SilverFinger
Sr. Member
- Apr 17, 2008
- 326
- 158
- Detector(s) used
- White's MXT, Eagle Spectrum, Treasuremaster
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
If anyone's considering getting the Fisher F4, I'd give it a thumbs up. I didn't think I'd enjoy hunting with anything other than my analogs but this detector is turning out to be a very good machine.
I found my first silver on 7/28 and 7/30 with the F4. A '57 rosie and a '26 merc. Sweet!
Very, very fast on the recovery. I've plucked coins that are smack dab next to a nail or other junk and was really surprised. The depth seems decent too. I'm using the 8" coil and have a 4" sniper coil.
It's great to be finding nickels after such a long time of using heavy discrimination and knocking them out.
The 4" coil is awesome at cherry picking coins in heavy trash. Just run it in all metal discrimination, listen for the high repeats and the #32 for nickels. I found 6 of them today. I'm ignoring #67, typically pennies. Heaven.
The ID is very reliable once you learn to ignore high tones that sound when you catch the edge of a large trash that emit them.
Pinpointing is awesome with the 4" sniper coil.
A couple complaints (mostly minor nuisances and one kinda biggie):
Lets start with the biggie-
All metal ground tune mode - While the detector is easy to ground balance, switching to all metal mode to GB provides a very staccato, poppy and unstable threshold to tune to. The manual describes the 'Threshold/discrimination' control as providing you fine tuning control for the threshold. I just don't hear it doing anything. Maybe it's me.
The little things-
Pressing the pinpoint button will get you into pinpoint mode (duh!) - pressing the pinpoint button AGAIN will not return you to whatever mode you were in prior to pressing pinpoint. You have to kinda stretch your finger (I have short fingers to press whatever other mode button (disc) to get back in the hunting mode. Not a real big deal. Easy to overlook as a shortcoming and easy to get used to but a little unintuitive.
The finish (or lack of) on the bottom of the search coil. The molded plastic that the coil is made of has a coarse texture to it so it sticks to the grass and creates drag. Sometimes it seems like you're trying to slide 2 pieces of velcro together (well, maybe not THAT bad, but you get the idea). I like to hunt as close to the surface as possible to max my depth potential. Im actually thinking of sanding it smooth and putting a couple coats of polyurethane on it. Wow, am I a geek or what?
Lack of an arm cuff strap. I had to make one from an adjustable carrying bag strap.
The 2 9 volt battery configuration. While they seem to last a long time, the 9v batteries are considerably more expensive than AA's.
Overall, I'm really happy. I wanted an M6 but realized I could never save that kinda $$$. The F4 seems to have most everything the M6 has feature wise but was a whole lot less.
I found my first silver on 7/28 and 7/30 with the F4. A '57 rosie and a '26 merc. Sweet!
Very, very fast on the recovery. I've plucked coins that are smack dab next to a nail or other junk and was really surprised. The depth seems decent too. I'm using the 8" coil and have a 4" sniper coil.
It's great to be finding nickels after such a long time of using heavy discrimination and knocking them out.
The 4" coil is awesome at cherry picking coins in heavy trash. Just run it in all metal discrimination, listen for the high repeats and the #32 for nickels. I found 6 of them today. I'm ignoring #67, typically pennies. Heaven.
The ID is very reliable once you learn to ignore high tones that sound when you catch the edge of a large trash that emit them.
Pinpointing is awesome with the 4" sniper coil.
A couple complaints (mostly minor nuisances and one kinda biggie):
Lets start with the biggie-
All metal ground tune mode - While the detector is easy to ground balance, switching to all metal mode to GB provides a very staccato, poppy and unstable threshold to tune to. The manual describes the 'Threshold/discrimination' control as providing you fine tuning control for the threshold. I just don't hear it doing anything. Maybe it's me.
The little things-
Pressing the pinpoint button will get you into pinpoint mode (duh!) - pressing the pinpoint button AGAIN will not return you to whatever mode you were in prior to pressing pinpoint. You have to kinda stretch your finger (I have short fingers
to press whatever other mode button (disc) to get back in the hunting mode. Not a real big deal. Easy to overlook as a shortcoming and easy to get used to but a little unintuitive.The finish (or lack of) on the bottom of the search coil. The molded plastic that the coil is made of has a coarse texture to it so it sticks to the grass and creates drag. Sometimes it seems like you're trying to slide 2 pieces of velcro together (well, maybe not THAT bad, but you get the idea). I like to hunt as close to the surface as possible to max my depth potential. Im actually thinking of sanding it smooth and putting a couple coats of polyurethane on it. Wow, am I a geek or what?
Lack of an arm cuff strap. I had to make one from an adjustable carrying bag strap.
The 2 9 volt battery configuration. While they seem to last a long time, the 9v batteries are considerably more expensive than AA's.
Overall, I'm really happy. I wanted an M6 but realized I could never save that kinda $$$. The F4 seems to have most everything the M6 has feature wise but was a whole lot less.
