Mine sounds great. The only real critique I could give is the bass is a little lacking but I kind of expected that and honestly the only real way to get good bass is either 6x9's in the saddlebags or putting a subwoofer somewhere and wasting a whole lot of space. Make sure you do two things. One is to make sure that SOMEWHERE you are doing a High Pass Filter. Either at your DSR1 or on the Amp itself. Then play something at like 80% full volume and watch the AMP for the clipping lights to flash and stop just after they start blinking a little.

 

BTW I ended up fitting it upside down under the bracket the radio sits on. I had to get a little creative and install it without the RCAs then plug them in through the side of the bracket. Then I just used a giant zip tie to hold it in place.

 

Hey Everyone,
I see this thread has been going for a while, and after reading through all the posts, I am still a little confused about some things. I have a 2018 Ultra with the stock head unit. I don't usually have the tourpack on, so I put DS18 PRO-ZT69 6x9's in my saddlebags. I am looking to replace the fairing speakers and add an amp. I don't know all the lingo that some of the experts use, so please excuse my ignorance. I am not looking for a competition system, just want to enjoy my music as I ride.
So here's where I am with this. I am looking at the DS18 ION1600.4D amp, and their RY-HARNESS.HD wiring harness. I am also looking at the DS18 PRO-HY6.4MSL speakers for the fairing.
Looking at the wiring harness, I don't see any wires that go to the battery for the amp. I am hoping that the amp comes with those wires. The RY-HARNESS.HD does have three 16ga wires for POS/NEG/REMOTE wires, which I assume plug into the AMP? Or are those for a DSP? There is also a "High/Low Converter". I am not sure what that is for. Is that like a DSP?

I really don't want to purchase the items above, only to find out that I need a bunch more to finish the install, so I am trying to do some research now. Hopefully someone that has installed the amp and harness can reply with their experience. How did you install the amp in the fairing? Did you need an install kit? Or, did you just velcro it to the Head Unit mount plate? Anyone have photos of the finished install?

 

I would suggest starting a new thread to get answers. And make sure you buy equipment from a reputable place. Otherwise you aren’t going to have any help with questions. IE, don’t buy from Amazon and Fleabay

 

Those 16 Ga wires are not enough for an amp of this capacity (or really any reasonably worthwhile amp) so they are intended for a DSP. You'll need at least an 8ga (I'd probably go 4ga just to be safe) amp wiring kit. You can buy one directly from DS18 or pick up one on amazon. Most of them are intended for installing in a car and will have enough wire to do two bikes practically. You'll need to make sure it has a fuse (I think DS18 reccomends a 140a but that seems REALLY overkill to me). You can use the power output for the DSP to connect to the remote turn on for the amp (so it only powers up when your radio powers on). You'll run the wires all the way back to the battery (at least the positive wire you can usually find a good place to ground the amp somewhere under or around the fairing). Best way to do it is under the tank in the little plastic tray with all the other wiring.

Next thing you are going to deal with is speaker wiring... the rear speakers are going to be fairly easy since there isn't factory wiring but I HIGHLY reccomend putting some kind of waterproof plug near the saddlebag so you can disconnect it when you want to take off the saddlebag. There are a few kits on the market or you can just buy some plugs and assemble it yourself. You won't use the wires in that kit for the rear speakers (unless you want to connect the tour pack as well and that gets into some other issues I'll go into later) As for the front speakers you have two options... 1) the kit you have will just plug right in and should work fine. 2) Run separate wiring and bypass the factory speaker wires since the power output you are looking at is pretty heavy for them.

With 6 total speakers (assuming you want to be able to use the tour pak speakers when it is on there) you need to watch your ohms. This amp will operate at either 2 or 4 ohms. So you have a choice... hook up 2 4ohm speakers in parallel for a load of 2 ohms (I'd reccomend this for your tour pak and lid speakers especially if you plan on going back and forth between the two setups) or hook up 2 2ohm speakers in series for a total of 4 ohms. You can do some googling to figure out what the heck this means but just so you know it's a thing and it will affect the overall system and how it performs (that's probably a debate somewhere akin to which oil to use). As for the dash speakers you can go with either 2ohm or 4ohm but the 2ohm will give you the maximum power output of the amp (again there's a BUNCH more science to go into here and I'm not trying to start a debate). Wiring them in series will also be a little more complicated than just plugging the plusses alll into the positive terminal and the negatives into the negative terminal but at least this amp has separate negative terminals for each speaker location (my last one had a shared plug and it SUCKED trying to fit four wires into it).

Now for the UGLY part... Your stock head unit has a REALLY goofy factory equalizer setting. It will make pretty much anything you throw at it aftermarket sound like crap. There's two way's to get around this... most people (especially anyone doing competition stuff or trying to sell you something) will tell you that you ABSOLUTELY need a DSP and nothing else will sound perfect... they are probably right... but "perfect" is the key word here and at $200-300 it's not exactly the cheapest option. The other solution is to have your head unit flashed with the rockford fosgate flash (or some other aftermarket flash that provides a "flattened" EQ). I had my old radio flashed by Black Jack Harley in Florence SC but you can also find shops that sell motorcycle audio that will do it or I think you can order a tool to do it from some company (if I recall they ship you the tool you flash it and then send the tool back to them or something like that). They run anywhere from $50-100 last time I looked. That brings me to the third choice... Get an aftermarket radio. Your 18 (same year as mine) doesn't have carplay/android auto. Since the aftermarket units all have RCA outputs you can return that $160 adapter and just pick up some adapters for the factory speaker wiring for like $50 and a set of decent RCA cables for like $20 (Yeah I know you were hoping not to have to buy a bunch more crap but figure you might as well accept the reality now). BTW the high/low converter is just to drop the power from the speaker outputs to something the amp can pull into the DSP. Technically there's also one built into the amp and you could have used the speaker outputs from the factory radio to plug directly into the amp (again either by hacking your factory wiring or buying some other adapters to make use of the plugs you unplug from the factory speaker wire to plug the amp outputs in)

