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Fisher F-70

Price: $650
Avg. Score: 4 stars 4.26
Based on 19 reviews

Avg. Durability: 4 stars4.00
Avg. Ease of use: 4 stars3.75
Maximum detection depth
Submit your review for Fisher F-70

More practice and faith

September 15, 2010
This is my third review with the fisher f-50. Its getting better. I went over the hunted out spot which I reported on about two weeks ago. This time I hunted for an hour and unearthed a 1905 barber dime, 1902 barber dime, and 1944 merc. two wheats, and one corroded indian cent.
All were 5 inches and more. I am convinced THAT THIS MACHINE IS REALLY HOT IN TRASHY AREAS WHEN SEARCHING SLOWLY WITH AN 11 INCH COIL. Persistence and practice with a little patients pays off. Oh, by the way my settings were 54 discrimination, 90 sensitivity, -3 threshold, dp tone.

Overall Rating 5 stars!

924

Practice, practice, and a little luck

August 31, 2010
I have an update since my last review. I've been hunting an area where I always believed there was coins in between the trash.

Well I have been rewarded Three hunts, slowly moving in this area with an 11 inch dd coil produced an 1876 seated dime, a 43 merc. two indian cents 1908 and one unreadable, 4 wheat cents 1909, 1913, 1928 1943, a 1946 rosey, silver. Not bad for a coil that large. I hunted with good ground balance, -3 threshold, 90 sensitivity, 54 discrimination. I'm very satisfied. Oh, all coins were 5 inches or better.

Overall Rating 5 stars!

1124

Practice, practice .......results

July 09, 2010
I have been out about 6 times now. I found that this machine takes getting used to. I have found one silver 1920 standing quarter first time out. Already unearthed 30 quarters, 15 dimes, many pennies and a silver ring.

All coins were clad and mostly 3inches down. The areas I've been hunting are old sites I had great luck with in the past. I think my lack of deep coins has nothing to do with the machine but that they are just not there. I think this machine with practice and some new spots to hunt will be well worth it.

Overall Rating 4 stars

1318

Good Depth - Easy to Use - Practice !!

March 19, 2010
The Fisher F70 is my first real quality metal detector. At first I was a bit hesitant to buy this machine because of the reviews of unstable and erratic readings but I went ahead and bought it because my friend has a Fisher Gold Strike and swears by Fisher.

I received it from kellyco for $649 in just under a week. I put it together in just under 5 minuets. Immediately out of the box I took it in my backyard and began swinging it with the factory settings. And unfortunately after the ground balancing procedure it was just as the reviews said it would do. This machine beeped non stop while I was searching. I decided to mess around with the sensitivity and the threshold for a bit. It took me awhile to get it set up correctly with all the Radio frequency interference in the area I live in.

I don't have over head power lines which is nice for the scenery, but was terrible for my detector because the lines ran underground. What I did was turn the sensitivity down and the threshold way up. I also used a pretty high discrimination mode with the Notch feature to un-cancel the 5¢ zone. The machine was virtually silent except for the occasional "blip" from the high mineralization in my area. Sure enough after about 15 minutes of searching I was digging up coins all over my yard with out any problems.

I can see why people get so frustrated with all the noise the machine can make when it is not set up right. trust me, I was really frustrated to see that I just payed all this money to have a machine that didn't work like I expected to. With a little of practice, things started to fall into place and started acting much more stable.

All in all I think this is a great machine, the pinpoint is amazing, and the controls are simple and easy to use, the interface is really user friendly and the unit was really light.

Overall Rating 5 stars!

3815

Jackrabbit Machine

April 05, 2009
A friend wrote me many times to tell me about how totally awesome his new F70 is and how much more he was finding with it.

After hearing this over and over I decided to buy the F70.

I found right off that some dealers would come way down on the price. Others will give you lots of extras like quality name brand headphones, etc., if you pay the regular price for your F70.

