“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?) 🙂
For more great resources, check Bill Ladd’s excellent video series on the F70 over at www.findmall.com in the Fisher forum. Also check out www.fisherlab.com for more company information and their latest products.
To download the F70 sell sheet in .pdf format, click HERE (be warned it’s pretty big)
Mark Ellington
