Brand new user of the F75

[MountaineerMark]

Hello everyone...I was a longtime Tesoro Cibola user and finally have upgraded to the Fisher F75 Special Edition (black) detector.
I researched F75's for almost 2 years before "pulling the trigger" because it's a pretty big purchase for me.
I have thoroughly read the manual multiple times (even before purchasing...you can download it) and have watched multiple
YouTube videos. My son and I went detecting Sunday for 3 hours...my first time using it...and after all of my research and
studying, I have to admit that I'm more than a little confused. I'm happy to find almost anything...coins, CW relics, Rev-War relics,
old farm house artifacts but am having trouble looking at and comprehending what all of the meters mean. I'm used to working
on just tone alone but bought the F75 to increase my chances of finding deeper, better targets. I know it's not the machine
because 10,000,000 good reviews can't be wrong...I know I'm just not used to it. Any helpful tips regarding settings to get me
started on the right learning curve would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Mark

 

[Elton]

try presets for the first few trips......... dig the id's that interest you, and the tones you want to dig.. Reread what each tone setting does.. I use 3 high

You will hear many targets due to the ultra fast reset......... Turn up Disc if it gets to much...

 

[hershey1]

Put on your 5 inch coil and leave your F-75 SE in factory default setting for awhile. That machine is not a turn on and go machine. It is a turn on and learn machine. You will get it and you will be proud when you do. Just take your new machine out and hunt with it. I know if you will learn that machine and plenty of people have you won't be sorry. FACTORY DEFAULT for awhile. Trust me we have all been where you are. HH

 

[pasttom]

Hersh is very wise putting you into the small coil to learn on. Factory settings are pretty good until you get the hang of things. Read the book and note how to do the factory reset. Play with going thru the settings to see how to do it. I used bp 100% of the time from day one. I believe factory sens is 60 you can even drop below that if there is too much noise from trash or EMI and still find pretty deep targets. Once you're comfortable with how it runs you can look for settings that fit specific needs. The unique thing about the F75se is that it has power to spare and in bp mode can reach deep from several inches above ground.
Have fun, hunt smart and may the good Lord smile on your efforts!

 

[MountaineerMark]

I'm going to go with the smaller coil and factory settings advice and use that as a starting point. I had set my sensitivity at 60, which in the slightly mineralized soil I hunted Sunday, left just a little bit of chatter. My disc level was at 25. Truthfully, I don't understand what the heck the notch setting is. The F75 factory video said relic hunters would prefer the tone being at 2F so I used that. For process, I went with DE. How do I use just the factory settings? Turn it on, ground balance it and hunt? Thanks a lot for all the advice, my first big trip of the year to detect with my son will be to a very good friends place in the Lowland Country of SC....last trip up there, the best find was my son digging a Rev-War cannonball from one of the winter camps of Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. Can't wait to get back and I'm really pushing trying to get a rudimentary understanding of my new Fisher.

 

[markg]

Keep this in mind at all times.
You do not have to max out the sensitivity to get the most depth.
From what I've seen the deepest targets can still be heard with a sensitivity setting of 60. If it gets to chattery, lower the sens down. This is one of the best machines on the market right now. It has found me the deepest coins of all time. Enjoy and give it some time.

Read all the F75 and LTD field reports.

http://www.fisherlab.com/hobby/field-tests.htm

 

[grumpy]

Mark

We have used the 75 ltd for several years now and the best thing that worked for me was to go and test garden the sound modes and find which set of sounds you like working with best; you may adapt and change that later but to get used to the machine the first thing i found was to get sounds that didnt overwhelm me. After you get used to the thing you will be able to work out all the features without being so intimidated.
Good Luck ; Dave dont build no junk its a good machine.
Grumpy

 

[Elton]

While off PUSH red button and PUSH trigger forward.........Turn on holding those two things.
This will reset to factory settings.

 

[MountaineerMark]

Thank you folks...I'll take the advice and play in the garden with different metals at different depths.
I'll report back soon with more questions I'm sure. Thank you very much for your help so far....

 

[master_cat]

1tone disc at 6 sens at 60 to start with dig all targets that hit solid 20 and over 4 ways easy to learn and u wont have so many tones hitting u

good luck

 

[sqwaby]

Without making it complicated, I'll try to explain the notch disc. Your Cibola had a disc and when you adjusted to iron it only disced out iron, but if you advanced it to nickels it not only disc out nickels but still disc'd out iron and anything else like foil that comes before nickels. On the F75 the notch allows you to sort of take a slice out of the whole disc range, you can disc nickels but still keep iron and foil and anything above nickels. Hope this helps, ck out some of the videos of people using other notch type machine like the AT pro etc you'll catch on.