I ended up with a brand new F70 shipped for $500. I heard of someone else getting one for $475.

One dealer told me “the bottom has dropped out of sales on these…I have lots of them on the shelf both new and used.”

My first day out I dug 30 holes with nothing in them.

My 2nd day I finally did find a piece of junk copper.

I took it down south to a 150-year-old house site and only found a few modern coins and several modern 30-06 rifle shells. Again I dug about 15 holes with nothing in them.

I sought lots of help all along the way from experienced F75 and F70 users.

I tried all possible settings and the thing only seemed to be somewhat stable when used it in factory-preset mode (learner mode). Other than that it constantly chirps and gives solid signals where there is nothing.

However I did find that it worked much better in plowed fields where there was little trash and not much by way of iron dust in the soil. I tested the depth in that soil and it was good but not exceptional. I could get a decent signal on a nickel at 7 inches deep. That was with the 11” DD coil. .

But I must say this is the jumpiest machine I've ever used in my 30+ years of metal detecting. The Minelab Explorer is a simple to learn machine compared to the F70. The Tesoro Tejon set on maximum sensitivity while hunting an extremely trashy site is a dead silent machine compared to the F70. This thing is noisy and gives false signals like nothing I've ever used before. It will find every single hot rock that comes anywhere near the coil.

I purchased the 11”DD coil because I was told it's much better than the stock concentric coil. I will say it did run a little smoother but was still extremely jumpy and highly effected by electrical interference.

After ruining several nice hunting trips with zero decent finds I decided enough is enough.

I didn't want to sell the F70 on ebay due to fear of the buyer wanting his money back so I made a deal with a dealer for another brand machine.

Now I'm happy again.

Conclusion: If you hunt wild areas with little trash like SOME Civil War sites, woods, or plowed fields, you'll probably like the F70. It's extremely fast in recovery and has decent depth (average about 8 inches on coins). But if you hunt trashy/iron soaked house sites, parks, or places with high electrical interference--this is the last machine you want. Shop around for the best deal.

Overall Rating 3 stars

6933

Good day with the F70

January 16, 2009
I finally got my Fisher F70. I played with it for several weeks until decent detecting weather finally broke. I learned how to navigate the menu. Vary Easy by the way. I tried many targets and different settings. Thought I understood the machine very well. When I actually got to take it into the field I found out I didn't know as much as I thought I did. There is nothing that will take the place of actual hunting with a metal detector. You can do all the Air testing you want and it will help, but you need to get the detector on the ground to really see how it performs.

The place I hunted was fairly high in mineralization, as it was fill from the 1980 MT St Helens Volcano eruption. It took me some time to find the correct balance of Sensetivity and Threshold to make the machine run stable. Even then, I still had a little background chatter. I could have eleminated that by lowering my Sens. even more, but setteled on 65. I ended up running the Threshold at +1 and sometimes 0. I ran in DE mode with tones at 3H. I started out with the F70 standard coil. The targets were fairly spread out with light trash. After an hour, I chose to remove the stock coil and I installed the F75 11"DD Coil. WOW. What a difference. The chatter was gone and talk about Target Seperation. That F70 was spitting out signals like Machine Gun Bullets. That's when the real fun began.

I could do almost anything I wanted with the F70 after installing the F75 DD Coil. It ran vary quiet and stable. I was finding coins that were hidden by trash so easy. The big 11"DD Coil helped me cover allot more ground, and even more targets were isolated. Target seperation is fantastic. Pinpointing was another matter. It really is not that difficult but I still have a ways to go to be always right on when pinpointing with the Big 11"DD Coil.Only problem I had was when I unplugged my headphones to demonstrate to my partner the target separation,the internal speaker would not work. I do not know what that is all about, but I am sure the warranty will cover it.

