Marcum 4.07 Update

Has anyone noticed that with the new update the sensitivity has to be super low. I was fishing a medium size Tingler and had the sensitivity down to 3-4.

Yes I noticed that also. I was fishing a small Gentz worm in 18′ water and I had it set to 2 with 3 color. Didn’t even need 6 color if I didn’t want to. Nice!

So do you guys reccomend the update or stay with 3.17

I would think the adjustment to the sensitivity would be a good thing. I always hated turning my gain way up.

had my lx7 out on the ice today after the 4.07 update or upgrade. took it completely through everything that was being offered and ARE YOU KIDDING ME things started freezing up and shutting down. my depth was jumping all over,things were flashing,could not do anything with sensitivity, target adjust was worse when turned up, could only get the 8 degree cone to work,then after awhile it just froze.WTF so i powered the unit off then back on …. nothing still froze so i went in to factory settings and pressed that and i was back up. then tried to program all over again and save and it started again and then after 1/2 hour it froze again.so i came home pissed off to say the least. this is my second one i’ve had issues with. and there won’t be a third.i am very displeased with this product and for the time and money spent and all the issues other people are having i would strongly advise against downloads until they do something about these issues.to me it unexecptable.but thats up to you BTW my 3.17 was working great!!!! should have left it alone.wait what am i saying what good is a downloadable firmware or upgrade if it is going to damage your unit.after all that was the major reasons for buying one.would not be so bad if you could go back and reinstall. thats another issue. anyway good luck people.

Maybe you had a corrupted install? Low battery? Simulator mode? Sensitivity to high??? Sometimes the best solution to a problem is something simple overlooked.

or maybe its just the crappy software being developed thats not 100 percent and safe to download. no one ever questions that. listen i’ve been using fishing electronics mechanical and digital all my life and the lx7 for a couple years. i know what to look for when it comes to troubleshooting.and the fact that there is hundreds of posts on different issues people are having helps.

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I would think the adjustment to the sensitivity would be a good thing. I always hated turning my gain way up.

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I only have a few hours under the new firmware. All in all everything runs OK on my unit under 4.07, nothing perilous or distracting happening, but I’m not super stoked performance-wise.

I’m finding that with a 3mm fiska in 25′ my gain was set at 1 and everything was showing up a little too well; I’d personally would have tweaked the gain lower if possible, but 0 is zero, not a valid option. Also, higher gain (above 4) seemed to invite noise susceptibility in my unit that wasn’t an issue under the earlier firmware.

Only trying to help Habs, not trying to undermine your ability to use the unit.

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the fact that there is hundreds of posts on different issues people are having helps.

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Hundreds?

I guess those of us that have had few issues are out numbered…

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and the fact that there is hundreds of posts on different issues people are having helps.

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Holy cow, hundreds of people already posted about problems with the 4.07? I must have missed at least 199 of them.

Well if anyone that has the 4.07 and has said to themselves “now this is why I love marcum” please post whore it up!!

let me re phrase (since the digital series came out). if you are not having any problems with your 4.07 upgrade great for you. i wish i was one of you. but the fact is i’m not.and thats another thing. why do people seem to think their few glitches they are experiencing are acceptable.

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why do people seem to think their few glitches they are experiencing are acceptable.

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That’s an easy question for me to answer…
When said glitches do not effect my ability to catch fish…

If they do…and I don’t like them…..I buy a different product..and so should you..

I have no plans to do that in the near future….

Habs,
Give the guys at MarCum a call. They will take care of you. I havn’t had any issues with mine yet, but I only have about 2 hours with mine since the upgrade. I hope all goes well. The beauty of the Firmware is if it isn’t right they can fix it and release another update. It stinks that it ruined a day on the ice for you. Good Luck!!

HABS. I think it’s safe to say that we kinda feel your pain. I know When I got my unit it had issues and I was on the horn with MarCum and got good service. Had to put the 3.17 in to fix the issues and defiantly not going to do the new one till I hear better results. I know it’s hard to listen to now but If you hang in there I have to believe MarCum will make it right.

yeah i’ll hang in there. just pissed off. thanks. good luck with yours.

