The reason I am skeptical on the antenna for better than stock MLA30 is that, (I am repeating this yet again
)
1. There are so many other factors which influence the noise floor figures and the performance of the antennas.
2. The major points for it are,
The band condition
The Antenna set up, location (how high low or near the building or clear in the field) and environment
RFI condition (How bad RFI saturation is in the vicinity of the antenna
And even type and length of the antenna element (smaller and shorter element tend to be quieter than larger and longer element)
And the noise generation of the receivers ... etc etc.
So it is meaningless to say, oh this antenna has quiet NF figures in the lab test results, so it must be better antenna.
And how well can it copy the weakest DX signals from the most distant locations from your RX site?
Perhaps this is the most important question on the DXing antennas, be it MW LW or HF.
MLA30 with the stock B-T, and another MLA30 with high quality B-T from AOR, ok on testing environment, it seemed the MLA30 with the high quality AOR B-T sounded quieter.
But in the real RXing condition? They were similar. They were both overrun by QRM, if the band condition gets noisy. Both got noisy equally under bad RFI condition too. And copying the weak DX signals? They were kinda same, no much huge difference between the two.
So, rather than spending time and money and energy for modification, I went for just buying different type of antennas = a vertical and another Active Loop.
Time is money, and sometimes it is better to just buy different and better product than modification efforts.