In Search of the Holy Grail, Part III (Carlos the Great)

Quote from Geraldo7

while i am @ 98% with joe b., i am total failure when it comes to carlos ... no matter which profile i use.

First of all you need the guitar with the best sustain that you can possibly find.
Then get Armin's profile pack 28 (Mesa Boogie MKV), don't forget to add some boost as soon as you picked the profile that fits Carlos' tone and your guitar best.
Armin's Mesa Boogies are a brilliant example of his profiles' strength. You get lots of choice and then you can build great results on top of that wonderful basis.
Don't forget to EQ, Carlos doesn't like bright and shiny tone, he's more on the dark side, but still some nice gloss. It's easy to find yourself under a blanket after tweaking a while, try to avoid that.

Hey, Mike43202 :

If your Zip Code is 43202, we live in the same metro area. I would have sent you a Private Message, but you haven't turned that feature on.

Quote from lightbox

First of all you need the guitar with the best sustain that you can possibly find.

That sound is pretty much the only use I ever found for my PRS. Although Carlos original PRS model was constructed a bit different and surely had other pickups than what PRS put in their production guitars, a PRS Custom is a good bet for that sound. In fact I had trouble getting anything else but that sound out of that guitar. Had a CU22 btw, a CU24 is not that close IMHO.

No need to get a PRS guitar to play Santana. His signature sound has not been crafted on PRS guitars anyway. Think about the Gibson SG he played at Woodstock or the Gibson L6S or the Yamaha SG-175B he played a lot in the mid 70ies (see videos below). Even a Gibson Les Paul is an instrument he used quite a bit in his career, even on his most successful album Supernatural.

Even the amps weren't so important for his signature sound, he used a Gallien-Krueger GMT 226A at Woodstock, he used Marshall Plexis and (mostly) Mesa Boogie Marks over the years.
I think the most important things to notice is he doesn't use a lot of Gain, he uses the neck pickup a lot with the tone knob rolled down quite a bit ... and don't forget to add a booster and/or compressor to get lots of sustain. It might help as well to turn down the amp profile's definition parameter a bit.

The rest is trying, listening, adjusting EQ a bit ... and a copy of his fingers, hehe.

I also found it interesting to read that he plays pure nickel strings instead of nickel-plated-steel ones.

source: http://www.vintageguitar.com/3248/carlos-santana/

Quote from Garrincha

That sound is pretty much the only use I ever found for my PRS. Although Carlos original PRS model was constructed a bit different and surely had other pickups than what PRS put in their production guitars, a PRS Custom is a good bet for that sound. In fact I had trouble getting anything else but that sound out of that guitar. Had a CU22 btw, a CU24 is not that close IMHO.

Santana's best tones were created long before PRS guitars even existed...watch the videos.

Quote from Geraldo7

Yes, ofcourse, Martin. Plus: there is no Carlos Santana Trademark tone at all.

• We have the late 60ies tone (Woodstock, Santana I and Abraxas). A rather raw early tube amp tone.
• We have the low gain, much shredding (Borboletta, Welcome) tone
• We have the IMHO best, with lot s of sustain and feeling on Moonflower
• We have a sound which begins to sound "american" with Zebop!, rather thin
• We have the commercial most non-carlos-sound on Beyond Appearances
• The fat, juicy, but somehow metallic of Blues for Salvador and Viva Santana (late 80ies)
• And then when it all comes together on Supernatural

And i did not even speak about his guitars!! Carlos once gave a legendary interview:

• CS: Oh, i could easily give you my settings of my amp, the gain, the treble, everything ...
• Q: Oh, yes. That's great!
• CS: ... and you would not sound like me. Forget it!

Haha! It is sometimes quite frustrating for my students, when they have noodled their 8 bars away, sounding terrible and i check their fender squire and get a good tone out of it. Carlos would sound good with a Hartke amp and a Fender Squire. And he would sound like Carlos, see above. That being said: I reamped the above sample with 230 amps, to no avail. Then i bought the Mesa for Christmas and i am finally in the ballpark.

cheers

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Why didn't you say this in your first post?

