so ive been going back and forth on this for like two years and finally just did the transmit mod on my ic-7300 last weekend. the whole process took maybe 20 minutes once i had the service manual open and knew which jumper to move. not gonna lie i was sweating a little with the soldering iron near that board but it went fine.

for anyone who doesnt know, the mod basically opens up the tx range so you can transmit outside the normal amateur bands — useful if you do MARS or CAP operations or just want the flexibility. the receive side on the 7300 is already pretty wide so thats not really the point here.

what i actually noticed though, and this surprised me, is the audio on transmit felt a little different after? like i cant tell if thats placebo or if messing around in there changed something with my mic settings somehow. nobody on the air complained so maybe im just overthinking it. anyway curious if anyone else has done this and noticed anything weird afterward or if theres other mods worth doing to this radio while i already have it apart

did the same mod on mine about a year ago, had no issues and didnt notice any difference in normal ham band operation. the audio thing is almost certainly in your head — the jumper just gates the tx range, its not in the signal path at all. unless you bumped something else while you were in there which is always possible.

if youre looking for other things to do while you have it open, some people swap the internal fan for a quieter one since the stock fan can be a little noisy during long sessions. not a performance thing really but quality of life improvement. also worth checking your electrolytic caps if the radio is a few years old, mine had one that looked a bit domed already and it wasnt even that old.

the mars mod is pretty standard stuff, been doing that on various radios for years. what i'd actually look at on the 7300 if you want a real performance upgrade is the receive antenna port — running a separate rx antenna through there for HF can make a noticeable difference depending on your noise floor situation. not a hardware mod exactly but it changes how the radio performs quite a bit. worth experimenting with if youre on a noisy lot like most of us are anymore.