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Hello Everybody, I posted this on Dankowski's forum. I thought others my find this information helpful so I'll put it up here :-) This saga all began in January 2015 with the purchase of a brand new (not upgraded) F75 LTD with DST. This first unit (11-14 model) was defective (the display was rattling around in the housing) and it had the "mama" pin point bug. After discussing with the dealer I purchased it from, we decided the best course would be to return it directly to Fisher. I contacted Fisher and they issued a return label no charge. Off it went. I asked that the new unit be completely calibrated and tested prior to shipping. Unit #2....This machine air tested quite well, 16" on a nickle in discrimination mode but weak in all metal mode. Really weak, like 13" max. On top of that, when used in dirt (actual detecting), the TID was extremely erratic. Called Fisher again. They sent me another return label at no cost. Once again I asked that the unit be fully calibrated and tested prior to shipping. I was assured it would be, like before. Unit #3....This one arrived, (same #2 unit I had sent in) with a note saying the coil was bad. No mention of calibrating or testing. The TID was now stable but the all metal mode was still anemic. Nothing had changed there. Back on the phone to Fisher. They sent me another return label. Once again I asked that the replacement unit be fully calibrated and tested. Once again I was assured it would be. At this point Tom was advertising one of his calibrated F75 LTD's. I bought it. At least now I could go detecting and know I was using a unit that would do what it was supposed to do. When this one arrived I did a quick air test on a nickle. over 16" in discrimination, BP, sensitivity 99, disc zero (just like all the other tests). All metal is close to 18" in air test. I'm smiling now!!!!! Unit #4 from Fisher arrives....OK, I'm thinking finally can get down to business. Surely this one would be proper. Man was I disappointed. This unit actually air tested worse then the last one both in discrimination mode and in all metal mode. Unbelievable!!!! Back to the emails and phone calls to Fisher. I also did a side by side air test and in the ground test between the Tom certified unit and the one from Fisher. I recorded the side by side air test results on a piece of poster board. Took a picture of it and emailed it to Fisher showing them the difference. At this moment I thought....since I have two machines sitting here, why not try swapping coils. So....I did another air test after swapping coils (11x9 is used in all tests) What do you know.....now the machine from Fisher air tests almost identical to the Tom certified unit. I sent Fisher another email explaining what I had done. Saying it may just be a coil problem. They responded saying that they would send me another complete unit but they were worried that I wouldn't be happy with anything they sent since I had a Dankowski F75 LOL. I said give me a good unit that I can have a clear conscience selling. Unit #5.....Well, Fisher finally got it right. This unit air tests every bit as good as Tom's calibrated unit, maybe even a shade deeper. It took a lot of time and persistence but they made it right. I will add that everyone I worked with at Fisher was really helpful and the service was great. They just really need to work on batch consistency and QC. The F75 is a beast. This fifth machine is for sale here Brand new F75 LTD If your looking for one that works like it should....look no further. I went through hell to get it, almost hate to part with it. I can't use two of them though. I would sell the Tom calibrated unit but it has been used....this one has only been air tested and made a quick pass over my test garden. I guess the moral of this story is if you don't think your detector is doing what it should. Ask why!!! Thank you to everyone that contributes to these forums. If I hadn't read what these machines were capable of I would have never known I had a sub par machine. Kenny

I believe the biggest sleeping dog in detectors is the whole issue of quality control both in the detectors and especially in the coils. Substandard units are very common and account for some of the widely varying opinions on detectors. There are many less knowledgable people using detectors or coils that are performing poorly and they do not even know it. It seems the problem has been getting worse but I can't tell if that is true or simply a side effect of the Internet and better cross checking and reporting by users. All the major manufacturers have made big fumbles in recent years on new detector releases so none can really be singled out. In general the more machines a company sells the more issues arise just from sheer numbers sold. I disagree with the concept that rare hot units are making all the rest look bad. The members of this and many other forums are people buying top end "flagship" detectors and each and every one should be performing to top specifications. If not they should not be getting out the door. Or is it they are slapping together cheap low quality components and it is just a crapshoot getting a top performing unit? Sorry, that is what we expect from cheap detectors, not ones costing $1000 and more. It really is so bad these days that in general I would advise a newbie to simply not buy a new model detector for a minimum of about 6 months after release just to let the bugs shake out. The problem of course is the "early adopter" being a guinea pig for the manufacturers and becoming in effect the last ten feet of the production line.

