First off, you asked LesComm for a 959 radio. You should have known better before you diss Les because of your own choice. I can see that the 959 has a problem with the receive, which he should fix.
The squelch is to adjust the threshold of the scan feature and the squelch level itself. He even pointed that out in the video. That works like it should.
As far as audio goes, I run a 959 as my daily talker. Have modified the audio circuit in both transmit and receive for hifi and it constantly get unsolicited xlnt audio reports using just a Silver Eagle mic. Six caps is all it took, as well as a careful alignment using a SINAD, sig gen, and a scope.
As far as the power output of the cabinet 175 on the 959, it is spec'd for no more than 175w from the git go. If he was saying that it was putting out 500w, he was not not thinking clearly at that moment in the video - is all.
All CB SSB radios drift to one degree or another. Nature of the beast. However, all Galaxy radios drift more than others because of the design itself, with little that can be done about it, as ExitThirteen has pointed out. But I have yet to see a Galaxy that didn't respond quite favorably to a proper alignment. One of the few radios available today that talks as well on AM as it can on SSB if aligned well.
Running a radio that has two 2290's into an amp that has 2290's just to see ~400w is not the sharpest thing that I've seen, but I know that a lot of people do it that way. Does not mean that it gets what people think it does, as the final amp is being driven into distortion and will die sooner or later. Of course, most people that do this are more impressed with seeing the meter bounce high rather than understand that most of that power is actually distortion and actually is being spread well above and below the freq as splatter, no matter how clean people think it sounds.
Just some thoughts; there are more . . .
