Gauging where your bars feel right while sitting still may not work for some. More comes into it when you're riding. For sure some wind hits you even if you're riding a Goldwing, more on the Tenere. Back in the old days guys would put lower bars on the 70s and 80s standard bikes and although they may "feel" low in sitting, while actually riding the wind strikes up the perfect balance. All these common sense ideas went into the Tenere. Bars low enough to get this balance, any higher balance is gone and you're fighting the wind sitting more upright.
Just my acquired opinion after 44 years of riding. More windshield means higher bars, less windshield lower, no windshield lower yet. Hey, surprise, this is exactly what most the manufacturers do right from the start except for cruiser style bikes made for cool looks and no function. Logical, but not accepted by most.
Of course if a guy has a bad back ect, all this is different, but for my riding I found the balance thing very valuable for covering long distance in relative comfort, did 10,800 miles in 13 days on an old KZ1000 with low bars where I bought it with the stock bars I could barely stand a 200 mile day, so high bars are not always the cats meow, despite all the threads on all the forums.
