fisher 1266x - still a relic hunting legend?

[SkiWhiz]

Glad to find this section of the forum, I have a 1265 on it's way to me. I have been pretty much a Tesoro user for a number of years but wanted to try something different. From reading your posts I think that the 1265 will be a good machine for me although will take some getting used to - heavier/noisier/like iron/etc. I am not looking to dig to China but am hoping that the 1265 will get me a little deeper. Here is a picture of the 1265 I am getting. I might get a spider coil for it sometime, I always liked the open center type coils over the solid ones. I was pm'd by a forum member telling me that the coil comming with my machine is a good one. Thanks! Steve.

Oops forgot to mention that I hunt for coins/jewelry at school grounds/tot lots/etc. and never any beach hunting.

 

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[BuckleBoy]

Glad to find this section of the forum, I have a 1265 on it's way to me. I have been pretty much a Tesoro user for a number of years but wanted to try something different. From reading your posts I think that the 1265 will be a good machine for me although will take some getting used to - heavier/noisier/like iron/etc. I am not looking to dig to China but am hoping that the 1265 will get me a little deeper. Here is a picture of the 1265 I am getting. I might get a spider coil for it sometime, I always liked the open center type coils over the solid ones. I was pm'd by a forum member telling me that the coil comming with my machine is a good one. Thanks! Steve.

Oops forgot to mention that I hunt for coins/jewelry at school grounds/tot lots/etc. and never any beach hunting.

SkiWhiz,

I've always heard that about Fisher.... "Fishers like/love IRON"... and it's usually said in a negative way. I'm GLAD the Fisher likes iron--it helps me pinpoint iron patches from sites that are long gone. Where the iron is, there the coins, and brass, and other items are.

Best of luck to you with your 1265--I'm sure it'll be fun. Is that the 12 inch coil? A spider would lighten the weight of it some... although they weigh the same amount as a Whites XLT does...

I've found that with the X-series Fishers, the bigger coil doesn't add a whole lot of depth vs. the amount of weight it adds... It does cover more ground though.


Regards,


Buckleboy

 

[ReidMan]

You will never see my 1266X on Ebay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[BuckleBoy]

You will never see my 1266X on Ebay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Attaboy!

 

[Mike_of_Tenn]

Thanks for the post guys, I am trying out a 1265x a fellow TNer was kind to let me do a test drive on. It's a different world than the XLT I am used too. I am abit under the weather today or I'd be out there with him right now...If I get to feeling better in the next hour I'll go hit a tot-lot and play with her abit. I plan to dig all and make notes on settings and tones..Anyways I'll let you all know how it goes if I get out there today..Again thanks for all the great info!

Mike

 

[Jimmy(PA)]

I still think the CZ's are the best and deepest coin machines out there too.

 

[BuckleBoy]

Thanks for the post guys, I am trying out a 1265x a fellow TNer was kind to let me do a test drive on. It's a different world than the XLT I am used too. I am abit under the weather today or I'd be out there with him right now...If I get to feeling better in the next hour I'll go hit a tot-lot and play with her abit. I plan to dig all and make notes on settings and tones..Anyways I'll let you all know how it goes if I get out there today..Again thanks for all the great info!

Mike

Mike,

If you have any problems, or need help--please PM one of us that has posted on this thread, or even post your questions or thoughts here in the thread.


Good Luck with the Mighty Fisher 1265.


Regards,


Buckleboy

 

[fhayslip]

Ok, well it's blazing hot outside today, and I really don't feel like going chasing clad, so I thought I'd put in my 2 cents on this...

Now, these observations are based on me being primarily a coin hunter, but they may be helpful to a 66 used in general.

I've been using the old-school Fishers since 1986, and I have (with all earnestness and humility) amassed quite a collection of great coin finds with both the 65 and 66. BB, in response to your comment about the 65 maybe having a little more depth - I'm not completely certain on that, as I am not hunting in the same places/conditions with my 66 as I did with my 65 - but I can tell you that I got freaky depth on coins with the 65... oddly enough, the deepest coin that I actually measured (I had a big@ss trowel with a ruler etched into it) was a silver nickel at exactly 10"... I do agree with you about dimes, though, however there was one morning that I hunted after a very heavy rain (I was actually recovering coins in water-filled plugs) in which I found 6 Barber dimes on an old school field that gave me nothing more than a sweet, tiny scratch, and it was only due to experience (and the fact that I was just on fire back then ) that I was able to find them. I've air-tested my 66 recently and got as much as 13-14" on a silver half.

