david(tx) said:
but that only affects the all metal side...in disc it is still an F2 that has an all metal option.
https://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,1127515
By the way to anyone that has an F4. There is poor information out that manual Ground balance only works in All Metal Auto-tune. This is incorrect. Set it in AM then switch to Disc and the setting is maintained. I know this from experience as well as I wrote Fisher and asked and they said it carried over.
Yea, you fell for that false information too.
Many have called the factory or write them and stated that this is what they were told so it just had to be the truth...they believed.
The problem is not one if them talked to anyone of substance at any time regarding this.
That's ok, many did believe this stuff and Fisher never changed or helped out the matter or the confusion they caused by spreading this misinformation especially if you contacted them and plenty of dealers did also trying to sell this $200 upgrade over the F2.
If you called Fisher 4 times most of their reps told you It did transfer over but every once in awhile at other times you could actually get a guy that told you it didn't.
This was very common and I would like to think it was a matter of bad training instead of out and out lying to sell a product.
There are about a hundred threads all over the forum that discussed this subject for years where it was split up about 50-50...
Many said it did transfer over and many said it didn't and a ton of them were sure they were right because they also called Fisher and asked...and were told two completely different things.
Be that as it may it was mostly a moot point after Dave Johnson at FTP went on at least 2 different forums and stated in actual English words that ground balance DID NOT transfer over to disc, in that mode it was preset.
Or it should have made it a moot point.
https://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,1773683
Not only is this guy NOT an untrained rep whose job is to answer the phone over at FTP but he is a lead designer whose pedigree and long list of classic detectors he was involved in bringing to market is legendary and the F4 is on that long list, too.
He a major reason the T2 and the F75 are even in existence and work as well as they do but he was also part if the team that developed the F4.
His office was also right down the hallway from John Gardiner at their old location and that guy is not only a design engineer but a genius programmer.
Pretty sure he was the main guy behind the F4 programming just like he was on many other great detectors on the market today.
His rep in this industry is also legendary.
On another forum Dave J. again popped in again when this subject came up and not only mentioned GB in disc WAS preset on the F4 but John Gardiner's name was also mentioned as another source if I am not mistaken.
Now you can believe some guy who answered the phone who was either misinformed or actually trained to tow the company line to sell a product that was priced way to high for its actual features and told you what you wanted to hear or the two guys that were major forces behind the design and programming of this exact product.
In case you actually don't know who these guys actually are here us a portion of an interview with both of them and other major players at FTP from a few years ago.
If you want to read the whole thing Google...
Detector Stuff Interviews FT-Fisher Engineers, David Johnson and John Gardiner
Question 5:
DS: Would you mind giving us a list of detectors you’ve had a hand in developing?
Dave: “Old Fisher: 1260, 1220, 1210, 1225, 1235, 1265, 1266, 1280, Impulse, CZ6, CZ5, CZ20, Gold Bug, Gold Bug II, TW6/Gemini, FX-3, and several industrial products.
Tesoro: Diablo MicroMax, Lobo Supertraq.
White’s: DFX, Beachhunter ID, GMT, MXT
Troy: Shadow X5
Bounty Hunter & related products: nearly everything we manufacture. Many of these products are adapted from the original Teknetics which was designed by George Payne. The Teknetics T2 however was an entirely new design.
New Fisher: F75, F4, and everything else since then.
On most of the above I was the lead engineer. On the White’s DFX and Beachhunter ID I developed the multiple frequency circuitry, and other engineers designed products around that circuitry. In addition to the above there are many products on the market which are adaptations by other engineers of products I designed.”
John: “Bounty Hunter : I have had a hand in most of our current line up from the bottom to the top, from Guardian to the Time Ranger.
Teknetics : T2 I was main programmer
The Fisher’s : The F4 and F75”
To this day it boggles my mind that some still believe that Dave J. was wrong about this particular model.
Like saying Henry Ford didn't know much about the Model A or th Model T.
Now I have read plenty of posts from owners that swear that GB did transfer over on their F4 because they could prove it using examples from in the field testing they have done.
This is very common in this world where those that spend lot of money on some product have a big need to justify this, to ease your mind you will come up with "facts" to prove what you need to prove to yourself to make yourself happy.
I have also read posts from way more that proved just the opposite.
In this world this is just going to happen on most product lines that have a large spread in cost, and definitely for sure in many instances there is a direct relationship between price and value.
Many times if you pay more you get more regarding features and benefits and with spending more to get extra features that you think are important.
However there is another side to this also and it is called marketing...many times the price you pay does not reflect the best value for your money, you were just convinced it did due to marketing.
I was in retail for close to 30 years and very successful at it with many different products to the tune of many millions of dollars in sales.
I learned full well of the power of words, images and everything else in the world of marketing.
In sales we have a term for a certain type of customer, an uneducated consumer.
It just so happens there is a huge percentage of this type out there, from my experience about 80% of consumers fall into this category.
Many times it is their own fault they spent too much on or bought the wrong product when better options were available because they did not put out the effort to get themselves educated.
Other times it is not their fault at all and they really never stood a chance because even if they tried to do their due diligence and get the information they needed to make informed buying decisions it was almost impossible to do because companies, if not whole industries, purposely make it hard for most anyone to gather the true facts and data they needed.
