so ive been running my 7300 stock for about two years now and honestly it was fine but i kept reading about the front end mods people were doing to squeeze more out of the receiver. ended up going down a pretty deep rabbit hole on eham and a couple other places and decided to try the preamp bypass mod that supposedly helps on the lower HF bands where the stock AGC can get a little aggressive.

the mod itself wasnt that bad, had to pull the top cover and there's a few SMD components near the RF board that you swap out, nothing crazy if you're comfortable with a soldering iron and have decent magnification. i used my hakko with a fine tip and took my time. whole thing maybe took 90 minutes including the disassembly.

honestly the difference on 160m and 80m is noticeable, weak signals that were getting kinda chewed up by the AGC are cleaner now. 40m feels about the same to me. i dont think i'd say it transformed the radio or anything but for the time invested it was worth doing. just wondering if anyone else has gone further with mods on this radio, i keep seeing references to some IF filter mod but cant find good documentation on it

yeah the IF filter thing youre probably thinking of is the roofing filter upgrade, some guys have been swapping in narrower roofing filters on the 7300 to help with close-in dynamic range. icom used a 3kHz roofing filter stock and there were some aftermarket options floating around although i think availability has been spotty. the actual improvement kind of depends on your operating conditions, if youre in a crowded contest environment it matters more than casual rag chewing.

your preamp mod sounds like what a few guys on the icom reflector were discussing a while back. the 7300's front end is decent but not exceptional and those lower bands can get messy especially at night when the noise floor changes. glad it worked out, i might try the same thing on mine this winter when im not using it as much

90 minutes for that mod is pretty good, took me closer to two hours first time i opened one of those up, those SMD pads near the RF section are not forgiving if you rush it. what magnification were you using? i've got a cheap usb microscope that works okay but im thinking about getting something better before i start poking around in my 7600 which has even less room to work with