Quote from Geraldo7

Haha! It is sometimes quite frustrating for my students, when they have noodled their 8 bars away, sounding terrible ...

The best advise I could give your students, if they are really interested in Carlos' vibe ... they should watch "Buena Vista Social Club"!
This movie is a MUST for those who want to get an idea about and hopefully some feel for the latin vibe.

Quote from Guitartone

Santana's best tones were created long before PRS guitars even existed...watch the videos.

I know that and I've around long enough to have actually seen him playing his Yamaha SG 2000.

But there's a reason he went with PRS and that is they pretty much sound like that out of the box.

Of course you can always roll back the tone on any humbucker guitar or tweak the amp accordingly but a PRS sounds that dark and midrange heavy right from the start That might have had a certain appeal to Carlos.

I sold mine because you couldn't get any other usable sound out of it. Everything I played sounded like that sound and it is not always what you want (at least not always what I wanted).

IMHO there is not much of a mystery about that tone. It is on the dark side with a lot of midrange and he uses the bridge pickup with rolled back tone.

I've come across one secret though: He has a nice way of doing something like a manual compressor. He would roll back the volume, than pick the string and when the sound is fading he would turn up the volume to keep the sustain going. I haven't seen him for quite a while, but in the 90s he was doing that during all his solo parts. Very funny to whatch actually.

Quote from Garrincha

It is on the dark side with a lot of midrange and he uses the bridge pickup with rolled back tone.

Probably just a typo, but he mostly uses the neck pickup with rolled back tone.

Wow, man. I was confused today. Actually almost shocked. Geraldo, in case you received a PM regarding Carlos' sound ... please forget it!
I was totally confused about what I suggested to you and what you actually bought and why the sound still doesn't seem to be spot on in your demo and why you're having trouble with noise and hiss. My brain suddenly did a couple of somersaults.

Anyway ... now I understand you didn't buy Armin's Pack but a pack from Andy that I still don't own (was released after my suggestion back in April). Maybe I should get it and check it, but on the other hand I get the Santana sound spot on with Armin's profiles.

Sorry if I caused not only my own confusion.
Martin

basics is always in guitar : mahogany body with maple top ,preferably mahogany neck with rosewood FB and decent humbuckers (see my avatar=Tom Anderson Bulldog have the exactly such a specs) , or PRS Santana, this is the most easiest way.
amps : any amp with smooth distortion , or better to say amps which allow saturation on early stage .
any Kemper profile with smooth but still clear distortion , one of the best one - Pit Bull
always roll down tone pot , and compeaste it on Kemper EQ adding some sparkle frequencies .

and remember , Santana is playing 100-150W amps on 11 - that is another main ingredient in his tone, apart from his mahogany HB guitars fingers and soul......
basicly , his tone is not heavy to achieve , if you dig it enough deep ...
Cheers,
Zoran

Quote from Mike43202

I grabbed a backing track for that song and recorded some licks with my setup so you can hear whether I approach the Santana tone or not.

Sorry but I don't think the Tupelo Crunch+ profile you mentioned is there for this purpose, personally. (Not that it is bad, I just don't think it is in Santana territory.) I like my Ceriatone profile a lot better (even if it only got a two star average rating from two voters).

I didn't change anything from my profile except to shut the tape delay effect off. And I'm using my PRS Santana SE on middle pickup position with the tone rolled down to around 2 or 3. No processing was done, it went straight into ProTools and straight out once mixed with the backing track. I think Santana was probably turned down a little more than me ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/edbqacz5su2g9nx/SantanaTest.mp3

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Mike, you are spot on, amazing !!!!

That Woodstock tone was the SG and a Gallien Krueger GMT 226A, a solid state amp with a backlit control panel, and modern styling that made people call it the "spaceship".

Hmmmm......High tech styling and a lot of lights. Sound familiar?