Fisher Gold Bug defective materials. - How many of you have had problems? -

[NeoTokyo]

Heya everyone;

So I am having a problem with my Gold Bug II, she is 2 years old and very lightly used.


Whelp a couple days ago I noticed that the sheathing around the cable to the 10" elliptical coil was tacky, and then I noticed a split in the sheathing right at the box.
I used my detector two more times and the sheathing has cracked, opened up and exposed the paper wound wires inside at MANY random spots along the length of the cord.

It has a 5 year warranty so I would assume that this would be covered, I hope.

Has anyone else had this problem or is this isolated?

 

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[Hoser John]

Mine is over 10 with many 1,000s a hours BUT you have a new unit made by the not fisher company of old and myne gott quality aaaaa not so much no more-John

 

[Oakview2]

I have heard there customer service is excellent. My wifes new dog chewed the chord in half of my whites gmt, sent it back and they put a new coil and chord on for free, I am sure Fisher would do the same....

 

[Featherdfishead]

I had the stock 4" coil get a hair line crack in the side that allowed water in and destroyed the coil on my Gold Bug Pro a month after i purchased it. Fisher was great, they immediately responded to my email about a warranty shipping label and had a new coil to me in two weeks after receiving mine, you will have to pay the return shipping which is kinda s----y. Good luck!
Happy Days - Happy Hunting (when your able again)
AJR

 

[NeoTokyo]

Heya John; I have seen tons of the origin gold bug still around with no problems, it sucks that only after a short while the new generations would have issues with something as simple as the sheathing not being UV protected or not being able to break down over time.

Oak, that's what my guess would be, you don't stay in business as long as they have without having quality customer service.

FFH, I figured other detectors would have this same issue, I wonder how many have this problem. Glad to hear that they took care of it for you.
Mine was purchased at the Miners Cache so I am going to ask they can forego the waiting and shipping and just swap the coil out there.


Has anyone else had this cracking issue?

 

[californiagold]

Call felix at fisher. He will help u out. Or maybe get a gold bug pro. Mine has been thru 6;000 manzanita bushes. And no probs.

 

[NeoTokyo]

Will do, thanks CaliGold.

 

[polekaat]

I have a Gold Bug 2 that is over 10 years old, with no problems whatsoever (knock on wood). If the sheathing was tacky, it encountered a chemical of some sort, that didn't agree with the rubber/plastic. Perhaps a cleaner, since it happened at both ends. Hard to tell, but fisher will make good on it.

Trevor

 

[NeoTokyo]

Nope, no cleaners.

I have had this kind of thing happen to rubber before.

The chemical bonds begin to break down and the binders / oils begin to seep out.
When that happens there is little left to keep the rubber from becoming brittle and cracking.

 

[NeoTokyo]

Whelp the entire detector died over the weekend.
The shorting coil caused the box to short out, smelt like burning electrical.

It gave me a warning for a second, tons of chirping and od sounds and then nothing.
I brought it to Chip at the Miners Cache and we tried other coils on it just in case it was only the coil, but no go, also fresh batteries too.

So now I gotta see how much a new motherboard is going to cost.
I pulled the Mobo out and the rectangular chip right in the center was what fried, its a Texas Instruments chip.

I hope that Felix can help but I don't expect them to do this all for free, I just hope that it is reasonable.

 

[NeoTokyo]

I called Felix today and got a repair order, I am going to ship the box off to them on Monday.
Felix could not give me an idea on the cost, not even a broad range, I hope that it is not very much.

I am going to make a YouTube video review covering how they handle the cost to repair the unit.

I have read some Horror stories about charging more for the repair than the unit costs brand new.


Here are pictures of the coil wire.
Now I can not stress enough how the sheathing simply fell apart, cracks began to form on their own without moving the unit and when you did move it the cracks spread like wildfire.

I went to our local mining shop to look at the Gold Bug 2 coils and was surprised to see that almost ALL of the coils he had there seemed to have wires made of different materials, a couple were oxidizing to the point of having a white residue cover the entire cord.

 

[NeoTokyo]

The pictures were taken after the box shorted out.

Before taking my detector into the Miners Cache to have him look at it I tried to repair the coil wire, hoping that it was just the coil.
I bought wire loom for it as you can see in the last picture.
I also painted liquid tape on it to try "replace" the sheathing.
I also sealed it at the coil disk with Shoe Glue.

After all that I was disappointed to find that it still didn't work, I took it to the Miners cache after that to confirm my fears that nothing I could do would fix it.

 

[Oakview2]

Bummer, if it is a problem on their end, I would suspect they will take care of you.

 

[NeoTokyo]

Good news everyone!

The Gold Bug 2 LIVES!

The speaker is all that died on it.
I didn't have headphones so I didn't even think about that.

I was getting ready to ship it out when the thought flew through my mind to try headphones, so I went down to Big 5 and tried a set of headphones that they had down there.
I was so excited to hear it come to life.

Even the coil works still, but I have since repaired the wires to keep any more interference from happening.

So unfortunately, this coil is a dry hunting coil only as I do not 100% trust my repairs of liquid tape and Shoe Glue.
But hell, I will take it!

Either it was the speakers time to die and that's why it made all that horrible noise or the wires caused an issue to make it blow.
At least a speaker is super easy to replace, heck I have a spare internal PC tower speaker that I can use.

 

[meMiner]

I am glad to hear the detector is still alive.

Just a thought. As I was reading this thread, I immediately wondered if you got bug spray on the plastic/rubber? Easy to do from aerosol overspray or leakage from a bottle. Bug juice with deet is a plastic killer. First thing you notice is it gets tacky.

 

[NeoTokyo]

That is possible, but I can not think of a time that I personally put bug spray on while detecting.
My friend Charlie had the detector before me, its very possible that he could have.

As far as using the headphones, I cant believe how crisp sounds are now, I LOVE IT!

 

[meMiner]

Don't blame your friend. The bug spray melts plastics pretty quickly (hours, not weeks), so that was a false lead.

Crisp sounds are like good music. I am pleased you were able to sort it out.

 

[NeoTokyo]

Me too, I was really depressed there for about a week!

 

[NeoTokyo]

Damn even through my repairs any cable that wasn't already cracked, cracks through the liquid tape.
I don't know why this cord is being so persistent on cracking, IT DOESNT MOVE!

Something chemical had to have gotten on it, it just doesn't make sense for it to break through the new coating so easily.
Everything that I have done has solved ALL of the chatter problems, its just annoying that it still is cracking, even inside the wire loom.
I dare not take it out on a dewy morning for fear of getting the wires wet.

What do you guys think about cutting the wire at the base and replacing it with a new fully insulated wire?