so ive been running an old FT-450D for about four years now and always kind of wanted to upgrade but never really had a good reason to. anyway the 450D developed some weird issue where the finals were getting hot way faster than they should and i figured instead of sinking money into a repair i'd just move up. looked at the 7300 forever, read every thread on here, watched probably too many youtube videos, and finally just ordered one.

first thing i noticed is the waterfall is actually useful, like i know everyone says that but coming from no panadapter at all it genuinely changes how you operate. found a pileup on 17m the other day just by watching the display which i wouldnt have done before. the touch screen is responsive enough, no complaints there. audio out of the speaker is way better than the 450D which had this kind of thin sound that always bugged me.

one thing i'm still figuring out is the twin PBT. i understand what it's supposed to do but i keep overcorrecting and making things worse. also the default noise reduction settings are pretty aggressive, turned NR off most of the time honestly. anybody else find that the factory presets for NR are kind of overkill or is that just me.

yeah the NR on the 7300 out of the box is way too heavy handed, you're not imagining it. i run mine at maybe 3-4 on the scale and even that's only when the band is really rough. most of the time i leave it off and just use the passband controls instead. took me a while to figure out the twin PBT thing too — basically think of it as two independent skirt controls rather than one width control. adjust them separately and go slow, it clicks once you hear what each one actually does to the signal.

the waterfall thing is real, i had the same experience coming from a radio without one. you start seeing the band differently. enjoy the 7300, solid rig.

i have a 7300 and an older Kenwood in the shack and honestly the Kenwood still wins for receive on CW in my opinion but for everything else the Icom is just more fun to use day to day. the spectrum scope alone is worth it. my only gripe is the menu system takes some getting used to but thats true of basically every radio made in the last ten years so whatever. how are you finding it on 40m at night, thats where i really notice the difference between radios