Overall I had a total blast yesterday and learned much about the F70. Oh by the way, the F75 DD Coil didn't seem to add that much noticeable weight to the machine. The F70 weighs 2.4lbs with the standard coil, and maybe a couple more ounces with the 11"DD Coil. We started hunting at 10:00am and never quit until 4:00pm and my right swinging arm felt just fine. Can't say the same for my Knees though. Next I am going to see how the F70 does with some Gold Nuggets. Thanks for taking the time to read my review.

Overall Rating 5 stars!

4315

Not too impressed

November 25, 2008
First, the build quality seems to be very poor, Nothing like the older cz series machines. It has a cheap feel to it. I think the $649 price tag is too high for what you get.

I did not see the great performance people are talking about. Only average depth and the usual jumpy target id numbers on coins over 4-5 inches. Not a whole lot better performance than the F2. It has some nice features and seemed to have a fast recovery rate. But other than that nothing to write home about.

I think with any of the latest fisher models you are basically taking a chance when you buy one. You may get a good one maybe not. I would definately think twice before buying one of these units without a warranty. May be costly in the long run to have it repaired.

Overall Rating 5 stars!

2927

Nervously and not stably built

November 21, 2008
Hi frinds of metal detecting,
I am detecting for 5 years. My first detektor was a Fisher CZ it was a good working machin with good deep and stably produced.In the May this yearly I bought a Fisher F70 and a minelab Xterra 70.
I sold the Fisher F70 soon again.
I cannot unfortunately say that the F70 is a deeply searching machin.The deep in air measured cannot be attained in the ground. Perhaps at completely scrap iron-free place.With maximum sensitivity the search is not possible since the detector runs much too jerkily.It runs only calmly with small sensitivity and a negatively adjusted Treshold but then it is not any more deeply.My Xterra 70 strikes the F70 in all.In this price range it gives substantially better detectors.
Everything in all it is for the achievement which it brings much too expensively.

Overall Rating 2 stars

3410

The Fisher F 70 is awesome

September 30, 2008
I've owned many detectors in my 19 years of metal detecting. I still own my first which is a White's Eagle Spectrum. The Spectrum is still a very viable, deep machine that I enjoy using.

I wanted to upgrade to a more modern technology. I was looking at the Minelab E-trac and a friend had just got one along with the Fisher F-70.

We were doing air and ground tests with both machines and the $649 Fisher F-70 was about the equal to the $1600 Minelab.

In air tests, the F-70 was beating the E-trac by 2 inches and in the ground, the F-70 hit every coin up to 14 inches down just as the E-trac did.

I did notice that the F-70 was able to hit coins on edge better. The F-70 was a better machine for covering more ground than the E-trac.

On ID'ing, the E-trac is better due to more information about the target being given with the technology involved.

The best things about the F-70.....
Very light. Easy to swing. Easy to use and adjust for ground conditions. Excellent ergonomics.
Good to excellent depth. Large numbers easy to read on the screen. The price is right. Top of line bells and whistles in a machine that is very fast on recovery. Battery life (4 AA batteries) is around 40 hours. Quite a few coils available to adjust the F-70 to your hunting styles.
Deep and somewhat accurate.

After a few hours of use, it felt like an old friend. I was able to ID nickles from tabs with no problem. The F-70 is a coin killer. Quarters down to over 12 inches. Dimes to about 9. Halves and dollars down to over 14 inches.


F-70 faults.
Not many.
The screen can sometimes not be read easily due to sun glare.
No back light for early evening hunting.
Can be affected by RFI...can be jumpy at times.
Volume control is in an area that can rub against your side and would turn the volume down.
Does not come with Velcro strap for arm rest.
Can be affected by aftermarket pin pointers. My Vibraprobe 570 causes interference with the F-70 if too close to the machine. The Sunray probe would solve this.

There are several coils available for the F-70. The F-75 DD coil and the 3.5 x 6 Fisher coil are the two hot setups. The standard coil is also a great coil.

I would recommend the F-70 wholeheartedly. An awesome machine for the money. Deep, pretty accurate and light.

Overall Rating 5 stars!

9329

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