steve herschbach
New member
Hi,
This relates to Dave's post on electrical interference.
I've used and sold Fisher Gold Bug 2 detectors since they came out. Had the very first one in Alaska. So I've demonstrated them for many years in our store in Anchorage. Recently, I got a batch of new Gold Bug 2s, and when I set one up to demonstrate in the store, the thing went completely bonkers when set into iron discriminate mode. It chattered so much it would hardly detect a gold ring at 3 inches. OK, no big deal, I go get another one, and it does the same. I get four more and they all do it. I'm thinking I got a bad run of units and I was not happy about it at all what with the hassle of returning them and such. So I call my distributor and go off on him and email nasty-grams to Fisher.
First of all I need to note that the Fisher response was very concerned but also very a calm and considered response considering the strength of my accusations. I guess I'm getting old as I can get a bit testy at times. After some back and forth I sent a unit back to get checked Dave asked me a simple question "was I sure I could rule out electrical interference"? Now, I thought hard about this. I'd used the Gold Bug 2 indoors at my location for what, over 15 years now? And never had this problem. But it had been months since I'd last put one in disc mode while in the store and so I realized I could not firmly rule out something new in the area.. I called a friend who had an older Gold Bug 2 and borrowed it, and when I tried it in the store it went nuts also. So it was just not this new batch of machines.
Long story short after some research I determined some kind of new EMI source has been installed in the immediate area of my store sometime in the last few months. Culprits may be a new lighting system, new radio installation for our new Stealth fighter squadron, of new high-speed cell towers. Not sure, but there you go. But the difference was enough to catch me off guard and I assumed the units must be bad, and not that something was new in the area, which turned out to be the case.
So with egg on my face I made apologies all around. This story illustrates how a person with almost 40 years of detecting under their belt can end up making a bad call. We live in the wireless age and people are installing new wireless gizmos all around us at an alarming rate. And unfortunately the hottest of the hot metal detectors, being extremely sensitive receivers, are going to have a tendency to pick up some of this stuff. I can see going forward where resistance to electrical interference is going to be more and more of an issue in urban areas. But it is also likely that in bad locations a person will forced to stick with certain single frequency units to get quiet operation. Multi-frequency or super high gain units are going to have issues in certain locations, much more so than in the past.
Anyway, my apologies to the people at Fisher for the false alarm and going off the deep end. I salute your calm handling of the situation. And a warning to all out there regarding erratic detector performance. You are going to run into it eventually, and the best thing to do if that is the case it try the machine at several locations distant from one another to make sure you do not have a local issues. And leave the cell phone behind!
Steve Herschbach
This relates to Dave's post on electrical interference.
I've used and sold Fisher Gold Bug 2 detectors since they came out. Had the very first one in Alaska. So I've demonstrated them for many years in our store in Anchorage. Recently, I got a batch of new Gold Bug 2s, and when I set one up to demonstrate in the store, the thing went completely bonkers when set into iron discriminate mode. It chattered so much it would hardly detect a gold ring at 3 inches. OK, no big deal, I go get another one, and it does the same. I get four more and they all do it. I'm thinking I got a bad run of units and I was not happy about it at all what with the hassle of returning them and such. So I call my distributor and go off on him and email nasty-grams to Fisher.
First of all I need to note that the Fisher response was very concerned but also very a calm and considered response considering the strength of my accusations. I guess I'm getting old as I can get a bit testy at times. After some back and forth I sent a unit back to get checked Dave asked me a simple question "was I sure I could rule out electrical interference"? Now, I thought hard about this. I'd used the Gold Bug 2 indoors at my location for what, over 15 years now? And never had this problem. But it had been months since I'd last put one in disc mode while in the store and so I realized I could not firmly rule out something new in the area.. I called a friend who had an older Gold Bug 2 and borrowed it, and when I tried it in the store it went nuts also. So it was just not this new batch of machines.
Long story short after some research I determined some kind of new EMI source has been installed in the immediate area of my store sometime in the last few months. Culprits may be a new lighting system, new radio installation for our new Stealth fighter squadron, of new high-speed cell towers. Not sure, but there you go. But the difference was enough to catch me off guard and I assumed the units must be bad, and not that something was new in the area, which turned out to be the case.
So with egg on my face I made apologies all around. This story illustrates how a person with almost 40 years of detecting under their belt can end up making a bad call. We live in the wireless age and people are installing new wireless gizmos all around us at an alarming rate. And unfortunately the hottest of the hot metal detectors, being extremely sensitive receivers, are going to have a tendency to pick up some of this stuff. I can see going forward where resistance to electrical interference is going to be more and more of an issue in urban areas. But it is also likely that in bad locations a person will forced to stick with certain single frequency units to get quiet operation. Multi-frequency or super high gain units are going to have issues in certain locations, much more so than in the past.
Anyway, my apologies to the people at Fisher for the false alarm and going off the deep end. I salute your calm handling of the situation. And a warning to all out there regarding erratic detector performance. You are going to run into it eventually, and the best thing to do if that is the case it try the machine at several locations distant from one another to make sure you do not have a local issues. And leave the cell phone behind!
Steve Herschbach
on this planet....
