[Kenwood] CW keying envelope at low power settings

[ken.d.brown at hawaiiantel.net]

Hi all, I am curious about the keying envelope on TS-480 and TS-590. I
have a couple of TS-440 and they had a weird "soft" keying when operated
at lower power levels. I was driving a SGC SG-500 amplifier which
requires only 50 watts of drive. When I turned to TS-440 TX PWR down to
50 Watts output the keying got weird. I could make adjustments to the
ALC circuitry to get the keying normal at 50 Watts, but then 50 Watts
became the maximum the radio would put out. Rather than do that I made a
power attenuator to use on the SG-500 input. Now I'm thinking about
buying a TS-480 or maybe a TS-590. If I chose the 200 Watt version of
the TS-480 would I have a similar problem when turning the TX power down
to 50 watts to drive an amplifier? Or does the keying sound the same at
any power level?