so ive been trying to get into CW for about three months now and i finally feel like im copying at maybe 10-12 wpm on a good day which feels like a huge win honestly. but the problem is when i transmit it sounds... off. like my dits and dahs dont sound crisp. a buddy of mine listened on the air and said it sounded mushy which is a pretty accurate description i think.

im using a cheap set of iambic paddles i got off ebay and my radio is a Yaesu FT-891 with the built in keyer. ive been messing with the weight setting but i cant really tell if im making it better or worse. is this a paddle tension issue or a keyer setting issue or honestly am i just squeezing the paddles wrong. i really cant tell where the problem starts. any advice from people who have been through this would be great

weight setting is probably your first thing to check -- most radios ship with it at 50% which is fine but some people like it a hair heavier, like 52-53, especially when youre still building muscle memory. but honestly the bigger thing at your stage is probably paddle tension. if its too loose you end up sending extra dits by accident without realizing it and that creates exactly the mushy sound youre describing. try tightening the tension just a little at a time and send some test strings and see if it cleans up. also gap adjustment matters a lot more than people think -- if the contacts are set too close even a light touch triggers stuff you didnt mean to send.

the FT-891 keyer is actually pretty decent so i wouldnt blame the radio. and iambic mode B versus mode A can also feel different depending on how you naturally squeeze, might be worth switching and seeing if one feels more natural to you. took me probably six months before my fist really started sounding like me and not just random beeping so dont get discouraged

yeah im kind of in the same boat, been at it about the same amount of time. one thing that actually helped me was recording myself with audacity and just listening back. its brutal but you can actually see in the waveform where youre mangling the timing. i found out i was squishing dits way too short on certain letters, K was the worst for me. also someone on another forum suggested practicing with a straight key for a while first to really get the rhythm in your head before going back to paddles and i thought that was dumb advice but it actually kind of worked