so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent way too long reading threads like this before buying it. coming from an old FT-450D which was fine but the waterfall on that thing was basically useless compared to what icom did with the 7300's touchscreen panadapter.

first thing i noticed is the receive is just noticeably cleaner on 40 and 80 meters, my local noise floor hasnt changed obviously but im pulling out signals i would have missed before. the real time spectrum scope is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick, i actually use it to find open spots before calling CQ instead of just spinning the dial forever like i used to do.

one thing that bugged me out of the box was the TX audio — people were telling me i sounded a little thin on SSB. spent an evening messing with the TX equalizer settings in the menu and got it sounding much better, there's a lot of adjustability in there if you dig into it. also had to turn the mic gain down from the default, it was set way too hot for my shure SM58 that i repurposed for radio use.

overall really happy with it. shack is just a desk in the spare bedroom, running it into a homebrew off-center fed dipole at about 25 feet which isnt ideal but it gets on the air. curious if anyone else went through the audio adjustment thing or if thats just me.

yeah the mic gain thing is almost universal with that radio, pretty much everyone who hooks up a dynamic mic has to back it off. icom's defaults seem tuned for their own desk mics which run hotter i think. the equalizer in the 7300 is actually pretty capable once you find settings that work for your voice, i spent probably two hours on a monday night just recording myself on a dummy load and tweaking until it sounded right.

the panadapter is the thing that ruined every other radio for me by the way. went back to my old 746 for a portable trip and felt completely blind. cant really go back once you have a decent waterfall in front of you all the time. your OCF at 25 feet will do more than you think, ive worked plenty of dx on worse.

im kind of in the same boat debating between the 7300 and the FT-991A since the 991 does vhf/uhf too and i only have room for one radio on my desk. does the 7300 feel solidly built or is it plasticky? some of the photos make it look a little toy-ish but maybe thats just the angle