To Notch or not to Notch, that is the question

[dbax]

Posted on a different site, off topic, so I reposted this question or questions in a topic of its own as suggested.

WV62 -- That notching business has always been a confusing thing for me too, maybe you can help my simple mind to understand this a little better. Someone else had mention what you said earlier about the disc level being higher or lower than the notch setting and recommended going to the notch setting and setting it to its lowest possible setting, like 1 and then using only the Disc settings to cancel out the iron or other metals. My question is, when you say "notch in", say nickels, does that mean you will not pickup nickels or that you will? I guess I am confused about the "in and out" -- Say I want to pick up nickels but not the iron or foil, would I notch in the nickels or notch out -- ? If using the notch feature would I then want to set Disc at the lowest setting? It seems the confusion in using the notch settings is its apparent conflict with the Disc setting. Use one or the other but not both? Thanks, for any light shed on this. Peace, Dan Maybe this should come under its own topic for NOTCHING?

 

[WV62]

Okay cut and paste time.

I am only talking about the F75ltd and I hope it carries over to the F70.

I will start out by answering a couple of the main questions that may get some off track.
Disc out= items that should no longer be detected.
Disc in= items that should be detected.
Notch out= items that should no longer be detected.
Notch in= items that should be detected.

Now one way to think of notch and disc are that they are somewhat the same being they setup the items to either be disc in or out.
If you only have disc you only have the option to run it up or down until you take out what you don

 

[shadowulf]

I'll jump in with the quick and dirty answer and let the rest work on the nuances.

NOTCH IN= allowing that reading to be heard.
Like when I'm qwikscanning a park for shallow new drops. I run the descrim up into the 40's, then NOTCH IN the around 26-28 to give the nickles a chance to sound in.

NOTCH OUT= not allowing that reading to be heard.
Like when I'm scanning around the picnic tables and the tabs are just killing me. I NOTCH OUT the Tab at about the average reading I'm getting on them.

Now here is something funny from the F70 manual. It recommends doing a default reset before notching. I have found out from playing around with notching, it can make for some weird signals. I guess the testers found it easier to just reset the machine, than fight your way back to the original settings.

 

[REVIER]

Keep in mind that unlike on my F2 which will notch out an entire range, (all iron, all foil, all tabs, all nickels, all zinc), or at least the numbers Fisher set in those ranges, these upper end units can actually notch out just parts of these ranges and is controlled by the number area you set in notch.
Pretty cool, actually, but something else to learn so you are actually notching in or out what you actually are aiming to do.
I probably won't use notch much but I will commit all of this to memory.
I can see in certain instances with a lot of specific trash and some wanted targets you suspect might be at a site, say older nickels, this might come in handy if you do it correctly.

Info from another forum...

Bought a new F75 late last year. I am having difficulty understanding "notching" function and what the "slashes" are suppose to represent. I am only trying to notch out Iron, Foil and Tabs.

Chris

Iron would be anything below 10 or do on the VID. Foil 20 to 25 and tabs 35 to 45 or so.

You can do it two ways. If you are above the discrimination setting pressing the button while in the notch menu will notch that segment out. If you are below the discrimination setting while in notch pressing the button will notch that segment in. The slashes cover half of the range (5 units in the lower ranges) as indicated on the upper scale.

Set the discrimination to 45 and then go to notch and press the button at 34. That will notch in 30 to 35. Then drop down to 29 and press the button again. That will notch in 25 to 30. You now will find nickels but not iron. Tabs get in unless you set higher discrimination - but it will cost you gold rings.

The other method is to set the discrimination to 20 and then go to notch and set it at 36 and notch out that range (35 to 40) and then again at 41 (41 to 45).

But what do the slashes mean? The top back slash, bottom back slash and the full slash through the range?
Thanks, Chris

Slash means it is discriminated or notched out. Each range has a upper and lower slash portion - so the full slash is the whole range notched out while a portion means it is still open.

Go into discrimination menu and slowly turn the knob. You'll see it puts the slashes in to match the number in the VDI. The discrimination only goes up to 65.

Also good to know is that if you turn off the detector and turn it back on while pushing the trigger forward and holding the button down it resets to factory defaults. VERY handy is you get lost in the notching and and notching out.

Anymore I set the discrimination to 4 and choose what to dig based on signal strength and consistency. I haven't put a notch on in over a year.

Thanks Charlie P
Now I know what the slashes denote.... Called Fisher 3 times and finally got and anweer 2 days ago and the guy seemed to be clueless about my quest.

******* never returned the call.

Now I have the answer...

Thanks so much!!!

