DiMarzio DP215 Evo 2 Bridge

The Evolution is a super hot pickup with lots of harmonics and is very tight. However, it had an issue when you try to calm it down. It seemed like it was always full on with no real way of introducing some dynamics to your playing. If you’re someone who likes to ride the volume knob, you’ll probably not like the original Evo. That’s why DiMarzio (or Steve Vai, I’m not truly sure) decided to make the Evo 2. This is similar to the Evo, but it’s not quite as tight sounding, yet it’s more harmonically pleasing and complex. The pickup has a lot of unique overtones going on with it. It has a lot of midrange, so keep that in mind. If you put this in basswood, it might be a bit too strong in the midrange, but a lot of people like it in Ibanez guitars, so it might be worth a shot. Personally, I find this best suited towards alder or mahogany bodied guitars as it really helps push those complex mids while leaving everything else fairly even. It’s not overly bright like the original Evolution was, but this still has a lot of harmonics that the traditional Evo has. I originally put this in my RG3120 and really liked the results I got. I’ve since taken it out and replaced it with something else simply because I like to change up pickups once in awhile, but this is a very solid pickup. I’ve since moved this to my JEM, and it works amazingly well with the middle single coil for those Hendrix and SRV kind of tones in the bridge position when split with the single coil. My guess is that this would sound great with a push/pull, but I didn’t have any on hand to test it, and I didn’t feel like opening up my guitar again.

The DiMarzio Evo 2 is the Evo that most people like. This pickup fixed most of the problems that everyone had with the original Evo. Where as the original Evo was extremely tight, bright, hot and hard to tame, the Evo 2 helped reduce some of those qualities while still making harmonics jump out like crazy. It features four conductor wiring, a ceramic magnet and adjustable pole pieces on both coils.

The original Evo was definitely a love or hate pickup. It was very bright, extremely tight and didn’t clean up when you lowered the volume knob. The Evo 2 tamed some of that brightness, increased the complexity of it, added more touch sensitivity and made it a bigger sounding pickup while still having those awesome harmonics that the original Evo had.

The midrange in this is boosted a good bit, so keep that in mind. It can make a guitar sound somewhat narrow, but it should mate with most woods. I’d probably recommend against using it in mahogany, but it depends on what your particular mahogany sounds like. The treble and bass are fairly even on this, so it delivers tone in spades. The split coil sounds are great, and the parallel tones are real cool as well.

If you didn’t like the original Evo pickup, I highly recommend trying this one out. It still has the similar characteristics of the original Evo, but it is a bit more tame and easier to handle. It’s not as extreme, so I find it works in more applications. I’d really like to hear this pickup with an Alnico 5 magnet, though. I think that would really make this thing come alive even more. I thought about doing a magnet swap in mine, but I’m too lazy to go through the process.