The Complete Handbook of Guitar Cases & Gig Bags

Chapter 1: Understanding Guitar Cases & Gig Bags

A guitar case or gig bag is a piece of engineered equipment, not an afterthought. When a guitar is in its case, it is being subjected to a specific set of environmental and physical forces: acceleration from a drop, pressure from stacking, torsion from being wedged into a car trunk, and the slow diffusion of moisture through the air. The case is the barrier between the instrument and those forces. Its entire purpose is to manage that energy and that exchange, and the difference between a good case and a bad one is the difference between a guitar that arrives intact and a guitar that arrives with a headstock fracture, a cracked brace, or a finish that has suddenly turned to a web of fine cracks.

It helps to think about what protection physically means. There are two distinct threats a case manages: impact and environment. Impact is the obvious one. If a case falls from a car roof, it accelerates, hits the ground, and decelerates over a distance measured in millimeters. The kinetic energy built up from the fall has to go somewhere. In a cheap, poorly constructed case, that energy transfers directly through the case wall, through the interior padding, and into the guitar's wood. In a well-designed case, the outer shell deforms slightly, the foam or felt absorbs some of the energy through compression, and the guitar body is suspended in a padded cradle that allows it to decelerate