Old wine in new skins - or not

First Texas seems to get a lot of criticism for changing faceplates and calling it a new detector. Is the criticism justified?

I claim no special imside knowledge on that score. I have noticed that careful operators like Keith Southern and Tom Slick concluded that the F19 is morre than a repackaged GoldBug pro. Likewise the latest version of the. venerable F75 seems to get criticised for the opppsite - too much change without naming it a new model.

Guess us customers are a varied and hard to please bunch.

A couple thoughts occur to me however. If you're into cars for example, somebody can test the car - they can drive down the road they can see how fast it accelerates from 0 to 60. They Can drive it over a road course and see what sort of lateral G's it can sustain in cornering and a bunch of other pretty objective measures. Compare that to a metal detector. we take it out we wave it over the ground somewhere and talk about what sort of signals it yielded and what sort of targets they turned out to be. We do here tests in uncontrolled conditions with God knows what kind of EMI from things in our house or whatever and publish the results. All this because we care and we are interested and then we all try to compare our results from Jack's results and bills results and Keith's results.

Meanwhile in the car industry - the companies and the engineers are happy to tell us what they did to the compression ratio the programming for the fuel control system the turbocharger the supercharger whatever. In the metal detector industry it's a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Not only is the objective mysterious – things hidden in the ground – but the technology is largely made mysterious through proprietary names for things like operating mode's - impenetrable patent descriptions etc.

The reason for this I think is twofold - first of all about 99.9% of us wouldn't have a clue what the hell they were talking about if they really describe what sort of algorithms they used for signal analysis. Secondly a lot of this "secret sauce" that they are using is not protected by patents, they were trade secrets they are not going to be disclosed.

So when first Texas takes the Gold bug pro platform - makes some changes for whatever reason - they believe improving it greatly - we are skeptical then when thoughtful people test it and find it is improved we're surprised. Meanwhile they introduce the F22 and the F44 and we whine about old wine in new skins.

Early next week I should have a brand-new F19 and a brand-new if 75 latest model to test one against the other and to compare to my recollections of my goldbug pro hopefully I'll be pleased.

Again these are just my thoughts.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2015 12:50AM by lytle78.

I know you'll like the F19 Rick

It's not just a repackaged "gold bug pro" - I've had/used and tested both extensively (currently have/use the F19) and although similar to a GBP = worlds apart too ;-)

Me and wjs were praising the f19 from its release. We both were posting some of the first videos. He had a g2 and I the gbp. But once we posted we were testing it against the etrac we both were banned. Then after 6 months they tell me they didn't know what happened? But all was well and my account was up and running. I ain't been back.
Lytle78. Me and Bill both like the f19 better than the f75 and f70. It's a super coin and relic machine. I have a video on how to set it up if you like on my channel.

Kenny
[www.youtube.com]

My wish for the f19. 3 or 4 tones that you moved around like you can do with the notch. Target Id in all metal if possible. But as it is if waterproofed would be an Atpro killer.

Kenny
[www.youtube.com]

For now I don't really care for Fisher but I have read a lot of nice things about the F19

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!

I think they have a good team over at FT. Hard to criticize them for coming up with new offerings which all seem to offer varied features and setups in alot of price ranges. I hope that will cause future inovations.The F75 ltd2 is definately a step forward. I can think of a couple of companies that could use a healthy dose of inovation.
hh
John

Great post Rick!

Bey

Agree Rick. - our hobby is very simple yet very complex and the only real help is on sites like this where others passionate about the hobby share knowledge and experience in a way that helps everyone including the manufactures if they choose to listen.

Right now iron masking and ways to see good targets amoungst bad is the focus and I am sure we will see better and better ways to do just that and it would not surprise me if First Texas was not one of the shining stars.

Bryanna - Nebraska

Current - New to me but not new MXT Pro and T2 SE2 - Previous Minelab Sovereign GT, Minelab Safari, Whites DFX, Whites Eagle Spectrum
Smile its a good for you!

Rick,

"White's" are the [re-packaging] masters...not Teknetics or Fisher!

Having Tested both the 75 and 19, I can honestly attest to then being [stand-alone] jobbies...

Enjoy your Tests and don't forget to tell us your thoughts!

Des D

Maybe someone can help me with something that has stuck in my craw---I have aF75 with all coils,couple Gold Bugs,A mint Fisher Impulse so I am not anti First Texas,BUT the up/down grade of the 75 has left me unable to trust First Texas,to wit: If you call FT today they will tell you that there IS NO depth loss in AM on the upgraded machines. Meanwhile there are hundreds of posts saying the opposite. Yes the discriminate side is quiter,but the AM side IS weaker than the unupgraded 75ltd's.What say you??

Doc,

Used upgraded F-75’s sell for more than unupgraded ones. If your F75 is upgraded and you're unhappy, sell it and buy a used unupgraded one ypu should make a few bucks on the deal.

If yours isn't upgraded, The upgrade is no longer available, so you have no decision to make.

We live in an imperfect world. The biggest complaint about the F75 has always been the EMI issue. The DST processes have eliminated this. If the AM depth (as measured in AIR) is reduced as a result, then it is a classic case of engineering "trades" all design solutions pose advantages and costs, the decision to proceed with a design change ialways involves a "trade study" where a cost/benefit analysis is done.

As far as trust goes:

FT does seem to need a clearer way of communicating with customers. Having multiple people answering customer calls can easily lead to sending multiple versions of the company's data on a problem. Clearly there were issues with the first upgraded units and various users got differing feedback when they contacted FT. The fact that this happened in the last couple of weeks of 2014, when a lot of the staff were probably on Christmas time vacation days surely didn't help.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

lytle78 thanks for your response--in the end I chose to not upgrade,which was free,my 75 because my CW relic hunting in the deep woods requires max depth,no emi issues and I only recently decided to coin hunt. I have been an active nugget and meteorite hunter since 93 and have a number of PI,multifreq, and vlf machines. The 75 is my most recent purchase and I had the idea of using it for both relics and coin hunting--purchased it solely on it's reputation for depth.When the up/down grades began I got my return voucher,but as conflicting reports began to surface I chose to not have my Bull machine made into a Steer. LOL I personally talked to 3 different people at FT, one just a month ago, and all three told me there was NO depth loss in AM.Now the old "don't p iss on my boots and tell me it's raining" comes to mind.In my work experience when you tell someone something you better have the data to back it up or you are put in a certain catagory and it's is a loooong way out.
Anyway both FT and I will survive,again thanks for your intelligent reply.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2015 02:12AM by doc holiday.

Thanks Doc,

Writing an email which sort of questions someone else's post is always a tricky thing to attempt. I guess I didn't screw it up too bad this time. lol.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold