Santana Sustain...

Keyzer

Been listening to a lot of Santana stuff recently - the old stuff not the new garbage. Excellent band in their day, some great tunes.

Pretty impressive guitarist but his sustain is mind blowing.

Any one got any tips on how to achieve lenghty sustain of single notes?

Voodu Child

Santana is a user of high-gain amps. His woodstock-era stuff was done with a Mesa/Boogie Mark I (the first amp with a high-gain cascading preamp architecture, but actually pretty low-gain by todays standards) and later he pretty much settled into various Mark II amps, probably IIC+'s. He also has used Dumbles, which have a similar circuit to the Mark-series amps.

So you're basically after a smooth, high-gain valve distortion. It helps if you can run the poweramp hard also, it'll contribute it's own kind of break-up to the mix, and the natural feedback from a loud amp is going to play some part also. It's not something you'll get from a basic fuzzbox or distortion pedal, but if you have a Pod or similar you'll probably have a Boogie preset.

More than likely he also runs the tone control down a good bit to kill some treble and give the tone that fat, bassy quality. And of course, he's using humbuckers, you're going to get a different sound if you try the same rig with a Strat or something.

rcaz

You could try something like a Big Muff? They always bandy about stuff like "creamy Santana-style sustain" when they describe that sorta fuzz tone.

Paolo_M

Voodoo is spot on.
If wanna believe the legend; Randall Smith was owner of a car repair/hack shop called Mesa Engineering. He also started doin repair/restoration work on amps for people in the area and developed quite a name for himself around the local music scene. He is supposed to have received a Fender Princeton, I think, to have some work done and, partially as a joke, he cascaded the input stages. Instead of the multi input amp it was now a single input with all the gain stages in series. This produces the massive (for the time) levels of compression and sustain as Voodoo mentioned.
Anyway the story goes that Carlos Santana walked into the store one day and played through the amp for a while. He is supposed to have turned around and said "man that thing really boogies" and the rest, as they say, is history.
Also heard another story that he used to run the power amp flat out, to the point where the orange glow was visable from accross the stage, and had fans blowing at the back constantly to try and keep it cool. This would also add to the warmth, compression and sustain but probably isn't a great idea in your local pub/club!!
Mahogany bodied guitar on the neck pick up (humbucker preferably), with the tone rolled back a touch will also help.

-=al=-

fulldrive 2 is very smooth and great for pushing any clean channell tube amp, i friggin love that pedal, super smooth

compressor will help a little too, and yeah usual jazz, nice thick toned wood, nice fat pickups, thicker strings

Patricide

Lets not forget the fact that santana used prs guitars, well known for there sustain on the santana models.

fish-head

... and let's not forget the facial hair and face pulling.

boycey

Patricide wrote: »

Lets not forget the fact that santana used prs guitars, well known for there sustain on the santana models.

He's well into his PRS nowadays alright. Back in the day he used SG's and Les Paul Jrs a lot too, and was also one of the first real high profile devotees of the Yamaha SG.

Fingers Mcginty

boycey wrote: »

devotees of the Yamaha SG.

Fab guitar...used to have an SG1000 ...amazing axe.

Johnny Storm

One of the best ever guitar players when he was on form, IMHO. Very expressive and melodic.

FWIW He has some pretty funny videos on his website where he "explains" the difference between male and female riffs etc. If you didn't know better you'd think it was a Cheech and Chong video. :cool:

Keyzer

Johnny Storm wrote: »

One of the best ever guitar players when he was on form, IMHO. Very expressive and melodic.

FWIW He has some pretty funny videos on his website where he "explains" the difference between male and female riffs etc. If you didn't know better you'd think it was a Cheech and Chong video. :cool:

I agree, very good guitarist but I much prefer the old stuff from the late 60's and 70's.

He's a complete nutbar though - some of the nonsense he talks about now is laughable.

Patricide

Keyzer wrote: »

I agree, very good guitarist but I much prefer the old stuff from the late 60's and 70's.

He's a complete nutbar though - some of the nonsense he talks about now is laughable.

Well he is a sceintoligist. He accredits all his guitar playing ability to XENU....nutcaseee.

Paolo_M

Patricide wrote: »

Well he is a sceintoligist. He accredits all his guitar playing ability to XENU....nutcaseee.

Oh no, not those guys...

Scientologist recruitment poster