Chris

Glad I could help. The manual sure could go a long ways towards being more informative. Luckily, the menu layout and few controls allow you to eventually self-instruct. I spent a lot of time in my test garden futzing with settings until I had them mostly figured out.

Maybe I should farm-out as a customer service contact?

I can fake a Hindu accent.

Also info here...
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,1435316

 

[Elton]

A preset determined number sequence set by factory. ( 10)...in notch settings.


[size=large]How to use Notch on the Fisher F75 and Ltd's

It really is simple..the manual appears to make it difficult. And that's only because they forgot to stress the Fixed set of numbers for notching abilities.

In other words if your detecting in a park.. your using Discrimination at 25. all of a sudden your getting a lot of one type of pull tabs. Say it falls in the
#38 Target ID.. Over and over again. You go to notch. Press menu dial to the number 38..and press menu. A dash will darken up above on the left side of the tab name on display. You removed the Number 38...but you also removed 36, 37,39,40,41,42,43,44,45.....Because the notch is set up in a fixed set of numbers on each target category..36 through 45 is the lower half of factory set notch numbers in tabs area... You will always remove all factory set numbers when notching out target numbers that is above your discrimination setting...You will always be putting the numbers in with notch if they are lower than your discrimination setting. You need to know these notch fixed numbers to understand the notch system.

Now if your running Discrimination at 40..then the notch system is designed to do just the opposite of Discrimination. So 36 37 38 39 40 will be notched in..
41 42 43 44 45 will be notched out. Notch always does the opposite of the Discrimination. So if you want all the fixed numbers in tabs on lower half out. Move your discrimination to 36 (Get your discrimination number at the lowest fixed number) in the range you want to remove. Before, you set the notch.. It's your choice. But you have to work the two systems together for full benefits.[/size]

 

[mudpuppy]

What would be a real world example of its use?

Maybe hunting for a specific lost ring in a target heavy area? Lets say its a certain sized mens ring, and one similar hits at 35...could a fellow disc out the lower numbers, and notch out the higher numbers and just keep that window open?
Or, perhaps hunting along the edge of a house that has an abundance of metal roof flashing scraps that hit like a Q? Can a guy notch out the Q's on up, and keep the midtones open?

I suppose I could easily fire up the 70 and figure this all out for myself, I'm just lazy today, and thought maybe one of us uses notch for some sort of benefit in the real world?
Mud

 

[shadowulf]

Mud, the way the F70 is set up, I don't think it will work that way. I used what I have done in my example.

Notching really can be a curse if you are in "tab city" while looking for jewelry.

 

[WV62]

What would be a real world example of its use?

Maybe hunting for a specific lost ring in a target heavy area? Lets say its a certain sized mens ring, and one similar hits at 35...could a fellow disc out the lower numbers, and notch out the higher numbers and just keep that window open?
Or, perhaps hunting along the edge of a house that has an abundance of metal roof flashing scraps that hit like a Q? Can a guy notch out the Q's on up, and keep the midtones open?

I suppose I could easily fire up the 70 and figure this all out for myself, I'm just lazy today, and thought maybe one of us uses notch for some sort of benefit in the real world?
Mud

The answer to your first question is yes. You could also just max out your disc and notch in your numbers around 35. At least I could with the F75. Either way you will still get the higher coin number. That wouldn't be to bad to clean out a pocket full of quarters to get to that ring would it?

As for question #2 I have no idea what Q's are, must be something proticular to the F70.

Ron in WV

 

[MarkCZ]

What would be a real world example of its use?

Maybe hunting for a specific lost ring in a target heavy area? Lets say its a certain sized mens ring, and one similar hits at 35...could a fellow disc out the lower numbers, and notch out the higher numbers and just keep that window open?
Or, perhaps hunting along the edge of a house that has an abundance of metal roof flashing scraps that hit like a Q? Can a guy notch out the Q's on up, and keep the midtones open?

I suppose I could easily fire up the 70 and figure this all out for myself, I'm just lazy today, and thought maybe one of us uses notch for some sort of benefit in the real world?
Mud

The answer to your first question is yes. You could also just max out your disc and notch in your numbers around 35. At least I could with the F75. Either way you will still get the higher coin number. That wouldn't be to bad to clean out a pocket full of quarters to get to that ring would it?

As for question #2 I have no idea what Q's are, must be something proticular to the F70.

Ron in WV

I think the Q's are items that hit like Quarters (Q's) I think.

If a group is disc out you can go back and notch one of the groups back in.
If you have a lower disc setting below any group you can notch any one of them out

Disc out all, Notch any of them in!
Disc in, Notch any one of the groups out!

Disc Out, notch in.
Disc In , Notch out.

The Omega works the same way.

Mark

Mark

 

[sprchng]

What would be a real world example of its use?

Maybe hunting for a specific lost ring in a target heavy area? Lets say its a certain sized mens ring, and one similar hits at 35...could a fellow disc out the lower numbers, and notch out the higher numbers and just keep that window open?
Or, perhaps hunting along the edge of a house that has an abundance of metal roof flashing scraps that hit like a Q? Can a guy notch out the Q's on up, and keep the midtones open?

I suppose I could easily fire up the 70 and figure this all out for myself, I'm just lazy today, and thought maybe one of us uses notch for some sort of benefit in the real world?
Mud

Mud ,
I don't know anything about the intricacies of the 70 except that it's NOT a 75se as much as people seem to want it to be but on the 75 the second scenario you referred to is not a possibilty thanks to the Fisher engineers who , unlike the flagship programmable detectors of their competition , decided you will always want hear signals generated from TID numbers relating to "good" targets. White's allows you to accept or reject any one of 190 TID numbers and Minelab has over 1700. Fisher's "notching" system breaks the first 65 of their 99 numbers into 5 or 10 numbers blocks and forces you to accept all of the last 35 from 65 to 99 much to the detriment of the user. How many good targets above 97 have you dug and how many high tone false signals do those numbers generate? On a White's you can reject 94 or 95 and on a Minelab you can block the 49 and 50 lines if you wish and remove that high tone falsing if necessary. In addition , because of the notching system , in your "35 ring situatiion" , on the 75 you would have to accept all numbers from 30 to 45 as well as all numbers above 65.

As Elton has said before the notching system is very simple , it really only involves about 10 blocks of numbers(not 190 or >1700) but causes 75 owners loads of grief because of a poorly written, inadequate manual.

 

[knarfj]

Hey thanks all!

I

 

[dbax]

WHAT? The F70 is not the F75? Let me be the first F70 swingers to throw up the white flag. (sorry MudI watched a couple of videos where the F75 was being set through its paces and what a machine, it is so cool and apparently so easy to set and reset, it was a marvel to watch this beasty do it thang. I really hope we can be friends I do love my F70, though, and drool over the F75 and while the F75 is certainly a real stud on the range the sweet little F70 prances around in a short skirt not ashamed to pick up quarters for services rendered. Certainly it is only natural for us to compare, after all, the stud and the little chippy came out of the same house. I too am taking the time to figure out the Notching system and like other things concerning the F75 and F70 they seem do more than use the same coils it seems the settings are near identical too. We can all trade info -- cross over info, how great is that. Notching is like KnarfJ puts it, set, reset, set reset then it starts to kinda set and reset in my mini brain. I'm going out in the morning to see how this might work -- advantage or disadvantage? It does seem like hardly anyone, F75 or F70 that uses the Notch feature. What had confused me was the business of how the Disc setting could, or would reverse the Notch setting, depending on the level set. That bit of info explained it all -- still not easy to jump in and out of. Peace, Dan

 

[WV62]

Dan,

I don't think you need to apologize, because in reality all you was wanting was a better understanding of notching. Now I attempted to do that but being my experience is only with a F75 I wanted to be up front with that fact. My hope was that the notching procedure was near enough alike that you could take what I say and apply it to the F70. My intent was not to get any kind of comparison going between the 2 machines.

I hope you are starting to understand notching, but if you need help shoot out a question and I am sure we can fix you up.

Good luck,

Ron in WV

 

[dbax]

Thanks WV62, just pulling your chain a bit, mixed with some upfront honesty -- a truly droll over the F75 but could not come up with the extra change so I settled for the F70. But, as it turned out a lot of the pro comparisons led me to jump for the F70. The notching business confused me right off, but I managed to accidently notch out iron, foil, and tabs, notching in nickels. Couldn't figure out why I was still getting hits on stuff notched out, an occasional nail, foil and found lots of nickels and tabs kept faking me out, even though they were notched out. So, I read how a lot of the guys weren't even bothering to figure it out and just using Disc, to control lost and founds. Still seemed pretty jumpy then someone explained that you need to go to notch and run it down to a value of 1, then reset Disc. I did that and my finds increased, lots of nickels and nearly a ring a hunt. My finds increased but the Notching business still made me wonder if I was missing something. It seem some of the guys with the F75 have researched the Notching to a greater depth and it seemed the F75, in this area, responds and handles Notching the same as the F70, or the other way around -- So, I went out this morning armed with all of this new info. Something I notice, once I set the Notching up to notch out iron, foil, and tabs, leaving Nickels notched in -- I had my Sens set at 60 and the F70 seemed to suffer loss of depth (air testing) reading a dime at 4" with a solid signal. So, I moved the Sens up to 80 and bam, the dime jumped out to 7", solid. When not using the notch the Sens did not seem to have much loss when set at 60, even 50, going below 50, however, would begin to loss depth. This is the first time I felt a need to move the Sens out to 80 to recapture depth while using the Notching feature. Still, while in the field this morning and with the Notching active I was still getting scattered signal across the Notched out items, really scattered, like it was trying to read the notched out times then changing its mind. Like false signals? I kept pushing on and it would hit and steady up on anything not notched out but those lower signals bleeping in and out was a disappointment. I finally retreated to removing the notching, taking it back to 1 and then reset the Disc level to 18 and guess what? I started digging bottle caps galore and tabs a bunch, but I also made some nice finds. The finds were about equal. The deepest, on both sides of the notch or not notched was about equal, I found a penny at 6" and a dime at that same depth. .Sorry for the long comment, not sure it is of any interest or serves up any real answers but I'm still not done with the notching. Peace, WV62, I value you your knowledge a bunch, you obviously know your stuff. Dan

