Open Street/Roland AC-22

Yesterday I went to the Open Streets event in FW with the Tele and BL rig, and the new Roland AC-33 amp (more on that later). I was directed to an establishment with power at the start of the route, but seeing little foot traffic, decided to go up Broadway and set up across the street from the cathedral-esque Baptist church. This would be a good test of the amp with battery power in an outdoor public sitch. Played for about half an hour to bicyclers, cops, strollers, kiddies, skateboarders and a few zombies happened by. A beautiful day for such an event. I'm not sure how well the amp projected out into the street (it's only 20 watts on battery power), but I'm sure I didn't bust any eardrums. After that, packed up and strolled to the opposite end of the route on Jennings where Tammy Gomez was doing her poetry/dance/art thing in front of the Rainbow Lounge. She graciously implored me to set up and plug in from the Lounge. What a difference. The extra 10W in power was ample to blanket the surrounding street with my sounds. I jammed with Tammy for a while and packed and moved on, fearing sunburn. Headed back to the car. Only saw another small band of yutes jamming acoustic on the route, I expected to see more music types.

Overall I'm pleased with the AC33's performance, although it did distort a bit on the peaks coming out of the loop pedal. The amp has an onboard looper and some nice chorus and reverb effects (it's actually an "acoustic" amp). I'm hoping to rewire the Behringer foot pedal son Eric gave me to utilize these functions in the future. The big advantage here is it's very lightweight, supposed to be 10lbs but it feels closer to 5. Beats lugging that Carvin around if I don't need the 100 watts, which I usually don't. Or I'll use it in conjunction with the Carvin for stereo sound.