The Continuing Quest for the Perfect Sound
The ongoing quest for sonic perfection took another step forward when I saw a Scorpion Pipe on eBay. The pipe is a Scorpion model AP50S, made totally of stainless steel. In fact, the packing is supposed to be stainless steel instead of fiberglass, so even that should last for a good, long time.
It is a beautiful pipe of the oval style that seems to be the rage these days. It comes with a stick-on label, that was easily removed and stuck on my deep-freeze with all the rest of them. The end cap is engraved with a Scorpion logo, which looks really nice. 
From a business perspective, there exists a giant hole all the way through the silencer, so I was figuring it would be pretty loud.
It was easy to mount, looks nice on the bike, and is tons lighter than the stock pipe. The Scorpion pipe does not come with a chip. It is meant to be used with the de-restrictable Aprilias where you can clip the magic wire and get the secondary map. Since my bike does not have that feature, I just ran it as-is. Honestly, it worked just fine: no drivability problems or anything. It might be down a few potential horsepower over a chipped ECU, but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference without a stopwatch, so I don't really care.
But what about the sound? Well, here is an MP3 of the Tuono with its Scorpion pipe getting run through the gears to about 75 MPH. Subjectively, it sounds nice. Loud, but nice. The "blatting" sound is due to the microphone being located about 12 inches from the exhaust tip, so it is picking up nuances that you can't hear with a helmet on.
Did I mention that the Scorpion pipe was loud? Let me clarify that statement: it is windshield shattering, birds falling dead from the trees loud.
LOUD.
Yeah, it's pretty loud, all right. But as I have mentioned before, the Rotax engine just seems to be inherently loud. I have yet to hear an aftermarket pipe on an Aprilia that I would call "mellow".
As beautiful as the Scorpion pipe is, I think I'll put the stock pipe back on. I kind of like the "stealth" aspect the stock pipe brings to the table.
The quest continues.
I do the sound recordings on this website with a Boss BR-864 8-track digital recording studio. It has an internal microphone, but I like to borrow Mary's microphone since I figure it is much better quality than the internal mic on the Boss. Mary's mic is a professional grade device that she uses for singing. Being pro grade, it uses one of those locking XLR connectors so that the cable doesn't detach when gyrating with wild abandon on stage. So imagine my annoyance when I get back from the recording session ride, pull into the garage, and notice that while I have a cable, there is no microphone at the end of the cable anymore.
I listened to the entire recording session to try and figure when the mic fell off so I would at least know roughly where to look for it. And in fact, the BR-864 claims that the mic stayed on for the whole recorded portion of the trip. I shut down the recorder and rode the last 0.7 miles to the house, and it must have fallen off in between. I walked the road twice, but didn't see it. I guess I'm going mic shopping tomorrow.
C'est la vie.
It will be worth it in the end.
Wright Cyclones in full song.