As far as an overall consensus on it as a coin hunting machine, it will hunt deep - the only thing (at least for me, anyway) is that I cannot say with certainty that it's the best machine for hunting in urban, trashy areas. If you're not used to it, or don't have the patience for all the noise it can make, it has the capacity to drive you insane. I still reach my threshold for it's noisiness at times, and just have to switch 'er off and find another spot to hunt.

It does indeed have an affinity to iron, and will sniff it out deep. It also has an affinity to the tiniest of objects, which can be a plus, however, you can adjust it to ignore smaller items and focus more on coins. Lately I have been hunting with #1 on 7 and #2 on 10, and I just switch over to eliminate Zlincolns... to me, they are just absolutely worthless, unless you recover it early, or just eyeball it. Plus, even though it's still a coin, I'd rather spend the time recovering a dime or a quarter. They'll always be there if I'm ever that bored, but, I doubt that'll happen.

It also absolutely loves silver, and due to that fact, and that I'm primarily a silver hunter anyway, I don't mind using that combination of discrimination, as even on a setting of 10 it will not discriminate out most any reasonably-sized silver object.

One peculiar idiosyncrasy it has is that at a certain depth (i.e deep), even discriminated objects will occasionally hit as a good target. This can work both ways for you. I have recovered a nice gold crucifix way down deep while hunting at 7. Most times, however, what I end up digging is a small bit of foil or aluminum that is between 4-6", and I don't really mind that, as I will occasionally find good stuff that way too, like the crucifix. I basically use the pinpoint to eliminate the smaller, shallower objects.

[Regarding pinpointing - this is one of the 66's BEST features. A nice feature of it's pinpointing abilities is that you can "shrink" the pinpoint signal down by repeatedly toggling while lowering the coil to the ground. I can usually hit my coin dead-center with my screwdriver - unless the coin is sidways - and in that instance, I usually end up going down to my elbows just to finally notice the Lincoln penny on the side of my plug about 4" down. You can also determine depth with some degree of accuracy using pinpointing, as well as eliminate larger objects by lifting the coil.]

Hunting for gold (jewelry) with the 66 can honestly be tricky and frustrating. Being an analog machine with virtually no ID (built-in), once you've accepted nickel-conducting objects, you're digging almost everything from small bits of foil, can-slaw, screwcaps, and aluminum in general, at any depth. I have not been able to successfully find a dual-disc setting that allows me to weed out the junk. Please, if anyone has any insight on that, let me in on it.

As far as sensitivity settings go, I have not seen how adjusting the sens. affects depth to any viable degree. The main thing that adjusting the sens. settings affects is the size of the objects it's seeing. Most gold jewelry objects are generally at least somewhat coin-sized, therefore finding a sens. setting that eliminates most smaller-than-those objects is advantageous when searching for gold. Also, most of the time I'm a "scrubber" - running the coil right on the ground, but I have found that in high-trash areas, that running the coil a couple of inches off the ground will help eliminate some smaller trash items. Nothing it seems, however, helps eliminate that @%#$@%# pencil erasers.

There are a couple of things that I just plain don't care for about the 66, and those are - its weight, and its tendency toward interference when near power lines and some types of buildings (and, just about any other metal detector or cell phone made - my cell phone makes it go nuts, so I usually don't carry it with me while hunting unless absolutely necessary). I was hunting some old easement in a downtown suburban office area yesterday, and in one spot it was talking to me so bad that I had to leave. It will usually remain quiet in these areas while you're swinging it, but when you stop to dig, it will buzz like a swarm of angry bees, and is just irritating beyond belief.

Regarding it's weight, well, it's just a beast. I'm not sure what the specific weight is, but compared to other machines, it's built like a brick $hithouse, and will wear you out fast if you're not used to it. I can swing it for several hours before I get fatigued, but I still do get there. And unfortunately, given the way it's constructed, there really isn't any pragmatic way of rigging a way to hip-mount it.

So, there's a few of my gleanings from 20+ years of experience with the 126_-X series... I hope it is of some help.

BB, please, don't hesitate to agree/disagree/comment on any of the things I hit on in this post, as it is rare that I have access to anyone else with as much experience (and success) as you.

Long Live the 1266!

Hey Fisherman, try this. Set #1 disc. to four - set #2 to 7, set sensitivty high as possible until you can hear background noise. Bring it down until it's quite. Adjust #2 disc until it starts cracking on a pull tab. With this setting in the #2 disc a nickel or ring will not sound off. You will still pick up a screw cap but lose most pull tabs.

