Just took delivery of my new 2013 Heritage yesterday. Obviously, one of the key initial upgrades is the new exhaust (boy, the stock exhaust is lame!!!). I'm planning to do the Stage 1. Talked briefly with the dealer's performance parts specialist about exhaust options. When my wife put new pipes on her Nightster a couple of years ago, we chose Rush slip-ons. Love the sound, but she's already experiencing discoloration and blemishes. Dealer-guy says they have stopped recommending Rush because (something to this effect) they only have a single wall and much more prone to discoloration (he told us this before we mentioned our situation with the wife's bike). He now recommends V&H for Softails.

Today, in the Walgreens parking lot a dude in a pickup sees the new bike (its got a temp tag) and starts talking. He's got a Heritage too and offers (without prompting) that he had initially replaced stock with V&H, but then went to Rineharts because he thought the V&H sounded to tinny.

So, tonite, I'm listening to Youtube exhaust videos. Damn if I don't think the parking lot dude is right. Almost every V&H video had what you might call the tinny sound, and most Rinehart had a nice, deep throaty potato sound. Rush pipes sounded more like the Rineharts than the V&H's.

The bike I traded in, a 2005 Sporty 1200C with Screaming Eagle slip-ons, had a sound that I like, not quite as deep as the Rineharts. I'm going to do some bike night scouting over the next couple of weeks, but would be interested in your respective thoughts on the relative merits of pipes for a Heritage Softail.

Parts guy was also recommending 2 into 1s for the best upgrade.

Sound and looks is more important than performance differentials for me. (old guy)

 

Take a look at dragosbikeworks for his 3 step header exhust system, great sound and performance.

 

When you get your answer post up would ya. I ran V&H ovals on my bagger and V&H straight shots on two different Dynas. The FXDXT lasted about 10 miles before they came off, Marine dry stacks come to mind on that one. The bagger I could pretty well duplicate the sound with to baseball bats and two upside down metal trash cans. Guess Im gettin old too. Just want a mellow deep rumble myself...that's all.