so ive been trying to get back into CW after probably a 15 year break and i picked up a used Bencher paddle a few months ago and honestly the mechanical side of it feels great, nice and smooth. but when i hook it into my radio (ic-7300) the timing just sounds off to me. like the dits and dahs kind of blend together at anything above maybe 15 wpm and it sounds mushy. im not sure if its a keyer settings issue or if i maybe have the paddle tension or spacing adjusted wrong or what.

i did mess with the weight and speed settings in the radio menu but honestly i dont totally understand what the weight adjustment does vs just slowing down. ive been recording myself on audacity and playing it back and yeah it doesnt sound clean at all. anyone dealt with this before? is there like a baseline starting point for keyer settings i should try?

weight adjustment is one of those things that trips people up when they first start tweaking keyer settings. basically it controls the ratio of mark to space within each element — if you push the weight too high the dits get fatter and start running into each other, too low and they sound thin and choppy. the default 50% weight is usually where you want to start and honestly most people never need to move it much from there.

what i'd check first though is the spacing on the paddle itself. if the gap between the contact and the paddle arm is too small you're probably getting accidental extra contacts especially as you speed up. benchers are pretty forgiving but they do need a little gap. also try the iambic mode settings — mode A vs mode B behaves differently at the end of characters and some people have a strong preference. took me a while to figure out i was a mode A guy.

yeah i went through almost exactly this when i started. what helped me the most honestly was just slowing way down and really listening to individual characters instead of trying to copy whole words. like get comfortable at 12 or 13 wpm before pushing up. the mushy sound might also just be your ear not being trained yet to hear the spaces cleanly, not necessarily a settings problem. recording yourself is a great idea though, most people dont do that.