First off, I have to say that you can have confidence that the Laser chip (and more importantly the map it contains) will be fine. Laser made a lot of exhausts for the 11S and there is no doubt at all that they know what they are doing. For reference the Laser USA guy - Robert Foster - is still active over on Pelican Parts, he was/is involved with the 11S Laser systems, very knowledgeable and seems helpful too.
The only failure scenario for the chip that I can see is that the now common preference for tuners to over-write the OEM mapping on the OEM chip may have lead a previous owner/tuner to over-write the Laser map with another. That is a very long shot and I wouldn't expect it to be true - just a possibility.
Moving on to the problem in hand, can I ask when the basic servicing was done last? I'm not trying to be rude but we know that the 4v Boxer is sensitive to a few things that will leave it running ok but that knock it 'off' a little if they are not perfect. Valve clearances being one, throttle cable sync and TB sync being a couple more. I know that the midrange pull on mine is something that starts to suffer first when its time for a little corrective surgery. Other things that may be causing the mid-range sheepiness are a soft coilpack (although I'd expect an increase in vibration too), poor spark plug function on the lower pair on the twin-spark engine and perhaps a clogged injector although that would normally bring other problems along. Basically, I'd check all the normal service items before I did anything - it's not just guff, you may well find the problem.
All of the following you should read with the understanding that my usage is not typical - my BCR is highly modified, used exclusively on the track, never on the road and is always in pieces while I try to improve it to do a job it was never designed to do. This means that my definition of 'best' will differ significantly from that of a road only rider. It also means that someday soon, I'll blow it sky high and have to start again.
To clear up my conversation with Tom about his bike: I rode his bike quite hard on track at Snetterton and I remember being impressed with its smoothness and delivery overall. There was a mid-range hesitation in there though and at the 4 -4.5K range too. At the time I put it down to a standard OEM mapping which contains a lean mapping at that point for emission compliancy. I did not know at the time that Tom's bike had the same Laser chip (installed by Er-Minio) that you have in yours. Its an interesting thought that perhaps Laser had to 'hole' their map at 4K to pass the stricter emission regs in some European countries and gain type-approval for their system? Pure speculation that one though and I don't think it's likely. I also remember wondering if I could distract him with a couple of dancing girls while I nicked his front Ohlins.
Assuming yours is tickety-boo and you'd still like to improve things, there are a number of routes to take. I'm not going to into a comprehensive list of all of the many available parts and systems that all report performance gains for 11S here, that's far too much work on a day where I have to service 2 tractors and take the BCR to my workshop to weld up the downpipe that cracked at Snetterton last time. Likewise I'm not going to get into a conversation about the ethics of modifying the 11S in the first place. There are many people who find the idea of trying to improve the engine performance of the 11S absurd in the extreme. I suspect a post or two on that very topic will appear here in time. Suffice to say that I *like* to tinker and that my primary reason for having done all this work is because I enjoy it. Yes I know I'm a freak - I'm happy with it. Laptimes are just a way of keeping track of how well my mods are working. Check back to see what I do with the 12S when I get my hands on one.
Right, that's quite enough of that. I've been over a few of the tuning options over time and there are only few things that I would recommend that you do. You seem to have the first three of those - the De-cat, filter upgrade and re-chip. If you don't find a solution within the bounds if a little servicing AND can't live with the problem AND enjoy a little tinkering then I would highly recommend getting a Power Commander. Be careful here though. You should understand that the main benefit of the Power Commander is the ability to add, and just importantly, subtract a little fuel flow from the injectors at particular points in the rev-range. Think of it as fine tuning the map to your particular engine. In order to fully realise the potential of doing this you will need to buy and fit the PC3 and then take the bike to a Dynojet tuner with a rolling road and ask him to make you a custom map for your bike. He will run your bike on his dyno whilst looking at the air-fuel ratio at each point in the rev-range and configure the PC3 to make sure the AFR stays within the correct stoichiometric range for best performance (somewhere between 13:1 and 14:1 normally). Its not cheap however and normally costs about £500 including a new PC3. There may well be tuners who can remap your existing chip (Rexxer, etc). Perhaps they would be cheaper. That main point here is that your bike is run on the dyno to give a bespoke assessment of your engine and therefore a map that you *know* is good for your engine. It is never a bad idea to get a Dyno-run on an engine *before* any upgrade work. You can often find problems that way before you buy expensive upgrades and at the very least you are left with a baseline against which the effectiveness of future modifications can be measured. I speak from experience as I've done more than few Dyno runs on mine to get to where I am now. There's a thread around here someplace with a few of them. It shows the CCP differences too...
Where was I? Oh yes, I was trying to work a conclusion out of this horrible rambling mess of reply - In short, you should make some basic service checks (google Rob Lentini or try
www.ibmwr.org/r-tech/oilheads), take a long look at it to see if you can live with the problem, perhaps take a current baseline dyno to see if the AFR is causing the problem (because if the AFR is good in the mid-range then your problem is either electrical or organic) and if funds permit, slap a PC3 on it before heading to the dyno.
