Prs se santana to sound like marsden se with pick up change?

[dtray187]

Hey guys I have an SE Santana, and I love the playability and the trem, but the sound is pretty thin. I really love the sound of the marsden se, very slash alinco ii sounding on the neck.
My question is if I throw some alinco ii's in my santana how close to the marsden will it get? I know its not as thick of a body and its a double cut, but I thought I would ask.

Thanks!

 

[andy474x]

Tough one... I believe the Santana already has the same pickups as the Marsden (245's), so looking at a pickup swap is a bit of a toss up, it may or may not get what you're looking for. I think the thing that's probably creating the biggest tonal difference between the two guitars is the trem on the Santana, in my experience trem equipped guitars always sound a bit thinner. First thing I would try is moving up to thicker strings, 10 or bigger if you haven't done so already. That should fatten up the sound a bit, and it's cheap to do. Just make sure to have a tech file the nut out for the bigger string gauge, or the bigger strings will get stuck in the nut and cause tuning problems.

I've never tried the Alnico II's myself, but I've always thought they were fantastic sounding pickups from what I've heard, so I don't think you could go wrong putting them in. But will they give you exactly what you want? That is a tough question to answer.

 

[dtray187]

Thanks, My santana is from 2011 so it has the santana edition pick ups, they do put the 245's in the newer santana's. Not sure how much that changes anything