Just a hint on the power of the F70...

digger27

Bronze Member
May 18, 2011
1,506
3,225
Last week I had chance to hunt a few hours one evening night before it got dark.
A Jr. College right near my house.
Been here a million times, took a ton of clad when I first came here but not a whole lot left, 3 gold rings from different areas so far too.
Just wanted to see if I cold still find clad I left behind in the past.
All settings were where I left them from the last hunt.
Disc was lowered to 4 because I still want to find the tiniest chains, everything else was left alone except thresh was lowered to -3, DE, sense at 30, 4H tones, notch always at 1.
These are my coin hunting settings in extreme trash because they have the effect of shrinking the scanning field on my coil, even my 11" coil, and it enables me to recognize and pluck the better coin signals out of a massive sea of trash.
Still not exactly sure how deep that 30 sense will get me at this point, but I have picked up a few coins at the 5-6" mark set this way in the past.
Also these seem to be some extremely quiet settings to hunt with, even in high EMI sites not much falsing going on at all.
I swung away and ding, ding, ding, found some coins pretty easily, a few pieces of trash, avoided most other trash that was jumpy and so on...a nice short but productive hunt.
These settings are excellent for shallow coin and jewelry hunting, I will probably keep them around but again, still not sure on the depth they will go.

Near the end of this hunt I came across a dime signal.
Solid 78, no jumpy numbers at all, solid tone and numbers from every direction, the depth reading said 5" deep and there was no trash or other signal near it.
Wish it was a bit deeper his was the one I could do a little trial and error on..
I knew it was a dime with every fiber of my being, hoped for a silver ring but 99.9999% sure I had a dime under my coil.
I stopped and played with this awhile with every setting I could think of to figure out a little more about depth on low settings.

The sense was still on 30, I started lowering down the sense while swinging in short passes over this thing.
When I got down to about 23 it started breaking up a bit, at about 21 it became a signal I would not dig anymore.
Also something weird happened when I got to about 24 while it was still a solid signal I would dig, the high tone in 4H changed and became weird sounding.
Very weird sounding.
Still solid, still repeated, but it was not full sounding at all like half of the tonal qualities just went away.
Hard to explain but I didn't like it.
At that point I started adjusting the thresh and moved it from -3 to -2.
The tone got a bit louder but still sounded weird.
Then I went to 20 on the sense and I lost the signal completely.
It was gone.
I moved the thresh up one notch to -1 and it came back again, solid and repeating but still weird sounding.
Thresh back to -2 gone, up to -1 back...I did this several times.
No breaking up or iffy signal at any time during this, it was just like a wall went up at -2 and went down where I got a signal again at -1.
Strange.
I moved it up one more notch to 0 and it was a bit louder and I left it there.
Then I switched from DE to SL at this point and the signal came back, sounded clear and full, and everything was all right with the world again.
The 78 number stayed solid and stable throughout all of this except when the tone went away completely and then the number did too.
One more thing to do.
I lowered the sense one more number to 19 and the signal was still there in all its glory, one more move down to 18 and it was totally gone again.

Ok, lets take stock of what we have at this point.
Thresh on 0, 4H, SL, Sense at 19, Disc on 4, dead quiet, no falsing or extra noise at all and by scraping the coil on the ground I was picking up a for sure dig me dime at a supposedly 5".
Impressive!
Now these are the kind of things I need to know to give me confidence in hunting at really quiet settings at or even below the factory start up 60 and still feel I can find deeper coins at 7-8" or maybe a bit more if I had to.
Not sure I will ever do this but it is nice to know I could if needed.

At that point I picked up the coil 1" off the ground, swung and the signal was gone.
If this thing really was at 5" this was the limit in my ground at these settings.
I turned the sense back up to 30 and I could raise the coil another 2 inches or so and still get the signal solid.
That would be 7" on 30 sense.
I turned up the sense to 40 and I could raise the coil 2 more inches and still get that solid signal every time I passed the coil over it.
9" on 40 sense.
Up to 50 on the sense, two more inches on the coil upwards, 11" on 50 sense with 6" air and 5" in the ground and that was all I needed to know.
Talk about confidence building!

All that was left now was to dig the coin.
I opened a hole, dug down slowly, got to the coin which of course was a dime and I took out a small plastic 8" ruler that I carry in my pocket which I get free from my bank and stuck it in the hole and put it right where the dime was laying.
Looking sideways across the top of the hole at the very edge of the grass where I was scraping my coil I saw the number 5 on the ruler.

Alrighty then...this is data that I can use to my advantage!

Hunting in lower quieter settings and still expecting to go deep with confidence, I think so.
I will do this test again, maybe on the next deeper target I come across to make sure this is not a fluke but it looks good.

Maybe I don't need to hunt on maxed out crazy settings to find the deep ones.
I don't mind doing it, but why do it and put up with a lot of extra noise if I don't have to?

More experimenting to do, but this was a very good day in the life of me.

Remember, your mileage may be different.
My soil is unusually great, I GB at the mid 40's to mid 50's most of the time, 1 bar on the dirt meter is common but a lot of times I don't even see 1.

All of this was done while using the 11" DD F75 coil.
 

Last edited:

Rick (Nova Scotia)

Silver Member
May 8, 2008
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I get the jist of it, that one doesn't need to be "maxed out" if there is nothing to find at a more modern location past 5 or 6 inches.

What's confusing is your talk of zip, zip, zip, and adjusting threshold as if your in AM mode, but then you say 4 tones, and notch (which are you coin hunting settings) so your in DISC mode.
 

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digger27

digger27

Bronze Member
May 18, 2011
1,506
3,225
I get the jist of it, that one doesn't need to be "maxed out" if there is nothing to find at a more modern location past 5 or 6 inches.

What's confusing is your talk of zip, zip, zip, and adjusting threshold as if your in AM mode, but then you say 4 tones, and notch (which are you coin hunting settings) so your in DISC mode.

Ah...the zip zip sound is what I hear on shallow targets when hunting in 2F, which I do a lot, and especially AT with settings of 99 sense, 9, thresh, and Sl speed.
I want to see exactly how deep I can go so with any and ALL settings soI am experimenting with a huge amount of different settings to gather valid data...which is my way.
In this case zip zip should have been stated as ding ding because I was in disc and 4H.
I do not use notch at all...yet.
In very trashy sites I might set disc at a little over 20, but most times it is set to between 0 and 4 at most regular sites I hunt.

I am playing around with everything at the lowest settings all the way up to jacked to the max.
Quiet is nice, but no amount of noise bothers me at all and I have learned to listen through it and still recognize the good signals due to my 1000 hours or so hunting with the F2 on max settings.
 

Last edited:

Hookedondetecting

Full Member
Jul 18, 2013
190
99
Michigan
Detector(s) used
Tesoro COMPADRE and Mohave
ORX and Deus II
Fisher F 75 LTD "2"
Minelab 600
Minelab Explorer SE Pro
Makro Multi Kruzer
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Good informative post. Thanks
 

IBdiggin

Jr. Member
Mar 21, 2013
75
15
Central Wisconsin
Detector(s) used
Fisher F70,Garrett AT Pro, Ace 250, 2 Garrett pro-pointers
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Digger speaks the truth my friends. The F70 is one of the most overlooked of the intermediately priced units. This is mostly because people are unwilling to put up with the chatter or throttle them back long enough to get past the learning curve. Lots of hidden surprises built into the circuitry of the 70. And it is no slouch with the 10" elliptical either.---------IB
 

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