I’ve had the Fisher CZ-3D for a little over a week now and have hunted with it for two weekends. I say I have put in at least twenty hours of hunting with it and this is what I have to say.
But before I write anything, I have to tell you that Tom Dankowski, the designer of the CZ-3D says that one should hunt for three months with the unit before making any judgement calls. Keep that in mind as you read my post.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. The unit works as advertised. 100%. Period. It finds nickels and it finds them with a high tone. Although the machine was designed to find more old coins of all types, it is a common occurrence now to come home with a 100% nickels. Yep. No dimes, no cents, no quarters; just nickels. What this means to me is that other hunters have depleted the other coins and ignored the nickels because in their machines, these nickels may have come in as pull tabs and they were left in the ground.
Also, I was warned that this machine is not good on newer sites and boy, was Tom right! You will dig endless amounts of beaver tails –they come in as nickels, and square pull tabs which hit on the zinc facet. Unfortunately for me, the very old parks in the city, are still heavily used today so if I want to get some of the old coins, I have to dig a lot of trash.
The thing that I am a little disappointed about is the effective depth of the machine. To be fair, Tom never said that this machine was deeper than any other machines. The legend of the CZ’s depth was created by its users. I’ve noticed when hunting, that the deepest coin I’ve found thus far, a nickel, was at a depth of six inches. From ground level to six inches, I have found many, many nickels and many other things but not deeper. Except for rusty nails that is, and we know those don’t count.
I finally took the CZ to my test garden. Yes, I say that with a certain amount of tongue in cheek. My test garden consists of three clad dimes that I buried in my yard in the Summer of 2011. One is at a depth of six inches, another at a depth of eight inches, and yet another at a depth of ten inches.
***It is possible that the dimes have now shifted or gone deeper so take this test with a grain of salt***
The CZ easily sees the clad dime at six inches. The signal is loud and clear and repeatable from any angle. The dime at eight inches comes in as an iron grunt. The clad dime buried at a depth of ten inches does not register at all in the CZ.
My ground is sandy loam and I am using the stock eight inch concentric coil.
I first tried the test garden with the standard setup I use in the parks. Sensitivity at 4.x, Disc at zero, volume at 5, ground balance at 3.x. Then, I went Mad Max and upped everything to ten. Same results.
So, at my present level of experience, with the eight inch concentric coil, it appears that the effective depth of the CZ on a U.S. dime is somewhere between six and eight inches. That’s normal for the size of the coil. I am considering buying the ten inch spider coil in the next couple of weeks.
By the way, the unit was calibrated and certified by the man himself, Nasa Tom.
Until I buy and try the ten inch coil, I won’t be doing another review of this unit. After that, I will do a final review at the end of three months.
I have been finding things in my hunts lately, just not anything I want to really talk about. Many wheat cents but all from the 40’s, and many, many Jefferson nickels, the oldest being a 1947. I’ve also found tons of clad.
Hopefully things will get a little more exciting soon.
Thank you for looking!
The Dirt Is Good To Me 
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