Gregory Smith

yeah i had almost the exact same thing happen on my first NE602 build. for me it turned out to be the audio amp stage picking up mains through a long ground trace that looped around the board. switched to a battery like someone probably already told you and it got better but didnt fully fix it. ended up having to reroute some traces and add a ferrite bead on the audio input. kind of a pain to troubleshoot honestly but once it clears up these little receivers actually work pretty well for what they are

yeah i did this on mine maybe 8 months ago, took like 20 minutes including the time i spent convincing myself i wasnt going to break anything. the jumper is pretty accessible once you have the top cover off, icom actually made it pretty straightforward. you do have to do the menu reset thing after or it wont take effect, i forgot that the first time and thought i'd done something wrong.
as for whether its worth it — honestly for day to day HF operating probably not a huge deal. but you're right about the band edge thing, there's a real difference when you're sitting at like 14.350 and the rig is already pulling back power. with the mod it doesnt do that, which is nice if you're contesting or just working the edges a lot. i also do some utility monitoring and having a bit more flexibility on the TX side is just a comfort thing even if i never actually transmit out of band. just feels less restricted if that makes sense.

also watch the band edges man, like dont transmit right at 7.300 because your signal has sidebands and if youre running USB and tuned to 7.299 your upper sideband is actually going outside the allocation. a lot of rigs will let you do it technically but youre out of band at that point. i learned this the hard way when i was new and had somebody point it out to me on the air which was a little embarrassing. general rule i use is stay at least 3 khz inside the edge to be safe

yeah the third party thing tripped me up too when i was studying. basically just dont hand the mic to someone unlicensed and walk away, you gotta be there supervising the whole time. i dont think most new hams ever really run into an issue with it unless theyre doing something like message handling for served agencies or whatever

good question and dont feel bad, this trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals. so the short version is: the FCC Part 97 rules are the actual law, the ARRL band plan is basically a gentlemans agreement on top of that. for 40m as a general you can do phone from 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, that is your legal phone allocation. below 7.175 down to 7.025 is CW and data for generals, and 7.000 to 7.025 is extra class only for CW.
now the band edge thing is real and important. the rule is your signal has to stay within the allocation, not just your carrier. so if youre running SSB your carrier needs to be far enough from the edge that your sidebands dont spill over. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so for upper sideband on 40m phone you wouldnt want to go below about 7.178 to leave yourself room. some radios also have a little frequency error so that gives you some buffer too.
the region 2 thing your club buddy mentioned is about ITU regions, north and south america are region 2 and the 40m allocation is a bit different than region 1 which is europe. thats why sometimes you hear european stations down around 7.100 on phone, that is legal for them but not for us.

yeah the LoTW wait time varies a lot, i think it depends on how busy they are. i waited like 10 days for mine. just hang tight.
one thing i'll add — make sure when you're logging contacts you're recording the exact time in UTC because LoTW matching is pretty strict about that. i had a bunch of contacts not match for a while and it turned out my logging software had a timezone issue. drove me crazy for weeks before i figured it out lol

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital modes and some CW but lately ive been wanting to actually talk to people on 20m SSB and honestly my audio sounds terrible compared to everyone else i hear. like really processed and thin. im running an IC-7300 which i know has a decent built in mic eq but i havent really touched any of that stuff.
the guy i talked to last week said i sounded like i was in a tin can which is not great. im just using the stock HM-219 hand mic that came with the radio. is that the problem or is it more likely a settings thing. ive heard people say you should set the TX bandwidth somewhere around 2.4kHz and keep the bass roll off not too aggressive but im not sure where any of that actually lives in the 7300 menus. also should i even bother with the speech compressor or does that just make things worse
any advice from people who actually sound decent on SSB would be appreciated

ugh i missed it, i keep meaning to just leave the radio on more but life gets in the way. i only got my general last spring so ive never actually experienced a real 10m opening like people talk about. been on 40 and 20 mostly. one of these days

honestly the General isnt that bad once you sit down with it. i upgraded maybe 8 months ago and was in the same spot as you, tech for a couple years just doing VHF stuff. the math looks scary but there really isnt that much of it and most of it is the same ohms law stuff from tech just applied slightly differently. HamStudy.org is what got me through it, i just did like 20-30 practice questions a night for maybe 3 weeks and by the time i took the exam i was consistently hitting 85-90% on the practice tests so i felt pretty good going in
the propagation stuff is actually kinda interesting once it starts making sense, like why 40 meters works great at night but 10 meters goes dead and then suddenly opens up. you'll start to care about the solar flux index way more than you expected to. passed with a 30/35 i think, wasnt perfect but you dont need perfect