so ive had my 857 for a few years now and it's been solid but i keep seeing all these mods floating around and honestly dont know which ones are actually worth the time. did the mars/cap mod pretty early on just to open up the tx range and that was straightforward enough. but now im looking at the noise blanker mod and the AGC mod that W4UOA put together and im not sure if itll actually help on the bands im usually on (mostly 40m and 20m ssb, some 6m fm).

also saw something about replacing the stock electrolytic caps on the PA board because apparently they go bad and cause all kinds of intermittent power output issues. mine hasnt had that problem yet but its probably a 2012 or 2013 unit so maybe its due. anyone actually done the cap replacement on a working radio preemptively or is that overkill

the one mod i really want is better audio on rx because the stock speaker situation is just terrible but i know thats more of an external thing. anyway curious what mods people have actually done and stuck with vs ones that didnt make a noticeable difference

the AGC mod is genuinely worth it if you do a lot of SSB on 40 at night. stock AGC on those radios is pretty aggressive and you get that pumping effect when signals are varying, especially with QRM. takes maybe an hour if youre comfortable with SMD work, there are a few components on the IF board you swap out. i followed the KD8CGH writeup and it was clear enough.

cap replacement on a working unit -- i'd probably wait honestly. unless youre seeing any soft startup behavior or the power output is drifting a bit at the end of a long tx session. if the radio is working fine i wouldnt go poking around the PA unnecessarily. that said i did do mine after it started acting up and found two caps that were clearly bulging slightly, so it does happen. just depends how much you enjoy fixing things that aren't broken yet i guess.

noise blanker mod i never bothered with because my noise floor situation is mostly my own fault (apartment, switching supplies everywhere) and a DSP-based NB in the logging software does more for me than anything hardware side would.

yeah the audio on those rigs out of the internal speaker is just what it is, not much you can do at the radio itself. i run mine into a small external speaker with a little matchbox amp between them and its a completely different experience. some guys tap off the external speaker jack and feed it into something with a bit of EQ too.

one thing nobody mentioned -- if you havent already, the TX audio mods are probably the highest return on investment thing you can do to that radio. there's a pretty well known mod where you bypass a high-pass filter cap in the mic input path and it opens up the low end considerably. on 40m ssb people actually commented that my audio sounded better before i even told them i changed anything so that was kind of validating