Yamaha 1300 Tourer - Yamaha 1300 Tourer Fansite

Ever since I started taking long rides through the country side, I've been wanting a sound system for my bike. After a lot of shopping around, I decided on a system from Motorcycle Tunes. The website looks incredibly outdated and there's a lot of egregious spelling and grammar errors, but the product was good and best of all, cheap.

I bought the 500w system from them for $180, which if you've ever priced speakers, is very inexpensive. The audio input is a plain 3.5mm headphone-type plug that works on any mp3 player and pretty much ALL audio sources. Installing them took a little while, mainly because there were a lot of little things to be done. The speakers go on easy enough but then the real work starts. I ran my wires (including the audio cable) into the plastic covers in front of the gas tank on top of the frame and under the gas tank back to the seat area, and then down the saddlebag frame into my right bag. You can either wire the power supply for the amp into an existing circuit (headlight would be good, because it stays on even after you hit the kill switch) or make your own circuit, provided you put a toggle switch and fuse on it. I opted for the latter. I installed another rocker switch ($2.50) next to the one for my LED accent lights and put an in-line fuze ($8) under the seat. I placed the amp into my saddle bag and drilled four small holes so I could secure it with steel wire. It was supposed to be temporary, but I don't see a need to buy bolts for it. The supplied audio cable was a few inches too short, but that was easily remedied with a trip to walmart for an extension.

Now the important stuff: How does it sound? Pretty damn good. It gets REALLY loud before it starts to get distorted, and that's with the amp at only half-power. It's a 500w amp but the speakers are 160w, leaving room to wire two more speakers either for you or your passenger. I may end up getting more and mounting them to my highway bars or underneath the existing ones.

I can hear music clearly even at highway speeds and with drilled pipes, even with a full helmet on. I think it actually sounds better with the helmet on, as long as the visor is up. The picture of the whole bike will show you what the speaker housings look like. And now for pictures:

As you can see in the last picture, it's a small amp (5" wide) and I have the speaker, power and audio source wires going through a 1/2" hole I drilled into the saddlebag. I took the negative power cable from the amp and ran it to the bolt for the saddlebag because it was easiest that way.

P.S. - When drilling a hole to run the cables through the saddle bag, you'll need a 1/2" bit to accommodate the RCA jacks. However, that will fit ONLY one jack - no other wires. This means that you'll either need to drill a bigger hole, or do what I did and drill a small offset hole to hide other wires in while running the jack through.

Also, the LEDs aren't THAT bright. They're bright for night time, but this photo was a 30 second exposure that I fired a remote flash for 6 times.