What made the T2/F75 so popular?

[Dusty]

For the first time this year I got out for an hour with the other half and her sister who is completely obsessed with detecting. Feeling the need to defend my F75 after a few sly attempts to extract the urine from the 'ladies' who were using a CTX and a Deus The sister asked me what I thought made the T2/F75 such a hit in detecting circles. She maintains that at the time those detectors were realised there were detectors already on the market that went T2 deep and possibly ID'd better on deeper targets.

My thoughts were people like buying new toys, it was light, performed well, a versatile machine and designed to run on the edge with plenty of power, not to mention good at finding the goodies.

Anymore thoughts?

[Chef Geoff]

When they were released and up until about 5 years ago you could buy a T2 new for around £450 and this put it up against the Minelab Explorer/Etrac at around £1000 which did/do id far better than any other machine and so are potentially deeper, the XP GMP and goldie at £550 were considered more ploughed soil machines and so were always more popular in the East of the country with their large tracts or arable land with Whites struggling (they still are) to come up with a top flight but easy to use consumer machine.
This meant that the price, weight and as you say solid power if you were willing to run on the edge made them very attractive alternatives and at the end of the day they did the business but as you say marketing has a big part in what we use and our need to want to believe it.

[probono]

i really liked my T2 - easy to use, easy to set up, good battery life and fantastic pinpointing. I basically learned to detect using it (after moving on to it from an SE Pro). Only downsides to me were a bit sensitive to moisture, batteries a bit loose (so you had to be gentle with it) and it did like to pick up signals from other machines and phones.

[Dusty]

Thanks for your thoughts gents. Don't know how I missed good on battery juice.. 

Is it fair to say at first realise there was no new tech not seen in other machines around at that time?

Been chatting with the brother-in-law this evening and he seems to think BP is just an audio amplification and outputs no extra power. I've not really paid that much attention but I thought it might have upped the power when used?

[probono]

I don't know really.

I'd not long joined a club, and people I trusted were very positive about it, and were certainly finding things I wasn't with my SE Pro - that's of course partly because I was useless of course (when we swapped machines, they found stuff with my SE Pro and I found nothing much with their T2) - but I did like the fact it was light, quite cheap, and easy to set up - I used in two tone mode (in fact I used the Deus in much the same way) - and with guidance from people it just made a huge difference to how I detected and finding stuff.

As I'm sure Chef would tell you, certain detectors are the fashion of the day, and this changes, but under it all the fundamental physics doesn't tend to change

[Chef Geoff]

I was the same as you Probono a 2 tone plus man and as you say the technology behind VLF machines hasn't, can't and never will change only the subtleties of the machines improve.
The sensitivity of 99% of machines only control the detectors sensitivity to the returning signal and works in a similar way to the squelch control on a walkie-talkie filtering out the weaker signals but this is different to the audio gain (amplification) that is separate on the Explorer series and on some machines kicks in above three quarters sensitivity, the outgoing power of the machines stays constant regardless of the sensitivity

[jcb (THE THIMBLE) jones]

will take your word for it chef 

[Dusty]

I've decided to sack off my F75. After spending more money than I care to mention it seems I've come full circle. With the exception of the Deus which is too pricey for my blood it looks like I'm back to Minelab. Should never have sold my Safari..