1st time with the F 70

Definitely read DIGGER'S posts, I also swing a F70 and I make sure to read his posts. He is very knowledgeable with Fisher machines, as well as others. One thing I can tell you about getting more depth is to turn up the sensitivity, but I highly recommend that you learn from DIGGER. Good luck with your new machine!

One...do a factory reset.
Always do that after someone else uses it or you are done with setting notches.
If you can't get a nickel, and even with the elliptical coil you should hit these somewhere close to 10", you have a notch still in effect.
The screen might not show it but the only sure way to get rid of notches is a reset.
You could have all kinds of other wonky stuff going on that reset will fix too, hard to hunt with a screwed up unit.
You will be surprised what a reset will do.
Forget about hitting that bullet shallow or anything else till you do it.
I can hit a 22 load, not the whole bullet with a casing just the load way further than that with any coil.



Two...turn down the sense if you need to, the thresh a number or two also...it will stabilize behavior if needed.
You have plenty of time to learn hotter settings but even on real low sense this thing gets deep.

Use the disc, bring it up out of iron at least.
I hunt with it up to 23 sometimes to still get gold and most everything else but you can bring it even higher.
Raising the disc this thing doesn't really lose depth, blast it up to 58 or so and avoid tabs, foil, most can slaw except the big stuff and lots of screw on caps and crown caps.
Those caps will usually jump around a lot, coins should be more stable.
With high disc you can concentrate on zincolns, copper cents, dimes and all other high coins and also silver jewelry.
Find some of that and build your confidence, all will come in time.
Ask here or PM me any specific questions and I will answer as best as I can.

Thanks Digger , you sent me your email the other week , and I will get with you there , I just want to try to learn some from your post so I'm not making you repeat things , sometimes my reading comprehension is kind of slow , but once I get it , it's got , . And I want to have time to get out in the field to try these settings instead of hounding you for more information when I haven't even had the chance to use the previous info . My hunting time is limited , so it may take a while . Updates and questions will come as I get the time to detect . Thanks .

Hey Hawggie! You got my phone number and D27's email, so just holler for help! With friends like this, Who needs an owners manual!

Muds basic easy comfortable set up: sens,55...Thresh -3...disc4....DP tones....DE mode,


Then toss out a handful of clad and iron and whatnot and give it a sweep...see how fast you can sweep over a target? See how high? See how tight the target profile is and how the proportional audio is working?? See how a copper and a zinc sound different? See how a Q and a dime do too? If you have a half dollar, see how that one sounds? (A NEG thresh eliminates ambient stray chatter)

just start with that...remember, this rig likes a fast sweep...not a slow one,
Dude, just call whenever you are afield and get into a question...I'll be out today working my F70...

Thanks mud . I've got some chores to get done today and If I can get them done I'm going to jump back on this 70 and learn this thing . I feel like theres targets in that volleyball court I was missing . I'll post back later If I'm able to ga\et back out there . Thanks Mud , I appreciate the offer , If I get stumped out there , I'll give ya a shout .

Some more info about hunting with the T2/F70/F75 platform units...lots about my methods for hunting in extremely heavy iron and the F70 has a few superpowers when it comes to that.
Shockingly successful methods using some way out of the box thinking but many methods work for all kinds of hunters...there doesn't seem to be many wrong ways to hunt with these things.

I am REVIER over there, I learned all kinds of stuff from many others here and we share info, settings, theories and insights all the time.

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,2322233,page=1

hawgdawg said:

Thanks mud . I've got some chores to get done today and If I can get them done I'm going to jump back on this 70 and learn this thing . I feel like theres targets in that volleyball court I was missing . I'll post back later If I'm able to ga\et back out there . Thanks Mud , I appreciate the offer , If I get stumped out there , I'll give ya a shout .

Click to expand...

Do that reset and then wade into that volleyball court and try this.
Turning the sense down to about 30 has the effect of shrinking the large scanning field of the big DD coil, the elliptical concentric coil and even the smaller sniper coils to a precise, laser-like surgical instrument.
Surprisingly still deep, too.
It is an amazing experience and can help you pick through extreme trash easily and still find the hidden good stuff.

The thresh adjustments have been known to be compared to a door.
At 0 it is open and you can sense most targets, go into the positive numbers, push that door open even more and the sense seems to increase and you can see ever smaller and smaller targets deeper and back down into the higher negative numbers the smaller targets will start to cut out.

