PSE Evolve Cam Tuning – secrets behind the most versatile cam!

Ever since 2017, PSE has changed the game when it comes to cam customization when they released the infamous Evolve Cam. Anything you could want to adjust relating to your cams could be done quickly and efficiently on this system. It’s child’s play!

Cam tuning the PSE Evolve cam is a five-stage process; stages include:

1. Draw length
2. Cam Timing
3. Yoke tuning
4. Percentage let off
5. Reference Points

By the end of this post, you will have learned the ins and out’s of adjusting your PSE like a total pro!

1 Draw Length

Draw length is perhaps one of the most vital things about your setup. If your draw length is off, then you’re off; no questions asked. So as you’d imagine, it would be best if you got it right, and it sure helps when you have a cam that will give you lots of options in a large range of draw length settings. Depending on what Evolve cam you have, the range of draw lengths will vary.

For example, if you have the EM cam, the draw lengths will range from 24” to 30” compared to the SE, which would range from 28” to 33.5”, bearing in mind these specs are taken from 40” axle to axle bows. Shorter axle-to-axel bows will have the same amount of range of draw lengths. They will be smaller values of draw lengths. I will go into specifics a little later on in the post.

Finding the right draw length for you can be challenging, but I’ve got a quick and easy way to calculate it. Make a T shape with your arms and then get someone else to measure your arm span from finger tip to finger tip, then divide this number in two. This will give you an excellent starting place as to what your draw length will be.

As you’ll soon learn, the Evolve cam increases in half-inch intervals, so don’t worry if you are in between a half-inch interval; you can always put twists in or out of the strong to make it longer or shorter.

I’ll use myself as an example to make this a bit clearer. My draw length is 28.80”, and there is no setting on your evolve cam for this figure, so what I must do is set my cam to 29” and put a twist into my string to make it shorter.

To know if you’re putting twists into the string, you need to identify which way your strings are being twisted and either twist with the way they are being twisted to make the string shorter or take twists out from the string to make the string longer.

Having the cam settings go up in half-inch increments means you spend lots less time twisting the string and more time shooting which I’m sure everyone will agree is better no matter what. Now that you know how to calculate your draw length and what to do if you are stuck in between the half-inch increments, I’m now going to share a chart I’m certain a lot of you will find helpful.

It is a chart that tells you what draw length setting corresponds to what letter on your cam. Once you have this, you will have all the knowledge you need to nail your draw length down to a t.

Now you’re fully equipped to get your draw length nailed! But the versatility of the evolve cam doesn’t stop there.

2 Cam Timing

The next essential you need to know about your evolve cam is how to time it. Personally, what I believe to be a no-brainer is that on the cams themselves, it is marked where the cams will be timed with the buzz cables indicated by a small dot on the cam. Other bows do not offer this simple yet extremely effective design feature to time your cams.

When coming from the factory, your bow strings will be timed already, no matter what brand of bow you shoot. But as soon as you change the strings, your flying solo when attempting to time your cams. But not with the evolve cams. Using the mark indicated on the cam; you can tell at a glance if your top or bottom cam is early, late, or on time.

To do this, you need to identify if the buzz cable is before (early) or after (late) the mark. If it is before the mark, your string will be in-between where the mark is and where the cam says ”EVOLVE CAM SYSTEM” To fix this, you will need to lengthen the string by taking twists out of the cable.

Once you take enough twists out of your buzz cable, it should be directly in line with the mark on your cam, meaning that it’s timed. The only other situation you could have is if the cable is after the mark, in which case you’ll need to put twists into the string to bring the cable back to be in line with the mark in the cam.

Although yes, that may sound a little confusing, I have a tip for you all. You have a 50/50 of being right or not. So even if you did twist the string the wrong way and the string ends up being further away from the mark on the cam from where you started, then you need to go the opposite way of what you’ve been doing. That’s the beauty of the mark on the cam. You can never be lost!

A little tip that I’ll share with you, which I find makes this process even easier – with a white paint pen, mark your cam; it makes it so much more visible and will make your life so much easier in the long run.

3 Yoke Tuning

This one is for those who like to keep their center shot true. Yoke tuning is an effective method to get rid of that nasty left and right tears through paper, and now thanks to the evolve cam, it’s even easier to get a bullet hole through paper with its floating yoke system on both top and bottom cams.

The reason that yoke tuning on the evolve cam is too effective is that the yoke cable is attached to the inside of the cam, meaning it’s closer to the cam, meaning any adjustment you make to the yoke cable will be made with more accuracy rather than if it was attached to the axel on the outer part of the limbs.

With this adjustment again being available on both top and bottom cams mean the perfect left or right tear can be fixed through just your yoke cables.

If you don’t know how to adjust for whatever tear through the paper you get, let me break down the difference between a left and right-hand tear for paper tuning.

• Left nock tear

For a left nock tear, as shown above, you will add twists to the left side of the yoke while taking twists out of the right side.

• Right nock tear

For a right nock tear, as shown above, you will add twists to the right side of the yoke while taking twists out of the left side.

4 Percentage Let Off

Here’s an interesting one for you. Percentage let-off plays a huge role in how your bow holds. To put it simply, the higher your percentage let off, the less weight you will be holding at full draw, and this plays a huge part in how your bow will aim and hold.

Target bows are generally always in the range of 65-75% let off, and hunting bows are in the range of 80-90% let off. In the evolve cams case, depending on which cam style you are shooting, you can change the percentage let off with the twist of a screw.

To check what percentage let off your cam has got to go to PSE’s website and look up the model of your bow and the cam that you are using. Once you’ve identified which cam you are using, you can play around with the settings.

A simple way I remember adjusting the let-off on the evolve cam is the further away the stop is, the higher the percentage of let-off. On your cam, there will be set settings for which percentage it is, and again, depending on the cam, it may be three or two different settings. But the way of remembering stays the same for which way is a higher or lower percentage.

Most target archers opt for shooting with either a 70% or 75% let off as having a bit of weight to hold means ultimately you’ll be steadier. I always use the analogy of holding a piece of paper when explaining this to people.

Imagine you’re asked to hold a sheet of paper as steadily as you can; you’ll only be able to hold it as steady as your hand will stay, however when holding something with a bit of weight to it, you’ll find that you can hold it steadier than the piece of paper. So, in a nutshell, a bit of weight is good! This also means you can stack a bit of weight on your front rod to counteract the weight you held at the full draw, which again will steady up your shot.

Something to keep in mind, particularly for any bow hunters (or anyone else using 85% let off or above). The higher let-off you go, the less tension is in your string at full draw; this means your string can be more easily manipulated by face pressure. So if you are shooting a high let-off, consider how much face pressure is in your shot routine.

5 Reference Points

This is more of a trick I use for my nocking points. There are a few holes in the evolve cam, and I certainly make use of them, and you should too. The first thing you do when setting up a bow is put on your rest and get a nocking point and d loop and get a tune that you’re happy with.

Once I have that done, I’ll mark using a paint pen two lines on both the top and bottom cams. This will allow me to measure the distance from the mark on my bottom cam to the bottom of my nocking point. Once you have that distance measured and recorded, you are now free to change where your nocking point will be without the worry of getting it back to the same spot as it was before.

You’ll avoid the pain of redoing the nocking point while trying to keep an arrow in the bow simultaneously.

Well, now you should be more than equipped to fine-tune your evolve cam to suit you just perfectly, and I think you’ll agree after reading this article it’s an extremely adjustable cam! What’s not to love about it?

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