power up, so I do the tip to ground, tap button once retune procedure.

One thing I liked a lot initially is probably the biggest difference I see in use. The Carrot ramps up very quickly when you get near a target, and the vibrate mode therefore feels more intense. F-Pulse ramps up more slowly (better modulation) but that means it feels weak on deeper targets until you get closer. In my ground the one touch ground calibration was critical because the weak ground signal is identical to the weak signal from a deeper target.

With more hours under my belt now I think the Carrot has a slight edge for actual in use simplicity. F-Pulse takes a little more work and patience, but does deliver a performance edge.

Bottom line is I like them both very much and am keeping both for sure. I will have to do a follow up review on both once I get a bunch more hours in. Right now however if I had to recommend a pinpointer to a total newbie I would still probably recommend the Garrett over the Fisher as it seems just a little more direct, a little less finicky overall. Easier to get up and running out of box with no prior experience with pinpointers.

According to Carl in the thread referenced above the type of AA battery employed in F-Pulse might cause issues, making the recalibration process posted by Carl and copied above invaluable.

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Great points Steve..

I was just not able to put into words my experience with the F-Pulse like you just did.. It is something to do with the modulation that slows down my coin locates compared to the Garrett and Pro-Find.. I was describing it as seeming more directional, but it might be the modulation ramp up like you said.. Between that, the interfaces with the Equinox and ground, I just got frustrated..  I plan on giving it a couple more tries and will do the frequency scan with the F-Pulse on to see If I can improve my experience..

Thanks,

Bryan

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Yeah Bryan I get this impression of more off the tip directionality with F-Pulse, like it needs to be pointed more directly at the target to get that final rapid vibration, versus a little more forgiving general response off the tip of the Carrot. I definitely am seeing what you are seeing, and like you say hard to put into words or even to show really. It’s also hard to separate what’s going on from the basic truth that I am just way more familiar with the Garrett. Somebody that used the F-Pulse for years and had only a few days on the Carrot might very well feel just the opposite, and so I do think sheer familiarity has something to do with it.

It would be fun to give both pinpointers new in a box to somebody that never used a pinpointer before and let them have a go. I think at the end of the day both are top notch pinpointers with a slightly different flavor and feel. F-Pulse maybe a little more finicky, but also more powerful. It probably just depends on the specific person and use as to who favors what, but can’t really go wrong with either.

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Good post Bryan, that retune seemed to fix  my locking up issues? 

Really surprised Fisher left that out of the operation manual. I wonder what other tidbits are missing?

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I thought mine began to power up slower as usual.. recalibration procedure as described didn't speed it up for me.

After fiddling around a little bit more, I finally manged to freeze it.. it just wouldn't power on.

Removed the batterycap and screw it back on. Pointer works again and is noticeably faster.. strange :ph34r:

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Some DIY cheapo protection tip:

D50BDFD7-152A-459A-9840-D32A8E654D3C_zps

This has been done with 1" heat shrink tubing (no glue inside).

I'll try 30mm next time, didn't have it in house.

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About the power-up time..:

I think I found the "issue". If I set the pointer to sensitivity level 1, it powers up almost instantly.

If I change it to level 2 or 3 it takes noticeably longer.

Perhaps somebody can verify / confirm that.

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