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in praise of the Tracker 4

Dave J.

New member
The TK4 usually retails in the $99 to 130 range.

It's been around almost forever.

I don't even know who designed it, when or where.

The darn thing is ugly ("muffler on a stick"), but nobody cares.

The meter is almost but not quite useless (nice hood ornament), but nobody cares.

Ever since I came to work for BH in 2003, I've wanted to redesign it.

The Magnum Bosso tells me NO! every time. Reason: customers love it, and that's a problem he doesn't want fixed!

* * * * * * *

As far as I know, the only real engineering rework that's been done on the TK4 was conversion to surface mount components about 11 years ago: and, as far as I know, that was a straight across conversion from through-hole, no change that a customer would notice. ..... Some original designs are so "right" that they keep plugging along (usually with minor changes to accommodate manufacturing problems) darn near forever. The TK4 is one of those designs. An industry classic that's usually an unsung hero only because it's in the low end of the market. It may outlive me.

This is the BH forum. Y'all know that there are more expensive fancier higher performance machines out there. You might not know that we also make those (Fisher and Teknetics). Another thing you might not know is that among diehard beeperists who spend more on beepers than an avid golfer does on golf clubs, a surprising number of 'em started out with a TK4 and they still have it and aren't ever gonna let go of it.

If you happen to own a new Gold Bug or G2, look at how the audio discrimination is done. That happened because diehard beeperists beat us over the head with what the lowly TK4 got right. Which they did because they still have their TK4's and aren't gonna let us forget it!

--Dave J.
 
Hey Dave.... is beeperists a technical term ? :cool:
 
I agree with the sentiments Dave and have one myself and find it a lovable machine but I feel with your expertise it could be improved probably cheaply and this would make it more popular, perhaps replacing the centre dial with something useful and then it would become the greatest icon in detectorland
 
aussie said:
I agree with the sentiments Dave and have one myself and find it a lovable machine but I feel with your expertise it could be improved probably cheaply and this would make it more popular, perhaps replacing the centre dial with something useful and then it would become the greatest icon in detectorland
You dang right! Teknetics came out with the Road Runner and when I opened it up (oops! Sorry!:rolleyes:) the mother board was the size of a credit card. The only difference was the tones were set to break at zinc penny. You could take this motherboard, get rid of the dang meter,and (here I go again!) waterproof it to 15 ft. and have the AMPHIBIAN and I'd be almost as happy as if I'd gotten an AT Pro. But, OTHERWISE, it could at least have dang near one of the smallest profiles in the industry. And if it had an internal trimmer where you could set the tones and forget it-you would have one knob-power and sensitivity. And for the record, the 7 1/4 coild is a killer. OK. l promise not to post anymore. I'm through for good. Sorry,, guess I got on everyone's bad list.
 
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