Mike Hillis
Well-known member
My F44 and F11 showed up last week. Want to post a little about the F44 first.
I liked the new look the first time I saw them. Very slim and trim. A very modern branding change for Fisher detectors.
The F44 has an interesting design for a coil. It is a 11” teardrop concentric transmit loop with an elliptical receive loop. The hot spot for tiny or deep signals is the bottom half of the receive loop near the butt end of the teardrop. The pointed front of the tear drop can be used to pinpoint just like a DD coil. The coil is designed to give good discrimination ability, good ground coverage, and good depth in most soils. It needs an air gap of about an 1” to 1-1/2” to work well. So it is not a coil to scrub on the ground.
The F44 runs on 2 AA batteries. So think about this. A lot of juice runs the audio speaker and/or headphones. There was a lot of work done in the act of balancing audio volume vs battery consumption. It came out well. But therein lays a secret of the F44. Good headphones. The 8 ohm headphones will work ‘ok’ and 32 ohm work better. However, 100 ohm and above work really good with the modulated audio options.
So, two things so far….at least a 1” air gap between coil and ground and headphones with higher ohm ratings. The F44 really likes my Koss headphones which are 100 ohms, and it works ok with my 8 ohm Fisher headphones but you can really tell the difference in the audio as the ohm ratings of the headphones go up. I recommend you spend some time on matching headphones to it. They don’t have to be expensive or even have volume controls as the F44 volume controls can meet that function but if you already own one or are planning to get one, spend some time with the headphone selection. I think you can buy Koss headphones all day long on the forum classifieds for about $30 - $35 shipped to your door.
The F44 has five operating modes, not counting Pinpoint. Four of those operating modes have their own preset audio selections. Yes they also have their own discrimination patterns but you can adjust discrimination pattern on all the operating modes but the all metal mode. I want to say a bit about the audio.
The Jewelry mode uses a non-modulated audio. This type of audio is often referred to as a ‘saturated’ audio. It is full on, full off. That’s great. I like saturated audio, however….The Jewelry mode, because of it’s full, saturated audio, will really highlight false signals. Regardless of the false signal’s origin; Ground noise and/or EMI noise, the Jewelry mode will enhance that audio report and may cause you to reconsider your detector choice. Don’t fret when you get into sites like that. Just change Modes and reset your discrimination pattern in a different mode.
The Best Thing about the F44 is the Custom Mode. I’ve been waiting a long time for affordable user selectable audio and finally it is here. There are five (5) audio tones or pitches that I get to decide how and where to use. There is a Bass tone, a Low tone, a Mid tone, a High tone and even a VCO tone option that I can assign as I choose to in the Custom mode. And when the VCO tone is assigned to the FE segment, I also get a VCO/Bass tone combination so I guess I could count that as a sixth tone. That is awesome, just totally awesome in my estimation. Selectable tone id for under $350. I’ve paid over $1,000 bucks for selectable tone id and I’m excited to see it in a more affordable detector.
I’ll add more later. The boss wants some work out of me today.
HH
Mike
I liked the new look the first time I saw them. Very slim and trim. A very modern branding change for Fisher detectors.
The F44 has an interesting design for a coil. It is a 11” teardrop concentric transmit loop with an elliptical receive loop. The hot spot for tiny or deep signals is the bottom half of the receive loop near the butt end of the teardrop. The pointed front of the tear drop can be used to pinpoint just like a DD coil. The coil is designed to give good discrimination ability, good ground coverage, and good depth in most soils. It needs an air gap of about an 1” to 1-1/2” to work well. So it is not a coil to scrub on the ground.
The F44 runs on 2 AA batteries. So think about this. A lot of juice runs the audio speaker and/or headphones. There was a lot of work done in the act of balancing audio volume vs battery consumption. It came out well. But therein lays a secret of the F44. Good headphones. The 8 ohm headphones will work ‘ok’ and 32 ohm work better. However, 100 ohm and above work really good with the modulated audio options.
So, two things so far….at least a 1” air gap between coil and ground and headphones with higher ohm ratings. The F44 really likes my Koss headphones which are 100 ohms, and it works ok with my 8 ohm Fisher headphones but you can really tell the difference in the audio as the ohm ratings of the headphones go up. I recommend you spend some time on matching headphones to it. They don’t have to be expensive or even have volume controls as the F44 volume controls can meet that function but if you already own one or are planning to get one, spend some time with the headphone selection. I think you can buy Koss headphones all day long on the forum classifieds for about $30 - $35 shipped to your door.
The F44 has five operating modes, not counting Pinpoint. Four of those operating modes have their own preset audio selections. Yes they also have their own discrimination patterns but you can adjust discrimination pattern on all the operating modes but the all metal mode. I want to say a bit about the audio.
The Jewelry mode uses a non-modulated audio. This type of audio is often referred to as a ‘saturated’ audio. It is full on, full off. That’s great. I like saturated audio, however….The Jewelry mode, because of it’s full, saturated audio, will really highlight false signals. Regardless of the false signal’s origin; Ground noise and/or EMI noise, the Jewelry mode will enhance that audio report and may cause you to reconsider your detector choice. Don’t fret when you get into sites like that. Just change Modes and reset your discrimination pattern in a different mode.
The Best Thing about the F44 is the Custom Mode. I’ve been waiting a long time for affordable user selectable audio and finally it is here. There are five (5) audio tones or pitches that I get to decide how and where to use. There is a Bass tone, a Low tone, a Mid tone, a High tone and even a VCO tone option that I can assign as I choose to in the Custom mode. And when the VCO tone is assigned to the FE segment, I also get a VCO/Bass tone combination so I guess I could count that as a sixth tone. That is awesome, just totally awesome in my estimation. Selectable tone id for under $350. I’ve paid over $1,000 bucks for selectable tone id and I’m excited to see it in a more affordable detector.
I’ll add more later. The boss wants some work out of me today.
HH
Mike
