Very interesting.

Do you know which actual part was loose and was therefore tightened/adjusted/replaced? The red circle seems to be highlighting something by the cam/rocker. Hard to tell, but is that a rocker arm to the right of the circle? (the vertical metal piece that appears to disappear near the base of the lower right valve).

I am guessing that the ticking followed the RPM changes? i.e., more ticking as RPMs increased, less ticking as RPMs decreased? Was there the same volume of ticking in any RPM, and was it consistent? (i.e., no missing ticking)

Not sure about the chain thing. If you are watching a chain go over the front sprocket when the bike is on the centre stand, at idle, in gear (with the rear wheel lifted), it might appear that the chain is tightening/slackening ... and you might see some "apparent chain slap" in the main run of the chain (the "slack" area between the two sprockets). This is caused by a load/no-load situation where the chain tightens to spin the rear wheel, but then the wheel speeds up and actually spins faster than what the chain is causing, so the chain momentarily slackens. Then the rear wheel slows a bit and the chain tightens to turn it, again. And so on. When a "slapping" chain (btw, it isn't really slapping) goes over a smaller sprocket, it appears to be occasionally lifting off the teeth.

BTW, a common situation happens when people "adjust" a chain when it is on the centre stand, using the owner manual's specs. The specs (usual free travel of about an inch) are intended for when the bike is resting on the ground with its riding weight (i.e., rider & gear). Obviously, you need two people (one to sit on the bike, one to measure the chain's play), but after you have set it with two people, throw the bike back on its centre stand and measure the chain play in its unloaded state. Depending on the geometry of a bike, a loaded bike causes a chain to be "loosen" because the distance between the sprockets decreases as the suspension compresses.

In my experience, one actually has to feel, by hand, each link to see if they move freely. If you can visually see a frozen link move over a sprocket, I'd have thought you'd hear it first. And I think there is considerable debate about using anything that penetrates an O-ring.

BUT .... if you noticed a big difference with the new chain ... hmmmm. Interesting. Did you inspect the old chain? Were some links indeed frozen?

Anyways, thanks for the info re our lovely JH600s. Fortunately, we haven't been freaked out by anything near the BMW 650GS fork problems that seem to have recurred. Check this out for a scary story ...

BMW front fork failure.