 

[sprchng]

My understanding is that disc, notch and tone on the 75se are designed to operate independently. Supposedly disc below 6 and above 20, if I remember right,kick in some type of "boost" to the sensitivity regardless of the process the machine is in , which may explain some of the variations in depth you are seeing----if the 70 works the same!!?? There are a number of threads over onTom's site which apply to this.I have never found ground I can run sens over 70 in DE or the BP mode above 30 so I have never been able to confirm either statement. I find the simplest method is to disc at 20 then notch out the tab range (36 to 55) and dig everything else using 4H for the zinc tones and pay extra attention to those solid mid 20 numbers for gold. Depth is irrelavent since I really only use it a clad broom anymore anyway.

 

[shadowulf]

It pretty much is the same on the F70. The f75se has more preprogramed options as well as a bit more "tweak-ability" than the F70. But when it comes down to it, they are pretty close.

I do envy the various programs and manual GB of the F75.
But i also like the simple choices the F70 has. now, If i were able to find out how to tweak my F70 to emulate the boost of the F75, and/or GB slightly positive. I would be very pleased. But it would still be a F70.

 

[dbax]

sprchng, thanks for the info. Give me something else to consider. Some say the boost on the F70, while not called a boost, is the S setting as opposed to the de. The S setting does go deeper but is also less stable than the de setting. Still, what you suggest gets me to thinking about trying the notch in the S setting? I set the Thres as -3 or -2 and it seems to run pretty quiet. I usually run Sens at 60 with no apparent loss in depth, except when I ran the notching. So, maybe I should have mere switched to the S ? I will try that next time out. I could play around with the Thres setting too. Thanks again for the info.

 

[Steve O]

I'm after old coins and don't use notch, ever. I also try not to use disc (f-75 and the ltd) unless the small iron is too much and then I don't go past 6 disc. I have literally thousands of hours on the standard f-75 and have to get use to my new LTD's boost possess....it's different somehow...sounds like the high tones are longer so your mind can pick them up... verses a short quick tone that goes unnoticed. When you are in an area with dozens of targets per swing, it's hard for your brain to keep up with the signals, so you automatically slow down....that's where the boost comes in handy, more snapshots on a target, hence the longer tone.

My buddy uses the f-70 and is learning the machine. The more he uses it the better he gets. The last few times out, I've been spanked. Good to see him light up when he digs an old coin.
The 70 is a great unit, especially with the 11"dd coil on it. I think it is equal to the 75 as far as being able to find the targets....just a few less gadgets to play with.

 

[dbax]

Hi Steve O Good comment. One of the sorry things about the F70 is if you run it full out you will dig bottle cap after bottle cap, fresh caps within and inch of the top soils will sound off just like a quarter and the deeper old rusted caps, many rusted down flat, sound off at depth as a quarter. I seemed to be digging a lot fewer of these while in the Notch mode, notching out iron, foil and tabs. How does your F75 handle the dreaded bottle cap. My F2 will find bottle caps but in the notch mode, Iron, foil and tabs out, it seems to ignore those caps pretty much, especially the deeper caps. I wish the Fisher gurus would, or could, come up with some kind of blocker or special filter between the machine and the coil to handle just this, maybe a switch on or off?? Maybe it cannot be done, or can it. So far the Notch feature does seem to influence depth and the Sens needs to be increased, from my experience.

 

[rubydot]

I never use the notch. For me, if I'm hunting an old home site. I'll set my machine to de mode, disc 5 and dig a few of the iron nails at this site. Once I have a good idea of what nails are there I find a clean spot and lay one of the nails on top of the ground and raise the disc to just pop and crack on the nail. That will be the disc setting for that site. No notch used.