these are the horns i want on my bike

[Jess Tolbirt]

i understand they make a mini version of these in chrome,,,but at 500 dollars i am still thinking is it worth it? can you imagine how far a bicycle rider out here on the Natches Trace riding in the middle of the road would jump if you snuk up behind him and hit these horns?

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xap1/v/t42.1790-2/11070038_427259920771441_1315867384_n.webm?oh=49c1d99a847c37030ffe52467650c6b0&oe=55084EC8

[BonS]

Pretty darn cool. What people do!

[John Schmidt]

The link doesn't come up for me, but loud does remind me of some air horns I used to have on my '92 Wing. While taking a break on my job in Daytona one day I was poking around in a marine store that handled a lot of used stuff as well as new. I saw this pair of trumpets on a table with one small beer can size compressor and asked about them. The guy said they came off a tugboat and did run off 12v. As I recall, one trumpet was 19" and the other 17" and when he hooked them up with just the one compressor they rattled the windows. I bought them and he threw in a second compressor. I mounted them under the saddlebags, one on each side with their own compressor in the bags. I could go up against any semi on the road with that setup, used to PO my wife 'cuz she never knew when I was going to hit it and she'd darn near jump out of the saddle. She'd hit me on the shoulder when I'd honk at livestock along side the road, send them running. Scared one woman so much one day she went over the curb and back. At the next light I told her to try looking before making a left turn from the right lane. She was still pale. Kinda wish I still had them, Orlando traffic needs a wake up call. 

[MarkT]

Pretty funny.  Great for parades.  Illegal in Colorado on a motor vehicle. (Though the law terminology is undefined so arguable - "excessively loud" IIRC)  I bought a train horn years ago and was collecting the parts to install it when I found the Hadley horn I did install. (I was hit back in 1970 by a brain dead bimbo and I said if I ever ride again I'm going to put a HUGE horn on my bike.)  Later I replaced the trumpets with the bigger Grover horn - who also made the train horn, coincidentally.  The two foot long fire truck horn I laid along the side of the engine is better aesthetically for both look and sound - much deeper tone, of course nothing like the volume of the train horn but still enough to scare the crap outta bad drivers.  The chord produced by a train horn is deliberately dissonant to make maximum attention I suppose - but still, I don't care for it.  Like fingernails on a chalk board.  The DEEP BLAST from my fire truck horn - now that was what I was looking for.  If I ever get ticketed for the horn - I can argue it's a truck horn and I have as much right to safety as a truck does.  Maybe more as every traffic judge surely knows right-of-way infringement against motorcyclists is a real problem.

Incidentally - that compressor in the video puts out around 130 lbs - I have one just like it, it's intended for airing up suspensions and tires on rock crawler 4X4's among other uses - might be a problem if he drops that bike on the tank with 130# in it.  Could explode with dangerous results.

My train horn I almost installed on the Valk:

[Jess from VA]

My experience with horns is that volume alone is not the only factor to consider.

Two tours in Turkey where the average driver is just a terrible driver, and no enforcement to speak of anywhere, with bad city traffic (and everyone used the horn continuously instead of the brakes, as the horn apparently never wears out).  So in a cacophony of horns, one louder one was ignored like all the others.

So I ordered the biggest JC Whitney Ah-Oo-Ga horn and put that on my El Camino.  It was decently loud, but the Turks had never heard one before, and they found it highly insulting, and they turned around an looked like they had been goosed, and gave me insulting gestures back.  So overall, it was much better than just a louder horn.  (And a bunch of them wanted to know where they could get one  )