“But can you make the Indian sound as obnoxious as a Harley?”
A “V” twin can be one of the nicest sounding man made noises there is. The trouble is that the “look at me” wants all the attention it can get even if it’s negative, so they run barely or completely unmuffled. I have a Ducati 900SS SP which is a 90° “V” (HD is 70°) so the cadence is slightly different. I have carbon fiber bodied mufflers that do a good job of keeping the sound at an acceptable level. Also, the exhaust is an ingenious two into one into two design that allows both cylinders to use both mufflers with no reversion. Even my wife, who cares nothing about motors, likes the sound. My touring bike is a BMW with the even firing boxer motor, in my opinion the best motorcycle engine ever built from a practical standpoint. Even with a nice aftermarket exhaust system it sounds about as sexy as the shop air compressor.
Yep. It’s a Harley thing.
Harley engines are 45 degree. (Except for the V-Rod, which has a 60 deg engine)
What makes Harley engines sound so unique compared to other twins is that the crankshafts are single pin. Most twins have staggered crank pins to fire cylinders evenly at 360 degrees apart. On a Harley, they fire at intervals of 315 degrees and 405 degrees.
Obviously Harley could make a staggered pin crank shaft. This is old tech to be sure. But it’s the sound. That’s why Honda started to copy the sound with their VTX1300 engine. They went backwards in tech to copy Harley.
Another Japanese manufacturer has topped producing overhead cams on big cruisers and went to overhead valve and pushrods to similarly copy Harley. Yamaha “Star” cruisers and their successors for example.