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Date Posted: 14:04:14 04/16/02 Tue
Author: Steve Herschbach
Subject: Gold Bug R.I.P.

Hi All,

I just wanted to take a moment to pay respects to the Fisher Gold Bug. After about 25 years of production it has been discontinued by Fisher. This makes it one of the longest continually produced models in metal detecting history.

The original Gold Bug deserves a place in the Metal Detector Hall of Fame for it's serious approach to nugget detecting. From an ergonomic standpoint the machine has never been bested to this day by any other design. Small, tough, light, convertible... it's hard to believe it's an early design, not something later. Newer models are getting heavier and clunkier all the time.

It's obvious when they built the Gold Bug they really looked at how people work in the field. And to this day most nugget detectors emulate the basic Gold Bug design concepts. What amazes me is that after all these years only Tesoro has come even close to building a machine as light and as compact as the Gold Bug.

From a detecting standpoint the machine still holds it's own. It will not hit the smaller gold like some other units, but on larger nuggets in mineralized soils it does very well indeed. And use it with the small coil and it does much better on small gold than people imagine.

I'm afraid the machine finally passed away as much from apathy and lack of marketing on Fisher's part as anything else. The perception held by many was that the Gold Bug 2 superceded the Gold Bug. Not enough was done to educate people to the fact that the Gold Bug outperforms the Gold Bug 2 in many situations.

The machine could have used a face-lift along the way. No real need for the mode selection switch for most people. Just lock it in autotune and get rid of the retune button at the same time. Add an audio iron id indication and the machine would make a great introductory unit.

But except for a few now left in some dealers hands, the Gold Bug is gone. I bought a new one a couple months ago as I just had to own that particular piece of metal detector history. And with a small coil it still is a great sniper for hot bedrock.

So here's to the Fisher Gold Bug... one of the very few real innovative detectors ever introduced!

Steve Herschbach
www.akmining.com

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