Dave Smith Instruments Evolver

Analog/Digital Synthesizer from 2002

My Evolver in 2009 was already well beat up

The year was 2003. Word had gotten out about all the analogue gear years ago and it had mostly been snapped up. I'd sold my Juno-60 just a year earlier, assured by the Roland marketing team that the JP-8080 could replace that old junk. It was all lies of course - the JP-8080 did not sound analogue at all and it was unlikely I was going to find an analogue synth in my budget ever again. They just didn't make them anymore.

I was offloading an RM1x and this guy with the online handle of "Dr. Evolver" had come over to take it off my hands. As we chatted and I told him of my predicament he just looked at me with a smile and said "You have to check out the Evolver". This wild synth carried me through the analogue winter of the early 2000's and still makes it onto nearly every track I do today.

Evolver Tuning Procedure

I found this text file from 2004 saved on my hard drive

Key Combos

Yes, there is a tuning procedure. If you hold down row 1 and 5 buttons at the same time, it will tune both filters and both osc waveshapes. This should only be done after the unit has been on for a while. The filters will never be perfect - they are analog, after all. The tuning just gets the two filters somewhat close to matching. Unless your filters are way out of whack for some reason, there will unlikely be much of a noticeable difference in the tuning procedure - which is why it hasnt been officially documented.

Beyond that, holding down row 1 and 2 together displays the controller processor version, and 1 and 3 together displays the DSP software version. There are a couple others that need to remain hidden.

BTW, I hope to have a new software version in about a month with a handful of new features. Stay tuned...

-Dave