so ive been running an old FT-450D for about four years and honestly it served me well but i kept eyeing the 7300 every time i was on eham or watching youtube videos. finally got one last month from a local ham who was upgrading to an IC-7610 and i have to say the difference is pretty substantial, at least coming from where i was.

the real-time spectrum scope is the thing that gets me the most. i knew it was a feature obviously but actually using it during a pileup on 17m last weekend just clicked in a way i didnt expect. being able to see where activity is without spinning the dial is just... yeah. anyway the audio is noticeably cleaner too, my wife actually said something about it which was funny because she usually tunes out all the radio stuff completely.

one thing i wasnt prepared for is how much time ive spent just in the menus trying to tweak things. the filter settings alone took me an afternoon. not complaining really just wasnt expecting to basically re-learn how to operate. anyone else spend a ton of time in the DSP settings when they first got one of these or did you mostly leave it stock?

yeah the 7300 menus are kind of a rabbit hole. i spent probably two weeks just messing with the twin PBT and notch filter settings before i felt like i had something i was happy with. honestly my suggestion is find one of the config guides that guys like W4EEY put together and use that as a starting point instead of going through every option cold. saves a lot of time.

the scope thing you mentioned is exactly right though. once you use it during contest weekends it becomes almost hard to go back. i borrowed a friend's older rig for a field event last summer and kept reaching for a scope that wasnt there, felt weird. congrats on the upgrade, the 450D was a solid radio but the 7300 is just in a different tier for the money.

i left mine pretty close to stock for the first month tbh, only thing i really changed early on was the AGC timing and the NR level because the defaults felt a bit aggressive to me on 40m. but i know some guys who went deep on the parametric EQ for their mic audio and apparently you can get it sounding really good if you put the time in. havent bothered yet myself