Any News On Fisher Waterproof AQ

[Steve Herschbach]

Heading into July 2022, still nothing about an updated AQ with redesigned drop in battery system. Even less about the Impulse Gold. 2023 now, if ever?

[Bill (S. CA)]

33 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Heading into July 2022, still nothing about an updated AQ with redesigned drop in battery system. Even less about the Impulse Gold. 2023 now, if ever?

Steve,

I was thinking the same thing this week.  Since all we ever hear from First Texas is silence my guess is that the platform has been abandoned.  Reminds me of their multi frequency that was touted and then just vanished.

Too bad but as a manufacturer First Texas is no longer a serious player in the industry.

Bill

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

On 6/30/2022 at 10:51 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

Heading into July 2022, still nothing about an updated AQ with redesigned drop in battery system. Even less about the Impulse Gold. 2023 now, if ever?

 

[Geotech]

It's my understanding that the AQ will resume in the next 1-2 months. It will not have the drop-in batteries but will still have the clip-on NiMH pack.

I finally got the green light to take the Impulse/Gold out for a field test, did so a few weeks ago in N. California. No gold but numerous small lead and quite a bit of rotted tin can flakes. Found some rough edges that need polishing but overall it performed very well. Very light & balanced, a pleasure to swing for hours. It does have the tube batteries, per Joe's photo above, and 8" solid coil.

Small gold sensitivity is pretty much tied with the SDC2300, Impulse may go a little deeper on gram+ nuggets. Biggest drawback is the Impulse is currently manual GB only. Question is whether to finish what we have & release, or develop ground tracking for it.

[phrunt]

That's awesome news Geotech, sounds similar in many ways to the performance of the QED and with the same manual ground balance method only available.  QED's struggling to ever get auto ground balance off the ground.

Now when you say manual ground balance is it like the Gold Bug 2 where you have to configure it completely yourself or is there some sort of ground grab to get the balance like the Gold Bug Pro for example?  I think with something like a ground grab then tracking isn't as necessary at all, if it takes quite a while to adjust to get it right like the QED does then tracking is more beneficial. 

By the sounds of it the detector needs its own coils and will not run GPX coils which is a bit of a disappointment and could possibly hinder sales a bit although if priced right that shouldn't be a product killer.

[Geotech]

It's strictly manual, no grab. GPX coils might work (I haven't tried it yet) but you won't get the minimum delay of 3us using them.

[Tony]

Absolutely nothing wrong with a manual ground balance 👍

If the ground is highly variable then a bit more tweaking is needed but quite often you will have a better tuned machine over an Auto GB

I may be biased as a I drive a manual 4WD with manual windows and manual locking hubs 😳

[Steve Herschbach]

20 hours ago, Geotech said:

Small gold sensitivity is pretty much tied with the SDC2300, Impulse may go a little deeper on gram+ nuggets. Biggest drawback is the Impulse is currently manual GB only. Question is whether to finish what we have & release, or develop ground tracking for it.

This is a plus in my opinion, and no serious need for tracking on a PI. Every PI that I had that had tracking, and the option to turn it off, I turned it off. It takes the fine edge off as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully it goes to production, as it is more the machine I want anyway. The ground balance being preset and fixed on the AQ was my biggest gripe about that model, that removed a lot of its ability to get the best performance in all situations, and made the AQ near useless for all but beach detecting. In a perfect world there would be only one model combining the settings available on both.

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

On 7/2/2022 at 12:15 PM, Geotech said:

Small gold sensitivity is pretty much tied with the SDC2300, Impulse may go a little deeper on gram+ nuggets. Biggest drawback is the Impulse is currently manual GB only. Question is whether to finish what we have & release, or develop ground tracking for it.

Geotech,

IMHO For the professional prospector definitely manual GB. For the newer prospectors or patch hunters on widely variable mineralized ground, less noise is preferable until they get more comfortable with the different sounds, so tracking GB would be best. New detector users like more simplicity, so to expand your market to both types of users will be probably better accomplished by having both options available at some point in time.

For now I would suggest do what Minelab does by starting with a new model dectector, then in two years add a couple of better options to re-up sales again. This will get the detector to the market sooner and give you time to fine tune the tracking GB for the next release. 

So glad to hear this detector can compare to the SDC’s performance, hopefully the price and weight will be better too, I’d pay even more if it has some decent discrimination also.

Can you describe the discrimination abilities on this new detector?

 Thank You,

Ron

[phrunt]

The reason I think tracking or at least a ground grab would be good on this detector is the market it needs to go for.  The weekend warriors or occasional use prospectors, it's clearly not going to be a Minelab killer so the appeal of it to the "professional prospector" might be rather limited.  It's target market needs to be more the new to prospecting types and the occasional users along with the people that simply just can't afford a GPX or GPZ and I'm sure this market would be really big if it was done right, good pricing and good marketing on a good performing detector.

Sitting on the shelf next to a GPX 6000 to someone that knows very little the GPX will look so much more superior with it's Geosense complete automatic operation or even the SDC which is also a simple to use detector, I wish I could turn the Geosense or at least the tracking off on the 6000 though, it's nothing more than a pain in the backside to me 🙂

One of the biggest problems I see with QED users especially new to detecting ones or new owners is they get confused how to ground balance it and find it too hard to use and understand, so making it a bit more simple than the QED would probably be worthwhile if it must be completely manual.  I think for people that have been doing these things for years it comes as second nature and they don't understand how difficult it can be for someone new to it all and Minelab is taking advantage of that on the 6000 saying they turn everyone into easy experts.

So that's the problem I can see, the target market needs simplicity, yes there will be exceptions to the rule where some experienced people buy the detector but it's not likely to be the norm and I can't see people selling their Minelab's to buy it, it needs to appeal to the masses and turn people that would normally just buy a VLF to tinker around on some weekends attempting to find a nugget or two into buying a PI, and a step up for existing gold prospecting VLF owners into the PI world.