Note: You can watch the video review of these speakers and hear them in action on our Tube of You channel: Street Bike Sounds video

Some of my earliest memories involve music; swinging on my swing under the back porch while listening to ABBA sing “Take a Chance on Me” on my little suitcase record player; playing a small metal flute to “Red River Rock”; swinging from the pipes in our basement while singing along with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. And later in life listening to Run DMC, Doug E. Fresh, Kurtis Blow, Beastie Boys,etc.. while playing basketball with my friends – or sitting in my room alone listening to The Cure, Pet Shop Boys, and countless other New Wave groups or even the “Hair Bands”. Music has always been a big part of my life. 

So you can imagine my excitement when I was introduced to the Sport Bike Speaker System from Street Bike Sounds (www.streetbikesounds.com). Dreams of cruising down the road and slicing through the corners all while wearing soft foam earplugs to protect my ears from the wind noise and STILL be able to listen to my favorite tunes. Incredible!

In short order, a set of black speakers were in my possession. The guys at www.streetbikesounds.com (a division of www.cyclesounds.com) have been making speakers and speaker components for awhile now and are industry leaders in weatherproof speaker systems for bikes and boats (if my facts are straight their parent company is the OEM supplier of speakers for Sea Ray boats).

The Sport Bike Speaker System contains two 2.5” speakers, all the wires you need, a mini-amp with a 3.5mm jack, and flex discs for mounting (not used in my application). According to the guys at www.streetbikesounds.com one of them took the Hyabusa they use for an installation mule up to 90mph and could still clearly hear his music.

Installation was a piece of cake; the hardest part being how to mount the speakers on our Project FJR. The included flex discs wouldn’t work as the windshield on an FJR is too vertical and far away. A quick run to Lowes solved the problem as I picked-up some L shaped brackets to mount the speakers to the brake and clutch lever perches. One thing really nice about the system is that www.streetbikesounds.com fit their speakers and amps with long enough wires that, regardless of where you have to mount those components, getting them all connected together won’t be an issue.

Right then, all attached and wired-up, turn on the ignition, and……..nothing. Guess hooking-up my iPod to the 3.5mm jack would be helpful right? OK…..iPod hooked up, ignition on, press play, whoa these things are LOUD! The volume and clarity of the speakers at rest is incredible; especially considering they are just 2.5 inch speakers.

Time for a ride! Since the volume of the speakers at rest (with the volume turned all the way up on the mp3 player) was approaching ear-bleed territory you can imagine my disappointment when, at 55 mph I couldn’t hear a freakin’ thing. Nothing. At 50 mph I could just barely make out what song was playing ifI concentrated really hard.

Well this isn’t good; off came the cut-down “summer” windshield and I put the spare stock one on. This added about 10 mph to the numbers above; so now it was 65 mph when the music became inaudible. If I raised the windshield into the full up position and slouched down in the seat like an idiot I could hear the music at speeds up to about 80-85…possibly higher but I didn’t feel like going faster while looking like Quasimodo.

As one last test I took out my earplugs and tried again. While this did increase the music volume it also increased the wind noise. After about 5 minutes I felt like I was trying to listen to a concert while sitting next to a running jet motor. Not acceptable.

(NOTE: Obviously results may vary depending on the type of bike, how loud your exhaust is, what kind of helmet you wear, etc..)

To be fair to www.streetbikesounds.com, they didn’t build this system to actually be heard by a helmeted rider who is also wearing earplugs. So in essence the system works exactly how they designed it to work – it just doesn’t do what I was hoping it would…… but there may be a solution. Street Bike Sounds have come up with a new amp that produces more power out of a smaller package; something on the order of 30%-40% more volume.They will be sending us one of the new amps to put on our bike and I will test it out and update this article when done. Stay tuned!

The Sport Bike Audio Speaker Systems start at $249.00 - Visit www.streetbikesounds.com for more information.

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Comments (3)

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Bill said:

	Cool Review Awesome review. I've been looking for a set of speakers for my GSXR600 and I like what I see so far. Can't wait to see if the better amp makes a difference.
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November 26, 2010
Votes: +1

jeff dodge said:

	What happened to part two? Its been about a year and a half or something like that and no update for the new amplifier?
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February 16, 2012
Votes: +0

Editor said:

"What happened to Part 2 is....." Shortly after publishing this article (and the video on YouTube) a rep from Street Bike Sounds called me all pissed off that I would publish an article saying his product didn't work. He said that he wanted me to remove the part where I said I had to bend over like an idiot as he felt that was a bit strong. I told him that I stood by my article and have never, and would never, change a published article to suit a manufacturer's wishes. He then went on a rant about how he never had anyone say anything negative about his product after he gave it to them for free for a review. I think that statement pretty much sums-up how he felt about honest reviews and his products in general. I've said all that to say that we never got a bigger amp and have never heard from anyone at the company again. So there you have it.

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February 17, 2012
Votes: +0

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