First of all, a big Mudcat welcome to Jo King! Yeahhh!

Second, here's a good horror story that I am currently living. My daughter plays cello in the high school orchestra. A moderately priced cello is still more expensive than most high-quality factory guitars. We bought her a used one a couple of years ago. It came with a padded heavy fabric soft case. Last week after her concert as we were walking out the door, the handle fell off the case and it crashed about two feet to the sidewalk. When we examined the instrument we found the fingerboard had separated from the neck. We are now looking for a hard cello case - it's going to be around $200 for the least expensive but even that will be 10 times better than the soft case. I repaired the cello myself yesterday. It was about most scared I've ever been on Halloween but I think it turned out okay - still have to string it back up though.

Frank Ford's Frets.com website has a lot of good information including how to protect your guitars while traveling.

Jon W.