so ive been sitting on this for a while and finally decided to ask — been running my 7300 for about two years now and overall its great but ive been reading about the TX audio mods people do, specifically the one where you swap out the electrolytic caps near the mic input stage. some guys on another forum were saying it cleans up the low end and makes the audio sit better in a pileup. i honestly cant tell if that's placebo or if theres actually something to it.

also separately i was thinking about doing the TCXO upgrade, mine does drift a little when it first warms up, maybe 20-30hz over the first 10-15 minutes. not a huge deal for SSB but i do some digi modes and FT8 especially it bugs me. is the Icom TCXO-3 the right one or has anyone used a third party option that worked out ok. the icom one is like 60 bucks which is fine if it actually fixes the drift but i dont want to open the rig up for nothing

the cap swap thing — ive heard mixed results honestly. did it on mine about a year ago following the mod that was posted over on radioreference i think, and i did notice a slight difference in audio but nothing dramatic. the bigger improvement i got was just adjusting the TX EQ in the menu and tweaking the mic gain. probably got 80% of the same result without touching any hardware. that said the caps are cheap and if youre comfortable with a soldering iron its not a scary job, just cramped in there.

the TCXO though, yeah do it. the drift thing you're describing is exactly why i did mine. went with the Icom unit, dropped right in, no fuss. the third party ones i looked at were either the same price or not really designed for the slot so i didnt bother. after the install my 7300 is rock solid on FT8, no more creeping off frequency during the first QSOs of a session.

dont bother with the cap mod imo, the 7300 audio is already pretty good out of the box and you can do a lot with software processing before you ever need to crack it open. the TCXO is a different story tho, legit improvement if you do any digital modes at all. just be careful with the ribbon cables when you open it up, theres one near the front panel that people snag and thats a bad day