I had a new problem come up while fishing the other day. I had my lx-7 set up with the 2 verticals with the flasher in the middle. All of a sudden both the left vertical and flasher went to zero and there was nothing showing. The zoom vertical was ok. I thought it might be the transducer so I turned it off, checked tightness on cable then turned it back on. After about a half hour it did it again. I believe I was in dynamic mode. I changed it to 20 ft scale and it seemed to work the rest of the day. Marcum told me to try the update and see how it works. I did update yesterday and am hoping to get out for an hour or so today to try it. I’m a little worried after reading about how low sensitivity has to be on new update since in 18 ft of water with a small jig I was running it at 3-4 already.

yeah,my sensitivity on the 4.07 was at 1 on a 16oz jig head in 25fow. and the mark was huge and had some red compared to the 3.17 sensitivity at 13.this was before my unit crashed and burned on the ice.your beginning to hear that now from people.it’s to sensitive.harder to dial everything in.it seems your gonna have to do alot more ajusting to your screen.forget about saving your screen configurations on it.

I would like to hear if the majority is having positive results. Really I’m interested in the percentages of good and bad. Also not being able to turn the gain down more if needed is very concerning to me, I fish a flowage system and at times there can be allot of debris in the water and not being able to adjust that out would be very problematic.

I’m sure glad I got an FLX-28………

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Also not being able to turn the gain down more if needed is very concerning to me, I fish a flowage system and at times there can be allot of debris in the water and not being able to adjust that out would be very problematic.

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The way it sits now, it’s almost like running a vexilar – except for the pimp zoom and the panapoly of display and setup options. I’d test out a machine with the update before you do your sonar.

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I’m sure glad I got an FLX-28………

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I’ve got a flx28, its a great vexilar. You and Frank are going to have to contemplate if there really is something cool that you don’t even know about.

yeah me to. i have been reading other fourms on ice fishing and specifically on this topic.have not read to many on the positive side with the 4.07.i’m sure there are those out there that are not responding.or have not downloaded the 4.07 due to the fact of the issues going on and have nothing truthful to say.that would be my bet.

i did find this. “quote” It was actually a serious question. Not sure what puts them ahead a of anyone else as they are just a flasher/graph sonar.In the end they are burning a lot of labor and warranty dollars on this unit and that has had to put a big ding in the bottom line. Two years into the product and they are still trying to dial it in. Now,maybe the margins are so high on these that they can afford to float those costs and still be profitable but if you just step back and look at this venture objectively at all the resources they are burning trying to dial it in compared to the same costs for a proven flasher or graph unit. My guess is there are bean counters over there that are questioning the costs.

Yeah, the format is.nee but not more ground breaking than say the structure scan and si/di tech that HB and others have introduced to open water fishing and it doesnt appear to me that they are havine the same post launch problems dialing it in.

And I am in no way bashing the company. I do respect that they are trying to introduce new products and not stagnate. I just hope for them that they have devoted enough resources and are able to get over the hump to make their product profitable over the long term. end quote.

People that have issues are far more likely to post they are having an issue vs. someone that everything is working fine. That alone can make a problem that may look to be widespread on the internet, but in fact just be a small percentage of the overall units flawed. That may or may not be the case here. I have had no issues with mine so far, but maybe I just got lucky.

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yeah me to. i have been reading other fourms on ice fishing and specifically on this topic.have not read to many on the positive side with the 4.07.i’m sure there are those out there that are not responding.or have not downloaded the 4.07 due to the fact of the issues going on and have nothing truthful to say.that would be my bet.

