Pyramid VI Flatwound String Set

I bought these as I love flatwounds and had just bought the Harley Benton GuitarBass VI. Thomann specifically recommend these strings for this guitar. I replaced the tuners on the guitar with a set of Fender locking tuners and put this set of strings on. They have quite a rough feel for flatwounds, even the Harley Benton own brand flatwounds are smoother. The tail ends at the tuners are bizarrely crimped, I can't explain why. Every 2-3mm the core wire is definitely and noticeably thinner than the general core diameter. I've never seen this before. Maybe it makes the strings grip better against themselves to help with tuning stability. It does make them fragile, especially if you put them in more robust tuning heads. I won't be buying these again and I wouldn't recommend them as flatwound strings. I'm going to wait for the flatwound strings from La Bella to come back in stock and buy a couple of set of those and hope they're better.

After realizing that La Bella Bass VI flatwounds wouldn't fit due to the difference in tailpiece positioning, I ordered a set of these since they're directly recommended by Thomann for the HB GuitarBass. Quite the nasty surprise to find that the winding length on these is too long to be usable. Loosely pulled straight, the windings on the low E string go about 2 inches past the tuning peg, 1 inch past on the A string, and the D string windings end right at the tuning peg. This is where I stopped attempting to install these strings, as all 3 of these will have a significant amount of the wound string wrapped around the tuning peg, a huge problem for flatwounds. Adding to that, the low E is too big to fit through the tuning peg, so by my estimation it will end up with 6-7 complete wrappings around the peg to get to tune.

Bottom line, if you're thinking about getting these strings for your HB GuitarBass, save your money and try something else.