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Fisher Has A Lot Of Models Marked Discontinued On Their Site And Teknetics Has 3 Models


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I agree for the chinese and especially Quest.  I have tested a Quest X5 a few months ago , an excellent machine , ideal for beginners , which is already a best seller over here because of its performances and very low price ( only 170euros ). 

Concerning FT , yes they have an excellent inland detector with the T2 ( 1st version released in 2008 ).  FT should repackage it with smaller electronics , a lithium battery , an improved user interface , lighter shaft and coils and it would certainly be a success story ..  

 

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Quest have something they call float resin inside their coils, it's super light and floats, a good idea to lower the coil weight while maintaining strength.

I know First Texas was also experimenting with a resin with little beads in it or something, I can't remember...   They could just run the resin through their Soda Stream 🙂

FloatResin chemical technology is specially designed for metal detector coils filling to make it lightweight thus rugged to last long.

It lasts long time! I've never tried a Quest detector, but they're evolving and becoming interesting and they could eventually target the big box stores with super low cost pricing to give First Texas a run for their money.  Even the X5 has a waterproof console, built in USB recharging battery, fast recovery, flashlight, modern look and feel and a user friendly interface so could better anything First Texas sell in that price range from a new user customer point of view looking at features on the box while buying at a big box store.

Every little innovation counts towards a better product, and First Texas were going to re-release the concrete heavy 15" coil for the T2 and F75 with their new resin technology to lighten it up a bit too from memory which would be good for a future detector release, I doubt too many T2/F75 users would bother buying it.

I still have hope for First Texas, they just need to get their act together.  Their best selling product to anyone other than a beginner right now is likely the F-pulse pinpointer.  Anyone wanting one of their other "high end" models could just pick one up second hand for cheap pricing from someone selling to upgrade to a competitors detector, even in our tiny market that no longer has a FT dealer it's easy to get your hands on a second hand F75 or T2, there is always one popping up for sale for around the price of a low end Vanquish model from someone that's upgraded to a different brand detector.

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Seems like this thread has gone past its original topic and evolved into something more appropriate for the Advice and Comparisons subforum....  More work for Steve.  😞

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On 10/12/2021 at 6:32 AM, GB_Amateur said:

Seems like this thread has gone past its original topic and evolved into something more appropriate for the Advice and Comparisons subforum....  More work for Steve.  😞

Interesting topic regardless, not much could be said about them discontinuing a few models other than it was well overdue.  Let's hope they're cleaning house as something new is coming, the new 12" coil could be an indication of a new detector coming with it as default perhaps?   They still don't have any information on that coil on their website, as far as it's concerned the coil doesn't exist.

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On 10/8/2021 at 9:45 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

No worries here. :smile:

I think a lot of the time manufacturers think we are just bitchers and complainers. I have been quite critical of all the manufacturers at one time or another. On these forums at least, there is more to it than just tossing rocks. Most of us genuinely love metal detecting, and we really care what is happening in the industry. We first get frustrated, then even angry, when we see these companies making stupid moves.

The U.S. companies in particular have been drowning in arrogance. I’ve watched for very many years in frustration, while Minelab, once an unknown upstart from Australia, has eaten all their lunches. They’ve seemed completely blind to what had been very obvious to me for a long time… that Minelab was literally going to put a few of them, if not all, out of business. Then along came Nokta/Makro to add extra pressure. They are lucky the Chinese were asleep forever, but Quest is just the first that will add even more pressure. Tesoro did not even try, just committed willful suicide by doing nothing. White’s tried, but woke up just a little too late, and now they are gone. First Texas is just a mess, but their volume in low end big box product has masked this. To me they are in more trouble than they seem to think. Their mind share with most of us is evaporating, if not already gone. Just like White’s, there are the faithful who stick with companies to the end, but most of us have moved on. If they think cranking out cheap units for Walmart will keep them alive forever, they will learn that never works, never has. The irony is they bought Fisher and Teknetics to try and escape the Bounty Hunter low end trap, but in the last few years they’ve let both those premium brands languish, if anything gutting them to give their best products to Bounty Hunter.

