Evolution...

I know I’m a Johnny-Come-Lately to this whole Dave Smith thing, but I finally nutted up and bought an Evolver this week. It just showed up, and boy, howdy is this little guy the bomb. I’d have a hard time coming up with a better value-for-money in the music industry than the tabletop Evolver, and that’s a fact.

First nice thing I’ll note, since I haven’t really seen it mentioned in the reviews I read, is the construction quality. It is incredibly rare to be able to buy an electronic music instrument that was actually made in the USA any more, but quite frankly, I’ve seen other boxes in this price range that were far less capable that were made out of extruded plastic and sheet aluminum, so I fail to see where the cost-cutting comes in to play. This thing is heavy and is made out of thick steel. High quality pots and a nice big display. I have no complaints whatsoever about the build quality. The panel is dense, and maybe a bit tricky to read in a live situation, but that’s the only thing I could fault about the package itself.

Sound-wise, it is fantastic. The addition of the DCOs and the delay really make it sound contemporary, as opposed to other modern analogs, most of which I am not impressed with. There are some very crafty presets that make use of the feedback path of the on-board delays, and I thought of about 20 songs while I was sifting through the included sounds. In short, that’s what a new synth is supposed to do. They don’t all do it, that’s for sure.

So, I’ll have to spend a little time with it to be able to offer actual opinions about signal flow and programmability and such, but for now, it’ll set me up just right. I’m fairly happy I bought this. Go buy one now. Seriously. You’ll thank me later.