Posted by Robert Gomez on
While this article is absolutely a shameless plug for our new collaboration with Soundskins, it’s also an excellent way for you to understand the “why” behind your need for a custom sound deadening kit for your hard bags.
There are two main factors we need to look at and how we can fix them.
Airborne Noise
Airborne noise comes from sound getting trapped and bouncing around in your hard bags. Sound damping material fixes this by absorbing and blocking the road noise and vibrations.
Structural Noise
Structural noise comes from the tires, exhaust, and engine. These are heard as buzzing, rattling, squeaks, etc., and can be incredibly annoying when interfering with your favorite song.
When you have the wind beating against your ears along with the humming and rattling of the road, you’ll be lucky if you can hear your tunes at peak volume. That’s why a sound deadening kit is essential - especially for Harley riders.
Good question and an important distinction to learn.
Sound deadening is placing material over metal to reduce vibrations, which in turn reduce unwanted noise. Sound damping (or dampening as it is often incorrectly referred to) is similar but additionally reduces the amplitude of the sound waves. Ideally, you want both, and here’s why:
Other kits have foil on the outside, causing the sound to be reflected inside a hard bag and creating audio chaos as it bounces around inside the bag. Our kits have the foil sandwiched between foam and a layer of rubber, effectively absorbing the unwanted sounds and allowing you to hear only your music with concert-level quality.
We at American Hard Bag knew that no matter how incredible the speakers you were putting in your hard bag were, they would never sound as good as intended unless we created a sound damping kit specifically for Harley hard bags. That’s when we decided to team up with Soundskins Global - the leader in car audio sound deadening, to create custom cut kits just for your Harley bagger.
Made of acoustic foam, foil, and butyl rubber, the templates are measured to the exact specifications of your year and model bike, run through a Waterjet Cutter, and sent to you with marked pieces and easy-to-install instructions.
Are you ready to hear your music for the first time? Give our audio experts a call or buy now!
