Fisher F22
Fisher F22 Settings by Site Type: Parks, Fields, Beaches and Trash
Quick answer
Run the Fisher F22 at high sensitivity only where the ground and the electrical noise allow it. In quiet parks most owners sit near the top of the range, in mineralised fields and on wet sand they drop several steps, and in heavy iron they notch iron and widen everything else rather than discriminating out the middle of the scale.
The Fisher F22 has a short menu on purpose. There are four settings that actually change your day: mode, sensitivity, discrimination and notch. Everything else is housekeeping. Fisher describes the machine as turn-on-and-go, and for a park that is genuinely true, but the default setup is a compromise aimed at nobody's ground in particular.
What follows is a site-by-site starting point, with the reasoning attached so you can adapt it rather than copy it. Nobody can give you a correct sensitivity number for ground they have never stood on.
Top pick
Fisher F22
The F22 is weatherproof, weighs roughly two pounds and carries discrimination, sensitivity, notch and pinpoint on a menu short enough to change mid-hunt, which is what makes site-by-site setup practical.
Price was accurate when this page was compiled and changes often.
On this page
What actually changes when you raise sensitivity?
Sensitivity is receiver gain. Raising it makes the F22 report weaker returns, which means deeper and smaller targets, and also means more noise, more falsing and less stable target IDs. It is not a depth setting. It is a signal-to-noise setting, and the correct value is the highest one at which the machine still runs quiet with the coil moving.
The test is simple. Sweep the coil over clean ground at your working speed. If you get chatter with no target under the coil, you are too high. Drop a step and sweep again. Repeat until it goes quiet, then leave it there. A stable machine at a lower sensitivity finds more than a screaming one at maximum, because you can actually hear the faint repeatable signal that matters.
Electrical interference counts too. Power lines, buried cable, solar installations and other detectors all force the number down, and that has nothing to do with your soil.
What settings suit each kind of site?
Start here, then let the ground correct you. The sensitivity column is expressed as a position within the F22 range rather than a fixed number, because the right absolute value depends on your soil and your local noise.
The single biggest setting change across sites on an F22 is sensitivity, which most owners run near the top in quiet parks and several steps lower on wet sand and mineralised ground.
| Site type | Mode and discrimination | Sensitivity | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mown park, low trash | Coin mode, iron notched out | Upper third | Clean ground and shallow targets. Chase depth and speed |
| Park with heavy foil and tabs | Coin mode, iron out, tabs left in | Upper third | Notching the tab band also notches gold rings. Dig the tabs or accept the loss |
| Pasture and open field | All metal or artefact, minimal disc | Mid to upper | Relics read across the whole scale. Discrimination costs more here than anywhere |
| Old house site, heavy iron | Iron notched, everything else open | Mid | Iron masking is the problem, not sensitivity. Slow the sweep instead |
| Dry beach sand | Jewellery, iron out | Upper third | Dry sand is electrically quiet and forgiving |
| Wet sand and surf line | Jewellery, iron out | Lower third | Salt water raises the noise floor. High sensitivity just produces falsing |
| Tot lot and playground mulch | Coin mode, iron out | Mid to upper | Shallow targets, dense trash. Separation beats depth |
| Ploughed or freshly turned ground | All metal or artefact | Mid | Broken surface causes ground noise. Back off until it settles |
Fisher publishes discrimination, sensitivity, notch and pinpoint as the F22 feature set. The positions above are owner practice, not a manufacturer recommendation, and every one of them should be tuned down if your machine chatters.
What do you change when the machine misbehaves?
Most field problems have one obvious cause and one cheap fix. Working through this list in order will resolve nearly all of them without touching anything else.
Chatter with no target under the coil is a sensitivity problem roughly nine times out of ten, and dropping one or two steps fixes it without costing meaningful depth.
| Symptom | Most likely cause | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Constant chatter on clean ground | Sensitivity above what the soil supports | Drop one step at a time until quiet |
| Chatter only near buildings or poles | Electrical interference | Drop sensitivity, or move and test again |
| Target IDs jumping wildly | Depth, mineralisation or wrapped iron | Sweep from ninety degrees, then decide |
| Machine goes silent over known targets | Discrimination or notch too aggressive | Open the notch back up and re-check |
| Good signal that vanishes when you dig | Target moved, or it was a halo effect | Re-scan the pile and the hole separately |
| Everything reads as iron on wet sand | Salt loading the ground signal | Lower sensitivity and work higher up the beach |
| Signals smear together in trash | Coil too large for the target density | Slow the sweep, or fit a smaller coil |
Generic troubleshooting order, applicable to any single-frequency machine with these four controls. The F22 specific behaviour is described in the Fisher F22 manual.
