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Fisher Impulse AQ Wireless Conversion Instructions


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I will be using my Impulse with the battery end well out of the water while shallow wading or on the beach, etc. I wanted to get away from wired phones and save the waterproof phones for when I actually need to submerge the machine. No sense putting any more wear and tear on the cable than I need to.

So I found a source of relatively inexpensive M8 pigtails and cables, AutomationDirect. Never ordered from them before, but it was easy and cables arrived in two days. I got two pigtails for the headphone 5-pin connector, one straight, and one 90 degree. And I ordered a couple longer 4-pin cables for the power connection, to work with a high capacity power pack I have on order. More on that later when it arrives.

I decided to use the 90 degree cable to make an adapter for my new TaoTronics transmitter/receiver box so I can use my Minelab phones, which I like, with all my detectors. There is also a less expensive transmitter only version.

M8 5 pin 90 degree pigtail

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I dug through my pile of adapters and found a spare mono 1/8" extension cable and cut it off, saving the female end for this project. The TaoTronics comes with a RCA to 1/8” female cable that would also probably work for this. I hooked up the 90 degree cable and powered up the Impulse. I randomly hooked up the two wires from the 1/8" socket to the five while having some stereo earbuds plugged in, and found that the brown and gray wires gave me audio in both ears. According to the chart below brown is #1 and gray is #5. I wanted to make very sure there was audio in both ears using the mono socket but with stereo phones plugged in, so good to go there.

I cut the cable down short, spliced and covered with shrink tube, and wrapped a little electrical tape on to add some beef. Not pretty but it will work - a typical Herschbach job. I bent the cable under the armrest, and added a stick on square of Velcro to back of the TaoTronics transmitter and the leg stand. I'll add more squares to my other detectors so I can move this transmitter around to whatever I am using. A little tie wrap secures things.

Fired it up, paired easily with my Equinox 800 headphones, better audio than the Fisher phones, and frankly the Equinox phones are not the best in that regard. Cheap, super easy... I'm quite pleased with this. I can of course use 1/8" type wired phones or ear buds if I want. I'll make another adapter with the straight connector but go to 1/4" with it, so I can use my Sun Ray Pro Gold headphones without an extra adapter. I'll probably make that cable a little longer than this one, which I wanted as short as possible.

If you got the TaoTronics transmitter only box for $20 and this cable for $8.50... well, this is pretty cheap and easy, and will work with a huge number of headphone options.

Ironically my new Tarsacci MDT 8000 comes with am M8 to 1/8" adapter with one little problem. Fisher uses a 4-pin connector for the power/headphone combo cable, but then for some reason they use a 5-pin M8 for the headphone only connector. The MDT 8000 headphone adapter is of course 4-pin. I swear they must all have secret meetings to make sure nothing from one detector ever works with another. :laugh:

Click or double click photo for high res version.

herschbach-fisher-impulse-wireless-headphone-adapter-cable.jpg

AutomationDirect M8 Cable Specs pdf

m8-cable-specifications.jpg

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Nice job Steve! Cable looks tucked and secure. Looking forward to the power pack     fix. 

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