I put on my seatbelt, mask and rubber gloves and accessed the Service Menu (Safety First) by holding in the Menu & Mode buttons. Let go as soon as you power it up, then hit each button next to them moving down the line starting with DW. That will land you in the Service Menu. You should see FM on the screen (factory menu) and be able to scroll thru each menu item with the channel selector. I only wanted to modify my AM mode settings, so scrolled to #16 (AM Hi Pwr) and #17 (AM Lo Pwr). WRITE DOWN THE VALUES OF ANY MENU ITEM BEFORE MAKING CHANGES) >> Hold the mic key in and rotate the Channel Selector to change the value<< I tinkered with #17 a bit to bring my Dead Key down to 2 watts. Watch your external Watt Meter to see the changes. I set my Low Dead Key at 2 watts with the power button all the way down. I then then set #16 high power to 4 watts with the power button turned all the way up. That way, I won't accidently blow that first pill in my 1x4 amp. A friend of mine had his 5555nII done up by a qualified service tech (no name mentioned) and his Bird RMS swing was much better then mine, so he checked his Service Menu Modulation settings, #19 & #20 and found their values set for all zeroes. I took a chance (wrote down my values) and reset mine the same way. Holy Schmoly!... Now, even at low power, my RMS swing is double what it was and it drives my 1x4 amp beautifully. I looked at the waveform on my scope using a 1khz tone and it looks good with no flat topping or splattering, so I was happy. The only other service menu item i tinkered with was #52 (AM RF Gain) and got it set the way I like so strong signals do not overload my front end and i still hear far off stations without all the hiss and heterodyne. Shout out to Panic Attack for his input on this site about the Service Menu and 352 for his assistance with the Menu settings.
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