I have done a ton of tweaking with the thresh lately and I can tell you this.
There is a reason the factory start up settings are at -3.
The thresh controls some of the noise problems you might have too, that -3 setting is just fine for finding just about everything we go after at just about all depths.
I have turned the thresh down even further to -4, -5, -6 and even to -7 and not only have I seen my rig turn into a true silent searcher but the tiny stuff I have found at these levels have sometimes shocked me.
If I can find targets so small at these settings coins, rings and all normal sized targets should be no problem.

A setting of 30 on the sense and -4 to -6 on the thresh plus maybe 3H or 4H and the disc set to knock out the small problem trash and iron...from maybe 23 or so, should make it easy to easy to notice and recognize all targets and picking out the good stuff will be easy.
Move the coil slow so you can notice targets as you move around.

Yes do a factory reset. I just purchased an F 75 SE. Not knowing what was really happening, I went ahead and started detecting. My friend who I bought it from told me it seemed very sensitive. I went ahead and searched with it a few days. It was noisey but hey, so are other First Texas products. Well I went ahead and did a reset. What a world of difference. I run it with pretty high sensitivity now if I want to and it runs a lot smoother. You will probably notice a difference if you do it too.

Thanks bigtim , I will do the reset my very next chance I get the chance to get out there .

Ahhh...Digger 27 = REVIER

I've read a ton of your posts over there and thought that these Digger27 posts sounded similar. I'm new to a F70 also and have been trying lots of different settings. I really like using a lower sense like 40 or so and -2 or -3 on threshold it's really quiet this way and you know when you lock on a target. This is also my first metal detector, but it seems pretty straight forward so far. One thing for Hawgdawg...keep reading that owner's manual over and over...lots of little tidbits in there that will make more sense after using the machine.

Just bought a new F70 also and anxious to read other users posts on it. Had a F4 so learning all over again.

KSCHEMIST said:

Just bought a new F70 also and anxious to read other users posts on it. Had a F4 so learning all over again.

Click to expand...

Similar in basic behavior but then add a ton more.
Much more power, you just live at a deeper level with this thing.
I found it was a bit of time before I could get those jumpy numbers to calm down to my F2 stable levels but with practice it came together...also a by-product of that sheer power range.
The 675,893 setting combinations possible...hard to believe but most everything works.
So far I am up to 3,567 so I still have a few to go but I do have my favorites.
Tweak a few in difficult sites and you will be amazed...check that...
You will be amazed wherever you go.

Well if you tune in to Digger27s post , you'll feel like an expert , or at the least you'll have a good idea of what to do when you get out in the field. Good luck

DIGGER27 said:

One...do a factory reset.
Always do that after someone else uses it or you are done with setting notches.
If you can't get a nickel, and even with the elliptical coil you should hit these somewhere close to 10", you have a notch still in effect.
The screen might not show it but the only sure way to get rid of notches is a reset.
You could have all kinds of other wonky stuff going on that reset will fix too, hard to hunt with a screwed up unit.
You will be surprised what a reset will do.
Forget about hitting that bullet shallow or anything else till you do it.
I can hit a 22 load, not the whole bullet with a casing just the load way further than that with any coil.


Two...turn down the sense if you need to, the thresh a number or two also...it will stabilize behavior if needed.
You have plenty of time to learn hotter settings but even on real low sense this thing gets deep.

Use the disc, bring it up out of iron at least.
I hunt with it up to 23 sometimes to still get gold and most everything else but you can bring it even higher.
Raising the disc this thing doesn't really lose depth, blast it up to 58 or so and avoid tabs, foil, most can slaw except the big stuff and lots of screw on caps and crown caps.
Those caps will usually jump around a lot, coins should be more stable.
With high disc you can concentrate on zincolns, copper cents, dimes and all other high coins and also silver jewelry.
Find some of that and build your confidence, all will come in time.
Ask here or PM me any specific questions and I will answer as best as I can.

Click to expand...

You may have just saved me from throwing my F75 in the pond. I messed with my settings after a ton of success the other day. Today my machine wasn't hitting targets the same. 6 hours of frustration. Sounds like I need to do a reset. Thanks for the great posts.

DIGGER27 said:

Do that reset and then wade into that volleyball court and try this.
Turning the sense down to about 30 has the effect of shrinking the large scanning field of the big DD coil, the elliptical concentric coil and even the smaller sniper coils to a precise, laser-like surgical instrument.
Surprisingly still deep, too.
It is an amazing experience and can help you pick through extreme trash easily and still find the hidden good stuff.

