I had the Hogtunes in my RoadGlide and liked 'em, but with some of the hub-bub about non-matching ohms and the potential for toasting the amplifier section of the radio, I bought a pair from J&M. Installed via instructions....takes a little longer due to replacement of grill, but an easy task.
My first impression was that they did not have the bass response the Hogtunes did, but the clarity, presence and volume capability were all there. FM, XM throughputs are good and CD's are quite good. I have the bass setting almost maxed and the treble about 45%.

Plugged in my little iPod Shuffle and was somewhat annoyed by the sound. I'm BRAND new to this MP3 thing and found the bass on the replay through the Harley was just about nil. Seems I need to adjust the download characteristics from iTunes if I can do so so for this little Shuffle gizmo......it sounds fine with the earbuds. And John at J&M pointed this out when I inquired.

I like the speakers......they work and will handle all the volume you can pump into them with your radio. Bass response could be better, but one can't expect living room quality from a 5.5" speaker in that enclosure.

 

I agree, I just installed some on my '03 Road Glide and tested them on a 1800 mile trip to 4 states including rides to Arizona (Grand Canyon) and Utah (Zion National Park). The speakers were awesome and my wife said she could actually hear them better than the ones that came with my Biketronic Retro Radio. She was very happy so I was very happy.

 

Mr Wonderful ,,,,,,

thank you again for taking the time to evaluate the J&M/Harley Fairing speakers ,,,,,, as this now gives the forum readersadditonal options when considering speaker upgrades for their Harley audio systems ,,,,,

Guys/Gals ,,,,,

when using I-tunes and loading music into your computer ,,,, there are some things to think about ,,,,,,

I realize that the single song music downloads off the I-tunes websiteare very convenient, but the quality is frankly lousy (even worse with URGE from Microsoft) ,,,, that is to be expected however, as they take a 3 1/2 minute digital song that normally takes up 45-50 MB of space on a standard CD ,,, and compress it down to 3-5 MB for "Your Listening Enjoyment" ,,,,,

well, if you are like me ,,, this is just crap ,,,, I am old now, but back in the late 60's and early 70's ,,, during the golden days of vinyl, we had some of the best needles and music quality ever heard, and here it is 2007 and we still have not duplicated the quality of sound on music, that we had back then ,,,,

CD's do come very close for the most part however, and they are getting better ,,,,,

the BEST way to load music into your computer, into the I-tunes software, is to put the CD directly into your disk drive, set the download options in the I-tunes menu, to bring in each song off the CD as a WAVE file, uncompressed at 44.1 KHZ sampling rate.

this will then duplicate the amount of digital information that is on each song on the CD itself ,,,, so once you do this, and do your back-ups on your computer hard drive often ,,,, you will never loose your music and it will always be CD quality ,,,,,

and with the hard drive space on the new computers we are all buying approaching 150 gigs and higher ,,, 1 Terabyte on some of the desk-top machines ,,, you can now load thoudsands of songs onto your computer's hard drive, as full sized CD quality files ,,,,

then when you transfer them to your I-Pod, select the download menu to transfer each song from your computer, to your I-Pod with "minimum compression" ,,,, and then when you plug it into the aux input port of your Harley radio ,,,, experiment with the various equilizer settings in the I-pod menu, to find the one that makes the music sound the best over your fairing speakers ,,,,,,

that is how to get very close to CD quality sound, out of your I-pod, into your Harley audio system ,,,,,,

now please don't run-me-out-of-dodge forthis lengthy and technical post,,,, but some of you may want to know ,,,,

I wish you all a wonderful holiday weekend ,,,,,

JMJOHN ,,,, john@jmcorp.com ,,,,,

 

CD's sound great through those J&M speakers, BTW. They can handle all the volume the radio can pump to them without distortion.......vastly better than stock. As clarification on the iPod Shuffle....the tiniest of players.....there doesn't seem to be any settings on the software for replaying through large or small speakers. Maybe the other, larger iPods have this advantage?
The music I have on the Shuffle was downloaded fom the iTunes site, not from my CD's, and that may certainly play a role for this application.

Also, as another kudo for J&M, some friends of mine with Ultra's that use their headsets a lot, love the units from J&M, claiming the fidelity and clarity is 100 times better than the OEM equipment. I knew they made quality gear, and that's why I took a gamble on their replacement speakers.

 

With all respect to J&M (I know he builds a great product) but I guess I'm a little slow here but tell Me if it was worth changing from HT to J&M?I know they are both great speakers and I could see buying one or the other but again, was it worth $100.00 to go from HT to J&M?

 

I have the HogTunes speakers in my SG and just added their amp. I can tell you that their Ultrasound amp REALLY helps in the bass department. Also, much clearer now across all frequencies.

 

It was for the Peace of Mind for me if nothing else. I got a little "wiggly" when the ohm mismatch between output and speaker issue raised its head. Allegedly the amplifier section of the OEM radio will succumb to the resultant heat.....someday.....and I figured 100 bucks was pretty cheap insurance. Cheaper than replacing the radio for sure, and I plan on keeping this bike until we run out of fossil fuel.

Don't misunderstand, I like the HogTune speakers and Pez is a stand-up guy. Maybe I never would have a problem with the combination......maybe it isn't an issue.......but at least I don't have this running in the back of what is left of my brain. And as you can see, I'm an orangutan who knows very little about electronics.

 

Now I understand what You're saying Mr Wonderful.I can see Your reasoning now.Thanks for the update!

 

jjsanta ,,,,,,

my somewhat informal research tells me that the majority of the riders do NOT want to add another ampifier to their audio system and deal with the extra heat produced, current draw on the electrical system and potential for RF noises and squeals when transmitting on the CB ,,,,, that is why I designed the J&M/Harley speakers to FIRST get the maximum amount of sound out of the stock audio system ,,,, thenstill be tough enoughto hande an aux amplifier if the customer installed one ,,,,,

having said that, if I find a large market for an additional amplifer for the Harleys ,,,, J&M will certainly offer one ,,,,

 

I would be interested in a amp, maybe you could build some on a limited basic and see how it goes "don't know till you try" My music is very important to us especially after changing mufflers ,need more kick from stock. After reading all of you comments on this forum when I do replace my speakers they will be J&M. Before reading your stuff I wouldn't even have considered your company nice Job John.