For my XR 1200 version 1, I went with the Vance & Hines exhaust.  In less than a year, the black finnish on the header pipes degraded significantly.  The pipes sounded great and performed well, they just looked like crap after only a few months.

So for XR 1200 version 2, I decided to give the Bassini exhaust a try.  The V&H pipes were 2-1-2, while the Bassini is simply 2-1.  The Bassini is louder than the V&H and hopefully soon the weather will be good enough to get it out on the road and check out the performance.

Installing the pipes was a bit of a challenge, but took less than two hours in total, and I'd never swapped out an exhaust before.  I paid a shop to install the V&H pipes on the first bike, but for version 2, I'm going to do all of the modifications myself.  Considering I feel much more comfortable sitting at a keyboard digging into the guts of systems, having tools in my hands and working in the real world is a challenge.  Learning new things and experimenting is how I honed my systems skills over the years, applying that same attitude to the physical world provides a new level of satisfaction.