When I initially picked mine up, the down pipe was completely shot. I replaced it myself and drove it a few miles down the road for the exhaust shop to chop out the center section to straight pipe it back to the relatively new muffler. Let me tell you, the drive down there was absolute comedy as the sound was DEAFENING. I am talking NASCAR track, car alarms, reverberation off the buildings. It was all grins the whole way. Once the system was hooked up, it still growled nicely and had nice giddyup.

That being said, in contrast currently run a 68' Volvo 142 with just the center resonator, no muffler as it was all rusted out. The tone is similar, but a little louder and drones a lot more on the highway as the restriction is directly below the cab. I also notice that it seems to lack a little bit of the off the line torque that should be there and attribute it to the change in backpressure from a lack of rear muffler.

Long story short, recommend the center resonator delete over the muffler delete, unless you really want to drown out the ricers.