We have had more monsoon season odd weather. Rained yesterday and cloudy and cool today. We'll take it. Time for more detecting. Went back to attack some more brush area of my cousins property. Detected With fors gold for about an hour before detecting first piece of gold. Then 10 seconds after that piece found another. Then it took awhile to find 3rd and 4th piece. Nokta pointer also . Complimented the fors gold nicely. All in all it was a nice low 80's degree day and 1.5 dwt of gold to take home. Hopefully we will get more cool temps this summer. Good luck!

PM sent strick

I would but I don't think anyone can help that 6.0 LOL Get that tool box switched over to the dodge and call it good :-)

I'm having a bit of trouble with a Ford truck. Would you mind calling them for me? You know how patient I am.

Went out detecting this morning. Have been trying to go find new areas to detect. So have been reading,researching, and mapping. For the most part I've been going to pounded out workings. It was not working for me. Was going on a 2 week drought. It was starting to make me wonder what the heck I was doing wrong. So this new area I had in mind had favorable geology to me. It looked right. But no evidence of any serious mining activity. But it looked and felt right. So I headed up this dry gulch. Sq nail, sq nail, Square nail. Then wire, bullet, nail, and tin. I was like here we go again. I decided to get out of the dry creek. I had saw this saddle while scouting the area earlier. So I gave it a walk to. I got to the area. Went thru the auto tune and ground balance procedure and started swinging. The ground was still wet from the recent rains. So I worked in High Yield, Normal ground, and no smoothing. I also turned my threshold down a bit. I swung for about 25 minutes, Then I hit the biggest nugget of the day first. I did eventually go into Difficult ground for awhile. And also low smoothing when the detector starting getting noisy. But would switch back and forth when conditions allowed. There was not any dig holes in the area that I seen. So it seems I'm the 1st in the area with a detector. One of my most fun days detecting ever.

I was thinking it would be interesting to hear your (other members) thoughts on cleaning your gold. One guy I used to hunt with felt very strongly that you should just rinse it with water, no further cleaning, and absolutely no chemicals. What I do, is scrub using a tooth brush (the same one I use daily ) and citrus cleaner. I then soak the gold in Whink for a day then scrub again with citrus cleaner. If it has a calcite/ caleche coating like much of the Rye Patch Chevron gold, I soak it in CLR. I like the gold to be free of any visible iron oxide, manganese, calcite, etc. But I don't like the gold to start getting polished edges and high spots, like what happens from handling it often. I like that natural dull finish it acquires from the Earths fine grit, sand, rocks, natural movement etc... I noticed this crystalline gold for sale on Ebay. It appears to me that the host rock was dissolved with a chemical that also began to soften the gold itself and polish it? Maybe Aqua regia (nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), but when the host rock was gone the specimen was then neutralized? It does look beautiful, but to me, unnatural. But who am I to decide what should be considered natural or not? Therefore, it is just my personal preference. But what are the majority of collectors looking for? To me, one of the most enjoyable nugget discovering experiences is when all you have left in your scoop is a hard dirt clod that ends up hosting a nice gold nugget. The next time that happens, I plan on gently removing the edges of dirt until there is proof of gold and then just save it in that condition (until some day I just get bored and decide to break it open ). Thanks all...

