Maiden voyage for my near new CZ-3D

[Pointman]

I received this unit yesterday and I had to take it out this morning to a spot that I had hit every which way with my CTX. I ran a bobbing ground balance and the machine was set on about 5 sensitivity, 6 ground balance and the discrimination on the square pulltab. The switch was flipped over to Salt.

20 minutes in and the second good signal I dug was this 1906 Canadian dime. It was about 5 inches deep. Not too far and about 6 inches down I dug this Buffalo nickel. I haven't dug too many of these, so I was stoked. In earlier hunts at this same spot I dug two Mercury dimes, 20 wheats and a token. There are a lot of nails and some can slaw.

After about an hour I still wasn't convinced of the 3D's depth. Then I walked across the street to a sidewalk that I had hit every which way with the CTX. Eight inches down I find a wheat. I then push the plug back and then get another signal and then another in the same hole. All the wheats were at an 8" depth. Sounded solid but not too loud.

I was digging a lot of nails, but it didn't take me long to kind of understand the difference between the high sounds of nails and the higher more solid sounds that coins made. I still would occasionally dig a shallow roofing tack. I only spent two hours this morning and I think I did good. It started to drizzle so I called it quits because I didn't want to get the machine wet.

My impressions are exactly what others have shared of the machine being a little unbalanced, runs deep and like iron. It high tones on stuff you don't normally hear high tones on, like nickels and zincs. Most of the balance issues seem to be from the lower rod which gives a little each way with the weight of the coil.

All told today I found 1 silver dime, 5 wheats, a Buffalo, 11 zincs and a clad dime on a well hit spot. I can't wait to try it on other places that seem played out.

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[3RINGER]

WTG pointman, I had the etrac in a lot of the locations around here...really enjoyed that unit and did well with it. The 3D is a great tool in the pot to pull in just a few more keepers I've found. The test garden showed it had reasonable depth and being able to hear what was going on with the various targets really helps in snatching a keeper among junk. some what like TTF did. Depending on the area I've had to go as low as 5/6 in bad ground and made it as high as 9 on GB in others.

We should get a few more days of hunting before the lock down of winter hits us, good luck and HH

 

[Pointman]

I'm a listening guy so, I don't use the CTX screen to its full potential and this is probably why the 3D was very natural for me on the first outing. The feel of the lower coil "wagging" made me think of the MPX detector that I got for a steal from Kellyco 6 years ago. It also had a lot of movement in the lower coil. I had the Deus for 9 months and I hate every sound I was able to make it do. It is a great detector, but it has this sharp sound that reminds me of someone squeezing air out of balloon and pulling the nipple end between their fingers, making it squeal.

Right now I am turning in my mind on how to make a cover for the control housing to enable me to stay out in the rain when I detect. This is one thing I love about the CTX. When you detect in the rain, no one will peek out of their houses to fuss at you for surfing the easements for coins, lol.

 

[Fletch88]

Nice finds Pointman! WTG! In the salt mode the CZ isn't nearly as sensitive to small gold. I would try same area in normal just to see what happens. The hardest thing for me on the CZ's was going back to a non-threshold machine, but I find it do like the clean zippy audio of these machines, especially the pinpoint. I don't think I would like the machine that sounds like a ballon squeal either! Lol

 

[Pointman]

Nice finds Pointman! WTG! In the salt mode the CZ isn't nearly as sensitive to small gold. I would try same area in normal just to see what happens. The hardest thing for me on the CZ's was going back to a non-threshold machine, but I find it do like the clean zippy audio of these machines, especially the pinpoint. I don't think I would like the machine that sounds like a ballon squeal either! Lol

I admit that it is a bit unnerving to not hear a slight hum. I was at a dead place this weekend with no signals in the ground and it was strange to have silence.

 

[Fletch88]

I've only used my CZ-21 once on wet/dry sand at the beach and really like running it in Autotune where I can hear a threshold. I tried running in disc mode and actually got a little bored not having a threshold to listen for deep faint targets. I usually can't run this way with the CZ-5 land hunting for all the iron signals.

 

[3RINGER]

I admit that it is a bit unnerving to not hear a slight hum. I was at a dead place this weekend with no signals in the ground and it was strange to have silence.

Pointman I found myself sometimes waving my digger over the coil just to make sure it was still working when I hit those target free zones lol

 

[Pointman]

Pointman I found myself sometimes waving my digger over the coil just to make sure it was still working when I hit those target free zones lol

I just swing over my Sampson sometimes in order to hear that 70s-80s fake computer sound when it nulls.

Here is the better items of my second full day of swinging the CZ-3D:

 

[3RINGER]

Nice! All high tones?

 

[Pointman]

Nice! All high tones?

Yes, it is amazing to hear a high tone and a nickel comes out of the ground. I am thinking about programming my CTX to do this.

I also dug about 6 more nickels today. They were averaging in the 6 inch range in depth. They were really crusted and I just knew I dug more old ones, but the oldest after this 1934 was a 1960. The button was sketchy (what Tom Dankowski calls a soft sound in his video) so I was surprised that it was a button. I nicked it because I was getting careless thinking it was trash. The lot where I found the button, I have probably detected 12 times with a Deus, CTX and Etrac and I was surprised that I finally found something else in the ground. It was the only thing that came up. I literally dug all the trash and good targets from the lot that I could hear. It is sanitized, literally.

I think the silver ring was missed by me in the past because it was at the very corner of a sidewalk and I probably simply walked by it before without swinging a coil. The ring was the second thing I dug today after a memorial cent.

Couple of things that I proved today from Tom's video (proved for myself).

1. If you hear low conductor signals mixed with jumpy high tones it is most likely iron.
2. If you have jumpy high tones and can only get a signal one direction, probably iron.
3. If you get a mostly consistent signal and it is good less than 50% around, it is most likely iron.
4. If you have to "over work" to get a signal to sound better and not just simply moving the coil in the opposite direction or move it over an inch, then it is most likely junk.
5. You can distinguish the depth by the sound intensity. I hardly look at my graph anyway.

The good signals are almost always distinct no matter the depth. The junk signals will sound high and scratchy as if it has static in the sound. Reminds me a little on how the Deus responds, because it likes iron also, but sounds off differently between iron and higher conductive targets.

I'm still having to learn what the very deep signals sounds like because my mind hasn't distinguished between junk sounds and deep sounds.

I also would turn my discriminate from 3 to 0 to check for iron. It would cause some of the high tones to sound like iron. I am not sure if this is effective, because if you have a junk signal next to a good signal, it could cause the junk signal to stand out more. You could probably do the same thing with the pinpoint button, but it seemed to sound easier this way.

 

[Bart@Big Boys Hobbies]

Yes, it is amazing to hear a high tone and a nickel comes out of the ground. I am thinking about programming my CTX to do this.

Good advice and it works on the Minelab CTX 3030 as well!