Hey Fisher, Can You Hear Me?

[Cal_Cobra]

22 hours ago, TheHunterGT said:

So if somebody hands me non-repayable cash (a grant).....that is the same as using my own money to R&D a project? 

Obviously not to finance, but to the people developing the projects, it's immaterial. 

Do you think the lack of attention to innovating/developing their high end machines is because FTP is broke?  FTP doesn't appear to be hurting for money, so I doubt this is a money problem as much as it's a leadership problem.  

[Rick K - First Member]

Heck Cal - always enjoy reading your stuff and look forward to more - but...

you have diagnosed a leadership problem?  I wonder what data you have to support that conclusion?

Problem? Yes indeed. Several years go by and projects which were expected to reach market in a year or two are still not out there.

What about the fact that doing something truly new in the small world of hobby and prospecting metal detecting is hard up against a tight corner in the hard world of physic - getting more target intelligence out of the ground is hard. Add to that fact that the companies nvolved are TINY on the scale of industrial and tech companies.  

Limited development budgets, the need to continue to develop and refine products for the whole range of the metal detector market world-wide, the fact that there are probably not more than a dozen top-flight metal detector designers in the whole world.  You think some of these thing might be the problem - maybe - instead of “leadership”?

If Nokta/Makro are receiving Turkish government financal support, do you think that that helps them continue to crank our new models of VLF detectors at a rate just a bit less than the cyclical rate of a German MG-42 machine gun?. Heck no, it’s no doubt due to having a capable and focused engineering group - unencumbered by the need to support dozens of existing models of hobby and industrial detectors.

But even at their rapid pace, the  “whirling dervishes” (no disrespect intended) of Istanbul haven’t yet managed to bring out a simultaneous multifrequency machine, something which Minelab and Fisher managed more than two decades ago and which ML has continued to further develop culminating in their latest “Wunderwaffen”.

It takes Apple with mega billions of net worth and tens of thousands of engineers about 5 years to bring a product from concept to market.

Give our favorite companies a break - without them we would be playing golf (oh lord, wash my mouth out with soap)!

[LowTide]

In 2005 & 2006 I was doing field testing for FRL for the Edge & Excel detectors.  After the purchase of FRL by FTP there was a great deal of anticipation mixed with angst.  The CZ series was a huge favorite of Fisher customers, with the main improvement desired by users being a lighter weight and more ergonomic design, along with a possibly updated/modern interface.  

The release of the F75 & T2 platforms excited many as they hoped that either of these was the new modern CZ they had hoped for.  But it was not to be and it left a hole in the market with pent up demand for a lightweight CZ type of product.  Even a CZ with the weight and design interface in an Edge or Excel package would have sold very well, let alone an F75 layout.

FTP made their decisions for whatever reasons, but to see the amount of money that they left on the table look at the sales demand for the Equinox.  It’s not driven by advertising but an existing demand that has been there for over a decade.  If the F75 had been a new CZ the Equinox might not even exist because there would be no market space for it.  So now rather than have gained a decade long loyal following with all sorts of coil sales, upgraded wading version of the F75/CZ etc, they face a daunting task that may not even be worth the development money.

So the question now is whether it’s worth the risk to pour money into a project, and compete against a Nox 600 that will soon likely sell at a street price of the mid $500‘s USD, if it’s not going to bring revolutionary technology?  They had better have lightning in a bottle and not just another VLF tweak.

[Cal_Cobra]

2 hours ago, LowTide said:

In 2005 & 2006 I was doing field testing for FRL for the Edge & Excel detectors.  After the purchase of FRL by FTP there was a great deal of anticipation mixed with angst.  The CZ series was a huge favorite of Fisher customers, with the main improvement desired by users being a lighter weight and more ergonomic design, along with a possibly updated/modern interface.  

The release of the F75 & T2 platforms excited many as they hoped that either of these was the new modern CZ they had hoped for.  But it was not to be and it left a hole in the market with pent up demand for a lightweight CZ type of product.  Even a CZ with the weight and design interface in an Edge or Excel package would have sold very well, let alone an F75 layout.

FTP made their decisions for whatever reasons, but to see the amount of money that they left on the table look at the sales demand for the Equinox.  It’s not driven by advertising but an existing demand that has been there for over a decade.  If the F75 had been a new CZ the Equinox might not even exist because there would be no market space for it.  So now rather than have gained a decade long loyal following with all sorts of coil sales, upgraded wading version of the F75/CZ etc, they face a daunting task that may not even be worth the development money.

So the question now is whether it’s worth the risk to pour money into a project, and compete against a Nox 600 that will soon likely sell at a street price of the mid $500‘s USD, if it’s not going to bring revolutionary technology?  They had better have lightning in a bottle and not just another VLF tweak.

Very well said, can't say I disagree with a single point.  

BTW The ID Edge was a decent little detector, not a depth demon, but it had good TID and separation, and it's light as a feather. 