When it comes to large scale manufacturing you are simply going to have some units that outperform others...its a simple numbers game. It isn't that the other units are necessarily performing poorly, rather, it is that there seem to be some rarely exceptional units in the mix. I had one of the original F75's without the DST or updates and it was a performer, even in hot ground it was a little noisy but not intolerable, I kept it around though because of the depth and sensitivity to small gold. I have a friend that had an F-75 LTD DST that he hated and wasn't anywhere near as sensitive. In all metal my old F75 would hit on a .3 Gram nugget at about four inches with the stock coil which is ridiculous - with the similar sized coil on my Teknetics G2 I literally had to be brushing this odd little nug against the coils surface to even obtain a response. I was a dummy and sold it for a good offer and now at times when using the G2 I find myself missing the old F75. It's not just one manufacturer either; you can single out any machine from any number of manufacturers and find the same thing. A similar example is the Garrett Infinium. One of the biggest problems for Garrett I believe is that they had some very poor units off the line mixed in with some other units that perform exceptionally. Obviously, these machines led to a barrage of negativity that still seem to be present in it's mention. Some people that think that the Infinium is a piece of Chinese garbage while others believe it is the greatest thing since sliced bread simply because they are obtaining different results, and granted sometimes, but not always is it the skill of the operator but the quality of the manufacturing or components themselves that lead to different results.

Where ya been nugget

A very informative experience Kenny, thankyou for relating it and your F75 prospecting observations to us. Glad to see that it finally worked out satisfactorily for you... thanks to your persistence. Jim.

Hi Rick, Fisher actually sent me 4 brand new detectors at no cost based on my findings. As I said above, everyone I dealt with was more than helpful. I'm not sure I would say only one of them was actually defective. When the non-filtered all metal mode is substantially weaker than the filtered discrimination mode, In my opinion something is amiss. When your paying top money for a flagship detector I feel you should get top performance. A frustrating experience it was but I think it was worth it and I think it brought some things to light within the company of Fisher itself. Maybe it was educational for all of us I hope. I understand assembly line and mass production but maybe they can implement some tighter pass/fail requirements and really make these shine. The F75 is an excellent detector. It may not fair as well as others in hot ground, that's not it's strong point. Actually in hot ground I think it becomes similar depth wise to my AT Gold. But in mild ground it's a beast, that's where it really stands out One thing I discovered on a prospecting trip.was it's tolerance for hot rocks. Heavy basalt in this area, I couldn't completely tune them out on the GPX 5000. When running the F75, I could hear the hot rocks loud and clear in All Metal but when switched over to disc mode Boost process with zero discrimination.....those hot rocks simply disappeared. Not a whisper. I didn't find any gold that trip with either machine but the hot rock elimination impressed me. I have a couple other spots to run it over and see how it does with the hot rocks there. Kenny

Am I just seeing patterns in the clouds here? Dunno, too much time on my hands away from the goldfields.

You Beauty, Congrats. Nothing more fulfilling than a virgin patch. With faith that they are there you may never look back.

Thanks for the comments. Hey tom no not too many large rocky diggings in my area. Lots of small rocks. Some gold targets I get are quiet repeatable signals. Thats why its important with Fors gold to turn down id mask as low as you can too make the deeper quiet signals and tiny gold more discernable. It may look easy but fighting thru thick brush is a pain. And the bears are down lower right now in the manzanita to eat the berries. I have come within feet of sleeping black bears. Theyll just lay there and hope you pass by. Getting too close is very dangerous. Especially when they chomp their teeth at you. Success at gold detecting is easier depending on how much you put in doing research and visual scouting. If you know what your looking at you can spot alot on google earth. Once you find a good coarse gold area then almost anybody with any detector can find gold. Once you get this down you can consistantly find gold. I know I have seen a couple newer members in the last year become consistent because of their effort. ( featheredfishead, nugget365) just to name a couple. They got it down. I spent years reading every paragraph of old cali newspapers to find gold finds details of the gold rush era. It gave me a good idea of where they found coarse gold. Then I walked around in those areas to find the places to detect. So far the research hasnt failed me yet. Good luck!