Fisher Metal Detector Lineup Fall 2018

[Rick K - First Member]

Dubious - I couldn’t agree more - all those nice rust belt manufacturers who fired their workers - offshore their production (not to mention the online customer service) and didn’t lower the sales price a penny - pocketing profits stolen from the tables of their employees.

The other story is a bit different.  New enterprises, investing their own NEW money in innovation, design, distribution, customer service and making competively prices produced here - or overseas while building a business. Lots of them are seeing benefit in high quality production in North America.  Notice the Japanese and German car makers opening plants in the US.

My little sermon (sorry if it sounded like that) about FT was precisely because all those good jobs wouldn’t exist in El Paso if some Americans hadn’t used their brains and money to figure out how to make the best of the unique situation represented by the Rio Grande.

Our new nation had to fight another war with Great Britain in 1812 over the right to engage in international trade.  times change - we must adapt.

[Cal_Cobra]

On 11/26/2018 at 10:53 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

The CZ-3D and CZ-21 have always puzzled me. I figured job one after getting Dave Johnson on board would have been a digital redesign of the CZ into a waterproof housing that more resembles the F44. Replace the CZ3D and CZ21 with one lighter weight model waterproof to ten feet. Dave designed the original, so you would think this would be a reasonable goal, especially with the CZ being an old analog design both expensive and difficult to manufacture. I always liked the CZ.

I had and liked the CZ70 quite a bit, it was their answer to the Explorer when it came on the scene and it was my first deep coin detector.  I had some conversations with Dave J., and followed his posts, and the CZ seemed to have piqued it's technological limit as an analog technology, even when they tried to design DD coils to work on the CZ platform, they failed to achieve a production ready design (although a few prototypes went out, I remember seeing them on ebay and know a person who has one, and said it actually runs pretty well).  

I suspect a digital design of the CZ would've been a complete redesign, starting from scratch.  I do agree that, IMHO, had Dave been given a CZ 2.0 as a priority project and had the resources required at his disposal, I'm sure it would have come to fruition.  With Carl and Dave working there, I'm sure that we'll eventually see something interesting come out of FTP aside from their French PI acquisition that appears to be in the final stages of testing. 

There were rumors for years of a CZ SMF replacement, even some purported leaked slides of one on the drawing board, but their so tight lipped I could shove coal in their mouth and they'd spit out diamonds.  Kind of a pitty to be honest, as I know Dave has hinted to me that their working on cool stuff, but they won't even drop a hint as to what it is.  That I don't really understand, I mean, this isn't really top secret stuff, it's metal detecting and if you want to stay relevant in your user base, you should at a minimum give them some clues that your actually doing something innovative, else at some point people move on to someone that's actually making new and innovative detectors.  That was my case, had many FTP machines, starting with the Coin$trike, F4, F5, Omega 8000, ID Edge (great little light weight machine BTW), F70 (found my first seated half dime with it), CZ70 Pro (my first deep silver detector), F75 LTD/LTD2 (found lots of great finds with it), and a Euro Tek Pro for the wife,.  I could be missing one or two ?

Eventually I simply moved on as I found more capable detectors that far outproduced any of the FTP machines in my stable, in my dirt. 

[☠ Cipher]

On 11/27/2018 at 4:38 PM, Rick Kempf said:

Anyway - don’t count them out.  Their engineering staff is solid and with the acquisition of the Manta project and the hiring of the “Euroteam” that developed it - they have leapfrogged dozens of man-years of R&D on not only PI detectors but advanced concepts for mixed mode and AI driven detection approaches.

I'm curious how AI will come into play in metal detector technology if you have any insight. I've seen some evidence that Minelab is playing around with it, was unaware First Texas is. Find it fascinating as I love electronic technology period. 

As an aside on this overall thread it is true that US companies are having a hard time keeping up in part due to companies outsourcing labor overseas, and State funding/subsidies. Companies with state funding have a distinct advantage in many ways. This has been partly what has propelled Nokta/Makro this far, and enabled them to bring concepts like the Simplex to market. It is going to effect the low end market like the Equinox has the mid-range and outward. At some point one machine offers so much more than others it can no longer be overlooked. The Simplex will force others to offer more or get out of the game. That's not as good for US business as it is for innovation. US companies have had to cope in ways they find embarrassing and won't readily admit, like having some of their boards made overseas. I just hope they get a handle on it all and produce. So far foreign companies have benefitted more from free trade than the United States has. Forced technology transfers in China many of which are then sold to other companies in other nations have irreparably harmed US innovators. 

[Rick K - First Member]

Free trade causes disruption of national economies - local high cost production has to change or disappear when world-scale producers have access to the local market.  First Texas creates lots of good jobs in El Paso because they can export container loads of metal detectors to Europe, Asia Africa and the rest of the world.  They also create jobs in Mexico because one or more facilities that they operate there do detail fabrication of  components which go to El Paso for incorporation into the detectors produced in El Paso.  This is exactly the same process used by many US and international companies to produce components and sub assemblies in Mexico - very often using US sourced components - which are then imported to the US for incorporation into US products.  

I have no specific information on advanced technology being developed by any detector maker, including First Texas. I am quite sure however that they are willing to spend money and engineering manhours on new products,  I’m sure that they are aware that current detector technology is vulnerable to a breakthrough.  It has been essentilly “stuck” for a couple of decades.

[Steve Herschbach]

All the current Fisher models have been added to the new Metal Detector Database with User Reviews

I have Bounty Hunter almost done, and have barely started on Teknetics, but have placeholders created for most current models. Please help others by leaving your own review of any First Texas model you have owned. Thanks!

Fisher F75 Special Edition

[Mark Gillespie]

But the large layoff in December of 2017 indicated either they needed to trim the fat or sales were down to a point where something had to be done.