so ive had my IC-7300 for about two years now and its been rock solid, no complaints really. but ive been reading about the extended receive modification where you basically just move a couple diodes on the board and open up the receive coverage way below and above the normal ham bands. some guys on another group were saying it lets you pull in the AM broadcast band really cleanly and even some stuff up around 74 MHz which honestly sounds kinda cool for monitoring purposes.

my question is whether anyone has actually done this on a 7300 specifically. i know the mod exists for a bunch of rigs but ive seen a few posts saying the 7300's front end gets kinda overloaded on the broadcast band anyway so maybe theres not much point. also wondering if it affects the warranty situation — mine is still under the extended warranty i bought from the dealer so im a little gun shy about cracking the case open.

if you have done it, how hard is the disassembly? the board access looks pretty involved from the photos ive seen, not sure i want to get into that rabbit hole right now but just trying to figure out if its worth the trouble.

did this mod on mine maybe 8 months ago and honestly it was fine, the disassembly is a bit tedious but nothing scary if you've ever worked inside a modern rig before. the screws on the bottom panel are the annoying part, you have to be careful not to strip them. the diode itself is tiny so you need decent magnification and a fine tip iron.

the broadcast band thing is real but so is the overload issue. without an attenuator or some kind of preselector in front of it you'll get intermod on strong local AM stations, i have a 50kw station about 12 miles from me and it just bleeds into everything below about 4MHz. slapped a 20dB pad in and it cleans up pretty good. above that it's actually pretty usable for utility monitoring, VOLMET and stuff like that comes in clean. whether that justifies voiding your warranty is a different question and only you can answer that one.

i wouldnt bother personally. the 7300 is already a really capable rig and unless you specifically need wideband RX i just dont see the point of risking it. if you want a good wideband receiver just grab an SDR dongle for 30 bucks and run it off a separate antenna, youll get better coverage with less headache and your 7300 stays stock.