SiReal said:"I ahve koni yellows on my slow accord. On the hardest setting, i blew both my headlight bulbs - they were 2 mth old $90 polarg B1s as well.
and everytime i went over a speed hump, it seemed as if my spine would compress. i now have it on the softest."

String said: "You aren't doing yourself any favours in handling with soft springs and the stiffest setting on the konis."

I have Koni 'Sports' on my Cb7 Accord using the stock springs. After a lot of experimenting I've ended up with Konis set at nearly full stiff front and rear. I find this setting gives better steering response (than softer settings) though may or may not be ideal for max grip in corners on a race track, but having said that I don't find grip lacking even on less than smooth roads, and even considering my cheapo tyres on standard rims. On the street I'd trade some outright grip for sharper steering response (helps avoid the potholes around here!).

I have front and rear strut bars too, and this may also affect what damper settings will work with a given spring on a given chassis, i/e. a less stiff chassis may not like the instantanous loadings imposed by stiff shock settings. Are strut bars good? I think they are essential with stiffer shocks (and springs too probably) to get the most out of the shocks. I can definitely feel the difference with / without strut bars, mostly this is 'feeling' thing but also has an affect on steering response and definitely substantially reduces scuttle shake on corrugated roads!

With stiff Koni damper settings the ride is on the harsher side on less than smooth roads, especially with the tyre pressures I'm running (38 front / 45 rear, arrived at with a lot of trial and error, very high on the rear due to excessively soft sidewalls on the crappy Falken ze329s fitted to rear). I don't mind this as a compromise for having a more stable / responsive platform, but I don't find it bone jarring or "neck compressing" (my wife hasn't complained yet!).

In the process of setting up these shocks I rang Proven Products (Koni importer) for advise. The bloke there told me not to run the Konis at FULL stiff because at this setting the valve(s) can / may close off making the shock almost rigid. He reccomended (for a stiff setting) to adjust to full stiff then back off a small amount. It may be your Konis are "neck compressing" at FULL stiff because of this??

I find the Konis are just too soft toward the softer end of settings. When adjusting Konis keep in mind that the adjustment is not very linear, e.g. say, a quarter turn from full soft will have much less affect on stiffness than a quarter turn from full stiff, i.e. as you approach full stiff the affect per degree of adjustment rotation seems to increase dramatically. For purposes of example, if we were to pick arbitrary numbers (from 0 to 100) to represent stiffness then zero turns would represent 0 (full soft), one full turn from soft may represent '30' stiffness, but the remaining 3/4 turn may represent the remaining '70'. Does this make sense?

Tip: Even when in good nick (and they may not be!) the stock upper rubber shock mounts (front and rear) are very soft and allow a significant amount of undamped motion in the unsprung and sprung masses that you can feel as a sort of suspension 'juddering' or as the body 'bouncing' after hitting a bump or sharp undulation. This 'juddering' or 'bouncing' is unreponsive to increasing shock stiffness (may even seem to get worse or at least more noticeable as shock stiffness is increased). This isn't just a problem for 'juddering' etc, but will also be significantly affecting things such as steering response and transient weight transfer...

Open your bonnet, while looking at the top of the shock push up and down on the fender. If you can see the shock shaft moving relative to strut tower then you have a problem here, and the rear shock rubbers are softer than the front ones (thicker, therefore more rubber, therefore softer).

I'd suggest replacing the rubber shock mounts with stiffer poly items, or (as I've done) compressing the rubber bushes using large washers (under the stock washers, and about the same OD as the stock washers) that have an ID slightly larger than than the crush tube. When tightened down this compresses the rubber mounts and stiffens them up considerably. I've compressed the stock rubber mounts by about 5mm(i.e. 5mm thick 'compressing' washers), which makes a very noticeable difference to this problem. When tightening the shock mount on the shaft, make sure that the 'compressing' washer(s) is concentric with the crush tube or the washer will get caught between the crush tube and the standard washer.

You may even find that harshness seems less with stiffer / stiffened shock mount rubbers. I think this may be because the uncotrolled (i.e. undamped) motion allowed by the soft mounts introduces a kind of 'secondary' harshness ('judder') that becomes more apparent as shock stiffness is increased.

PS. FWIW, from what I can gather all the real shock / damper experts consider there to be only three shock manufacturers at the top of the tree, and these are Koni, Bilstein, and Penske (in no particular order, though Penske may be the pinnacle). All the rest are second rate in comparison...