Thanks for sharing that review! Mine is sitting here waiting for me to install it after I gather up a few more parts. Looks promising.

 

Thanks for the review. Hopefully, our local RF rep above reads the review and reports back to the team on some of the shortcomings you've uncovered.

You would think that a mission built replacement wouldn't be missing so many features, especially the CB. The AVC, isn't that big of a deal to me, but the Speaker Switching, and Intercom is very important to some of my buddies who do long distance touring and 2 up. Imho, these are big losses.

And that MP3 directory view and quantity limit is kind of eye catching. I mean with a now tiny 16BG, you can fit 4,000+ MP3's for Pete's sake. Hopefully, that can be corrected with future firmware updates?

For the cost of this thing, you'd think they'd have this buttoned up a little better. Having to give up a ton of features doesn't sound all that interesting. And, the incompatibility with models like the CVO with built-in amps is an open question. Sure, most of us CVO guys have gone with aftermarket amps, but do they detail how do you have to deal with the stock harnesses?

 

Something I would really like to see is the ability have band pass and various lp hp options. I had a pioneer head unit years ago that had all that and Time alignment. No need for a dsp at that point. Wonder if they could make that available, even for purchase, in a software update.

 

In my opinion RF hasn't done anything that Aquatic AV hasn't already done. The only thing I can see about the RF unit vs. the Aquatics AV that may be better is RF does list its FM sensitivity and Aquatic AV does not. The RF claims 8 db which is pretty good.

One of the reasons folks buy Ultra Classics is for the communication options. This radio completely does away with all of them. Also those of us that live in areas where the speed limit changes constantly and wildly find the AVC to be a very useful feature. Last week I was on a long stretch of mountain road that had a posted speed limit of 55, but I constantly had to slow down to 20 or so due to the sharp curves. I never had to touch the volume control (nor would I want to, I needed to pay close attention to the road).

If I absolutely had to give up my stock HK head unit I could get a much better aftermarket one for a fourth of the price of the RF and just put a cover over it.

 

They did a better job on the pre outs, more more eq bands, and I believe aquatic doesn't have variable hp frequencies.

 

Good to know. I've never seen either one in real life to play with them. Not much of that stuff around here.

If someone were using a DSP though which unit would y'all prefer?

 

I think the point is, the Aquatic and the others were not designed OR marketed as Harley OEM replacements. Rockford decided on their own to try to capture this market where enthusiasts were taking rather generic auto and marine radios and making them work, with various degrees of success.

The point is, if you want to claim the space, it's got to be fully and truly integrated to handle all of the features. This product gets a BIG Incomplete and needs to go back to the drawing board. Arbitrarily omitting key features for a purpose build product is extremely near sighted, and needs a complete refocus.

 

the Aquatic AV and Jenson HU's should not even be in the same discussion as this RF unit. The only thing they have in common is the plug and play aspect, anythingthing else and the RF unit blows them away.
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What about the handling of digital music Marco? The reviewer illustrated a sort of clunky interface on the RF. I also wonder about the song limit RF advertises. Just from the CDs I own and have ripped myself that add up to about 5000 songs. The Sony units I have in my trucks have no problem navigating USB drives with that whole collection on them.

 

How do you navigate thru 5000 songs on a usb? Can you create playlists?