Upon opening the transceivers, I quickly saw what looked like water damage on the IF crystal filters:

I’ve always wondered why my FT-450 I bought second hand had a lower RX level on the higher bands, starting around the 20m band. I took a look at the schematic, and the input on the RX side is very classic: a DC blocking cap and protection diodes.

Protection diodes, wait – those aren’t RF protection diodes; they are bog standard SMD red LED’s! What was Yaesu thinking here? (“Let’s save 2 cents?”). Only reason they might have used these (and the only reason I can think of) – is that they maybe have a low capacitance. But seriously, Yaesu.. ?

Anyway, I set my multimeter to the diode setting and quickly realized that one of them was shorted. Really, who tries to use LED’s as protection diodes? Really not up to the task. Here’s one that was still working. The picture gives a good indication where you can find them on the PCB (underside of the transceiver).