Can't speak to the Vee nor the FJR, but came from decades of sports and sport-tourers. My last was a Honda VFR 800 - you don't get much smoother than that V4 when cruising in the 70-90MPH range. I don't miss it a bit.
The Tenere is by far the best bike I've ever owned. It takes a few thousand miles for everything to smooth all the way out and get fully broken in, but when it does it is quite the ride to behold. Not that it's bad when new, but it's pretty cool when you hop on with six thousand miles on the clock and think, "Damn this thing just keeps getting better!"
Comfort is very subjective, but I dialed mine in with a very slight change in handlebar angle and flattening out the seat with shorter grommets in the rear. Total cost, about $2.00, and 5 minutes of my time. Definitely the best stock seat I've ever had. and while I'm no Iron-Butt like some of these guys I've pulled down 650+ mile days with no discomfort - was up and ready to roll the next morning. My only complaint about the seat is I wish the foam was a bit more firm, so I may look into options as the miles-and-time add up and the stock foam gets softer.
Spokes? I check them every now-and-again to make sure nothing is loosening up (zero loose spokes in 16,000 miles) and I just don't worry about the appearance anymore. Actually, even with a patina of surface crud on them I just don't see it as something that detracts from the appearance of the bike. Again, I don't even notice it...
Buffeting - yeah, I had that with the stock windscreen. Bad! I mean bad like Buddy Rich playing paradiddles on my forehead with baseball bats, bad. Did I mention it was bad? My fix was a Madstad bracket and CalSci Shorty windscreen - all good now. I live in Florida so the additional airflow from the shorter screen is welcome 10 months out of the year - the other two months are covered by heated gear - so it's not worth it to me to investigate a taller windscreen, but I haven't seen a buffeting report yet that hasn't been resolved with some combination of bracket and/or screen. I'm 6' with a 32" inseam and I've seen guys here my size who've had zero buffeting issues with the stock setup. I don't know how that's possible as I tried a few different helmets, and it was always the same until I changed the screen and added some rake with the bracket. Again, that's something your going to have to work out for yourself...or maybe not... ???
My bike is setup for mostly sport-touring, and I believe it's perfect for that mission. It's also great for long days in the saddle (pick your flavor of asphalt) or ripping through some twistie roads - it'll actually surprise you there. And if like me it takes a few hours to get to interesting roads, you can get there and still be fresh enough to enjoy the fun. I run 90/10 tires as about 1% of my total riding time is off-asphalt, but it's been a blast going to find out where that occasional dirt road leads. Even with heavily street-biased tires the bike does fine on harder-packed dirt, hell I've even plowed through Florida sugar sand (albeit slowly) without incident. Or you can go extreme off-road, slap some knobs on and take this girl pretty much anywhere - no really...you can - I've seen it right here on this forum from normal human beings - not just Dakar elites.
You see, to me, the beauty of Yamaha's genius with this bike is that it's a perfect platform on which you can fashion the bike you desire. Just look around here, you'll see everything from sport-tourers like mine, to extreme distance tourers, to full-on nuclear-powered dirt bikes - and some that are a bit of all-of-the-above. Or you COULD just leave it bone-stock and have a great all-around bike...to the best of my knowledge though, RonH is the only person who has actually tried this.
You really need to take one for a spin and decide for yourself if the Tenere is the right canvas on which to paint your perfect bike...for me it is.
