Yes Shockwave, that is what i was thinking as well. It would seem that this rig putting out 95 to 98 watts out on both am and fm with the rec/send switch in the send position. so i would imaging the problem is not with the pa board, but rather a problem with the audio amplification/processing as you suggested . I also had an issue with a loose power cord but I confirmed this evening that i have repaired that issue and it is not the cause.
And it does have this issue weather the processor is on or off, although it is much worse with the processor on. So now i am figuring that the problem lies in the mic amp section, and or speech processor. I have also tried multible microphones ( three brand new stock mic's and my old trusty minuiteman II d104) with this rig and I got reports of the same audio problems with all of them. And being the rigs mic impedance rating is between 500 and 52k ohms I can rule out it being an inpedance issue.
Also, the issue with the fm board, When i received the rig I had no operation at all on fm, and found two of the jumpers in the wrong locations. 2 and 20, and 4 and 6 were reversed. So i reversed them back to their correct locations, after that i got rx and tx back on fm, but no audio. I wonder if something was damaged from these jumpers being in the wrong locations? I don't know. Perhaps an adjustment is needed? I couldn't really find any write up on that fm board other than the installation instructions from Kenwood, and i didn't find anyone in my searches that had any appearent problems with audio on fm.
So what would be your recommendation to look for first in the mic amp and or speech processor sections?
Any ideas Gentelman?
Thanks again in advance.