The thresh adjustments have been known to be compared to a door.
At 0 it is open and you can sense most targets, go into the positive numbers, push that door open even more and the sense seems to increase and you can see ever smaller and smaller targets deeper and back down into the higher negative numbers the smaller targets will start to cut out.


I have done a ton of tweaking with the thresh lately and I can tell you this.
There is a reason the factory start up settings are at -3.
The thresh controls some of the noise problems you might have too, that -3 setting is just fine for finding just about everything we go after at just about all depths.
I have turned the thresh down even further to -4, -5, -6 and even to -7 and not only have I seen my rig turn into a true silent searcher but the tiny stuff I have found at these levels have sometimes shocked me.
If I can find targets so small at these settings coins, rings and all normal sized targets should be no problem.

A setting of 30 on the sense and -4 to -6 on the thresh plus maybe 3H or 4H and the disc set to knock out the small problem trash and iron...from maybe 23 or so, should make it easy to easy to notice and recognize all targets and picking out the good stuff will be easy.
Move the coil slow so you can notice targets as you move around.

Click to expand...

I'm still working this small park/playground near my house and here recently I've finally been finding better targets (silver coins, wheat pennies and even a few silver rings) but they don't seem to be deeper than 4 inches. I've been running my F70 at
Sens. 80
Thresh.-3
Tone 3
Disc. 23
I know with me starting to find good targets that there must be better things even deeper, but I'm confused as to what to set my machine at. Your help would definitely be appreciated.
I recently was watching a YouTube video on the F70 settings and the guy stated that he doesn't understand why anyone would run their machine with the thresh set below 0. I can't remember who posted the video, but I think it was Minnesota Digger (I could be wrong about who posted the vid)

The send and threshold setting is what confuses me , especially when one affects the other. But my lack of free time to get out with it is not helping either

hawgdawg said:

The send and threshold setting is what confuses me , especially when one affects the other. But my lack of free time to get out with it is not helping either

Click to expand...

bruinvikes said:

I'm still working this small park/playground near my house and here recently I've finally been finding better targets (silver coins, wheat pennies and even a few silver rings) but they don't seem to be deeper than 4 inches. I've been running my F70 at
Sens. 80
Thresh.-3
Tone 3
Disc. 23
I know with me starting to find good targets that there must be better things even deeper, but I'm confused as to what to set my machine at. Your help would definitely be appreciated.
I recently was watching a YouTube video on the F70 settings and the guy stated that he doesn't understand why anyone would run their machine with the thresh set below 0. I can't remember who posted the video, but I think it was Minnesota Digger (I could be wrong about who posted the vid)

Click to expand...

hawgdawg, the thresh and sense do have a close relationship, almost like having two gain settings on one machine.
You can turn them both low, stay really quiet and still get decently deep because this thing is way overpowered out of the factory, you can overdrive both like I sometimes do and get to depth levels that might amaze you or do any combinations of both depending on the sites to pretty much find just about everything we look for at any levels.
There is a reason so many of us use completely different settings and all seem successful.
High sense and low thresh, low sense and high thresh, so many combinations can work and maybe duplicate each other but each hunter usually finds their own favorites eventually.
Some like to hunt silently, some can handle a bit more noise, some look for settings to do it both ways like me.
Whatever it takes for me to find extremely masked targets in my difficult soil I can learn and get used to if they help...that is why I experiment and tweak so much just looking for the very best way to do it.
I might not ever find the perfect settings but I have filed away many that have found me amazing things even if they are completely different...just more arrows in the quiver I can pull out and try whenever I feel like it.



bruinvikes, here is some stuff I wrote about how much I love using your coil, that elliptical concentric.
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,2296414,2296568#msg-2296568

The bulk of all my oldest coin targets, both here in the bad dirt and in Kansas in the good dirt usually were laying at the 4-6" depth level.
Most, but not all.

Usually when I hunt in disc I rarely go much higher than -2 on the thresh and I have gotten way deeper than 4" with that concentric coil in the past in both states.
One hunt I found a very masked injun at the 5-6" level and got a way thin V nickel every bit of 7" deep in my really difficult soil using the sniper coil.
I think it might have actually been closer to 8".