 

[BuckleBoy]

Hey Fisherman, try this. Set #1 disc. to four - set #2 to 7, set sensitivty high as possible until you can hear background noise. Bring it down until it's quite. Adjust #2 disc until it starts cracking on a pull tab. With this setting in the #2 disc a nickel or ring will not sound off. You will still pick up a screw cap but lose most pull tabs.

That's a GREAT tip! Thanks for your reply. This thread is awesome. How many years have you been using the trusty 1266?


-Buckles

 

[RPG]

Great thread...Not only for Fisher users but for alot of other detectors as well. I use Tesoro's and other than the settings for your machines, most of this is true for my machines too. My Tesoro's love iron (which is a plus as far as I'm concerned) and like you I can tell the difference, but dig it anyway. I have only been doing this for a little more than a year, but have learned, when out in the wild away from most pulltabs/foil/can slaw, run the lowest disc. and dig everything. This is the only way to learn what your machine is telling you. Thanks everyone for this thread.
Randy

 

[BuckleBoy]

Great thread...Not only for Fisher users but for alot of other detectors as well. I use Tesoro's and other than the settings for your machines, most of this is true for my machines too. My Tesoro's love iron (which is a plus as far as I'm concerned) and like you I can tell the difference, but dig it anyway. I have only been doing this for a little more than a year, but have learned, when out in the wild away from most pulltabs/foil/can slaw, run the lowest disc. and dig everything. This is the only way to learn what your machine is telling you. Thanks everyone for this thread.
Randy

You hit the nail on the head. With the discrimination set as low as possible without digging every nail out there, the detector communicates with the user in the most comprehensive way possible.

Thanks for the reply my friend, and best wishes in your upcoming hunts.


-Buckles

 

[fhayslip]

Man, I'm so happy to finally see a nice, beefy thread on my machine! And I don't mean to hijack your thread, Sag, I'm just excited to finally have a meaningful, running dialog on this machine.

Yeah Buckles, even though it's basically a turn on and go machine, it has tons of nooks and crannies and different things about it that do make it a really difficult detector to use successfully. Hell, I've been using it for over 20 years and I'm still learning things about it every time I use it.

Regarding discrimination, I would hunt at 5 every time, but seriously - there is SO much trash in the places I hunt that it's nearly impossible, unless I want to practically do an archaeological dig, and given the types of places I hunt that is just basically impossible. Yes, I'm aware that digging everything is the only real way to find the good stuff, but again, that is just not practical. So, I have to use my logic and the technology available, and make the best possible decisions that I can. All I can really do is decide if hunting a particular spot is worth it at 5 and use either the "disc thumbing" method (I'm still trying to wrap my head around that method) as opposed to "dual discing"... I just haven't been able to find that notch between tabs and nickels/gold quite yet.

Now, I do know that in some cases if I'm in a particularly trashy area, if I swing my coil a little more quickly, the machine tends to react slower to the trash than it does to the good targets... is there some kind of logical explanation for this?

This has happened to me also. I have found out if it hits good, then disc. out. I'll run the coil fast over the hit and if it disc out and cracks, it almost always is a bad target. I've dug it to see and it was. I use disc. 1 at 4 and always swing it fast on #2 disc. If it cracks and not a solid sound, you can bet it's a bad target.

Date Found:xxxxxxxx
Location Found:xxxxxxxx
Value:xxxxxxxx
Description:xxxxxxxx
Detector Used:xxxxxxxx
Comments:xxxxxxxx
​

Also, and this is something I just remembered that also drives me insane at times, is that the 66 will hit good on something, and with subsequent sweeps the object will disc out... I can understand this, however, it just drives me nuts. Again, an explanation of this would help greatly.

 

[Bigfootgal]

Hey BuckleBoy,
Thanks for all the great information on the Fisher 1266x! I just now found someone who is selling me their machine and I can't wait for it to arrive. The only machine I have is a White's Eagle Spectrum and it wasn't long before I realized it was nearly blind to finding jewelry. (It was great at finding coins and junk metals, though. ) Being on the small side, I can vouch for the fact that the Spectrum is a monster to swing around. I poop out quickly using it. I think the Fisher, while not lightweight, HAS to be lighter than that Spectrum! Anyway, I've bookmarked this site so I can refer to it when learning to use my new 1266-X.
I also want to find a Fisher 1265-X to add to my arsenal, so if anyone knows someone wanting to sell one please let me know! The reason I want a 1265-X is because back in 1993, before I ever had a detector, I was recovering from surgery and feeling a bit sorry for myself. I felt okay enough to finally get out and drive up to a mining store where I was going to look for gold panning stuff and look into metal detecting. At this store I saw this magazine called Treasure Found on the rack and it looked fascinating. There was this great article called "A Boy and His Detector" about a young man who found all this great stuff with his trusty, beloved Fisher 1265-X machine. Ever since reading that article I wanted a 1265-X! So while I'm excited to get the 1266-X, I'd also love to still have a 1265-X--mainly for sentimental reasons, when a single magazine let me escape from the worries of surgery and gave me something to get excited about and look forward to.

