Richmond Harley Audio Upgrade Creates Radical Improvements

A repeat client from Richmond, Virginia, came to Extreme Audio with his beautiful 2010 Harley Davidson Street Glide, looking to upgrade its audio system. We had performed a Harley audio upgrade on this bike awhile ago, and he came back to us for a serious update. We sat down with the client and went over his goals and objectives for this project. Based on his feedback to us, we worked up a solution that we thought would best suit his needs, and he liked our proposal. We scheduled an appointment, and the customer dropped off the bike.

Great Harley Audio Starts With A Great Headunit

Upfront, we selected an Alpine CDE-HD149BT CD player for multiple reasons. We knew multiple amplifiers were going to be installed, so a great preamp was in order. The customer also wanted easy access to all of his music, and this unit gave him a USB port and Bluetooth for music streaming. The Alpine unit is also easy to control, which is always a plus on a motorcycle.

Upgraded Front Fairing Speakers By Arc Audio

For front speakers, we chose the Arc Audio Moto602. Arc is unique in that they have designed several products specifically for the motorcycle market. The Moto speakers are built to take the vibration, dirt and moisture a motorcycle speaker will endure, and keep coming back for more. They are also built around the acoustical environment a motorcycle lives in, meaning they have a more aggressive, brighter sound that is designed to overcome all the road noise. These products are designed to take motorcycle audio to the next level, and they truly are incredible audio products for motorcycle enthusiasts. We used Arc Audio speaker adapters to allow the speakers to fit in the stock location in the front fairing.

Extreme Custom Bag Lids Hold Arc Audio Speakers

The fit and finish on the bag lids is a testament to the level of perfection that goes into every installation at Extreme Audio.

The rear bag lids were custom fabricated to hold Arc Audio Moto 6×9’s. They sound great and look even better!

The fit and finish on the bag lids is a testament to the level of perfection that goes into every installation at Extreme Audio.

The rear bag lids were custom fabricated to hold Arc Audio Moto 6×9’s. They sound great and look even better!

In the rear of the bike, we custom-made new bag lids to hold the Arc Audio Moto692 speakers. As you can see in the pictures, we gave great care to the production so they would look like factory Harley parts. We are very proud of our technicians here at Extreme Audio and their attention to detail, and the pictures show the quality of their work loud and clear. An Arc Audio Moto600.4 amplifier runs the front and rear speakers with more than 600 watts of clean power. When we say these speakers jam, they really jam.

Hidden JL Audio Subwoofer Provides Awesome Bass In A Small Space

A lot of time went into designing this enclosure to fit perfectly and perform to its peak capability.

Notice the precision in the perforations in the bag to allow the bass to reach the riders.

The custom wood and fiberglass enclosure fits perfectly into the Harley bag and provides impressive amounts of bass.

Now, this customer truly wanted his audio system to grab attention. When he’s sitting in a parking lot or cruising at low speeds, he wants bass. Real, accurate, low-end bass. That is difficult to achieve in any vehicle, but on a motorcycle, it is very hard to accomplish, but we love challenges here at Extreme Audio! We spent significant time on poring over several different designs and products, but ended up with a plan that worked very well.

We rebuilt the left-side bag on the inside to house a JL Audio 10TW3 subwoofer. This is a unique design in that it is very shallow, works in an extremely compact enclosure and has phenomenal output. If you look closely at the pictures, you will see that we perforated the inside of the bag to allow the low frequencies to fire toward the wheel. This design makes the subwoofer invisible unless you get close and personal with the bike. We used Frogzskin material on the front side of the woofer to protect it and the bag from dirt and water. That’s a very cool product that worked great for this application.

A second Arc Audio amplifier powers the Jl subwoofer – a KS 500.1 mini. This amplifier is very, very small, so it can be tucked into places where a normal amplifier won’t fit. What is so unique about this amplifier is that it has more than 500 watts of clean power that rivals the sound quality of models three to four times its size.

Dual Batteries Ensure Plenty Of Juice For Crankin’ Tunes

The battery is hidden under the carpeted trim panel. The trim panel allows the bag to still be used for storage space.

This special device allows the radio to play off of the auxiliary battery when the Harley is turned off. This saves the cranking battery from running out of power.

If you‘ve ever owned a motorcycle, or even seen a battery for one, you know those batteries are small, so you can imagine that cranking up this audio system with the bike off would not work. Well, it can if you are a customer of Extreme Audio! We made a custom battery mount in the right-side bag and built a circuit that allows both batteries to power the stereo when the bike is running. When the engine is off, only the second battery powers the audio system. Now our customer can play his music with the bike off for a reasonable amount of time and never have to worry about being able to start the bike.

We Love Great Bikes And Great Audio!

If you own a motorcycle and have always wanted a great-sounding audio system that you could hear while driving up the highway, we invite you to stop by our facility. We will work with you on designing an audio system that works best for your unique needs. We have been named the Top Mobile Electronics Retailer in the Nation by Mobile Electronics magazine, and our award-winning installation technicians are some of the finest in Virginia. Let us put our expertise to work for you!

Feel free to contact us here for more information about any of our products and services.