Fisher Gold & Treasure Detectors | Field Test Reports
Fisher F70 Review
“The Heat!”
To put it
bluntly, the Fisher F70 is THE HEAT! As a proud and happy owner of an F75, I
caught myself thinking…”I bet the F70 will be a scaled down F75”. In some ways,
I was right. A few less features than the F75, (and I LOVE the F75 trigger!…it
should be illegal to build a metal detector without a trigger!) However, Fisher
retained the most useful functions and made them very accessible to the user.
There’s also a little something extra under the hood… more depth than the F75!
Yep, you read that right! In my soil, coil-for-coil, the F70 is slightly deeper
than the F75.
Speaking of
coil-for-coil, if you already have an F75 you can swap coils back and forth.
The new elliptical concentric coil for the F70 is great! Excellent design,
construction and balance. However, slap the big F75 11” DD coil on the F70 and
hang on! I’m talking SERIOUS depth here! Select the “slow” option in areas that
will allow it (lengthens the sampling time on the target…if I understand it
correctly) and you will be getting way, way down in the ground! (I picture
moles, grubs and earthworms packing their bags and fleeing the radio waves in
utter terror!) However, due to the lengthened response time, the odds of
masking due to nearby trash are increased…but I love having the option to pick
which way I want to hunt, depending upon site conditions.
The F70 is
built very well and sports the nice graphics design seen on other new Fishers.
(Whoever does graphic work at Fisher is pretty darned talented!). The rod types
seen on the F75 are used here, with the exception of the handle and arm cup.
The detector is extremely well balanced and feels light as a feather in actual
use. The front panel uses “membrane” type buttons that are in vogue these days,
and offer the benefit of water resistance.
I’m a big fan
of Dave Johnson and his approach to metal detecting. I’ve been lucky to get
opportunities to chat with him from time-to-time. He has made it a personal
mission to improve not just detector performance, but also weight, balance and
most importantly user interfaces. There’s nothing worse than a clunky interface
where you can’t find stuff, or you have to drill down through multiple menu
layers to change things. Like most the new Fisher machines, the menu options
are very, very accessible and always visible on the screen. You’re never
“wondering” how you have something set…it’s right there in front of you.
The F70 uses
cool audio ID options similar to the F75. I tend to hunt most often in 4H mode,
but also enjoy dp (delta pitch) mode which assigns a different pitch tone to
every digit in the ID scale!
John Gardiner
is the Lead Engineer on the F70, and has done an outstanding job creating what
I see as a custom made old coin killer. The visual ID is in nice large LCD
digits that are very visible in all sorts of conditions. I’ve used some LCD
screens that were tough to read when it’s either overcast or extremely
sunny…I’ve not had that issue with the F70. The confidence bar works very well,
and helps cut down on the trash dug…especially when you’re in a hurry. Like any
detector, the coins that are in the very extreme limits of the machines
capacity will not always identify themselves accurately. It’s kinda like a weak
TV or radio signal…the picture or sound can be “snowy”. That’s when the
discriminator between your ears takes over… is there enough “good” seen in that
12” target that it’s worth digging? I can tell you my answer would be “YES!”.
SUMMARY
If you are
looking for a detector that is light, gets ridiculously good battery life, has
accurate ID, is reasonably priced…and goes DEEP, then the F70 is for you! I
actually find myself picking it ahead of *gasp!* my F75 quite often! John
Gardiner, Lead Engineer on the F70, outdid himself on this one! The F70 feels
like a modern muscle car, and most folks who have trouble with it will do so
because they keep the pedal to the metal! Even at low sensitivity settings, the
F70 goes uncannily deep. One often overlooked feature is the Threshold control.
I found many sites that were normally tough to hunt due to noise from power
lines, electric fences, etc. By lowering the threshold, the F70 was extremely
stable in those spots…and still deep! (Did I mention it’s deep?)
Mark Ellington