Out of curiosity, when did Alembic move away from shipping basses with flats to using round wound strings?

I bought an Alembic new in 1978 and it was shipped with Pyramid Gold Flats.   Maybe others can chime in on what strings their bass had when shipped and we can narrow it down a bit.

I want to say I've seen some build cards from the early-80's with Kaman strings? Later in the 80's they started saying Alembic strings on the few cards I've seen.


I can't for the life of me remember what my '81 Distillate said on its card. (one of the few I ever got with a used instrument...) I do remember it was quite heavenly with Pyramid Gold flats.

Among the historic pictures on the old website there was one showing an ad for Kaman strings showing Susan and Ron holding an Electrum and a Persuader, with a caption along the lines of "only the best will do".

Yep, I remember seeing that ad Adriaan. There's at least a couple Distillate basses in the Showcase Threads that have build card pictures with those Kaman strings. '82-'83.


And I see a build sheet for an '87 Vector that used Vinci strings. Pretty sure those were rounds... I wasn't playing bass guitar then, but Vinci guitar strings were all the rage about that time. Haven't seen them in years. Tony Rice even had an endorsement deal with them for a while, so we had to have them in my little acoustic open-chord world.

Tom Vinci sold his original company to Washburn in 2000; it has since gone under.
He is, however, making strings again, DBA Thomas Vinci Strings USA.  Supposed to be available through Amazon, EvilBay, and Acid Fuzz, but none on the first, the second won't open for me today, and Acid Fuzz lists one set - electric guitar, .010-.038 - for $3.85*.  But they're out of stock.


*To put that in perspective, the ones I use - D'Addario EXL, .010-.046 with a wound G - are pushing $8 nowadays.

Peter (who must needs wax philosophical, and posit "If you can't buy a string, does it exist?")

Does anyone have a picture of the ad,  "only the best will do"