December Acoustic Jam

The Sunday before Christmas was our fourth monthly session of the Downingtown Area Acoustic Jam group that we found out about through meetup.com.

We've come to enjoy and look forward to these monthly sessions, and this one promised to feature holiday songs. The songs we played, as best I can remember, are as follows, and the one we chose is marked with asterisks.

• Philadelphia Lawyer (Woody Guthrie)
• Hey There Delilah (Plain White T's)
• Happy Xmas (War is Over)*** (John Lennon)
• Angel from Montgomery (John Prine)
• Go Tell It on the Mountain
• Christmas in the Trenches (John McCutcheon)
• Torn and Frayed (Rolling Stones)
• Christmas Time's A-comin'
• Winter Wonderland
• Jingle Bells
• Holly Jolly Christmas
• What Child is This
• What Child is This (to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun")
• Auld Lang Syne
• Mele Kalkimaka
• The Way You Do the Things You Do (The Temptations)
• Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
• Good King Wenceslas
• Even Santa Gets the Blues
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Bugera V22 Amp

I must have been a good boy this year, as Santa brought me a new guitar amp (somehow fitting it down our chimney.) I now have a Bugera V22 two-channel tube amp. Apparently 22 watts in a tube amp is the equivalent of much more in a solid-state amp. I'm not sure about that, and I'm not really interested - the goal isn't loudness, it's good tone.

I've grown more and more dissatisfied with the sounds I'm getting out of my Line 6 Spider amp. It does a lot of things, and has a lot of built-in effects, but it seems to me that it does a lot, but nothing well. I'm thinking that I'd rather have an amp that does one or two things really well. Doing some reading of reviews and message boards, the Bugera amp was highly recommended by a number of people as a great value for a low-end tube amp.

I've only had a little time to play with it, but it sounds like a dream, and I can't wait to get better acquainted with it.