so ive been sitting on this for a while but i finally pulled the trigger and installed the Collins mechanical filters in my FT-857D, did the 500hz CW filter and the 2.3khz SSB one. been wanting to do it for like two years and kept talking myself out of it because the surgery on these little rigs is just... a lot. very cramped in there.

anyway the difference on CW is actually pretty significant, like i was running a pileup last weekend on 40m and i could actually pull calls out that i was completely missing before. the stock DSP filtering on the 857 is fine i guess but its not the same as having a real mechanical filter doing the work upstream. the SSB filter honestly i havent noticed as much of a difference on casual ragchewing but in a contest environment it probably matters more.

the mod itself took me about 3 hours and i had to desolder a couple jumpers and there were a few moments where i thought i had bricked it, the alignment after is a little fiddly too. think i had to tweak the carrier point a bit. but its working great now. anyone else done filter mods on the 857 or similar rigs? curious if people think the collins filters are overkill or if there are better options these days

did the same mod on mine maybe 4 years ago, can confirm the CW filter is absolutely worth it if you do any serious operating. the 500hz collins is night and day. i also did the mars/cap mod while i had it open just to open up the tx range, not that i actually transmit out of band but its nice to have for certain emcomm scenarios where you might need flexibility. one thing i'd add is that the reassembly is where people run into trouble, there's a grounding point near the PA section that's easy to leave not fully seated and then you get all kinds of weirdness on TX. sounds like you got through it clean though. the alignment fiddling you mentioned is pretty normal, i had to go back in twice before mine was happy.

hm i always thought the DSP on the 857 was decent enough that mechanical filters werent really necessary anymore, guess i was wrong or at least it depends what youre doing with it. i have a 991A so its a different situation but ive been thinking about the IF filter options for that one. does anyone know if the mod scene for the 991 is anywhere near as developed as for the older yaesu stuff? feels like most of the good mod documentation online is for rigs from like 10-15 years ago