so ive been on SSB for about a year now mostly on 40m and 20m and people keep telling me my audio sounds 'thin' or 'tinny' and i cant figure out what the deal is. im running an IC-7300 which i know is a pretty decent rig so i dont think its the radio itself. using a Heil PR-40 mic which everyone says is great but honestly i wonder if im just not setting it up right.

the mic gain is sitting around 50% and i have the compression on but only like 2-3 bars showing on the ALC. someone on the air told me to turn the TX bandwidth up but i messed with that and it didnt seem to help much or maybe i was doing it wrong. i also noticed the high frequency stuff in my voice just doesnt come through and i sound almost like im on a telephone from 1985 according to one guy lol.

is there some baseline setup people use for SSB voice that i should know about? i feel like theres a combination of settings that work together and i just havent stumbled on the right combination yet. any help appreciated, been bugging me for a while now

the ALC thing is your first clue — if youre seeing ALC limiting while at 50% mic gain, thats actually backwards from how you want to approach it. ideally you want to set the mic gain so the ALC just barely kicks in on your loudest voice peaks, not sitting there constantly. backing off the compression a bit might help too, especially if its the speech processor thats squashing your highs.

on the 7300 specifically, go into the menu and check your TX bandwidth setting under the SSB filter options. a lot of people leave it at the default which i think is like 2400hz but you can widen it to 2800 or even 3000 if the band conditions allow and that alone will open up the top end of your voice considerably. also double check which profile the PR-40 wants — its a dynamic mic and the 7300 expects a certain impedance match. theres a Heil adapter that some people swear by but i've never used one myself so cant say for sure if it makes a difference.

yeah honestly the bandwidth thing is huge and most people dont mess with it. i had the same problem on my older 746 pro years ago. also worth asking — what are you using for a boom arm and how close is the mic to your mouth? the PR-40 is cardioid and pretty sensitive to positioning, like an inch or two off axis will change how you sound quite a bit. ive heard some guys running that mic almost touching their lips which sounds terrible on SSB, you get a lot of low end boom and the highs get buried.