I finally have this issue resolved.

I set the product price to 0.
In the Price Manager, I checked Yes for the "Priced by Attribute" (Display price will include lowest group attributes plus price".
On the Attributes Controller, I checked Yes for "Include in Base Price when Priced by Attributes". And price has to be entered for each strand.

Never did figure out the difference between the Price Manager and the Attributes Controller options....seems like they are saying the same thing, but I guess whatever it takes to get it to work.

I did have some products that didn't seem to want to price correctly but was able to copy attributes from the products that did price correctly.