Does sweep speed matter more than settings?
On a trashy site, yes. The F22 is a motion machine, so it needs the coil moving to report a target, but there is a wide range of speeds that work and the slow end of it is where iron-infested ground gets readable. A slow, overlapping sweep gives the machine time to resolve two targets that a fast sweep blends into one signal.
Coil height is the other free improvement. Keeping the coil consistently close to the ground, and level through the whole arc rather than rising at the ends, is worth more depth than a sensitivity step. Most people lift the coil at the end of each swing without noticing.
If you are spending whole sessions on one field, working out the lane spacing in advance is worth the five minutes: the search grid planner turns a site's dimensions into lanes and a walking distance, and the coil size selector will tell you whether the trash density argues for something smaller than the stock nine inch coil.
What else belongs in the bag?
A pinpointer is the single accessory that changes recovery time most, and the Garrett Pro-Pointer AT is submersible to twenty feet with three sensitivity levels and a moulded ruler on the shaft, which is why it gets recommended without much argument. A cheap wired pair of Garrett MS-2 Headphones headphones is the other obvious addition, because faint deep signals are audible in headphones and inaudible through a speaker in wind.
The F22 runs on AA cells, so a set of Rechargeable AA NiMH Batteries, 8 pack is the difference between hunting and shopping for batteries. Low cells change how a detector behaves before they stop it working, which is a genuinely annoying way to lose an afternoon.
Once the settings are sorted, the numbers on the screen are the next thing to learn, and the F22 target ID chart covers the 0 to 99 bands. If you are curious how the F22 compares to the rest of the sub three hundred dollar field, the budget detector ID comparison lays out what each brand actually publishes. A full starter list sits under beginner setups, and other machines are indexed on the reference hub.
Sources
- Fisher F22 owner’s manual, sensitivity, discrimination and notch sections
- Fisher Research Labs published F22 product specification
- Garrett Pro-Pointer AT published specification, submersion depth and sensitivity levels
Frequently asked questions
What sensitivity should I run the Fisher F22 at?
The highest setting at which the machine stays quiet with the coil moving over clean ground. There is no universal number, because the answer depends on your soil mineralisation and your local electrical noise. Sweep clean ground, and if you hear chatter with nothing under the coil, drop a step and sweep again. A stable machine at a middling setting outperforms a noisy one at maximum every time.
Should I use discrimination or notch on the F22 in a park?
Notch iron out and leave the rest open. Iron rejection saves real time in a park full of nails and bottle caps, and it costs you very little. Rejecting the middle of the scale is the expensive mistake, because pull tabs and gold rings occupy the same band, so blocking tabs blocks jewellery. Use your ears and the tones to filter rather than removing signals before you hear them.
Can the Fisher F22 be used on a wet salt beach?
It can be used at the wet sand line, but it is a single-frequency machine and salt water raises the noise floor sharply, so expect to run sensitivity well down and to lose depth. Fisher describes the F22 as weatherproof and rated for land and shallow water rather than submersion. For regular surf hunting, a fully waterproof multi-frequency machine is the right tool and no setting on the F22 substitutes for it.
Does the F22 need ground balancing before a hunt?
The F22 handles ground conditions internally rather than offering the manual ground balance controls found on machines like the Gold Bug Pro or the F75. That keeps the menu short, which is the point of the machine, but it also means mineralised ground is handled by lowering sensitivity rather than by tuning the balance. If your soil is genuinely difficult, that limitation is the reason to look at a machine with a ground balance control.
How slowly should I swing the coil on a trashy site?
Slow enough that the coil takes roughly two to three seconds to cross your body, with each sweep overlapping the last by about half a coil width. That sounds tedious and it is, but it is what lets the machine resolve two targets sitting close together instead of blending them into one confused signal. On open clean ground you can move considerably faster without losing much.
Researched, not professional advice. This page is compiled from published specifications, manuals and owner-review consensus, not hands-on testing. Target ID numbers, depth figures and settings vary with soil chemistry, moisture, target size, depth, orientation and firmware version, so treat every figure here as a starting point and verify it against your own machine's manual and your own ground. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.