Some History on Fisher Detectors: Dave Johnson Essays+ The Relationship Between Fisher, BH and Teknetics :fisher:

[vlad]

That would be the Vantage AD-14. Not very many were made. Pretty much the 'last hurrah' for D-Tex.

Yes, it was the last model I know of they released. (Van Fossen in Houston bought 50 of them.) What is odd is that the D-Tex catalogue was full of photos of detectors I never saw in person, or was offered to sell: including water units. Frank Ball flew into Memphis in '82 and we drove to a middle Tenn. site for a treasure hunt sponsored by a club. He brought a prototype that was his and Dorian Cook's answer to motion units: it was a non motion VLF/TR with an extra mode using a reverse TR-disc feature that was reversed to give a beep when you moved it off a target instead of a null which was normal for a good target on a TR reverse, and it even had an over ride to speed it up. It used a 5" coaxial loop and was called the GCD or "ground cancelling discriminator" and advertised "motion was dead." It was nothing special and the 5" loop was a bad idea (and regular D-Tex loops would not work) and I bought it to demo anyway. The 1260 was just out and one old timer used one and everybody looked at him like he was nuts, but he ended up with the grand prize (and soon after it was all you saw with relic hunters.)
Later the GCD quit and I sent it in and got a call from Frank offered me a new GCD-2 in a trade for $50--could not turn it down. It came in and "motion was not dead" because they added a 4 filter circuit. (I later told Frank the 1260 was so much deeper there was no comparison.) Soon after George Payne brought out the Tek Mk-1 but without the auto ground balance because it added $100, and Compass hit with the X-100 (a design George worked on because by now he was free lancing.) My how the years, and opportunities slip by......I never spent as much time at Brices Crossroads as I wanted (Nathan B Forrest biggest victory) or at Shiloh. With today's better technology there would be so much more to find, but the people I knew that then owned the land are long gone, (And Sheriff Buford Pusser too who liked the local barbecue.) Years later I wrote to Jerry Tyndall who called me up and said he made a DMC-2b with TID but never went into production: and he said there was enough filtering that he could have made a no motion disc mode too. He died at some point after that: what a loss to the hobby. At times it seems to stagnate with just refinements of things here 30+ years. (The Compass X-200 had switchable frequencies in the mid '80's.

 

[vlad]

Tesoro made the Shadow X2. The Shadow X3 and X5 were Dave Johnson designs, mostly, and were assembled at FRL.

The Vantage detectors were a small number, short lived, and the search coils were deigned/made for them by another short-lived detector maker at that time.

Monte

Well, you talk to Dave Johnson, and Troy, it was a lot of Troy too, with someone else doing the manufacturing. (Troy is a very competent engineer and worked in electronics to include computers.) A few years ago he had worked with another engineer on a new Shadow and got to the point where he was tired of spending money (and he had already designed new loops.) With no one willing to make it, what was the point. I guess he is still raising Starlings and dogs in Dallas.

 

[vlad]

I had a prototype AD-14, it was my fave for a few years, I gave it to a friend in the end. Did not know that history about it. It was friggin deep for its day, outperformed most anything out there and had dual discrimination with a tactile dome switch on the handle for a toggle. But today it would be a sub-par performer compared to most. If they made another one for around $300'ish i'd buy it as my second detector, though. I knew it inside-out and it was a hot machine. Here was one of the brochures: https://static.secure.website/wscfus/6268851/uploads/Vantage_Metal_Detectors.pdf

Nice seeing the brochure: wish the catalogues were still online. (I think they had a 10" loop too)