Hi d.....,
The first bikes were 2015 and we released to Market too early. It appears that the Factory did not fully test them outside their own racetrack simulations. Also the fine tuning of the emission to an actual bike on the production line was slipshod.
Some were delivered as lemons and some creamy smooth. No two bikes were the same. PD and service from selling dealers in the USA seemed to be joke by our standards in Australia.
Suzuki released a new ECU around May 2016, to stop the bikes from surging up in speed by 500 rpm and then dropping back shortly after, and repeating this over and over.
Some people who got this ECU on warranty claim said that it fixed more than that, and made it less on and off on a constant throttle. Suzuki said no it didn't.
I personally had a May 2016 bike, that was a thin cream, rather than rich cream. It was perfectly OK once the suspension was correctly set for sag and become more bedded in, and in the engine by 4000 km.
Last week I bought a 2019 1000, and it is so different to the 16. It is a further refinement. 2018 saw so engine changes to smooth it out, and for 19 Suzuki have fitted a less abrupt opening throttle grip tube.
Continuous development, but the bike just looks the same and the stale old stories keep rolling out of the mouths of the uninformed folks who have only ridden a 2015 first edition or just read stories somewhere.
Yes, you can upset this bike by being ham fisted with the grip action. If you think of a racebike and how it should fire strongly away from the start line, this the how the 1000 is designed to be and is.
A Racer for old Racers - your either on the throttle OR off it.
If you jerk it on and off, it will object by being jerky. If you know how it needs to be ridden, it's all good. It's not a scooter with a rubber band drive. When you twist that grip in anger, it's like you've lit 2 rocket boosters onto the bike, even now in 2019.
If you want a Honda CB1100EX sort of big bike, the GSX-S1000 is as far from that as a HD is away from the EX.
A lot of the time I think the wrong sort of people (say, returning riders who haven't ridden a bike for 20 years) buy the 1000 without test riding it (there should be enough second hand one's around today),
and imagine the 1000 is a modern 1980's Naked GS1100E that they may have once owned. How wrong they are !
Rob.