Scott,
please give me your opinion of this setup:
Biketronics 2180 amp
Biketronics 7.1 w/brackets for upper fairing
Arc Moto 602 in parallel for lower fairing

Bill at Biketronics said he can supply a wiring harness with disconnects for lower fairing if I want to take them off for summer. I'm also leaning towards the Biketronics magic box when it comes out.

 

I have the same set up but less the lowers and speakers. The speakers are in my plans once I get the lowers and have them color matched. Interested to hear the response.

 

If you are going to run speakers in parallel they should be the same or at the very least have same/similar sensitivity so they get to the same volume. Otherwise one will be louder than the other.

 

I can only speak for the 7.1's with brackets, nothing but good to say about them. Haze and Gannicus are the guys who know about the other stuff. Never heard anything bad about the BT amp but if you want more than 2 speakers I might consider upgrading the amp.

 

Yeah - His only issue would be not having the ability to set the gains with the 2180. I'd probably opt for the Arc Moto 600.4 in this case. That way you can adjust the Moto 602's to match the 7.1's. I've had them both in there with the 4180 and due to the sensitivity of the 7.1's they are louder than the 602's with the 4180. Can't adjust it out. Swapped the 4180 out for the SS 1000D and there was a night and day difference. Bumped the gains up a little on the Motos and they were right there with my 7.1 PRO's. Awesome sound by the way!!

 

Unless you add some fairly thick adapter rings the Hertz HSX, HCX and ECX speakers will not fit in the tour pak pods. Only the DCX low profile 170 fit without mods.
Also for some of your other concerns ...
Yes the pods provide stability for the fairing. The biketronics brackets provide that stability as well.

Depending on what you want your sound to be you can't put just any speaker in the pod. Some speakers are designed to breathe while others need a sealed enclosure. The biketronics speakers seem to be designed to breathe or use a much bigger enclosure which is why they do not use the pods. This is also why in some cases putting polyfil in the pod produces better sound.

There is a big difference in sound quality between coax speakers and component speakers. Coax takes a single input and pushes highs, Mids and lows through each portion. Components use the crossovers to split the highs from the lows so that the tweeters only output the highs where the tweeter on a coax is also pushing the lows.

There are a few line shifter products out that take a factory DSP signal and convert it to a flat signal to the go into an after market amp. The biggest advantage here in the case of harleys is it eliminates the need to flash the hu which causes you to lose bass, treble, fade and avc inputs. As it stands currently if you flash the headunit it seems you would also need add an eq to adjust the outputs. It also removes the +14 dB mid input harley has in the hu for increased volume at higher speed that can make things sound too bright or tinny. The line shifters remove the need to flash thus leaving the adjustments intact. It will be interesting to see what BT comes up with to compete with magic box and Audio Control's units like the LCI 2.

In my opinion, if you truly want clean sound you should look at component speakers to separate the signals and line shifters to flatten the dsp but not lose input controls then go to the amps and additional speakers. But remember there will be diminishing returns if you're trying to get better sound when you're not sitting still. At a certain point you're just burning money to get better sound when traveling 80+ on the highway and the gains will be very modest. If you are trying to win trophies at shows, I'm not sure there is an end to the spending....

 

 

Well Haze, Scott, Ragz and Gannicus I can't thank you enough for all the knowledge and information you guys have. When I had my '12 Street Glide I installed a Hogtunes speaker/amp and it was markedly better than stock. I went with them because I really like the idea of plug and play, since I'm not looking to turn my bike into a show bike. Like most here, just want good clean sound at speed. This time around, I was looking for something to improve the low end. I went on the Hogtunes site to see what they had for the Rushmore bikes and wow their prices went way up. I then started looking at JM and they were even higher. It wasn't until I joined the forum and read up on what people were saying that I realized that there are other plug and play manufacturers such as Arc or Biketronics. I definitely am partial to mobile audio designed specifically for bikes. As such, after considering Rockford amp, Cerwin Vega amp (I even peeked at a Kenwood amp) and Hertz speakers, Moto speakers, Focal speakers, Kappas, etc. there always seems to be issues. Not huge issues, but issues nonetheless. At this point, I'm strongly leaning to saving my nickels and dimes and going with a BT2180, 7.1 and their BT477 in the lowers (when I get the lowers and if those have the same sensitivity).
Also, the lifetime warranty is pretty impressive. When the time comes I will document install and result and share here. If the budget won't allow it then I'm sure I'll post some more combos for your advice. The only thing I'm 100% certain about is that I don't want to flash the radio.Thanks again for all the input.

 

 

Awww shucks Gannn,,, I NEVER thought I'd hear that about my bike! LOL. OP what are you installing it in? My RG install was a 6-7 on the difficulty level (scale of 10) ONLY because I took my time, and had never had a RG fairing off. Second time for me it'd be down around a 4-5 on difficulty level.