so ive been a tech for about 3 years and just upgraded to general last month, and i always told myself id learn morse code eventually. well i finally bought a used Bencher paddle off a guy at the club and grabbed a MFJ keyer to go with it. the problem is im completely lost on the keyer settings — specifically the weight and ratio stuff. i set the speed to about 13 wpm which feels manageable but the dits and dahs sound kind of mushy to me? like they blur together. i dont know if its the paddle gap, the keyer settings, or just my ears not being trained yet. ive been using the G4FON trainer software for receiving practice and thats actually going pretty well, but sending is another story. any advice for a total CW beginner would be appreciated. also is 13 wpm a reasonable starting point or should i just go slower

13 wpm is totally fine, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. honestly the mushy sound is almost certainly the paddle tension and gap rather than the keyer weight settings. when i first started i had the gap way too wide and kept getting doubling on the dits. try closing the gap down a tiny bit at a time until the contacts feel snappy, not sloppy. the MFJ keyers have a little bit of a learning curve on the weight setting but i'd honestly leave that at default for now and just focus on getting the paddle feel right. squeeze keying takes muscle memory and thats not gonna happen overnight so just be patient with yourself. G4FON is great for receiving, i'd also recommend just tuning around 40m around 7.050 or so and just listening to actual QSOs even if you cant copy everything yet. your brain starts picking up patterns without you even realizing it.

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. i went through this exact same thing last year. one thing that helped me a lot was slowing WAY down and just doing individual letters over and over until they felt automatic, like i wasnt thinking about the pattern just my hand knew what to do. also i found that the Bencher paddles sometimes need a little adjustment out of the box, the spring tension on mine was way too loose when i got it secondhand. there's a screw on the side for that. took me forever to figure that out. anyway stick with it, first CW contact is pretty special even if its just a quick 5nn exchange in a contest or whatever