As for the speakers I have the 6.4MSL's in my fairing and they sound great. The bass isn't anything to bragg about but your 6x9's should fix that nicely. The highs are LOUD and lets be honest if you are going down the road at 80mph with whatever "super thunder neighbor screamer" exhaust you probably already have installed sound quality isn't really what you are worried about... it's volume. My wife considers my radio borderline obnoxious (that's her opinion from riding near me on HER bike) and my step son usually asks me to turn it down when he gets on cause it's "too loud!". You may have to take the little yellow plastic covers off the back of the magnets (there's 4 little allen screws) to get it to fit in the fairings (I have a road glide so I know it's probably a little different) and I had to make sure they were turned in the right direction so the wiring cleared. They should also work great in your tour pak (DON'T try hooking those factory speakers up to this amp unless you wanna hear the sounds of speakers exploding). The only issue you may find with going back and forth between just the lid speakers and the tour pak and lid speakers would be tuning the amp. you'll probably have to fiddle with the gain to find a happy place where it works both ways.

As for amp mounting there's a couple options there too... Zip ties, velcro or a mount. I couldn't find any mounts for a road glide that would actually fit this amp but I think there might actually be a little more room in the batwing fairings. They do clean up the install but honestly who is looking? I just zip tied mine in with some large zip ties. I bought a big bag of different sizes and they are honestly a must have for any work on a motorcycle.

Good luck hope this helps!

 

Thank you for the detailed response. I will break down my questions in multiple posts to try and separate the issues.
You mention setting up the rear speakers in Parallel. Currently I have 4 Ohm speakers in the saddlebags, and 4 Ohm speakers in the tour pack, and again 4 Ohm speakers in the fairing. If I hook up the tour pack and saddlebag speakers in parallel, then the rear is running at 2Ohms, but the front is still at 4 ohms. Is that ok, or should I have 2 ohm speakers in the front? Of course when the tour pack is off, then I wouldn't have the speakers in parallel at that time, so my rear would be running 4 ohms again. So is it ok to have the front channels running different ohms than the rear? What would the effect of mismatched ohms be? Is there a way to communicate through whatsapp or messenger to chat further?

 

2 things of note in your above comment:

1. As long as the amp you choose is stable and capable of handling a 2 ohm load you will be fine paralleling the bags and pods.

2. If you parallel the bags and pods, then you will need to adjust gains when you take off and put on the backrest. A potential resolution would be to parallel the bags and fairing on channel1/2 since they will "always" be connected and run the pods on channel 3/4, thereby removing the need to adjust gains every time you take the tour pack off. Food for thought...

 

The amp I am looking at is the DS18 ION1600.4D. On their site it says
4 Channel Full Range, Class D, 2 - 4 Ohm Stable, 4 X 240 Watts @ 4 Ohm
It shows 4 channel connections and at the top of Channel 1 and 2 it shows Bridge 4Ohm.
I would hook up each each channel to a speaker location? correct? So Channel 1 for the fairing left speaker, channel 2 for the fairing right, 3 saddlebag left, 4 saddlebag right.
Then if I want to also hook up the tourpack speakers, I would run them parallel to the saddlebags, making channel 3 and 4 running at 2 ohms? From what ShoreRider said, I would have to take my fairing off each time I hook up the tour pack, to adjust my gains on the amp.
Would running the saddlebag and fairing speakers on the same channels in parallel (so only channels 1 and 2 in use when the tour pack is off) result in poor audio quality?

 

I run that same amp. PM me and we can discuss.

 

Yes as other's have said Two 4ohm speakers in parallel (both plusses in the same hole and both minuses in the same hole on the amp) will provide you with 2ohms of load which will work just fine on the 1600 (That's how I have my tour pak qand fairing speakers wired which are the same as your fairing speakers). Then you can adjust everything however you like. You will lose the ability for fading between front and rear but honestly on a motorcycle there isn't really a whole lot of need for that. One way to do it would be to wire the two 6x9's to the left channel and the two fairing speakers to the right channel and then you can "fade" by using the left right balance but I think that would a) be unnecessary and b) potentially cause other issues with the speakers being a little bit different on each channel. I'm not sure how much if any problem that could actually cause but it's probably better to just leave right front and right saddlebag on the right channel and left front and left saddlebag on the left channel.

You never really said whether you replaced the speakers in your tour pak but the factory ones probably are not gonna be able to handle the power of that amp. You can turn the gain down and you should be fine. But if you do replace them I'd reccomend the DS18 2 ohm PRO-HY6.2MSL it's pretty much the 2 ohm version of the ones you have in the fairing and they fit in the tourpak (same thing as before you might need to take the plastic cover off the back of the magnet and fiddle with how you clock them.

Feel free to PM me as well always willing to spew whatever information I've gleaned from my limited experience and research.