How to get that great Santana sound ?

[Robert Burns]

Thanks for the feedback... I wouldnt do anything to my Charvel, and
i do have the Active USA Dinky with tone control. Heck, i wanted a
Mesa anyway! Whats your thoughts on his Signature PRS for $4400.00?
Tons o' dough, but its purdy! And i have to disagree on his ranking.
To me he's in the top 5 of all time. If you hear 5 seconds of any of his
songs , you know who it is. How many guitarists ever could pull this off?
For that alone, he should get major praise. Emotion? Hes got twice
what Clapton ever thought of having! :-)

[markD]

when i was using a mesa/boogie mark IV, i plugged my hamer special P-90 in into it and sounded like santana almost instantly!!!! my PRS into the mark IV wouldn't sound like anything EXCEPT santana!!! especially on the neck pickup....

[akoch]

I was to his show once (don't ask me I did not pay for it). The sound was very typical Mesa. Lots of low mids, lifeless, even, smooth. It is no effort to re-create it with a tubescreamer and say a Mark IV. The rest is hist touch and his hands. You probably would not sound 100% like him (though I don't know ), but the base of his sound will be there.

[jgcable]

Hopefully from a Marshall...EVH art series guitar, and GT-8 processor.
Do you have to go Mesa Boogie, and buy a $5K PRS to do it? :-)
Any quick tips?

Wow.. you obviously weren't thinking about Carlos tone when you picked up your amp and your guitar.

You can get a great Mesa tone from your GT-8 but you are going to have to ditch the EVH and it you are using the Marshall for your basic tone and the GT-8 for effects you will need to ditch the Marshall too.
Santana tone is PRS-Mesa Boogie Mark series (you can also get his tone with the Nomad series and some of the older Studio Calibers)

[jgcable]

Thanks for the feedback... I wouldnt do anything to my Charvel, and
i do have the Active USA Dinky with tone control. Heck, i wanted a
Mesa anyway! Whats your thoughts on his Signature PRS for $4400.00?
Tons o' dough, but its purdy! And i have to disagree on his ranking.
To me he's in the top 5 of all time. If you hear 5 seconds of any of his
songs , you know who it is. How many guitarists ever could pull this off?
For that alone, he should get major praise. Emotion? Hes got twice
what Clapton ever thought of having! :-)

I agree that Carlos is a very popular guitarist but I can tell you why you can instantly recognize him after 5 seconds of any of his songs.

Its because he plays basically the same guitar riffs in every one of his songs for the last 30 years.

[VitaminG]

you could hear 5 seconds of a Violent Femmes song, or the Presidents of the USA song, or the Ramones, and instantly recognise any one of them. They each have a distinctive sound, which is certainly to be admired, but that doesn't make them top 5 guitarists.

[Guitardude86]

Wow.. you obviously weren't thinking about Carlos tone when you picked up your amp and your guitar.

You can get a great Mesa tone from your GT-8 but you are going to have to ditch the EVH and it you are using the Marshall for your basic tone and the GT-8 for effects you will need to ditch the Marshall too.
Santana tone is PRS-Mesa Boogie Mark series (you can also get his tone with the Nomad series and some of the older Studio Calibers)

Carlos has also been known to play various SG's (both Gibsons and Yamahas), Les Paul's etc. but it still sounds like him..
I understand what the threadstarter is asking, but if you ask me it's mostly in your hands bro..

[hippietim]

What do you guys consider classic Santana tone? Because the tones I consider classic have nothing to do with a PRS or a Boogie. He sure didn't play them at Woodstock - that was a P-90 SG. He sure didn't use them on Abraxas which has all the songs that 95% of you have ever heard by him until Supernatural came out.

[Endrik]

I personally like his modern tone the most, I'm always talking about his 90's or 00's tone. Vintage guitar magazines concider his classic tone everything he played with boogies or dumbles.

[Guitardude86]

Here's a vid of him playing Samba Pa Ti on a Yamaha SG, obviously improvising at places..
CHECK OUT THAT PICK!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSECQtF58BU

[Guitardude86]

Oy.. Talk about sustain.. Check out this vid. About 3:40 or something.. How long does he let that note ring?? Wish I knew how to do that..
I guess he must be cranking them amps way up or somthing..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym-O90uCF0E

[hippietim]

the common theme on all these videos is not the gear. it's him working the guitar in different ways. he tweaks his volume/tone controls and pickups a lot. and his picking hand technique varies a lot - he gets a lot of his dynamics just switching between a pick and his fingers and adjusting his attack. i guarantee you he'd sound about the same with any decent 50-100 watt tube amp with the power section dimed.

[tanpsi]

What do you guys consider classic Santana tone? Because the tones I consider classic have nothing to do with a PRS or a Boogie. He sure didn't play them at Woodstock - that was a P-90 SG. He sure didn't use them on Abraxas which has all the songs that 95% of you have ever heard by him until Supernatural came out.

I think that's right as far as all his hits and those live albums, I know he used a Yamaha Gibson like guitar a lot too. He may have used Mesa Boogies earlier, wasn't he part of the start of Mesa Boogie?

[Guitardude86]

the common theme on all these videos is not the gear. it's him working the guitar in different ways. he tweaks his volume/tone controls and pickups a lot. and his picking hand technique varies a lot - he gets a lot of his dynamics just switching between a pick and his fingers and adjusting his attack. i guarantee you he'd sound about the same with any decent 50-100 watt tube amp with the power section dimed.

Agreed I think even people who dislike Santana can learn a few tricks from him.

[Robert Burns]

I would be willing to bet that you Santana haters, are under 30!
You just needed to live back when he was one of the top 5.
Who were the other 4? Oh, just a guy named JIMI, ERIC, JIMMY,
and PETE! Man, some of you dont think anything was interesting
after 1980? LOL