« Calmed down version of the Evo »

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.