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Kalium Strings Alive and Well

#81
tom-g said:
See I live in Germany and the strings I ordered usually sat in customs for at least 2 weeks anyway. With things as they are, living in Germany, I am not taking any chances. I will order my strings locally.
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In your situation, I'm pretty sure I'd do the same. I don't know of any German string makers, but is it convenient to order from other European countries? I guess you've got T-I in Austria, Dogal and Galli in Italy ... not sure what other options there might be.
 
#83
HaphAsSard said:
Ever heard of Pyramid?
I'm sure @tom-g has, but you should be aware of them too, if you ever need custom work.

[Optima (also owners of the Lenzner and Fisoma brands) are German as well.]
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D'oh!! What an oversight on my part. Of course I've heard of Pyramid; I've even used their electric guitar strings. They just slipped my mind. (Happens at my age.) And now that I'm thinking of this, of course I know about Optima too, though I've never used them. And I frequently use Hannabach strings on my nylon-string guitars, though AFAIK they don't make electric bass strings.
 
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#85
Just wanted to add my experience, I ordered a set on February 14th (largely because of the positive experiences posted here), and received them March 5th. Not quite as fast as some of the others, but not an unreasonable turnaround in my opinion. I went with a stainless set, which was darker than I expected, not sure if anyone else here has had that experience.
 
#86
Jimbowhit7 said:
Just wanted to add my experience, I ordered a set on February 14th (largely because of the positive experiences posted here), and received them March 5th. Not quite as fast as some of the others, but not an unreasonable turnaround in my opinion. I went with a stainless set, which was darker than I expected, not sure if anyone else here has had that experience.
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In color, or sound? I've noticed Kaliums are sometimes darker in color, but hadn't noticed anything in the sound...
 
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#89
Shanannigan said:
My recent order has been pretty slow.

Ordered on Feb 18th. I was notified that it was completed and shipped on March 2nd. But the tracking has been sitting at "Shipping Label Created" since then. Just asked for an update today.
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I completely forgot that I promised an update on this, and didn't deliver.

The strings arrived a few days after Skip responded to me.

The strings that arrived....were completely wrong. I had ordered a 7 string set with a low 146, and I received a 7 string set with a low 246. The gauges on the rest of the set were half correct, half incorrect. The 5 string set that I ordered was correct on 2 out of the 5 gauges. Luckily, between the 2 sets of strings I was able to piece together a "close-enough" 7 string set, but the other 5 strings are worthless to me. Including that bridge cable 246.

I give up. I've never experienced such a waste of time, money, and effort buying strings. I wanted to put my head through a wall when I opened the package. 0/10.

The Newtones I ordered also arrived and they are...okay. Not bad, but not great either. 7/10.

I ended up ordering a set of Curt Mangans. I will say, Curt shipped the next day and were at my door 3 days after ordering a custom 7 string set. I'm pretty happy with these and would give them a 8.5 / 10. I'll most likely stick with the Mangans for the foreseeable future. The fast shipping and quick response to an email I sent to curt with questions before ordering will keep me a customer.

It's too bad. A few years ago I would have rated Kalium a 10/10. And now, I will never in my life spend another penny on Kalium strings.
 
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#93
King V said:
I completely forgot that I promised an update on this, and didn't deliver.

The strings arrived a few days after Skip responded to me.

The strings that arrived....were completely wrong. I had ordered a 7 string set with a low 146, and I received a 7 string set with a low 246. The gauges on the rest of the set were half correct, half incorrect. The 5 string set that I ordered was correct on 2 out of the 5 gauges. Luckily, between the 2 sets of strings I was able to piece together a "close-enough" 7 string set, but the other 5 strings are worthless to me. Including that bridge cable 246.

I give up. I've never experienced such a waste of time, money, and effort buying strings. I wanted to put my head through a wall when I opened the package. 0/10.
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I don't know about the other four, but the 246 you could resell here. There must be some subcontra-curious folks who are wary of dealing with them directly.
 
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#94
J Posega said:
Highly recommend sending your feedback to Kalium. They probably won't respond, but you should still tell them that they suck.
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I think Skip has been told this quite a few times.
I'm out. Not worth the effort and I have found an acceptable alternative.

The never-ending string of excuses that comes from Kalium for failing basic 101 level concepts of business tells me that any feedback would fall on deaf ears.

Oh well, on to the next.
 
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#96
King V said:
I completely forgot that I promised an update on this, and didn't deliver.

The strings arrived a few days after Skip responded to me.

The strings that arrived....were completely wrong. I had ordered a 7 string set with a low 146, and I received a 7 string set with a low 246. The gauges on the rest of the set were half correct, half incorrect. The 5 string set that I ordered was correct on 2 out of the 5 gauges. Luckily, between the 2 sets of strings I was able to piece together a "close-enough" 7 string set, but the other 5 strings are worthless to me. Including that bridge cable 246.

I give up. I've never experienced such a waste of time, money, and effort buying strings. I wanted to put my head through a wall when I opened the package. 0/10.

The Newtones I ordered also arrived and they are...okay. Not bad, but not great either. 7/10.

I ended up ordering a set of Curt Mangans. I will say, Curt shipped the next day and were at my door 3 days after ordering a custom 7 string set. I'm pretty happy with these and would give them a 8.5 / 10. I'll most likely stick with the Mangans for the foreseeable future. The fast shipping and quick response to an email I sent to curt with questions before ordering will keep me a customer.

It's too bad. A few years ago I would have rated Kalium a 10/10. And now, I will never in my life spend another penny on Kalium strings.
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That sucks to here.

I did reach out to Skip after my post and he got back to me pretty quick, just said that he'd reach out to the post office to see why my package hadn't moved. After that it started moving and I received it a bit later.

I am happy with what I received, 6 string set .043 - .192 for low F# tuning. I've never been disappointed with the feel or sound of Kalium strings personally. It's just the shipping times that can be annoying sometimes.
 
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#97
Shanannigan said:
That sucks to here.

I did reach out to Skip after my post and he got back to me pretty quick, just said that he'd reach out to the post office to see why my package hadn't moved. After that it started moving and I received it a bit later.

I am happy with what I received, 6 string set .043 - .192 for low F# tuning. I've never been disappointed with the feel or sound of Kalium strings personally. It's just the shipping times that can be annoying sometimes.
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"Reached out to the post office" means that he brought it to the post office to ship.

In my experience, the tracking has always updated as soon as the package has been scanned by the post office. When a package has gotten lost, it's been in transit, it's not like it was just sitting on a desk in the post office until the seller called them.

You can generate a shipping label any time after someone places an order, and that's what Skip has done over and over again for years.
 
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#99
Yep. I had the above experiences a few times and that's why even though I always really liked the strings when they did get to my door, I won't buy them again. Sad to see they haven't been able to turn things around consistently.
 

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