Just making one of my rare visits to the Forum and spotted the thread on your quest to find a lighter touring bike. You have probably moved on and have your new mount by now but I thought I would throw my experience into the mix just for the heck of it.
I reached your position in 2017 and eventually settled on a 2015 Yamaha MT09 Tracer (c/w OEM panniers)
It took me a little while to get used to it after stepping down from the silky smooth ST1300 but soon came to love this firey little machine. I have now done over 60,000 mostly touring k’s on her over the past 7 years. It pretty well ticks all your boxes. I can definitely credit this little bike with keeping me touring on into my dotage (turned 80 this year) and am planning to celebrate with a 4000k x 4 day run in a couple of weeks.
Here endeth the lesson
Cheers
DickB aka Yewie
