At this point in time, I'm declaring the Pyramids the winner. One thing that helped was a tweak on the truss rod. Once I got that all leveled out, the increased tension was no longer a problem. The G string still hits a bit hard, but I'm getting used to it and it can be a useful tool in the belt. It's kind of like the rest of the Starfire. It's idiosyncratic as all get out and there's no way I would consider the tone and feel consistent all over the bass the way an Alembic is, but that's part of its charm. Once you get used to it, it becomes part of the palette of flavors.
I also really like the interaction of the strings with the Series II filters. They are different because the TIs have more midrange information going on, so that can be interesting, but for what I'm going for, the ability to bring out more of the top end stuff and then boost it so that it drives the input of the F2B gives me some of the grind on big chords that I was looking for. TIs are great strings, but the Pyramids have something very cool going on. Much more like the late 60s/early 70s Casady/Lesh tone. I'll see about getting a few samples up on soundcloud.
While I'm blathering on, I also think the Grace M103 is a huge step up from all the DIs I have been using before. I ended up not really using the EQ section, but had the compressor set up with a high ratio but also a high threshold so it only kicked in on peaks. My previous DIs had all been transformer based, which can sound very good (the F1X is excellent), but Mike really got it right with this one. The combination with the F2B is a winner!
