WHY???

[fishstick]

Since the day I bought my F5(new) it would never pick up BIG silver.I mean dollar's and OZ bars. It's the same with the 10" or the 11"dd. I can be 2" from it and it still won't read it, not a sound. It runs great on everything else and I 've made alot of great finds but alway's thgt that was a lil' strange. Any idea's why that may be? THANX... HH

 

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[gleaner1]

Maybe, just maybe, you have the top end scrimmed out. Other than that, it should hit silver dollars at about a foot or more. Have you ever found silver dimes at say 6" or so?

 

[fishstick]

Maybe, just maybe, you have the top end scrimmed out. Other than that, it should hit silver dollars at about a foot or more. Have you ever found silver dimes at say 6" or so?

Hey there G. It will find dimes no prob. In AM it will hit but as soon as I put it in DISC it won't. I mean with as lil as 5 on DISC. The F5 won't let you Disc past 65 so that would'nt be it. Good idea thg!! THANX.

 

[Gimpydigger]

I am going to chime in here on this as it could very well be a problem from the factory. This exacts issue happened with the first Gold Bug Pro's..we could not detect big silver...dimes were o.k. as were quarters but silver dollars...invisible...and the cause was this. When they set the internal Ground Balance offset they use a piece of Ferrite to calibrate this. By mistake they techs had set this point wrong....it was mistake. This calibration is crucial to be exact because....it affects the machines VDI scale when properly ground balanced...and if it is wrong then the VDI is off also. What this effectively does is push the VDI of targets up the scale and where big silver used to VDI at say 88...it pushed it up and out of the upper ID range and into the ground balance range effectively causing you to GB out the ground..and big silver and BIG silver would not ID it at all. Most of use had to send em back in and have them recalibrated. When they came back they worked fine.Fisher ID machines do not have enough top end discrimination adjustment on most of the F machines to allow you to disc out yourself any silver....so it is not a disc setting. You need t call the factory......now they did tell us an easy way to check our gold bugs by using a piece of ferrite to see what the ferrite id at or maybe we used it to do a GB....I forget but....the ferrite should have read a particular number within 1 digit and if it did not then our cal was off....and it was.Actually...I think what we did to check was get a piece of ferrite from radio shack...then use the ferrite and ground balance the detector to the ferrite until the detector was balanced to the ferrite...no change in threshold....then read the GB value. This told the techs if the calibration was off. So.....do not panic....but you cannot set the machine so it can't hit big silver at 2"......you most likely have an internal GB ferrite calibration that is off.scott

 

[fishstick]

I am going to chime in here on this as it could very well be a problem from the factory. This exacts issue happened with the first Gold Bug Pro's..we could not detect big silver...dimes were o.k. as were quarters but silver dollars...invisible...and the cause was this. When they set the internal Ground Balance offset they use a piece of Ferrite to calibrate this. By mistake they techs had set this point wrong....it was mistake. This calibration is crucial to be exact because....it affects the machines VDI scale when properly ground balanced...and if it is wrong then the VDI is off also. What this effectively does is push the VDI of targets up the scale and where big silver used to VDI at say 88...it pushed it up and out of the upper ID range and into the ground balance range effectively causing you to GB out the ground..and big silver and BIG silver would not ID it at all. Most of use had to send em back in and have them recalibrated. When they came back they worked fine.Fisher ID machines do not have enough top end discrimination adjustment on most of the F machines to allow you to disc out yourself any silver....so it is not a disc setting. You need t call the factory......now they did tell us an easy way to check our gold bugs by using a piece of ferrite to see what the ferrite id at or maybe we used it to do a GB....I forget but....the ferrite should have read a particular number within 1 digit and if it did not then our cal was off....and it was.Actually...I think what we did to check was get a piece of ferrite from radio shack...then use the ferrite and ground balance the detector to the ferrite until the detector was balanced to the ferrite...no change in threshold....then read the GB value. This told the techs if the calibration was off. So.....do not panic....but you cannot set the machine so it can't hit big silver at 2"......you most likely have an internal GB ferrite calibration that is off.scott

WOW!! That's some great info there. Thanx for the time to explain it. I guess I need to make a phone call. THANX AGAIN GIMPY!!!!!

 

[Gimpydigger]

Not a problem......glad I just happened to wander into this thread. Of course this may not be the problem but sure sounds exactly the same. Certainly not right and nothing you set on the machine should cause this. Hope it all works out...and when you find out if this or a different issue is causing this....post the results of what was found. A lot of us did not know ours was not hitting big silver as we never tested it...I just checked dimes and quarters and assumed the rest was fine...until another field tester posted this result...then the rest of us tested and found ours we also doing it. So...when you find the answer let us know.....hey mistakes can be made...no big deal....but if this is your issue it will help others to know what to do if this happens to them. Fisher is a fine company so you should have no problems dealing with them.....they have always been great to me.Scott

 

[foiled_again]

FWIW my F5, an early one with the push-in coil connector, reads a Morgan dollar as 91-92.