b'The Fylde guitar case & bracing patternsDave Walters guitar is next to one of the very few glass fibre Fylde Cases from about 1976.The patterns for the moulding were made by Adrian Hornby and myself with leather grain fabric glued to the surface to provide a texture. They were an absolute work of art. As with so many of my projects, I couldnt spare enough time and having solved many problems and invested a lot of time and money, it was left by the wayside. I am very good at starting things, but if there are too many delays, I move onto something else and never manage to get back. Its frightening how many projects have ended that way. I need parallel lives, or even better, a few clones.On the wall above the case are a few examples of soundboards salvaged from damaged guitars. I am constantly experimenting. Most of my thinking is concerned with how the stress caused by string tension is distributed over the soundboard area, and how that stress affects the behaviour of the guitar. Part of it goes like this: put simply, with a fixed bridge, the soundboard in front of the bridge is under compression, and behind the bridge, it is under tension. The transition from compression to tension takes place in a small area of significant torsion - or twisting to the non-engineer, and there are certain small areas where stresses are actually zero. The vibration of any component is governed by the stress within it, so it is easy to see how important all this is. The bracing of the soundboard governs the distribution of stress, and therefore the vibrations within it. If I lighten the braces in front of the bridge, that part of the structure compresses a little, causing the tension behind the bridge to increase. If I build the top with a slight arch, rather than flat, there are stresses built in even before I tighten the strings, etc.applying one on top of another, then This is not a technical book and I ammake modifications accordingly.not sure if I could explain very muchI may not have gone where I even with my technical background.intended to go, but I believe I have But that background has taught meended up where I needed to be a lot of very basic concepts, and IDouglas Adams again.use them by trying to visualize the concepts as Ive described above, 82'