Santana

selected  Santana TShirTS, PosTerS & Prints

Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947), known simply as Carlos Santana or Santana, is a Grammy Award-winning Mexican-born American Latin rock musician and guitarist.

Santana (originally the Santana Blues Band) is a flexible number of musicians accompanying Carlos Santana since the late 1960s. Just like Carlos Santana himself, Santana is known as the one which made Latin rock famous in the rest of the world.

Santana was formed in 1966 in San Francisco. The first members were Tom Frazier (guitar), Mike Carabello (percussion), Rod Harper (drums), Gus Rodriguez (bass) and Gregg Rolie (keyboard, vocal). In the following years (and decades) the members of Santana changed frequently for a number of reasons, and from 1971 to 1972 there was a brief separation between the group and Carlos Santana.

In 1998, Santana was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with Carlos Santana, Jose Chepito Areas, David Brown, Mike Carrabello, Gregg Rolie and Michael Shrieve being honored.

In the mid 1970s Carlos Santana endorsed a lot of musical equipment, including the Gibson L-6S, the Fender Stratocaster, and Mesa Boogie amplifiers. He featured in several Gibson advertisements throughout the decade. Santana played a red Gibson SG Special with P-90 pickups at the Woodstock festival. He was also photographed playing a white Gibson SG Special and later the Yamaha SG-175B model and on one of his more famous albums; "supernatural" he used a Gibson Les Paul for the majority of the tracks.

Santana currently endorses PRS Guitars. He uses a Santana II model guitar using PRS Santana III pickups without covers (the black & white "zebra" coils are visible) and a tremolo, with .09-.42 gauge D'Addario strings. His Signature Series models vary greatly from this in some cases, such as the Santana SE and Santana III guitars (which have ceased production). The Santana III has covered pickups instead, and no abalone stringers between the pickups (a feature unique to his official guitar). The Santana SE guitar has 22 frets, no tremolo, a basic sunburst top, and a pickguard.

Santana's guitar necks and fretboards are constructed out of a single solid piece of Brazilian Rosewood, instead of the more traditional mahogany neck/indian rosewood fretboard combination found in stock Santana models and other PRS guitars. The Brazilian Rosewood helps create the smooth, singing, glass-like tone that he is famous for.

Carlos Santana also uses a classical guitar, the Alvarez Yairi CY127CE with Alvarez tension nylon strings. For a classical sound Santana plays with the pick not far from the guitar bridge.

from Wikipedia licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.