Has Anyone Used The Fisher F5?

[kac]

Way back when I was shopping for a machine I had looked at the F5 and ultimately went with my AT Pro. Was always curious how the machine performed depth wise and overall as a coin and relic machine. I do prefer pots over buttons for the finer adjustment and that 7.8khz seems like a good frequency for bad ground.

Poking around I saw that one the dealers has it on sale at $299 and they Nel makes a Superfly for it.

https://www.metaldetector.com/fisher-f5-metal-detector

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Hmmm... I thought the F5 had been discontinued some time ago. Maybe they found one in the warehouse.

[kac]

Dealers still selling them at the $500 mark and Fisher still has it listed. That one dealer has it at a really good price. Thought it would make a great starter machine for anyone wanted to get into coin and relics.

[Steve Herschbach]

16 hours ago, kac said:

Dealers still selling them at the $500 mark and Fisher still has it listed.

Fisher lists discontinued detectors on their website, and most dealers show the F5 as out of stock; others show it as discontinued.

[kac]

Fisher hasn't updated their website in ages either, might explain that. Curious why that machine didn't do well market wise when it has the base key features to be a good relic machine.

[Tom Slick]

I've had an F5 off and on for a few years in addition to the Deus and Nox 800 (and others). The F5 is a great Coin and jewelry detector for hunting parks and school grounds. It not the deepest detector but has some nice features like ground grab and manual G/B, Threshold, Notch, Multi tones, etc. Just a fun detector to use. I think all the Knobs may have scared off a lot of buyers and more experienced users felt like the F5 was a beginners unit (wrong). 

[kac]

I think your right on that Tom. Seems Fisher put a pretty small coil on it too which I am certain doesn't help on depth. I did see a 12" superfly coil available for it and with that unit selling at 299 think it would make a nice relic machine with descent depth. I would snag it but I have too many vlf's now. My next machine will probably be a land based pi with ground balance.

[Tom Slick]

I, myself wouldn't add a larger coil to the F5 as I already have a Nox 800 and the Deus for deeper hunting and/or relic hunting. I do however have a CORS Shrew 3.5 x 6" DD that I once used on a EuroTek Pro. The F5 with that tiny coil gets the job done when hunting around picnic tables where there's lots on aluminum trash (tabs) and bottle caps.  

[kac]

Good point. The stock concentric should help around beer caps and flat iron. Probably why it does well with the stock in parks.

[Mike_Hillis]

Its my understanding Fisher makes it specifically for metaldetectors.com now.

The F5 is probably my favorite detector behind the F75 LTD with DST.   I like it because the gain and threshold settings are independently adjustable.   It gave me the ability to hunt at very low gain settings with very high threshold settings with a weak target audio boost for very small jewelry targets at grassroots level.   Very effective at controlling coil footprint too.

The F5 also has a very unique overload feature.   You can place it in an overload condition and it will reset while still in the condition that caused the overload and essentially null the coil to the overload until you put it in motion again.   Very effective for large object masking.

It also has probably the largest ground balance range of any detector I know of.   It is one of the few metal detectors that I can ground balance spot on in my ground, to the point where a single point is perfectly balanced.   

The feature set is effective for most any kind of hunting.

I've posted lots of information about it.

I sold my last one to help fund my V3 purchase as I wanted to try and replicate the F5 with the V3.   Very hard to replicate the F5 and now that they have the 4" coil out for it I'll probably get another one this spring.

HH

Mike