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They are dialed in, Marcum is just perfecting them. Sometimes technology malfunctions, but because Marcum has such confidence in their product it is worth it to them to replace malfunctioned units. I believe you may have mentioned that you had a similar experience previously with a returned unit. Personally, I love my LX6. I’ve had the chance to use pretty much every other flasher out there now, and I can say without a doubt that the Marcum digital series works better than any of the others put together for me. It has the cleanest, clearest, sharpest, fastest display than any of the others put together And I get full control over every aspect of how I see the display. If I get interference I can shut it out. If an annoying school of small baitfish move in and bog up my screen I can shut them out and still see my lure. I can tell the difference between 1 nice sized fish and 3 smaller ones stacked because of how tight the target separation is. And I can use it in my canoe when I go on trips into the Boundary Waters. If something happened to my unit along the way… I would give Marcum a call and get it taken care of–because for me–it’s worth it.

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They are dialed in, Marcum is just perfecting them. Sometimes technology malfunctions, but because Marcum has such confidence in their product it is worth it to them to replace malfunctioned units. I believe you may have mentioned that you had a similar experience previously with a returned unit. Personally, I love my LX6. I’ve had the chance to use pretty much every other flasher out there now, and I can say without a doubt that the Marcum digital series works better than any of the others put together for me. It has the cleanest, clearest, sharpest, fastest display than any of the others put together And I get full control over every aspect of how I see the display. If I get interference I can shut it out. If an annoying school of small baitfish move in and bog up my screen I can shut them out and still see my lure. I can tell the difference between 1 nice sized fish and 3 smaller ones stacked because of how tight the target separation is. And I can use it in my canoe when I go on trips into the Boundary Waters. If something happened to my unit along the way… I would give Marcum a call and get it taken care of–because for me–it’s worth it.

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Are you running the latest v4.07 firmware?

I got a chance to get out with my LX-7 yesterday after doing the 4.07 update. I ran it in dynamic first and put it on graph, flasher, verticle zoom settings, as I was having trouble before update with the lines on graph flashing on and off every minute or so. Also had digital depth change alot. I also had a problem before with my flasher and vertical going completely black the other day. It ran perfect! I tried the manual dynamic for a while and the only complaint I have is I still get the black triangle in the left(bottom read out) while changing the depth. Once it was set it worked great. I do think the sensitivity may be a problem as I was in 18ft of water using a small jig with plastic and I had to set the sens. to 2 to get rid of the clutter. If I set it at 1 it was way to low. I also had target adjust set at 0. I also was using it with the 6 color. It showed my jig very wide. I think if I was using a bigger spoon etc. it may be hard to get it set where I would like it. It still worked better than before I did update. I only had a chance to try it for about on hour.

Yep, I’m running the 4.07. It seems that most of the issues people have been experiencing are with dynamic depth mode, if you experience any glitching with it I don’t have a recommendation outside of just using a different mode. Marcum is really working on the dynamic depth feature, so don’t count it out, but if auto or manual depth works better for you, then I would just use those settings. When I was out yesterday I was on a crystal clear lake in 60 feet on a steady break. I was able to use 6 color mode with sensitivity set at 3 on the 20 degree cone and the only thing on my screen was my lure. However, some bugs started hatching and showing up on my screen in blue clutter, so I simply turned my color mode down to r,o,g, bumped my sensitivity to 5 and maxed out my target size because it’s just cool to be able to do that without effecting gain! No bug clutter. Right around 4pm the smelt started moving in, so I turned the sensitivity down to 3, and switched to the 9 degree cone which settled the smelt issue. This is usually the point where my vex became useless because I could never get the smelt off the screen and I couldn’t see my lure once they moved in the area. Basically what I am getting at is that the update works fine for me, but tapping a few buttons to make the unit work for me was key in the whole process. I also set my max ping rate to 2… At 4 there was a lot of signal bounce off the granite boulders. If there is a lot of clutter the first thing I would do is shut off the 6 color mode and play with ping, then adjust your sensitivity and target.

Very well explained Ben I have 2 LX7’s that I just did Monday and a friends unit I did Tues. I haven’t had a chance to test mine (little nervous now ) my buddy is on Castle Rock as I speak so I’m sure I’ll get a report how his is working. There is so much you can adjust on these units to make them run very well that I think some guys might not know everything to do to get them “just right” we’ll see this week.