or, do i really want a louder bike??? ive been riding my 86-750-RWB for the past 15 years and it sounds great. it came to me already sporting a nice pair of trapps that ive grown very acustomed to. i just added a 99-G5 to the stable 2 weeks ago. its bone stock, and sounds QUIET different from the G1. my 1st thought was that i would pretty quickly add a new can so i could hear a more familiar tune, but then... i was out the other day suffering up the longest climb of my ride on my other two-wheeled conveyance, which is human powered (i manage a bicycle shop), when a motorcycle passed me from behind. i pedal thousands of miles on a annual basis, and am quite attuned to maintaining a high degree of situational awareness to powered vehicles in my vicinity. the motor-bike really suprised me as i did not even hear him until he moved left to pass. i didnt get a good sighting, but believe that it was most likely a beemer or ST or such. as hank hill would say: "boy let me tell you what", that bike was whisper quiet! so it really made me think: is a nice quiet bike really such a bad thing???
My last bike was a GSXR 600 SRAD. It came with a D&D pipe that was wicked loud. Even I thought it was too loud. I had Quite an irritable older woman as a neihbor that just could not stand to hear the bike idle to warm up in the morning before I went to work so I compromised and returned to the stock pipe with some custom jetting. Power was the same as far as I could tell and it was very quiet untill the tach reached about 6500rpm. After I moved from the tampa area I decided to keep the stock pipe on the bike just to remain low key and not stand out so much to law enforcement. I actually liked a quiet bike and did not find much for power gains if any from the D&D however I doubt it was tuned proporly for the pipe. My VFR however sports a Jardine rt1 and I love the sound, guess I have mixed feeling on the topic...
