No one asked me, so here's my 2 cents.
The availability of several complete working replacement ignition systems for our obsolete bikes is nothing short of amazing. Every one of these systems is the result of someone seeing a need and opportunity, and with no guarantee of success or return they took the chance, leapt in and designed, built, or modified a working ignition for the XS650. The systems available all will do the job (including the original points) They span a wide range of price points, features, availability. My congratulations to all those that have waded in and made and marketed working product.
Now to the current argument; is crank timing a superior system worth spending more for? For the average user? nah. For the racer fighting for every last fraction of a horse power on the ragged edge of detonation? Yeah it's hard to argue it's better. Well over 95% of users just grab the stock timing settings or ear time it till it runs OK and call it good. Those factory settings were engineered for a different world than we live in today, fuel, carburation, user profile are all considerably different now. If you go to the effort you can probably tweak them for the way you ride with better results. Bu how many do that with a reasonably refined metric of finding the "right" setting? I've put a couple miles on XS650's using; stock points, stock TCI, Pamco with and without e-advance, and even a Martec over a wide variety of riding styles from potsing to "too fast for the street" hammering. I think I can detect the deficiencies inherent in points ignition but find it perfectly acceptable for "street" riding when decently maintained. If I were going racing, funds weren't an issue, and I was pretty sure of supplier reliability, I would run a crank fire system. If the average US based Joe asks me what to use, I say Pamco and lay out the advance timing option plusses and minuses.
Try and keep this to the point. I think I see what Hoos is doing and think it's a bit borderline located in the garage compared to the vender section but the info serves the owners well enough for my sniff test. The various posters may be revealing much more about their attitude and business practices than they realize.
The real holy grail is a modern multi parameter, sensor based, computed advance curve, but we're riding antiques not F1 bikes.
A closing point. A blanket condemnation of a product because it has Chinese built components is simplistic and dated. Those same arguments were once used against (insert asian, several european, or north american countries here). They all have had varying degrees of quality over the years and they all continue to improve with the market weeding out the bad apple manufacturers.