It’s not that they have not been trying, but their efforts have floundered, or been misdirected. The marketing is a non-cohesive disaster, almost non-existent. The main efforts seem to go into placing pallets of product at Costco and taking care of their big box customers, not taking care of the small dealer network. The Fisher website, as has been noted, was downright embarrassing in its non-updated, neglected state. It perfectly encapsulated my view of the company… just an ad hoc, sticking fingers in leaking dams approach to the business.

Sounds like I have it in for them, but just the opposite. I probably care more about the company than many people that work there. Detecting is my life long passion, and I find it almost offensive watching the U.S. manufacturers run their businesses into the ground through arrogance and neglect. Mainly arrogance. They all think they are so damn smart, and that people like us are just unfair critics or idiots. No, many of us just see what they don’t, brands we know and would love to support, but who simply don’t seem to care enough to engage with us, or listen to us.

Steve I've said it for years, far before White's and Tesorro faded away, that the U.S. detector industry seems to have appropriated the playbook from the U.S. automotive industry in the 1970's -1980's and beyond.  We all know how well that worked out for them while the Japanese, and even Korean's slowly took note and started taking market share to the point where two of the big three were on the brink of self destruction had the government not bailed them out (so much for capitalism).

Although they are still in business, I view FTP as the largest fiasco to date for all the reasons you've noted, not to mention they just invested a massive amount of funds into a new production facility, and for what?  To continue building low end detectors?  That's a race to the bottom, and for a manufacturer that's not a profitable business model.  Works great for Walmart and Costco, but the vendors will fail if that's their playbook.  I was a FTP fanboy for years, but finally saw the light after having a great amount of success with their contenders products. 

 

 

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22 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Seems like this thread has gone past its original topic and evolved into something more appropriate for the Advice and Comparisons subforum....  More work for Steve.  😞

Not enough discussion here anyway, so it’s got that going :smile:. I’ll go with the optimistic view that they are waking up, giving website at least a little attention (they should put new product like the 12” coil up, one would think), and maybe getting ready for new product for 2022. I’d still like a proper Impulse Gold, if such a thing is ever to be. The Impulse AQ is interesting, but in my ground a properly functioning ground balance is more important than an attempt at PI discrimination.

Any new single frequency I really don’t care about any more. FT has some great single frequency models, and we can mostly all agree that anything new in single frequency is just a remix of something old. The tech is maxed out. CZ going away does however imply to me a new multi on the way. It’s not a secret one was in the works for years (CZX) that finally ran into a development dead end. But they are bound to have picked up where that left off, and I do think the CZ being discontinued means we will see something in that regard. So maybe a new multi, a genuinely finished PI or two, and hopefully a full website revamp. The discontinued models need to be archived, and replaced with the new lineup.

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I'm surprised one of the staff at FT's kids or grand kids hasn't volunteered to do them a new website for a free detector or something.

It'll be great if they do have a multi in the works, I'd be very pleased if they surprised us all and came out with one soon.

Maybe they're going to try get this puppy off the ground

 

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I just saw Carl's name on it and seeing he's at FT it gave me hope 🙂

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On 10/10/2021 at 1:40 PM, phrunt said:

Nokta did with the Simplex what First Texas could have done with the T2 or F75... completely modernize it, waterproof it and sell a bunch of them. 

But FT did this, to some extent when they released the F44. No, it's not as capable as a T2 or F75 (and its variants), but for the average metal detector consumer (not us), it's a roughly comparable version to the basic Simplex or AT Pro. 

I do think a waterproofed (or weatherproofed) T2/F75 with wireless and a few tweaks could have sold better than the F44. But would they have sold enough to warrant the R&D costs? I'm guessing FT's powers-that-be concluded the answer was no.

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