[Noah (FL)]

Would be interesting to see some actual sales numbers.   I’d be willing to wager that FTP makes alot more selling BountyHunters in  the “big box stores” than Minelab will make off the EQX.  Im no marketing genius but just by sheer number of stores and units I've seen on display I would think that BountyHunter probably rules the roost in sales.  In the US anyway 

[Rick K - First Member]

It is clear that the money in the detector business these days is in the African goldfields and under the Christmas tree.  Other than nugget detectors, the real money is in the low end.  Companies spend a lot of engineering and marketing brainpower to keep their low-end detector lines healthy.  Minelab spent a pile of cash - millions of US $ probably - to develop and market the GoFind series for the mass market retailers. This is millions for a machine which most of us have no need for.  We (North American committed and informed detector users) are not the market that makes the difference between profit and loss for either Minelab or FT.  

Minelab has clearly hit a home run with the Equinox, but I would argue that the most important source of Nox customers was found in the existing base of Minelab customers.  These folks have been waiting for Minelab to do exactly what Fisher has not done yet - bring out a lightweight, waterproof multifreaker with a fact processor - all at a radically high level of value for money.

You are right about the Nox 600 being the target for any company bring out a new top detector. The “open field” in the hobbiest market is the <$500 range.  New, modern machines costing between $250 and $500 will make their producers tons of cash.  Detectors you can buy as a gift for a relative - detectors you can buy even if you aren’t sure detecting is for you.  If you could also make a machine in this price range which did most of what ordinary users want, including water - even salt water - then you would have something.  We will see what develops.

[☠ Cipher]

I could be wrong, but I think all it would take to bury the Equinox in yesterday's news is to take a similar platform up a notch in the depth to stable ID ratio, provide the target ID I see many people complaining they are missing, improve depth/size prediction, improve build quality, and incorporate an imaging program (would require color screens, which are not expensive these at all these days).

The latter is key. The first company to incorporate a useful imaging program into affordable detectors will be raking in piles. Minelab has Target Trace, and that is very often mentioned as a favorite feature of the CTX. I know it's mine, but it's a heavy $2,500 machine that favors deep silver, with a weak HF signal. Makro/Nokta have been developing their imaging. They recognize the market for it, but have went the other way with it, further up into the high end, hoping to milk that market first and it requires carrying around a separate component screen which is pretty lame.

GPR still sounds pretty costly to develop these days, but what about a program that builds an image off of tone variations, pitch and length. With 99+ tones on some machines, that's a lot of detail about composition that could be interpreted. Many people say they get far more out of tones than they do ID numbers. But both are useful, and computers can be faster than humans at combining all available data and building it into an interpretation. Imaging has been useful on Spectra models. The color, shape and length of the humps tell you quite a bit at a quick glance. What it fails to do is keep building a profile on a single larger object. This is where a profile mode would be useful, where the machine continues to profile the object or objects, until the end user taps the profile button again. 

There is a good and valid point that in most instances this kind of imaging amounts to gimmickry. When it comes to shallow coin and small jewelry hunting you make quick decisions about whether or not to dig. Objects are retrieved pretty quickly and it's not that big a deal to cut a quick plug to find its crap and move on to the next. This is not as true as you get older and have back problem and joint aches etc. Some of us have to choose our targets more wisely. It's also not true of deeper, larger objects, caches, and good targets adjacent to trash. For these situations and these people it's helpful to have as much information as you can get in a light package. Building a profile on a patch of ground is useful if it is sufficiently detailed. 

Money is an object when it comes to R+D. Minelab, Makro/Nokta and companies like Whites/FT get their money in different ways. Minelab and Makro are like the rich kids that can just ask mommy and daddy for more when they need it. If they have good ideas they can sell to a boardroom (Minelab) or a government (Makro) and a track record of results it'll be theirs for the taking. Whites and FT are like the kids that have to work after school and on weekends to save up for what they want to accomplish.

The point on Apple is a good one. How long does anyone think it would take Apple or Google to crank out an innovative metal detector integrated into and utilizing their ecosystems. If Apple had approached people like Carl and Dave before FT and had an interest in this industry you could bet advances would follow very quickly (perhaps if Apple or Google realized there is a big market for a monopoly on advanced detection technology around the world they would sit up and take notice and interest in a partnership). 

[SDMiner]

Quite a few replies about this....WoW

[LowTide]

Imaging program......how soon we have forgotten Garrett "Treasure Vision"  with "Graphic Target Imaging".  Maybe if Garrett made a multi-freq AT with "Treasure Vision" they could get back in the game. ?

When the CTX was released the USD & AUD were near parity.  But now $1USD = $1.34AUD and some US based customers are mystified as to how they are selling the Nox'es so cheap.  They are not selling them "cheap", as currency valuation is taking care of the margin.  So US manufacturers are at a distinct disadvantage against a well oiled engineering machine that has arbitrage on their side at the moment.  And that makes developing a Nox competitor even more difficult especially if you will have to charge 1/3 more for comparable model value.  And to add insult to injury when XP/Deus settled with Minelab last Fall one has to wonder if Minelab is getting a percentage on every Deus that's sold or whether it was a one time payment.