been thinking about doing that front end mod i keep seeing mentioned for better weak signal stuff. got the service manual but wondering if its actually worth it or just theoretical improvement. my location is pretty noisy so not sure if it would even help much

also saw something about a different crystal oscillator swap but that one looks way more involved

Did the front end mod on mine about 6 months ago and honestly cant say i notice much difference. Maybe slightly better on 20m but could be propagation who knows. The crystal thing is supposed to help with phase noise but ive never bothered with that one since you basically have to tear the whole radio apart

I wouldn't mess with the front end personally, icom did a pretty good job with the filtering already. If you're in a noisy location you'd probably get more bang for your buck with external filtering or maybe a different antenna setup. The 7300 is sensitive enough stock that adding more gain might just make things worse with all the rf garbage out there these days