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well If I am not mistaken Devin, his bike is the full dresser and already has an alternator to power the accessory lighting and light bar. I would be willing to bet that a Coustic amp powering a 6w0 would sound very nice. Won't be earthshattering loud, but with the full dresser, you can get plenty of airspace to house a sub. A small sub, but a sub nonetheless. Hell I thought about it with my old Excelsior Henderson, but the alternator on that thing sucked donkey butts

solution:
good hedphones under the helmet.

you're not going to get any bass from any system on a bike when the engine is running.
That engine is going to drown out anything low frequency. Especially with no cabin to contain the sound pressure. The bass you seek is created by compressing and rarefying air. It's hard to do that when the chamber you're compressing happens to be the size of the earth's atmosphere.

saw a bike once that have an avic-n2 in place of the guages and was running a 5 1/4 comp set up front with an 8 under the seat and had the amps in the saddle bag....also saw a goldwing once that was runnning 4" comps with a couple small bass tubes in the trunk....biggest problem here is going to be power for the amps...

GlassWolf wrote:solution:
good hedphones under the helmet.
you're not going to get any bass from any system on a bike when the engine is running.
That engine is going to drown out anything low frequency. Especially with no cabin to contain the sound pressure. The bass you seek is created by compressing and rarefying air. It's hard to do that when the chamber you're compressing happens to be the size of the earth's atmosphere.

I agree fully. Some good noise-cancelling ones will work very well. I'd look into ones that pilots wear or some studio headphones. For some good studio ones, look at the Sennheiser HD280. They are usually $100.

Thanks for the replies so far, even the snide ones.....

The bike is indeed a full dresser and please understand - I'm not looking for window shattering bass, just some low end that doesn't distort. It seems like the radio (or present speakers) strains to make any kind of low frequencies. Tinny music doesn't quite cut it.....

Headphones won't do, the State Police take a dim view of motorcyclists wearing full headsets.... besides, the way most cagers drive, I don't want to lower my chances of surviving a ride.

I will look into the 5" Focals. Any suggestions for a small amp to power the speakers? I do have the rear mount speakers already on the bike so mounting them should be no problem. As mentioned before, there is limited space under the fairing for the amp, so small the better. Suggestions there?

Thanks all !

one thing I did once, and this is a bit extreme, but the guy insisted on bass on his bike.. was to take a hard saddle case behind the seats on a Goldwing, and seal it, cut a hole in the side, and mount a sub after adding some deadening material to the case's interior, and polyfill to increase the mechanical volume. For what it's worth, it worked well at a standstill, with a RF Punch45 driving the sub, but I dunno how well it'd do with 70MPH of roadnoise.
If you amp those components it'll help a lot to clean up the distortion, too.

Solution: None

First people forget about Harley's and how loud they are and how they vibrate the bike.

You wouldnt hear or feel bass if it was even present on it. The motor will drown out any of it. Just like the motor noises probably and easily cancel out the sound from your speakers.

If you had something thats smooth I would sugguest Aura Bass Shakers.

Ryan from Ohio wrote:Solution: None
First people forget about Harley's and how loud they are and how they vibrate the bike.
You wouldnt hear or feel bass if it was even present on it. The motor will drown out any of it. Just like the motor noises probably and easily cancel out the sound from your speakers.
If you had something thats smooth I would sugguest Aura Bass Shakers.

This bike is not that loud, even at highway speeds - the engine is rubber mounted, so shaking is minimal. I can clearly hear the radio at a volume setting of about 20-25. My whole quest here is to get a little more bottom end so that I don't have to run the radio so that it sounds like tin can speakers.

You could look into a jl e1200, that a nice, compact, little amplifier that can push some wattage for about $150. Not sure if that matches up with whatever 5"/6" you are looking at, though.

the smallest amp i have seen so far thats decent is the hifonics eagle. its a 4ch and you could use the front for a set of comps i would suggest maybe mb quart cause those are loud and harsh you should be able to hear everything from them. and then bridge the rear channel for an aura bass shaker.