so ive been messing around with the 7300 for a while now trying to squeeze better transmit audio out of it because honestly out of the box it sounds a little thin to me, maybe thats just my ears but multiple people on the air told me the same thing so i started digging around

first thing i did was the standard TX bandwidth tweak in the menu, bumping the high cut filter up and adjusting the bass boost a bit. that helped some but wasnt transformative. then i found this thread somewhere (cant find it now of course) about swapping the stock mic for something with a better capsule and adjusting the parametric EQ to match. been running a Heil PR-781 into it now with a custom EQ curve and honestly the difference is pretty significant. people keep commenting on the audio quality now which they definitely werent before

also did the modification to expose the hidden menu items, not going to get into the legal gray area stuff but there are some TX filter adjustments buried in there that icom didnt surface in the normal menus and they make a real difference for SSB. if you know you know

wondering if anyone else has gone down this rabbit hole with the 7300 or similar rigs, curious what mods have actually been worth the trouble vs the ones that were kind of meh

yeah the hidden menu thing on the 7300 is pretty well documented at this point, i wouldnt worry too much about it, icom basically left those options in there and people have been using them for years. the TX bandwidth adjustments especially are just quality of life stuff

the mic swap is the real game changer though in my experience. i went through like three different mics before settling on an Electro-Voice 664 through a cloudlifter because i had it lying around and it just works. the 7300 preamp isnt the strongest so giving it a hotter signal cleaned up a lot of noise i was fighting. one thing i'd also look at if you havent is the compressor settings, the built in one on that radio is actually decent if you dial it in carefully, a lot of people crank it too hard and it just sounds pumpy and bad but backed off to like 20-25% it can help intelligibility without wrecking the audio

also just throwing this out there, have you checked what the audio looks like on a panadapter or spectrum from someone elses end? sometimes what sounds good to you on the mic doesnt translate the same way over RF and its worth having someone record a clip and send it back so you can actually hear what youre putting out

ive been wanting to do the heil swap on mine for a while but keep putting it off, good to hear its actually worth it. does the PR-781 need an adapter for the 8 pin icom connector or did you just wire something up yourself