The Evolution® Neck and Bridge humbuckers are the result of two years of research to come up with the right sound for a very demanding player: Steve Vai and his Ibanez® Jems. Both pickups are designed for maximum impact and power. The neck pickup is fat, punchy and loud. The bridge pickup is tight, aggressive and louder. Both pickups have our patented dual-resonance configuration to reproduce more harmonic overtones than conventional humbuckers. Evolution® pickups are not polite-sounding, and they’re not for the inexperienced, but – if you’ve got the chops and a hot amp – your sound will burn. The Evolution® pickups were originally designed with live gigs in mind, but they have so much presence and definition that they’re great recording pickups, too; they slice right through even the densest mix.

F-spaced pickups measure 2.01" (51 mm) center-to-center from the first polepiece to the sixth. Standard-spaced pickups measure 1.90" (48 mm). Although some players believe that F-spaced pickups are only for the bridge position of tremolo bridge guitars, many guitars with fixed bridges (including post-1998 Gibson® and Epiphone® Les Paul®, SG® and semi-hollow guitars) should have F-spaced pickups in the bridge position. Most tremolo equipped guitars that have a nut width of 1-11/16” (43mm) or more should also use an F-spaced pickup in the neck position. If you’re replacing a bridge-position pickup and you're not sure what your string-spacing is, it's usually better to get an F-spaced model. It is not necessary for the strings to pass exactly over the center of the polepieces for best performance, but it is wise to avoid a situation where the E strings are sitting completely outside of the outer pole pieces.