Settings were disc at 65, SL, notched in foil and nickel, sense at 80, thresh at -2, 3H tones.
It has been said that this platform loses very little if actually no depth on high disc and I believe it after seeing a few things I experienced out there.

In the same area in a spot of rare and better black dirt that is closer to your Ohio stuff using the concentric coil I once dug a silver Masonic token the size of a quarter also at about the 7-8" area and it hit hard still using negative thresh and if I remember DE speed, sense in the 80's and I forget the disc setting but it might have been 23 similar to yours.
When using disc I rarely go above 23, I found too many gold rings at 24 to permit me to go any higher.
Your detector with that coil in your soil can easily go further than 4", you just might not be hunting in areas with deeper targets but there are ways to find out.

One, the 5"sniper DD coil will easily reach the same depth as that elliptical and I believe even surpass it.
The big F75 DD coil definitely will get deeper, it just lives at a deeper level overall than the other coils and gets a bit stronger, louder signals on the deep ones.
All of the very deepest targets I dug in the good Midwest soil were found with the big coil at the 9-15" level.

Two, second way to get more depth...turn up the thresh and you will get deeper or at least hear and see more targets at deeper levels then at negative thresh numbers.
I don't turn up the thresh all the time, when quick sweeping parks and using multi tones from 3-4H I usually don't go much higher than -2 because anything above -1 skews the higher tones into a squeaky area I don't like to listen to...at all.
Try it, throw some coins down on a clean piece of ground and use multi tone and negative thresh and turn it up to positive thresh and you will hear the difference.
SL or DE speed does not matter...it is the thresh that changes that tonal quality.
I have found that using all metal, 1, 1F and 2F this effect is nominal and those are my more favorite tone settings to use nowadays and when I push that sense and thresh up high the only tone choices I use.

The thresh settings also affects volume, the higher you go the louder targets sound in both disc and the threshold tone in all metal.
Deeper targets can possibly be heard that you couldn't in lower thresh because you are gathering in more data like a hard of hearing person putting a hearing aid in their ear...everything gets magnified.

That vid you referenced...if it is the one where that user is hitting an 8" nickel in his test garden with thresh up high but sense at 1 then you can see what high thresh can do.
He didn't try to replicate those results with higher sense and lower thresh which might have also worked well but using the data he had I can see why he came to that conclusion/opinion.

High thresh might not be the optimum way to hunt for everyone because it might add more noise to the equation at certain sense levels but that is why I tweak and I think everyone should take a few minutes and do the same on hunts.
A little time doing that might get you way more in the future on other hunts if you hit upon some good ones.
In your soil I would try moving the thresh up into the positive...maybe 4-5 and adjust the sense as high as you can to your noise comfort level.
Forget SL for now and just use DE.
Even if you end up with the sense lower into the 20-50 range go out and see if you can come across targets deeper than 4"...I assume you might.
The deepest target I ever dug in Kansas was with DE, 2F, the thresh at 9 and the sense at 99 and it was solid, clear and with pretty accurate numbers on the screen at 15" which rarely happens even with the big DD coil I was using.
Using the concentric coil and these settings I might not have been able to hit that thing so deep but I believe coins and rings at the 8-10" level would not have been a problem...definitely I could get deeper than 4" for sure even with much lower thresh and sense levels.

Go out and experiment a little.
You have great soil and never take that for granted because I have been on both sides of that fence.
Everything should work well up there but there could be some settings that will be more optimum than others.
You started with factory settings and just used those for awhile and did pretty good.
Now you have pushed that sense a bit higher I see but it might be time to tweak a few other settings like that thresh.
The sky is the limit with this thing, spend a little more time outside your comfort level and you might be amazed at what can happen.
I am positive there are at least a few targets, great targets, deeper than 4" around there so now you just have to figure out how to find them.

Thanks a million DIGGER! You're the best! I'm on the road right now, but when I stop to take my break I will try to find the video I spoke about and post it here or I'll pm you with it. Thanks again bud!

bruinvikes said:

Thanks a million DIGGER! You're the best! I'm on the road right now, but when I stop to take my break I will try to find the video I spoke about and post it here or I'll pm you with it. Thanks again bud!

Click to expand...

Here is the one I was referring to...



I refer to this when people comment about thinking you can't get deep without using high sense on these things.
There is a reverse governor of sorts on this platform where even 1 on the sense is way higher than most people think...all the sense settings are.
It also shows what high thresh can do if you want to explore that area.