 

[BuckleBoy]

Hey BuckleBoy,
Thanks for all the great information on the Fisher 1266x! I just now found someone who is selling me their machine and I can't wait for it to arrive. The only machine I have is a White's Eagle Spectrum and it wasn't long before I realized it was nearly blind to finding jewelry. (It was great at finding coins and junk metals, though. ) Being on the small side, I can vouch for the fact that the Spectrum is a monster to swing around. I poop out quickly using it. I think the Fisher, while not lightweight, HAS to be lighter than that Spectrum! Anyway, I've bookmarked this site so I can refer to it when learning to use my new 1266-X.
I also want to find a Fisher 1265-X to add to my arsenal, so if anyone knows someone wanting to sell one please let me know! The reason I want a 1265-X is because back in 1993, before I ever had a detector, I was recovering from surgery and feeling a bit sorry for myself. I felt okay enough to finally get out and drive up to a mining store where I was going to look for gold panning stuff and look into metal detecting. At this store I saw this magazine called Treasure Found on the rack and it looked fascinating. There was this great article called "A Boy and His Detector" about a young man who found all this great stuff with his trusty, beloved Fisher 1265-X machine. Ever since reading that article I wanted a 1265-X! So while I'm excited to get the 1266-X, I'd also love to still have a 1265-X--mainly for sentimental reasons, when a single magazine let me escape from the worries of surgery and gave me something to get excited about and look forward to.

Bfg,

It is great that MDing gave you hope. It also gave hope to a dear friend and long-time digging buddy when he broke both his legs in a motorcycle accident years ago, and gave him something to focus on through hours of physical therapy.

I am sure you will enjoy your 1266-X. It requres some time, but you're right--it is lighter than the old Spectrums. If you ever need any more tips or have any questions, feel free to post to this thread here, or send me a PM.


Best Wishes,



Buckles

 

[Bigfootgal]

Thanks, Buckles! I really appreciate it.

I live on the west coast but last April I was visiting New England, driving through
all these neighborhoods with these big, old historic homes. We don't have stuff that
old here in California. I kept saying to my friend, "Oooh, that would be a great place
to detect! I'll bet that yard has never been detected....Sure wish I had my metal
detector!" Haha! I would be in Heaven detecting back east!

 

[BuckleBoy]

Thanks, Buckles! I really appreciate it.

I live on the west coast but last April I was visiting New England, driving through
all these neighborhoods with these big, old historic homes. We don't have stuff that
old here in California. I kept saying to my friend, "Oooh, that would be a great place
to detect! I'll bet that yard has never been detected....Sure wish I had my metal
detector!" Haha! I would be in Heaven detecting back east!

Most of my hunting here is at places that are as old as the oldest places in California. I work hard for my finds, but I do ok.

I'd love to dig in New England someday too.


Best Wishes,



Buckles

 

[miner812]

I have purcased a fisher f70 my buddy has a xterra 70 but the old fisher 1266x is our back up and they were our main detectors for about 10 years. It's a bullet magnet! It's the only detecter I would trust to back me up if something went wrong. It's a detecter thats always got your back period!!

 

[BuckleBoy]

I have purcased a fisher f70 my buddy has a xterra 70 but the old fisher 1266x is our back up and they were our main detectors for about 10 years. It's a bullet magnet! It's the only detecter I would trust to back me up if something went wrong. It's a detecter thats always got your back period!!

Welcome to TreasureNet! Thanks for your reply to this thread. Feel free to add any tips for the 1266 if we've left something out.


Best Wishes,



Buckleboy

 

[Woodland Detectors]

Agreed BB. I have heard similar stories pertaining this machine and how it's still being used today. I have an older machine myself and sometimes it out sniffs my etrac. Good ole machines

 

[BuckleBoy]

Agreed BB. I have heard similar stories pertaining this machine and how it's still being used today. I have an older machine myself and sometimes it out sniffs my etrac. Good ole machines

Experience makes all a lot of difference, especially with a machine as subtle as the 1266. Good to hear from you, 4-H.