 

[osgood]

ive used mine several years now, agree with those above in re to sens not being too high at first. I use three tones. What Grumpy said is important find the sound settings you like. Also at the same time test different coins, that is put them on (and in) the ground and scan them, after a while you can learn what a penny sounds like, how that is different from a quarter etc. I also use the id number in conjunction with the sound. Now no one will tell you its one hundred percent cause it isnt, but for instance on my machine an id that locks on 82 or 83 with the sounds i want to hear with it, tell me with a high degree of certainty, modern quarter. Or maybe a lock on at 90 or 92 might be a silver quarter etc. Now dont quote me, you might see on your machine consistently a number like 84 might be a quarter etc- you will learn that certain coins will have a consistency on your machine (and in fact I find they can match fairly well with numbers in the manual.) If you saw some of my way early post, I skipped digging a silver half, till on a return trip, because I had never dug one before, and thought it was a beer can, taking a chance i dug and lo silver half. Well next time around I was more alert, hey this might be a silver half, it has that bigness, that brightness in the sound like the other one I dug. Other diggers will tell you and I agree though, that the numbers are not always 100 percent. There is instinct you get after a while. For coins I listen for a coherency in the sound, a solidness, not too big to be an anvil, etc. You will learn these type of skills also. The f75 ltd is a great and durable machine, lightweight enough to swing all day. Good hunts, CO

 

[DocBars]

Give it time. Dig all good repeatable signals till you get the feel of what it's telling you. Start off in 1tone,6disc and 60 on sens. like Master_Cat said. Get the hang of it and once you get comfortable with the settings start cranking your sens up and disc down. keep this in mind ,you have a powerful machine ,do not handycap it by running it to tame. Once you get the hours on this machine you will find out just how awesome it can be.

 

[MountaineerMark]

I really appreciate all of the advice fellas and it's helped immensely. Sqwaby, thanks for the explanation on the notch setting...I at least understand that now. As far as the tones go...I've pretty much settled on the DP (Delta Pitch) setting. The tone is correspondingly higher to the number displayed and my brain understands and processes that information better than the other settings. I do have a question about my sweep motion on this machine. Does it prefer a particular motion? I found that my old Cibola liked about a 5 foot TOTAL sweep (from one side to the other) in about 4 seconds with the coil brushing over the grass or whatever. I took y'all's advice and have been practicing in my garden with different metals buried at different depths with the 5" coil. I'm also using the factory settings as suggested. I'm using the same sweep motion as my Cibola but am not always getting a repeating signal. What I mean is if I pass the coil over a target that I know is there (because I put it there), I may only get a tone on 1 pass. Is there a preferred height from the ground for the F75 or a preferred motion?

 

[okwaho]

i haven't been MDing for very long.
just a couple of months.
started out with the F75 and was at first a bit overwhelmed.
i had it set for all metal and i dug everything.
THAT WAS INSANE. but i learned that if the F75 said something was down there, it was right.
i also learned how to pinpoint where "it" was, and started to get an idea of how deep it might be.
i only did this on my first outing.
second time out i used the following settings.
de mode
disc set to 10
sensitivity set at 60
tones
i kept changing till i found what i liked. this seems to be as much a preference thing as anything else. find a target, change tone setting, find it again, repeat and not changes in what you hear after using all tone settings DIG IT UP. do this a few times and you will find the tone setting that's best for your ear.

i still dig pretty much everything the F75 finds.
if i was only digging "good signals" i would have missed a couple of my best finds.

on one of my other posts i listed some of them
what the F75 thought they where, and what i dug up.

have fun...

stay with it....

the more you use it the more faith you will have in it and the more comfortable you will become with the settings, meters and such

 

[MountaineerMark]

My son is my digging partner and we spent 4 hours this morning digging a private 1/3 acre lot next to Freedom Park in Atlanta.
I used my 5" coil as you all suggested. My son had on his 11" coil on his Whites. I starting to pick up a little every hour that
I use this F75...especially with the suggestions/directions I get from here. Todays booty (which I was EXTREMELY pleased
with BTW) was two 3 ringers and 36 cents in modern coinage. The second 3 ringer that I pulled read out at 70 fluctuating to
the low 80's with a high pitched tone. I'm using the DP setting which I like. My depth read 10" and it was right on. It was a very
trashy area and my son's 11" was popping with multiple targets. My little 5" performed much better in the middle of all the nails
and pulltabs but I'm still learning the discrimination settings. I don't want to lose too much and maybe miss something that's
reading weak.

 

[Coilfisher]

I am curious to see what you find.
Keep 'em posted.
I notice noone uses the flutey tones on it.
Good luck and keep posting.

 

[pasttom]

For grins try bumping sens up by 5s to see where it gets noisy. You are ground balancing, right? Since you have a se, give BP mode a half hour a few times. It really is the strongest mode. Most of all have fun! HH!