I've been duplicating Carlos' guitar sound for about 20 years. I've owned two Mesa-Boogies, a Yamaha SG 2000, and a PRS. I use D'Addario strings. I've even used Carlos' personal picks. I actually stumbled across a keyboard magazine in the '80's (I forget which one), where they interviewed Carlos and he actually told them how he set up his amps. Right now I use a Mesa-Boogie F-30 and a Roland Micro-Cube, and it is quite easy to get Carlos' sound out of a Micro-Cube. The guitar has to be a neck-through body mahogany (the maple top helps, but it's not absolutely necessary), with serious pickups. Santana has used Seymour Duncan '59s in his Yamahas in in his first PRSs, and PRS Santana IIIs in his newer PRSs. I used Seymour Duncan 59s in a Les Paul copy with a Mesa-Boogie Studio 22. In my Yahama SG-2000 I used two EMG 81s and a PA2 preamp, and in my PRS Santana SE I use 3 EMG 89s, and Afterburner, and three 3-way mini-toggle switches. The D'addarios Santana uses are .009s, and the pick he uses, made by Dunlop, is basically a large Fender triangle pick. Having used the man's picks myself, I are Mike Bloomfield, from whom Carlos learnedwould say it would be unwise to underestimate his picks in the process of trying to achieve his sound: they have a rounder tip than regular and teardrop picks and thus have virtually no pick attack. I use a Dunlop white nylon .30 pick. I actually found it difficult to play with them--the characteristic tone comes from holding the pick in the middle. It's a medium-gauge soft material. Basically, Santana tries to get the distortion as smooth as possible, to make the guitar sing instead of scream. He runs both the gain and the volume controls at 6 or 7. The important thing is not the amount of distortion; it's the fact that the controls are set in the same place. The amp has to sound almost clean. You can even get that sound on 2. On a Mesa-Boogie get just enough to make it sing and fill the room, and then in performance if you turn it up a little you will find that you get feedback, which if you hop on right away--you can hear it coming--and add vibrato, will give you endless sustain, especially facing the amp. You may have to compensate somewhat for the brightness or depth of the sound of your guitar by changing the tone settings on your amp. The guitar will also sound different when the tone control is set at 7 instead of 10 and when the volume is at 5 instead of 10. If you watch Santana on video you'll see he's always twiddling the knobs, especially the volume knob. Here are the amp settings, from Carlos himself; gain--6; volume--6; treble--7; midrange--5; bass--2; reverb--7; and presence is completely unnecessary. If you add more distortion or more reverb it doesn't sound right. I would recommend using the bridge humbucker full up and turning the tone control to 7 to get the "Supernatural" sound. The "Caravanserai" sound would be more like the volume on 5 and the tone all the way up. You'll have to experiment. And you must also bear in mind that two of the greatest all-time masters of the subtleties of the use of the pick are Mike Bloomfield, from whom Carlos learned, and the undeniable all-time master--Carlos himself. So the amp and the guitar are just tools. But when you hear people say that Carlos' sound is in his hands--believe it, because it's true. Those crazy wide bends, that subtle whispering pick attack, that crying vibrato, the slides and pulls, and that wailing sound that define him most all of all--aren't coming from the amp. They're coming from his hands, and from nowhere else.