Fisher F44

Jeff McClendon · January 20, 2019

I finally got my hands on an F44. I was looking for an easy to use loaner for my family, that was not a beginner detector, that actually worked!, and that would challenge them (and me too) for basic coin and jewelry detecting. My grown kids grew up with pretty crappy detectors whose brand name will go unmentioned here and they expect something much better but not so complicated that they won't have any fun when they visit me.

The F44 so far is meeting that need. It has plenty of quality features that work very well. It has respectable depth (as deep as my F19 and Omega 8000 with the same coil in discrimination mode) and has good, accurate target ID numbers down to about 4". No snickering please....... I hunt in 3 to 4 bar highly mineralized decomposing granite and volcanic ash clay with an incredible amount of natural iron particles of various sizes. My very expensive detectors don't go much past 6" with any accuracy! The F44 also has a very good All Metal mode along with a custom mode that can be adjusted to one's needs easily. It has VCO, bass, low, medium and high tones. The pinpointer works very well so far too. Coil selection is great with both concentric and DD coils available from FTP and lots of aftermarket coils. The weatherproofing of the control box is awesome. It is lightweight, well balanced and easy to swing even for the occasional user.

My only complaint is with the quality of the audio modulation. Really good headphones are a must with this detector especially for the medium and high tone signals.

Otherwise, the F44 is a very good, well designed and made detector. It feels very sturdy and of higher build quality compared to its close cousin the Land Ranger Pro.

March 13 2019.

After having my Equinoxes for about a year I have sold most of my other detectors which didn't get any use. I kept my F44 however. It is so light-weight and actually has more stable target ID than a particular detector I used to own that costs $1000 more!. I picked up a simple 8" round concentric coil and a 5" sniper coil for the F44. The 8" round (greek series coil) works great on the F44 and makes pinpointing a breeze. It easily gets 9" of repeatable tone depth and 5" with usable target ID. It is much less chatty than the stock 11" DD, almost as deep and has better target ID. The little 5" DD round is fantastic in heavy trash and can easily hit 7" targets with good repeatable tones. I really enjoy using this detector for first-time hunts on new fields, purposely shallow hunts, bad weather hunts and tot lot hunts.