Of course many believed this misinformation about the F4, they called the factory and "some guy that answered the phone told me so".
Bull...
Think about it, there was a huge jump between the $200 F2 and the $499 F5 and they needed to fill in that slot with...something...and the F4 fit that bill perfectly.
I am sure they knew of the the confusion about this F4 GB stuff going down in the forums and at dealer level and the way they wrote up the manual but it was definitely not in Fishers best interest to clear it up at all if what Dave J. was indeed correct, the more confused people were the more F4's could be sold over the F2 and that meant more profit for the company.
The F75 and the F70 capabilities were another sore subject that caused a whole lot of discussion over the years.
Some F75 guys were adamant that the F75 was way more advanced than the F70 and way more productive because it cost about $400 more so it just logically had to be...plus it had boost and the F70 didn't.
We F70 owners laughed and laughed at this because we knew the truth, the F70 did have boost and had it first and we knew exactly how capable that lower priced model was in comparison to the flagship.
Eventually Dave J. came out on a forum and stated that there was way less difference between the two than most ever knew and that the marketing guys at FTP never wanted the truth to ever make it out into the public domain.
Dave said NOBODY should ever feel slighted or thought they were missing out on anything at all because they chose to spend way less on the F70 than the flagship model.
Now notice the Patriot is $399 and the current models of the F75 still cost more but the gap is way closer than it has ever been in history, as close as about $100 in some cases.
Are they totally different products than back in the day when there was about a $400 difference....nope.
As a matter of fact there have been some improvements since the old days, look at DST and all the other programs and things they added to the current F75's.
That $400 difference back then was mostly a marketing difference, both units were excellent at what they did and way closer in abilities that anyone suspected but the large gap in price between them sure didn't reflect that.
You can believe what you want but I used an F2 for way north of 1000 hours and I hunted with a couple of guys that used F4's a bit, too.
Here are my opinions about them...again just MY opinion but using a lot of experiences.
The F4 came with the larger DD coil over the 8" and 4" concentric coils in the two coil packages so tge re should have been a higher price on the F4.
Then again you could buy a bigger DD coil for the F2 and sell the 8" one and there sure wasn't a $200 gap because if that coil.
The F4 did have manual GB in both all metal and in pinpoint...but not in disc.
It could be an advantage if you hunted in all metal but I rarely read about any owners that actually hunted that way.
As far as all metal the F4 had a setting for that and the F2 did not...or at least most believed it didn't.
It had no all metal actual setting, per SE, but if you hunted with your thumb pressed down on the pinpoint button you were actually hunting in the same all metal that the F4 had.
Of course your thumb could get tired and you used more battery power doing this but it was there on the F2 you wanted to hunt in all metal.
There was a 1-99 spread on the ID numbers on the F4 and I believe they could possibly all show up on the screen on the F4.
They said there was the same thing on the F2 but I don't think this was true, this one would actually skip several numbers for some reason in several areas.
Not a big deal, it would still hit on all targets but in some cases instead of hitting the same exact numbers the F4 on the same target the F2 would just move slightly up and down the range to one it could show on the screen.
I can't say this is fact but in all my time using that thing there were a few numbers I never saw on the screen even once.
I myself and a ton of others believe Dave J. on this subject when he stated the disc was indeed preset.
If you read his replies about this you can tell he was being a good company guy, tried to be very diplomatic about it all and not try to sabotage sales of the F4 at any time but read between the lines....he was trying to get out correct information to the masses as best he could.
I believe to this day he probably had the same opinion as I did about the F4, it was a product designed to fill a gap in a product line and even though it was a good detector and very capable but not actually value priced.
I thought this issue was cleared up long ago when an engineer chimed in about it but that didn't happen.
As the years went on and FTP came out with other value oriented models and the F4 sales started to fall and more out if the public's conscious I thought this issue would go away...but it didn't.
Now that the F4 has been discontinued and not talked about much at all anymore you would assume this would be a dead issue forever more, finally, but as you can see that never happened either.
I can see now that it probably never will.
Just because "the factory" told somebody something didn't make it true.
They were attempting to sell a $400 product, do you really believe they would say or do anything to kill sales on the thing?
Several years ago many tobacco executives went before congress and each with a straight face told them they don't believe that cigarettes were anywhere near as harmful as so many said they were and they stuck to that because they knew their industry was at stake.
Lying wasn't hard for these guys at all, after all their main product killed millions and the only way to increase their business is to continually get new customers to replace the ones that died so was this a surprise to anyone?
No.
Of course years later they admitted they lied but nobody thinks they are sorry in the slightest and they are still doing whatever they can to keep their industry alive.
This F4 stuff us not life and death, of course, but it still bothers me to this day that this company, a company I like a lot, actually came out with and priced this thing the way they did and made no effort to actually state the truth and clear it all up once and for all.
Again I believe it was all about marketing and sales and nothing else.
No company is perfect and neither is FTP.
I can forgive them for a small black mark on an otherwise mostly stellar history.
None of this matters now, nobody Elsevier or in the future will be spending an extra $200 on a new one anymore whether or not it was worth it or not to do just that.
if you have one and believe the GB transfers over great, as long as you enjoy using it that is all that matters.
